At the request of readers, I'm rounding up my favorite posts on Holy Week and Triduum. For wherever you are and wherever God may meet you this week...blessings on all of it, the mess and the joy. If you're expecting: Labor's Stages: A Triduum. If you have a new baby: Baby's First Holy Week. If you're a new parent, missing Triduum services for the first time: Wholly Weak (Or A Sick Mother's Reflections on Expectations). If you have little ones and can't make it to church: A Holy Week at Home. If you're busy preparing: The Forgotten Days of Holy Week. If you're burnt out: The Footwashing. If the weather (or world) doesn't look the way you hoped: Holy Snow. If you're gearing up to wrangle kids for many hours in the pews: Gospel, Interrupted. If you have a child with special needs: Where I Saw Christ, Back Row, Pink Coat. If you or your kids are sick and you're stuck at home: What An Upside-Down Holy Week Taught Me About Jesus. If you're grieving: Was It A … [Read more...] about how to Holy Week: a guide for where you are
Seasons of Church & Home
introducing Risen: 50 Ways to Live Easter
Every year I struggle with Easter. Sounds strange, I know. But after the long, intentional season of Lent, I always find myself floundering with what comes next. How do you celebrate well for seven weeks? Easter Sunday? Simple. Church, feast, family, chocolate. Kids going bonkers for baskets. All of us scarfing down too much sugar. Delightful and delicious. All the Alleluias! But then comes Easter Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. Fifty full days of the Easter season. I'll be honest: I had no idea how to live it. Surprisingly, joy is hard to sustain. Easter should be a season of celebration, a long feast of gratitude, an abundance of praise. But how can we keep singing Alleluias for weeks, when the rest of the world packs up the Easter eggs and races ahead to the next holiday-of-the-month in the Target aisles? What does it mean to be an Easter people for 50 full days? I wanted to find out. After years of grief, I felt a tug last year to turn to the practice of … [Read more...] about introducing Risen: 50 Ways to Live Easter
a decade of waiting: Advent in the body
Advent is a season of strange stories and wonder-full waiting. Angels. Dreams. Miraculous pregnancies. Surprising visitors. But in a season of powerful Scripture and symbols - light, darkness, watching, waiting - we can forget that the first Advent was embodied, too. Without pregnancy and birth - messy, physical experiences - Christmas could not have happened. What can bearing, birthing, and caring for babies teach us about the Incarnation? How might pregnancy, labor, and nursing shape our understanding of God becoming human? A few of my favorite questions. Turns out I can't stop thinking about them this time of year. . . . For ten years now, I've been pregnant or nursing during December. (That realization alone was enough to startle me.) A decade of Advents spent in changed relationship to my body as it expanded and contracted, filled and emptied, nourished and nurtured new life into being. Becoming a mother through these biological experiences changed my spiritual … [Read more...] about a decade of waiting: Advent in the body
when hearts become ashes
Two years ago, I had two hearts beating beneath my own. Twins. I was overwhelmed most of the pregnancy, to be honest. Worry multiplies with multiples. How would we care for two babies at once? What would life look like with five kids? Deeper, darker questions slid underneath, slimy and squirming. How could I love them all well? Would I lose myself? I worried about the wrong things. Most of us do, most of the time. Two weeks later, their tiny hearts were beating outside my body. Each fighting to keep pumping: one with too much blood, one with too little. Trapped inside giant isolettes, wrapped in plastic and tubes, poked and prodded, too much and too little. Neither heart strong enough to survive. A week later we held two tiny urns. Hearts to ashes. . . . Everyone we love will die. Of course you don't want to read that; I don't want to write it; no one wants to believe it. But it is truth. Can we hold it between steady hands? Look it straight in the face? Even … [Read more...] about when hearts become ashes