Posts Tagged ‘Easter’
How to Celebrate the Easter Season with Your Family
Want to keep celebrating the whole Easter season—even now that chocolate is on clearance? Here are ideas for living out the 50 days of Easter with your family. Get up early and watch the sunrise. Then cook breakfast together and read the story of Jesus serving a morning meal for his friends on the beach…
Read MoreEaster Prayer
Spring seems especially brilliant this year, as does Easter’s promise of resurrection. Perhaps, though, I’m attuned to it differently. More alert. More awake. More present. Or maybe the darkness, death, violence, and grief has been much too prevalent. In the bright purples, the wild flowers dotting the grass, a chorus of birds, a flowing stream,…
Read MoreLament for a Tree
It was a morning like any other, except for the chainsaws. They started early—before my two-year-old was even up—and continued on well past her afternoon nap. While the coffee brewed, I peeked out the back window and saw them: hard hats in highlighter yellow dotting the tree line, and our tree in particular. Our urban…
Read MoreAn Easter Prayer
God of new life, In this season of resurrection, help us to look for the little miracles. Shatter our disillusionment when the big miracles fail to materialize before us – Break through with your consolation when our Lazarus isn’t raised from the dead, Break through with Your mercy when our children aren’t healed, Break through…
Read MoreLentiest of Lents
Loving God, this trudge toward Easter has been long and the sustenance meager. I find myself coming to you with empty hands and aching arms, from the effort of carrying a cross I did not choose. You know all too well that choosing a sacrifice this year was a luxury. In the midst of it…
Read MoreLingering on Saturday: As a Hen Gathers Her Brood
I lean back at the bottom of the blue plastic slide, aware of my hair sticking to the static, the sandburs piercing the soles of my shoes, and our English words echoing off the wall that lines the perimeter of the park, our clunky foreignness flittering up to the open windows. The playground in this…
Read MoreMay Flowing Waters Quench The Parched Land
May flowing waters quench the parched land. May tiny tendrils push through the once hardened ground and blossom. May the grip of gloom be loosened to make way for joy. May the smallest spark of light shatter the suffocating darkness. May the tombs be empty and the gardens full. And in the groaning and straining…
Read MoreHow To Holy Week: A Guide For Where You Are
Holy Week—from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday—is the most sacred week of the Christian year. Whether you’ve always celebrated Holy Week or you are new to these liturgical feasts, we invite you to enter into the beauty of this week however you can. If you’re expecting: Labor’s Stages: A Triduum. If you have a new…
Read MoreJoy, Meet Relief
Can you hear it in their voices? Once you cut through the baffled wonder and divide the nagging disbelief and set aside the stuttering astonishment, there it is: relief. He is risen. He is risen? He is risen! It’s not a matter of simple punctuation. There are a thousand reactions to surprising news, and the Gospels cover nearly every one. Mary…
Read MoreBaby’s First Holy Week
Sweet boy, here we are. In the holiest of weeks. It all started on Palm Sunday. You solemnly gumming the long green palm in your father’s hands. Your brothers waving their palms wildly around the air (bonus points for whacking a sibling in the eye). Me watching all of you, half wondering why we bother to bring…
Read MoreLabor’s Stages: A Triduum
A journey of four days, each unique. Holy Week reveals itself in new shades every year, shadows of dark and light. It pushes through the broken, cold dirt of Lent’s long winter with a fresh green curl of hope. With only a few short weeks to go before baby’s birth, I see these feasts through a new slant. Each…
Read MoreCourage From The Tomb
What took more courage: going into the tomb or coming out? On Good Friday the thought of going into the tomb overwhelms me. Too much blood and betrayal, too much violence and grief. I drag my feet, wanting to stay in Holy Thursday where we break bread and wash each other’s dirt away. Yes, there’s…
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