Blogging A-Z Day 2: Birthdays, Bach

Let's hope that this one doesn't crash the server... Do enjoy  another all-time favourite of mine for Holy Week, J.S. Bach's St John Passion, sung here by the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir, conducted by John Eliot Gardner. This is another work that I've been fortunate enough to sing in in the past, although not, I would add, with the outfit above, (way, way beyond my capabilities). I find the opening particularly moving. When we sung  it, we had some liturgical dancers performing along to the overture. They   took it to a  truly different dimension.

B  is also for birthdays - mine! After 50 *ahem* years I'm growing accustomed to having my birthday in and around Lent and Eastertide. This year it falls on Good Friday. What a  dilemma! Do I celebrate or go along with the mood of the liturgy  for the day.  Any thoughts?

Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology,  you should receive this post at  7 a.m. BST,  tomorrow, just in time to browse over with your morning coffee. If you live in the UK, that is. Or more likely, as this morning, you won't. I'm not sure if it was April Fool's gremlins in the works or my own ineptitude that did it. Luckily I just had time to press the magic button and send my bons mots soaring into cyberspace before I rushed for the train.

What Kind of Wilderness?

...and the spirit drove him out into the wilderness.

                                                                                   (Mark 1)

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom.

                                                                                       (Isaiah 35)

God's Grace and Chocolat

I'm not sure what the theme of my homily today ought to be. Do I want to speak of the miracle of Our Lord's divine transformation? Not really, no. I don't want to talk about His divinity. I'd rather talk about His humanity. I mean, you know, how He lived His life, here on Earth. His kindness, His tolerance... Listen, here's what I think. I think that we can't go around... measuring our goodness by what we don't do. By what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think... we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create... and who we include.

 - Pere Henri in the film version of Joanne Harris's  Chocolat

Another recycled Greenpatch:

And by the way, for a brilliant depiction of our shadow sides, the various and mixed motives behind Lenten observances and how they can go horribly wrong, do, if you've not already had a chance to, have a look at Joanne Harris's Chocolat.  The whole novel, but especially the scene near the end when the priest (in the book) or the mayor (in the film version) pigs out in the Chocolaterie window. It would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

To which I'd add now -  such a wonderful depiction of God's grace - in the screenplay at least, along with the famous Bishop's Candlesticks scene in the film of  Les Miserables. (I prefer the Chocolat take on it myself, though what that says about me I don't like to think!)

Great minds think alike anyhow: as I was pondering all this yesterday Chris Goan of This Fragile Tent pipped me to the post with his Chocolate and The New Kingdom.

Ash Wednesday

Psalm 51 - another much recycled Greenpatch

Lent Approacheth

Well here I am, back down to earth after my recent expeditions and wondering where January went. Why, it's been nearly a week since I last blogged, for a start! I can't believe  that Lent is almost with us. Not yet, surely? Yet I spotted a  large pile of last year's Palm crosses in church yesterday waiting to be turned into ash,  so it must be so.

So, with Ash Wednesday in mind, here's a link to another of the marvellous blessings by Jan Richardson of The Painted Prayerbook - Ash Wednesday: Blessing the Dust.

"This is the mystery of faith": Passiontide

 So Passiontide begins.  Rather than my own muddled meanderings on the meaning of Christ's Passion, I'm linking to last Sunday's sermon from what, for online purposes, I've previously  blogged about  as 'Newchurch. ' Here it is, a memorable  reflection on the metaphors we  use as we grapple with the meaning of the mystery that lies at the heart of our Christian faith: Why did Jesus go to these lengths? What was the point of his sufferings? What was the point of his death?

It's when I hear teaching like this that I realise again that Eeyore though I might be at times,  I'm so fortunate to have found a church  now where different viewpoints are accepted, questions are asked and we're  encouraged to expand our understanding of God beyond the human constructs we place on him. As it says in the closing paragraph: 

...as we travel on towards Holy Week and Easter, let’s pray for the grace to expand the horizons of our imaginations and not limit our understanding of God to the poverty and littleness of our human existence… there is so much more.

Amen to that!

Lent Practices: Confidence and Letting Go - Mothering Sunday reprise

  Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.  When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom.  After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it.  Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.  When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

    “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”^[ But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

  Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.  And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

 - Luke 2  New International Version (NIV)

So, the pic above is my reflective take today on the Mothering Sunday talk I wrote about last week.  The snap here was taken in a hurry and rather fuzzy: Basically, I decided to juxtapose Cecil Day-Lewis's Walking Away (pasted  into the heart), against the account of the boy Jesus in the temple.  Simplicity is all. The seed case and dandelion were a last-minute addition, gathered as I walked up to church. Not easy to find at short notice these last two; church is in a 'nice,' area and people keep their gardens and verges neat, tidy and relatively weed-free. (to the detriment of my spontaneous bursts of self-expression!)

I've been pondering a bit as to whether I'm bringing some of my own 'stuff,' into what's turning out to be a kind of  visual meditation and the appropriateness of so doing. Last week's - which I forgot to photograph -  certainly did. Then looking at it another way; who's to know what  each viewer (most people are too busy drinking their coffee to notice it in any case!) sees in it? That it's rooted in prayer, authentic and from the heart is surely A Good Thing, regardless of outcome... Hmm? That sounds suspiciously like another example of  'letting go,' and, oh dear, I really am not managing very well on that front, am I ?!

Lent Practices - Sin

Psalm 51

If I view sin as woundedness, how will that change the way I deal with it?

          Once you see that your "sin" and your gift are two sides of the same coin you can never forget it.
           - Richard Rohr
            
          Sin is a refusal to keep growing up.
           - St Gregory of Nyssa 

Lent Practices - Finding a Quiet Place

"And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?

 ⁶"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace."

 - Matthew 6 - The Message

Turn your speakers on, log out of Facebook, Twitter and I don't know what else-er and spend just 90 seconds with The Quiet Place Project. Thank you to Jesuit Post for this one.

Lent Practices - Putting Down and Taking Up

Is it a prayer station or is it Godly Play? Both maybe?  Either way, after a shaky start,  my inner child has  been having a whale of a time recently. I've been running the church's lent library book swap scheme which we had for the first time in 2011 as part of a special Lent program of Putting Down and Taking Up. We're encouraged to press the  'pause' button on   the  busyness of  our daily  lives by putting down something, be it an activity, way of being or  behaving;  in particular clearing our schedules of all but necessary 'churchy' meetings,  replacing them by practices that draw us closer to God. To explore new types of prayer, journaling, maybe painting, reading (hence the book scheme), or getting out and about and walking in the countryside. 

To date, I've little idea how this is working out in practice. Maybe I should ask...

Getting back to the library, the joke of it is that I  get 'booked out' quite easily nowadays. And I'm finding that as I get older, the very  thought of  the  plethora of Lent and Advent resources churned out by Christian publishers  brings me out into a sweaty panic.  Simplicity is my watchword; I am Franciscan, after all! And to remain open to what calls.

So a week in, I was rather taken by the use of imagery and symbolism in   the Sunday sermon,  when  bingo! I mean - Hallelujah! (Oops! Sorry, it's Lent). There it was - my Lent 'practice.' : Each Sunday I  wait to see what speaks to me from the talk and create a  library display round it for the following week. The one in the pic here was inspired by The Cost of Discipleship. Advantages: well, first of all it ensures that I listen to the sermon! Secondly, it helps focus me as I  sit prayerfully with it* during the week. Lastly, to translate it into another, non words-based medium is, as I've discovered with my experiments with art journaling, a wonderful means of helping move those truths from head down to heart. 

What anybody else makes of it, again, I have no idea...

For now I'm off to muse over last Sunday's topic: Sin.

*[ whenever new GP cat condescends to let me onto my comfy armchair, that is. You don't mess with him, as the vet who gave him his vacc this afternoon will certify.] 

Counting the Cost - On return from a Far Country

 Another Lent blogger: Andrew Proud, Bishop of Reading reflects on Facebook about life in Ethiopia.

On return from a Far Country 12
Sunday 4th March. Lent 2.
Mark 8: 31-end
Verses

36 and 37 catch my eye. The average life expectancy in Ethiopia is 46 for a woman, 47 for a man. More than half the population live more than a days walk from the nearest asphalt road and only 35.5% percent of the adult population is literate. We probably live 30 years longer on average and most of us can read and write. But of course, the truth is that all life hangs by a thread. Yours and mine as well as theirs. We’re just so protected we forget it much of the time. We have a fantastic NHS, an education system that is the envy of many and we can insure ourselves up-to-the-hilt if we wish. But it doesn’t change anything. Our life still hangs by a thread, but it is pure gift from God. Give thanks for being alive today and use the day to be a blessing to others.

 - more from On Return from a Far Country here

Counting the Cost

Quick now, here, now, always–
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well …

T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

 - Matthew 16:24

Blogging as a spiritual discipline

Just popping by before dashing off to Things Lenten to flag up two bloggers who're blogging through Lent: Jen, with Lenten Positivity and, on the wibsite, Balaam with  Forty Blogs of Lent. Enjoy...

Got to run...

All creatures great and small: R.I.P. Greenpatch Cat

                                            - Greenpatch dog and cat, 20 February 2012

It's a strange time  to be starting a new blog. The last week's been one of those weird, liminal periods when  normal time and routine were suspended and  we've been  plunged into a deep fog of waiting and watching. Fifteen year-old Greenpatch cat, who'd been unwell for a while, took a turn for the worse. Though I didn't  mention it at the time, the planning and beginning of Growing Greenpatches took place whilst I and Mr GP were keeping vigil through Tuesday night (we took turns to doze on the sofa) and into Wednesday. The photo - one of those chance in a million moments - was taken on Monday evening, at least I think it was Monday ; (ignore the camera setting), tiredness has played havoc with my memory; just as she began to wind down and slip in and out of consciousness. She died early on Wednesday evening. Funny old way to spend Ash Wednesday....very surreal...strangely right...

I can't say it was a happy experience for any of us, however,  though I hope it was a peaceful one; the main thing being that that she was kept as warm and comfortable as possible and died with us beside her; rather than, as our two previous cats were, in the very caring, but clinical atmosphere of the vet's surgery.  We always adopt elderly rescue cats so our children love to joke about our home being a last staging post for elderly moggies. Be that as it may, and yes, you do set yourself up for heartbreak, (this is the  third cat we've lost in six years), we reckon it's more than compensated for by knowing that our pets, whatever experiences they've been through in the past, are loved and cared for in their twilight years. They've all been so different from each other in character, personality and behavour, as I said once in my old Greenpatches blog:  Goth Cat, Viking Cat and ....well, we never gave Chops an honorary online moniker; Mr GP's just suggested 'Scaredy Cat. ' Yet they've all been equally loved. 

So...and though I'm embarrassed to admit it, we don't feel it's in any way disrespectful to 'Scaredy Cat's'  memory to reveal that yes...we've already been out a hunting and that subject to the go-ahead by the vet, a certain furry gentleman should be heading our way in a few days time.  Rather we feel it's a testimony to the love we felt for her that we  just have  to share it with another moggie.

RIP Greenpatch cat.We'll miss you.

Do not be afraid

 - Salisbury Cathedral Font looking south. Source - Wikimedia Commons, public domain image

But now, this is what the LORD says— 
   he who created you, Jacob, 
   he who formed you, Israel: 
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; 
   I have summoned you by name; you are mine. 
 When you pass through the waters, 
   I will be with you; 
and when you pass through the rivers, 
   they will not sweep over you. 
When you walk through the fire, 
   you will not be burned; 
   the flames will not set you ablaze. 
 For I am the LORD your God, 
   the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; 
I give Egypt for your ransom, 
   Cush and Seba in your stead. 
 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, 
   and because I love you, 
I will give people in exchange for you, 
   nations in exchange for your life. 
 Do not be afraid, for I am with you; 
   I will bring your children from the east 
   and gather you from the west. 
 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ 
   and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ 
Bring my sons from afar 
   and my daughters from the ends of the earth— 
 everyone who is called by my name, 
   whom I created for my glory, 
   whom I formed and made.”

 - Isaiah 43:1-7