April 2025 Highlights

• Urban Wilderness City Paradise Lectionary Project for April

• Wednesday 02 April • Another Trip to Torrance. I collaged the Stained Glass Windows I thought to capture this time. Have I mentioned google AI makes some really good collages, and has different options for us to make our own?

• Monday 07 April • Ground cover daisies. I don't know how many pics I've taken of ground cover at commercial sites. It's always fun and lively and even encouraging.

• Thursday 17 April • Florist Shop Easter Flowers in a collage by google AI.

• Saturday 19 April • My first time back in town in four years. Here are snacks from the annual Holy Saturday Easter workday; with covid and other disruptions I'm not sure when my last one was.

• Sunday 20 April • Easter Day, the Festival of Resurrection, Queen of Feasts. Lunch on the lawn included Persian Food for the end of Nowruz, the Persian New Year.

• Tuesday 22 April • doubles for Earth Day! I designed a poster for 2025 and my blog linked to six faves from previous years.

• Serendipitously, Earth Day also was the Fourth Tuesday Santa Monica Lunch Brunch I enjoyed for a second time. I collaged the lunch venue and some outside foliage.

March 2024 Lent to Easter

• city paradise / urban wilderness lectionary reflections for March

• California Rangers Ball at a posh venue in Panorama City.
Dance floor pics weren't too great, but the blog header has a good shot of the light show.

• World Water Day 2024

• Palm Sunday! Back at Saint John's Gardena

• Bilingual Maundy Thursday

• Creation Beauty on Good Friday

• Easter Sunday at Saint John's and around town

• March Summary:
Panorama City Mural
Santa Clarita Succulents
Palm crosses with Lavender in narthex

Five Minute Friday :: Suffer

Rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy.
1 Peter 1:8

• Five Minute Friday :: Suffer Linkup

To suffer is to bear, hold up, let, allow, permit. You may have heard the translation of Jesus' plea recorded in Matthew 19:14, "Suffer the little children come to me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

Common parlance has translated suffering into pain, trials, and anguish, which isn't an extreme stretch, because in a sense we do allow unpleasant events to prevail for a while, though many times we have no choice.

Our FMF host Kate explained she chose the word suffer because she loves the reminder in 1 Peter that any suffering is only for a finite length of time. Kate quoted the NIV, "…you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

Several years ago I illustrated an 8-part series of verses from 1 Peter and 2 Peter. It was unusual because the pieces all were different sizes and different styles. Typically overall style, color palette – or minimally size – ties together a group of designs produced under the same heading, but this was different. Today's prompt prompted me to use my illustration from 1 Peter 1:8 to head today's post. The RSV I used tells us we "rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy."

A few verses earlier 1 Peter 1:3 reminds us God has given us new birth into a living hope through Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead. Some translations says we have been "reborn."

Churches that observe Lent are at the halfway point to Holy Week when we remember Jesus arrest, trial, conviction, and crucifixion. We listen to the passion narrative about the literal pain and suffering Jesus allowed. But we need to remember when Jesus himself predicts his suffering and death, he also includes his resurrection, his rising. To be raised from death? You first must die. For the apostle Paul, the gospel is death and resurrection.

Whether we ponder and endure our own sore trials, consider the cost and outcome of those Jesus experienced, or look with sorrow-filled horror on atrocities in our own countries or places like Ukraine, it truly helps our endurance and patience to remember pain and death is not God's final answer.

1 Peter opens by addressing God's people who live as strangers, those who are resident aliens wherever they may be. NRSV says "exiles of the dispersion." That language is marked, pointed, and precise.

The pair of letters 1 Peter and 2 Peter were written to the church in diaspora that lived weekdays amidst ethnic, cultural, often linguistic and culinary strangeness; on Sundays they gathered as permanent citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. 1 Peter and 2 Peter remind us the church always is in exile, always has at least a hint of strangeness and stranger-ness vis-à-vis those around them, even when they themselves are voting citizens in that place, under that government.

At the heart of the story of Jesus of Nazareth stands the seven days we call Holy Week: a crucified man – but – then an empty grave. As we continue in Lent, as we anticipate Holy Week and suffer through Jesus' passion alongside him, we know the Day of Resurrection will be here.

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April 2023

• Peach Blossoms
• Golden Poppies
• Succulents
• Roxy in Easter Egg Bandana she won from a twitter friend

• Triduum Act 1: Maundy Thursday in North Hollywood 06 April

• Triduum Act 2: Good Friday in North Hollywood. What a Night! 07 April

• Crucifixion by He Qi is a separate line item. He Qi Art website

• Triduum Act 3: Resurrection – font and flowers 09 April

• Statice and Golden Poppies. The world in spring bloom!

• Too funny! I was so intent on publishing this April rundown before midnight, and I knew I'd carefully included all the highlights… but I ended up spacing Earth Day! Here's a Monday morning edit and addition. I trust you'll always #InvestInOurPlanet.

• Very early April peach blossoms turned into very late April peaches

Five Minute Friday :: Deny

Palms 2 Cross public domain illustration from the group we used Good Friday evening for Stations of the Cross with scripture readings Tenebrae service
• Five Minute Friday Deny Linkup

We've recently experienced seasons of Lent and Holy Week; today is Holy Saturday and tomorrow the Day of Resurrection – Easter Sunday – so I instinctively remembered 2 Timothy 2:12-13 telling us if we deny the Christ, Jesus still remains faithful. Where would we otherwise be, given our propensity to fear, thoughtlessness, and tendency to jump in with all four feet before we assess what's happening? Besides, despite sometimes doing our best to study all angles, we often need to make decisions and move on with limited information. But rather than riffing on a classic passage of scripture, I'll reflect on daily denials that lessen the quality of our lives and prevent our living fully right here and right now.

I'm writing about myself, though all humans tend toward the same traits. I'm expert at putting the best construction on unfortunate behaviors, rationalizing even when people clearly have intentionally behaved badly. Forgiveness isn't about denying the sin or offense; it's about acknowledging it so you can move on. Everyone has been in at least one bad relationship, unfortunate living situation, or negative workplace environment. It's important to exit and find something healthier as soon as possible, but one's (my, your) motivation to do so won't be very compelling if you don't admit what's happening instead of denying what's going on.

On that always there other side, when days are sunny and surprises splendid, it's easy to default into doubt and denial because – you know – how can these wonderful events even be after such a long series of disappointments? Denying God's constant gift of life? Another denial that God's final answer always is resurrection from the dead?

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Maundy Thursday 2022 :: Triduum Act 1

Psalm 116

¹²What shall I render to the Lord
For all his benefits toward me?
¹³I will take the cup of salvation,
And call upon the name of the Lord.
¹⁷I will offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
And will call upon the name of the Lord.
¹⁸I will pay my vows unto the Lord
Now in the presence of all his people.
¹⁹In the courts of the Lord's house,
In the midst of you, O Jerusalem.

Observing April 2019

• April in southern California predictably brings warmer weather, longer days, hints of new life, and (very often) Holy Week and Easter Day. If you used to visit this blog on a regular basis, you may remember I used to write a lot of more or less formal, structured theology—on a regular basis. As I've been doing for the past couple of years, this end-of-month summary is a pictorial chronicle, yet isn't all creation, aren't all activities basically theological?



• First Moonflower of 2019



• Green Team / Farmer's Market / Pacific Ocean

• After Green Team met again in Glendale (sorry no pictures again this time because the formerly on-campus school's relocation means no more colorful bulletin board and other décor), friend J and I visited the Hermosa Beach Farmer's Market that gathers on Fridays.




• Pacific Ocean

• The literally pacific and placid west coastal Pacific Ocean offers an extreme contrast to the east coastal Atlantic Ocean, but either one is best of the best for a short stroll or a long saunter on the sand!



• Union Station

• Though A and I met up there for a formal transaction, the opportunity to chill around Union Station is a major perq of Current City that's a port of call, a port of entry, a cultural crossroads. What's better than a train to illustrate our (yours, mine, almost everyone's) open-ended futures? Well... there's always LAX along with at least a dozen other international and general aviation airports, then we have the seaports of Los Angeles and Long Beach—yes, but trains carry a mystique no other transportation mode can match.




• Earth Day in Watts

• One month before Earth Day – 22 March – World Water Day reminded us Water Is Life. This year the day after Easter Sunday marked the 49^th celebration of all that's good, all that needs healing about Gaia. I ventured over to the LA neighborhood of Watts for an Earth Day event sponsored by the Sierra Club.



• Lent 6

• Originally we canceled Sunday School for Palm / Passion Sunday because of anticipated extra activity on campus, but I decided to meet anyway because I knew I'd enjoy reviewing and assembling liturgical and theological observations about Palm/Passion Sunday through the Three Day Triduum that accompany my quadrivium of related graphics.

• Maundy Thursday – Good Friday



• Holy Saturday – Easter Vigil / Sunrise / Morning / Evening



• Easter Flower Actuals



• Earth Day Monday in Town