Five Minute Friday :: Toward…

• Five Minute Friday :: Toward

…the light.

In the global north, days are getting shorter (the corollary? Longer nights). Every year I anticipate summer warmth, summer light, summer activities. I never can get enough of those very good things. Yet just as astronomical seasons are essential for the well-being of this planet's flora and fauna (we can include humanity in that "fauna" category), seasons of work, play, rest, and repose are essential to the allover health of human individuals and human communities.

I've long aligned my own annual journey with the seasonal rhythms of the liturgical year. Each new year of grace opens wide during Advent, a time of approximately one month that starts on the Sunday closest to Saint Andrew's Day (November 30th). Advent is the favorite season for many who observe the Christian year. It's a time of hope, of waiting, of expectation. We mark our wait toward the winter solstice when days begin to lengthen by lighting candles. One candle on the first Sunday of Advent, two on the second, three candles on Advent 3, then four, and finally on the festival of the nativity, a Christ child candle surrounds the other four.

From Advent to Christmas, darkness becomes the matrix for wanting light, for appreciating light, for going toward the light. From Good Friday to Easter Sunday dawn we also wait in darkness. At the Easter Vigil we kindle the new fire, we light the Paschal (Easter) candle from the new fire. The celebrants enter the church building as they proclaim "the light of Christ;" then everyone lights their own candle from the flame of the Paschal candle. From the light of Christ.

We have a choice to walk toward the light of Christ or keep hiding in the dark. Do you know "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light" by Kathleen Thomerson? The tune is lovely, lyrical, and easy to sing; the lyrics grounded in scripture:

I want to walk as a child of the light.
I want to follow Jesus.
God set the stars to give light to the world.
The star of my life is Jesus.

Refrain:
In him there is no darkness at all.
The night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God.
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.

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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 :: Break

• Five Minute Friday :: Break Linkup

I first wrote this on my City Paradise – Urban Wilderness blog; it will show up here after I update the IP address.

News break. Breaking day. Day break. Water main break. Lunch break. Break dancing. A break in the routine. Break a bone. Relationship breakup. Break bread. Don't break your promises. God doesn't! I want to write about all of those!

Our host Kate begged for a break in school shootings (others, too) that have become routine.

What's my focus this time?

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

As Jesus breaks bread and blesses wine, he tells us "do this—in remembrance of me."

Bless and break bread, pour out wine? "Do this" blood of the new covenant announcement?

Re-membering means re-collecting pieces and putting them back together to restore a broken whole that weaves together past and present.

When the church obeys Jesus by breaking bread and pouring out wine in his memory, part of the liturgical action includes retelling the story of God's people from creation through redemption in order to make it part of our own history. This remembering becomes about all of us throughout the history of the cosmos. We recollect how God has led us, how even those hard days didn't last forever… we again trust God whose final answer always is resurrection from death that breaks lives, shatters dreams, looks as if it annuls promises.

Do we need bread and wine to remember Jesus? Well, throughout the records of Jesus' life we find Jesus feeding strangers and feasting with friends; Jesus tells us people will come to the banquet from the east and the west, the north and the south … and about giving his broken body for the life of the world. The Welcome Table, the Calvary Cross, and the Reign of Heaven are tightly bound together.

When Jesus breaks bread and blesses wine, he tells us to do what he does—"in remembrance." Do we need bread and wine to remember Jesus?

We are breakout people! Wherever we go we become a living and a life-giving memory of Jesus. In us, Jesus again becomes alive in the world and we become a living connection to the heaven of God's reign on earth. Will people recognize us as the body of Jesus Christ when we break open our lives and hearts, share our substance and pour out our lives? I hope so!

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April 2022

• Liturgy and Lunch on Tuesday in Holy Week in Glendale. First time there since February 2020—more than two years! These stained glass windows on the front of the building always wow me.

• Maundy Thursday and Good Friday marked the first two acts of the three day Triduum. A Pink Full Moon on Saturday was the first full moon after the vernal equinox; let's also call it Easter Moon. I've never had a camera that can photograph the sky, so again this time I illustrated the moon. No Easter Vigil or Sunrise this year, but the concluding act three of the Triduum on Sunday morning was splendid.

• Earth Day 2022 – #InvestInOurPlanet – happened on Friday in Bright Week!

• On the second Sunday of Easter, April 24th, a neighbor's garden was part of the Native Plant Garden Tour sponsored by Theodore Payne nurseries. At least twice I've blogged pictures from visits to Theodore Payne and will try to find and tag them.

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