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 :: Persist

• Five Minute Friday :: Persist Linkup

Similar to a visual or musical pattern that repeats itself over and over again, sometimes exactly the same, sometimes with variations, my years have hankered after whatever skills and experiences I'd need to answer and fulfill God's call on my life and gifts. Anyone would say I persisted. When yet another expected situation didn't turn out well or never even began, I persisted in the same direction.

It doesn't take profound powers of observation to notice how creation also fancies persistent patterns. Something about the basic design of the universe? Probably so!

My current persist list includes:

• Keepin' on keepin' on with this "main blog" I started on the middle day of July 2002. I haven't missed a month, though for a scant handful I've blogged only once or twice.

• My mostly scripture, mostly lectionary blog: City Paradise / Urban Wilderness

• More skills for, more experience related to the essential "persist" for my lifelong sense of call and purpose to beautify the inner city and serve the urban church.

• The Beethoven Piano Sonatas. I can play 27 of the 32 to public performance level, though admittedly I've paused that project for now because the five remaining seem too conceptually difficult. I'll get to those soon, I trust.

• My relational persistence definitely is subject to revision. Only a very few times I've decided I no longer can persist leaving the light on for a particular person, though that still says nothing about what I might do regarding them a few years from now.

Time's up! How do you persist?

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Earth Day 2023

Earth Day 2023: Invest In Our Planet

Flowery clip art with legal reuse rights is from Creative Market several years ago. When or if I find the artist name, I'll add it here and link to their CM or other online presence.

• Earth Day Official Website

Five Minute Friday :: Realize

Back with FMF from my usual blog; for now I've happily reverted to the blogspot address and will deal later with custom one. After talking with a very helpful guy from domain registrar to learn everything basically was ok at their end but then still not being able to log in to there from 13 year old iMac to update blogger info with them plus every phone attempt I made to log in sort of worked except after I retrieved text code they sent, browser window reverted to login screen…

• Five Minute Friday :: Realize Linkup

• A long time ago I blogged about the book home is always the place you just left with its "restless longing and persistent grace" subtitle as the condition of Longing For Home. I accurately admitted i enjoy being almost everywhere, yet I always have a sense of yearning for where I've just been and sometimes even for almost every place I've ever lived. (Only a slight exaggeration.)

But what can I say about this week's realize prompt in five minutes, more or less? I'll start by telling you a few weeks back I suddenly realized I feel settled in my current place of Los Angeles. I'm still restless. I still need opportunities the huge metro area hasn't offered me. I need to keep reaching out with offers and overtures, but I want to stay in this general area. I realized that despite my anger, consternation, and other emotions about not having opportunities I need to be healthy and well again, I don't even remember the last time I longed for somewhere else or plotted an escape from the second largest city and most populous county in the USA. Together with a few million others who weren't born here, who came here from other cities, countries, and states of being, I've become an Angeleno. And that realization brings freedom. I realize I'm free to stay in LA,

One of my anthems is American Idol Phillip Phillips' chart buster, "Just know you're not alone, 'cause I'm going to make this place your home." I realize to be welcomed (in quite a few places I have been) isn't the same as belonging. I realize I'm physically home, but I still lack belonging.

My realize part 2 is admitting despite the welcome a few truly have given me, I cannot continue more than survival without a space and place to belong, because "belong" necessarily includes some opportunities to contribute to an extent that resonates with my preparation, abilities, and longing. I realize that will be God's deliverance into the broad space – "spacious place" – of Psalm 18:19 when it happens.

"Restless longing and persistent grace" is the subtitle of the book about home; I realize be-longing is my persistent subtext.

Note: I plugged in "realize" where I might not have if I hadn't been trying to address the prompt. # # #

Five Minute Friday :: Own

• Five Minute Friday :: Own Linkup

Although I contacted the domain host and the person I talked with did his best to update this blog on the CMS, it still doesn't load correctly and there seems to be zero way to contact blogger directly. If the blog didn't date from July 2002 I might give up and start another, but I don't want to lose all that content and I really really like the blogger interface, so migrating to another CMS with the same name isn't an option. Therefore… I formally Five Minute Friday'ed on my scripture blog again and I'm replicating everything on desert spirit's fire.

Own

When we own something, it belongs to us. Some ownership of an item or object, a success or a failure, is a clear choice—when you purchase something, for example. Sometimes we need to own a circumstance or outcome that happened because of many factors, so that particular owning is a bit complicated.

…if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my special treasure or possession – segullah – סְגֻלָּה – among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Exodus 19:5-6

Just as God claimed Israel as God's own during their desert trek toward the Land of Promise, in baptism God owns and possesses us. We belong to God! God chooses us, claims us, and charges us to be part of the reign of heaven on earth. As the PCUSA's Sixth Great End of the Church expresses it, "The exhibition of the reign of heaven to the world." That means the world sees heaven when they observe us! It's both gift and response ("responsibility") because God's promises have a condition.

Almost immediately before giving them the ten words of commandments that describe how God's people are to live out their relationships with God, known and nearby neighbors, and with strangers (sojourners, aliens, foreigners in scriptural terms), God tells them if they obey and keep covenant, then God will treasure them, "own" them, in a particular way.

Yes, God loves each of us and all creation unconditionally. But keeping Torah and keeping our baptismal covenants carry the distinctive responsibility of owning them by acting for the good of friends, neighbors, newcomers, strangers, frenemies, and even enemies to help create a flourishing common-wealth.

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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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March 2023

• Header collage: mid-March peach blossoms; Lion King banner outside the Pantages Theatre. A friend and I had planned to see Lion King, but it ended before we got tickets (long story). LA Phil tickets; late March peach blossoms.

• Urban Wilderness Lectionary Project for March

• March has a string of special days; the entire month celebrates Women's History, with International Women's Day on the 8th—a midweek Wednesday this year.

• A friend got tickets and chose LA Phil's New Music Group for Tuesday March 14th. John Adams has won a Pulitzer and multiple Grammy awards. His autobiographical Hallelujah Junction for two pianos was the unforgettable highlight! This was my first time inside Disney Concert Hall and I'd previously only heard LA Phil at Hollywood Bowl.

• John Adams' Hallelujah Junction book

• Every March 17th we remember Saint Patrick, patron of Ireland whose day makes everyone Irish.

• On Sunday March 19th it rained a little on the local Festival of Colours / Festival4India / #HoliFunFest that celebrated the full moon, a full range of natural colors, and the newness of spring.

• This year's spring equinox happened on Monday the 20th, along with the Persian Nowruz, another time of new beginnings. A few years ago I captured some Nowruz pictures in Westwood's Little Tehran or Tehrangeles; if I find them I'll add them here.

• Two days after the solstice the annual World Water Day rippled across the planet especially to raise awareness of fresh water without easily measurable saline content. For several years I've designed for WWD, but not this time—follow the tag to see some of my previous WWD interpretations.

• Six days later on Saturday March 25th several of us – including Sweety dog – walked around Lake Balboa. Of my dozen photos, these are the really irregular ones.

• On the last Tuesday of March, I facilitated an afternoon banner workshop at the Synod Bishop's Colloquy. These color-filled free range crosses are from audience participation in the first morning presentation.

Five Minute Friday :: Follow

• Five Minute Friday :: Follow Linkup

• Luke 9:57 I will follow you wherever you go … I will follow you.

• Matthew 8:19 I will follow you wherever you go … I will follow you.

There have been saints and martyrs in all eras whose passion for love, mercy, justice, and the reign of heaven on earth has led them to follow Jesus to the extent of forsaking their earthly lives. Jesus told us to follow him; a classic perspective says we follow Jesus to the cross, then to the empty grave, which feels especially appropriate during this season of Lent.

My header image isn't quite a labyrinth, yet if you follow the words you'll find yourself at the center that's also source and destination. My footer photo is the labyrinth a friend in Previous City designed and built for his Eagle Scout project.

If a stranger asked, what would you tell them following Jesus is about? You could tell them it's like a labyrinth that guides you unimpeded without dead ends but typically has a few surprising switchbacks that momentarily make it look as if you've gone backwards. You could say it's like following words of life – love of God and love of neighbor – to create healthy local community and ultimately, a global commonwealth.

You could tell them both religious and political leaders in Jesus' imperial context with its violence, poverty, and despair considered Jesus a major threat. In that case, what would following Jesus here and now look like?

You could tell the inquirer to follow you into worship where the sacraments / ordinances of baptism and holy communion are politically, socially, and culturally subversive. If you follow the visible words of the sacraments you'll find yourself at the center that's also source and destination.

Exodus 24:3 Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do."

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Five Minute Friday :: Story

• Five Minute Friday :: Story Linkup

• Here's one from a few years ago with my Telling the Story label

Suddenly you look and no matter how you parse it, you're not remotely where you'd marginally expected to be in terms of relationships, career, accomplishments, people you'd expected to stay on the journey with, or join you (join me, that is) on the journey.

Countless outreach attempts. I can't count the number of stories starting to be written (yay! finally!) and then erased. Did you know, do I really believe insanity is expecting different results from the same behaviors? Well… context matters. Where and when may not exactly be the key, yet how many times have I told myself and recently dared say to at least one other? My experiences would have been different in a place like Cambridge or Berkeley.

You've heard life is about story and it's about the journey. Stories include the give and take of relationships with other imperfect people. Stories happen in assorted cities and diverse surroundings. Ends of situations. Beginnings of others. Messiness and unexpectedness. Yet the best way to predict the future is to create it.

William Faulkner reminded us the past keeps overtaking us. My good actions, my mistakes and missteps, behaviors and attitudes of coworkers, acquaintances, and distant strangers, all converge to make an imperfect whole that continues to influence my future, yours, and outcomes on the other side of the planet.

Where's your story? Who's in your story? # # #

Five Minute Friday :: Reach

• Five Minute Friday :: Reach Linkup

Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Genesis 12:1, 3b

God charged Abram to go because when he did, all the earth would be blessed as far as Abram's life reached.

Where is home for you? How is home for you?

How far does your life reach?
What spaces, places, locations do you frequent or wish you could reach?

To be human means to reach out and participate in politics, education, commerce, sometimes religion—all those endeavors outside the four walls of home that converge to create the fabric of society.

How far does your life reach? How far does my life reach?
Do you typically reach onto the edges of your existence or into the center of the action?

Do you reach out and reach in, halfway between center and margins so you don't need to label yourself either insider or outsider? Do you covet the threshold, neither back where you began or in that new place you haven't seen—but God will show you when you get there?

How far does your hospitality reach? Do you distinguish between strangers and friends?

Reach out! Connect with insiders, outsiders, strangers, and friends whose lives reach out and touch yours.

Where is home for you? How is home for you? Comfortable or not?

Reach out!
Go from your home, your comfort, and your kindred, to the place and the people God will show you (when you get there…) because in you they will be blessed.

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Winter & February 2023

• Peach Blossoms header! Last spring I blogged peaches from the same trees. I love how well a Photoshop dry brush filter captured the seasonal mood.

• December 2022 Highlights

• January 2023 Highlights

• Urban Wilderness / City Paradise for February

• Free tickets for the Saturday February 4th Celebration of Life for Los Angeles' Lion King P-22 "sold out" almost instantly, so I watched online. As always, the energy of the live event would have been wonderful, but participating virtually gave me far better visuals. Sound may have been superior, as well.

from KTLA:

In tribal communities, mountain lions are regarded as relatives and teachers. Alan Salazar, a tribal member of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians and a descendent of the Chumash tribe said his death should be honored appropriately.

"We want to bury him like he's a 'wot,' like a 'tomier,'" Salazar said, "which are two of the words for chief or leader in the Chumash and Tataviam languages, respectively. "Because that’s what he was."

Los Angeles and Mumbai are the world's only major cities where large cats live—mountain lions in one, leopards in the other.

• The Full Snow Moon on Sunday February 5th was a micromoon. February's full moon sometimes is called Storm Moon or Hunger Moon.

• A surprise Strawberry Whipped Cream Cake on Monday February 6th!

• Here's one of my all time fave illustrations for Valentine's Day that was on its traditional February 14th. Tuesday this year.

• As always, Ash Wednesday was a moveable observation because the date of Easter depends on the spring equinox and the full moon. This year it was on February 22nd.

• This month's yellow California picture is a fresh lemon duet.