Porch Stories :: March 2018 So Far

Intro

Again this month Kristin Taylor's Stories from the Porch comes in categories! The month of March on the Left Coast also had variety, mostly featuring renewal and restoration. At the start of the month the church's year of grace was about one-third into the slowed-down season of Lent with its focus on repentance, spring cleaning all aspects of our lives (the word lent means slow, and is an old word for spring derived from days getting longer or lengthening in the northern hemisphere), Jesus' relentless journey to Jerusalem and the cross... and the indescribable surprise of resurrection we never truly expect. Today, Wednesday of Holy Week is the last day of Lent! The Triduum or Three Day liturgy of Maundy Thursday – Good Friday – Easter (Vigil, Sunrise, Day) begins tomorrow.

RecycLA

Mist permeated the air outside City Hall on the morning of Wednesday 07 March, but many of us delighted to brave the {dramatic?} southern California weather – partly to demonstrate, majorly to celebrate – that multi-unit residential dwellings finally having an easy recycling option as a result of the public/ private partnership of RecycLA known en español as RecycLA.

World Water Day 2018

Due to my being bone-weary, heavily into discernment and letting go, I won't post more pictures or another description, but also related to redeeming planet earth, you can read about World Water Day 2018 by the Los Angeles River and maybe imagine the river that owns this city that owns that river being sufficiently cleaned-up and free-flowing year round for churches to begin regularly celebrating baptisms in the river! At our August Green Team meeting illustrated in my August & Summer 2017 Porch Story Chronicle, Lisa Dahill, one of our guests whose university classes usually don't allow her to attend our meetings, talked about being baptized (or renewing your baptism) in your local river, and then owning again those particular waters every day as you pray and work toward justice, renewal, and resurrection for all creation that emphatically includes the well-being of that city, its river, its headwaters, and its watersheds. Many times, as in Los Angeles' situation, the city and the river even claim the same name! A couple weeks ago I finished reading the book about Eco-Reformation Lisa Dahill joint-edited and contributed a chapter to, and hope to review it in a week or to. So please watch this space!

Outro

Lent ends today. On Palm-Passion Sunday, the Sunday school hour was disorganized and a bit chaotic with regular participants coming and going back and forth from here to there. Originally I'd hoped to pull together and print a few key scriptures to discuss but didn't because I simply couldn't. Instead, in my intro I mentioned the church over the centuries has brought many interpretations to Jesus' trial, conviction, crucifixion, and resurrection, some of them not very faithful human imaginings, some with scriptural grounding, but in essence Jesus died because that's what happens when a person acts like God. I suggested let's not even attempt to analyze or explain Holy Week or Easter: let it engulf us; let us embrace it.

This is the last day of Lent 2018. I'm not trying to explain or describe the mercy, grace, love, and hope Holy Week and Easter bring to all creation. I'm so tired all I can do is allow it to surround me. Amen? Amen!