February 2022 :: Urban Delights

…Winter, too:

• December 2021 All Around Town

• January 2022 Trippin'

• February is Valentine Month and Heart Month!

• Maybe you noticed outings and activities had started again? Suddenly because of Omicron, work and play have been crazy, so life subsided. For February's traditional emphasis, here's some city love in the form of urban beauty.

• Lectionary Project for February concludes the Season of Epiphany

• Worship Planning Retreat on an early February Friday

• Graceful Tree and Ground Shrub in the Parking Lot

• Garden of Hope and Birdhouse Looking Out into Town

• Noontime Winter Shadows and Flowers

• Still Living Local in 2022

January 2022 trippin'

• 4 more Reflections on Scripture During a Worldwide Pandemic on my other main blog: Urban Wilderness Lectionary Project

• Float Fest happens the day after the Rose Bowl Parade. They charge not low $$ admission and these days you need to prove your vax status, but especially after watching the parade on TV a few times the day before, admiring the floats up close was fabulous! Due to their scale and my proximity I didn't get enough good shots, but here are a few; my header collage includes a couple others of my fave pics.

• A first ever venture into nearby world-renowned Forest Lawn, where I saw their stained glass version of Leonardo's Last Supper. Good Friday and Easter need to wait because they were closed to visitors. They didn't allow inside photographs and I didn't attempt to capture the green grounds.

• Next stop the same day as Forest Lawn was the almost brand new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures that forms a trilogy with the Petersen Automobile Museum and LACMA. They do allow guests to take pictures, but due to the nature of the displays and other factors I didn't try very hard to get anything memorable.

• Lastly, we sauntered to the Farmer's Market for dinner. Some vendors already had closed, and astonishingly the venue was new to me despite my having become an Angeleno (as in no longer a "San Diego transplant") and despite having lived in nearby Koreatown.

• This year there were many online observances for MLK Day, but I didn't participate in or watch any. So sad. Hopefully 2023 will be different.

• On the fourth Sunday of January that wasn't its last, Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Area "A Symphony of Sounds" started mid-afternoon and transformed into the golden hour.

• Enjoy these tangerines! I LOVE this picture!

• Formally and officially I began living local in 2020, not long before COVID became a worldwide reality. I was happy to revise typography and year on my banner.

December 2021 All Around Town

• Urban Paradise Lectionary Project: Four for December

• Tuesday 07 December: Ecumenical Prayer followed by Soup, Bread, and Pastries at the Armenian Cathedral in Burbank

• Neighborhood Toy Drive and Christmas Party on Saturday 11 December

• Day Long Worship Planning Retreat on Thursday 16 December

• Las Posadas Tuesday 21 December "Wear Your Own Costume" because of COVID. I was a black cat panther.

• Front Lawn with Nativity Scene to set the seasonal theme

• Christmas Eve – Participatory Lessons and Carols at church. I got to be pianist because our staff pianist's spouse had a high fever so the fam wisely didn't go anywhere.

• On 26 December, "The First Sunday of Christmas," three of us gave a talk – here's mine – focused on our testimony of Christmas. Instead of live music we had a wonderful video of scripture readings and music for another Lessons and Carols.

• The afternoon of 26 December I finally saw West Side Story 2021, one of very few movies I absolutely wanted and needed to see.

• Final event of the departing year—house blessing for Jeremiah at noon on Friday 31 December. His place is full of beautiful furniture and decor. I've included pictures of the cow painting that's similar to one or two I have; the tall digital clock he got at Home Depot for an amazing price; elegant elephant tapestry.

Five Minute Friday :: Announce

• FMF :: Announce Linkup

The last Five Minute Friday of 2021!

• On my mostly lectionary blog this week I wrote about Mary Jesus' mother's response to Gabriel's announcement. As the world approaches again celebrating God moving into the neighborhood (thanks soooo much to late Pastor Eugene Peterson for that description) in Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem Little Town of House of Bread, we read again in Luke's gospel how Gabriel the angel first announced John the Baptist's upcoming birth to Elisabeth's spouse Zechariah; Gabriel announced to Miriam/Mary the birth of a son. Both those events were biologically unlikely and humanly unexpected. What can I say about announce today on the eve of the fourth Sunday of Advent? This blog description announces, "Theology – Ecology – Liturgy – Life" so I don't limit its content as much as I do for Urban Wilderness.

• Taking 5 to write:

I'll start by announcing communication is key in every facet of life. Humans and critters have many ways to convey what's going on; varieties of spoken and written language are fairly central to people, but signs, gestures, colors, and symbols play major parts. It's announce for today, but sometimes speech and other forms of communication makes a reply, reminds, or has another function. Where am I leading? Back to this morning, when a gentle mid-December sun announced the hope of yet another day of grace. On to a little later when an email announced a quick client design I need to start and finish at almost the same time. Then to the calendar announcing tomorrow is Sunday.

More than once I've quoted Cornel West, "We are people of hope? Why do we party on Friday nights? Why do we go to church on Sundays?" So along with Gabriel each of us can announce the surprising end of the routinely expected status quo. The dawn of the new creation. Is this only reason to rejoice because our waiting for God in our midst in Jesus is almost over? No, let's announce it's already happened, it's been happening, it'll keep on happening! To quote Jesus' cousin John the Baptist, "Jesus must increase and I must decrease." With light and evergreens, my header advent candles design announces, "All Earth is hopeful; the Savior Comes…" Even COVID-devastated earth. Even war-ravaged people and places. All. Announce it! Amen!

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Five Minute Friday :: Expectation

• FMF Expectation Linkup

• In Shakespeare's Henry V: "For now sits expectation in the air!"

Luke 3

¹⁵As the people filled with expectation, and all of them questioned in their hearts concerning John the Baptist, whether he might be the Messiah, ¹⁶John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

Expectation, anticipation. From observing a few others and from knowing myself to a limited degree, it seems as if most humans spend most of their lives in a past that is over (to some extent) and in a future that hasn't yet dawned (though God already has gone there to ready it for us). Those enticing five minute fridays! Of course you can write to any prompt at any time, and I've done a couple of them too late to link, but isn't it more fun to join the weekly writing flash-mob?

With Advent well underway and Nativity drawing nigh, it's been yet another crazy week. I had to attend to formal and official projects so I didn't quite write about expectation, but I blogged my weekly Revised Common Lectionary reflection for Advent 2. In doing that, I retrieved and slightly updated a prayer I wrote fifteen years ago; I'll re-blog it here:

Prayer

God of all creation, again this year we anticipate your Holy Presence among us in the Bethlehem manger. We also find you in our neighbor next door, the homeless family in the park, the clerk at the convenience store, frontline medical and municipal workers, scientists studying COVID, and conflicts across the world, may we bring to all of these the joy of the Bethlehem baby. We pray in the name of the Bringer of hope and Author of peace, amen!

© Leah Chang, 2006, 2021
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November and Autumn summary

• Lake Balboa • Gallery at Mount Olive, Santa Monica
• Malibu Lagoon State Beach Entrance Sign • Advent 1 + Thanksgiving at Central

• September 2021 Overview

• October 2021 blog

• Lectionary project for November

• After the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox both became "also rans" in the 2021 World Series, I adopted the Atlanta Braves and what fabulous winners they were—they still are! I really surprised myself by watching every post-season game. Particularly with COVID infections continuing worldwide, I loved the diversion and – of course – the opportunity to remind myself what an outstanding model for real life the slow drama, devastating defeats and last second wins of baseball can be.

• On a Sunday afternoon excursion to Lake Balboa I got at least a dozen good pictures; these are the best of quite similar scenes.

• Check out the footer image for more Thanksgiving in Santa Monica! We began with interfaith worship and continued with traditional dinner served and enjoyed al fresco. I loved seeing several friends from West LA.

• After 11am dinner, my current hosts and I drove along the very long Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu Lagoon. I always love capturing creation's textures and colors.

• Back to real life worship for the first Sunday of Advent. Despite a smallish group, the atmosphere was electric! My header pic includes hopeful Advent blues and seasonal thanksgiving brights.

• Atlanta Braves logo • LA Food Bank Truck
• Program cover for Interfaith T-day Service
• Communion Table dressed with flowers and Reign of Christ frontal


• I've been Living soooo Local, google maps told me I didn't leave the LA city limits at all during September and October!

Five Minute Friday :: Wander

"Desert Scene with Stars" from my suntreeriver design identity
• Five Minute Friday Wander Linkup

J.R.R. Tolkien's meme-worthy, "all who wander are not lost" never stops making internet rounds. That's not my reference today, yet ties in well with what I want to say for this week's one-word free write.

The classic scriptural place – locus classicus – of "wander" remains the trek through the exodus desert testified to in the pentateuch and reenacted at passover and in the eucharist. We sometimes refer to that wandering as identity-forming, though Israel's liberation from imperial slavery was the true watershed without which a future couldn't be, but then again there was God's grace-filled gift of the Ten Words at Sinai that covenanted together God and people and land—and without which no community could long survive. So what's up with all of us today as COVID-19 trends away from the center of our news reports and the inconveniences of our lives?

Sometimes we view deserts as lifeless, but it doesn't take a geographer or geologist to realize how incredibly lively and life-giving the desert biome is underneath the apparently still surface. Doesn't that make a desert a close to perfect place to wander and grow? To trust God's surprising next thing? Because just as the desert carries only an appearance of lifeless, God's people assume only an appearance of lostness.

In words from late Ragamuffin gospeler Brennan Manning, "In the desert Yahweh and Israel rendezvoused with each other." We continue to wander through normalcy-deserted pandemic toward what never will become anyone's new normal; God continues to challenge us to trust divine provision, to acknowledge the sufficiency and "enoughness" of his daily supply, to focus on that essential what's really important with each other as we wander on to places God has prepared.
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October 2021

• Clockwise from upper left: red church door on Reformation Day; Keep Calm and Mask On kitteh; patio wall lizard; red flowers and cross on Reformation Day

• Lectionary Project for October

• A splendid vision from the community garden

• Real-life church on Sunday 24 October

• Overcast morning street scene in West Los Angeles

• My design for Reformation Day 2021 again. Psalm 46 scripture reads, "Be still and know that I am God."