The week between Palm Sunday and Easter
How are we supposed to cope with the despair that sets in when our known world is stolen and an invading, oppressive regime steps in?
Incorporating the new science, creation spirituality, and Christian teaching
Evolutionary Rituals are ways to show how religion, humanity, and divinity evolve.
For Classroom and/or Home Schooling
Compassionate, Intelligent, Inter-Spiritual, Non-Dogmatic
For Classroom and/or Home Schooling
Compassionate, Intelligent, Inter-Spiritual, Non-Dogmatic
For Classroom and/or Home Schooling
Compassionate, Intelligent, Inter-Spiritual, Non-Dogmatic
Today is Holy Saturday, that period of mourning, disillusionment, anger, fear, and other heart-wrenching emotions that occurs between our recognizing the realities of injustices and tragedies of the past and present, and our harboring the hopes for life and resurrection that hang on tenuously, if at all, for a better future.
Most years, sometime during the season of Lent, Jewish people observe Passover. I knew a little bit about it, but I learned a lot more at a friend’s son’s Bar Mitzva last week. The weekend of this Bar Mitzva included the Sabbath of the red heifer. I listened transfixed as the Rabbi spoke about it.
Now, I know Jesus taught his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. And following Jesus is something I take super-seriously. But I’m angry and worried, and pretty much everyone in the United States is. It isn’t easy to follow those particular instructions.
With Andrew Harvey
40 days & 40 nights: A Journey of Prayer and Contemplation
O God, let us take in the moment of this day of crucifixion, not remembering it in the context of what came after it, but how it left Jesus’ disciples and followers in tragic sadness and heart-wrenched disillusionment.
Sugar Maples remind us to tap into our core in transitional seasons when life itself sometimes hangs in the balance, tossed to-and-fro between the fluctuating extremes of faith and doubt, sickness and health, or fear and courage. Crises tend to dim and blind our exterior self as we awaken to and free fall toward our inner self, and with it the few things that matter.
An Easter Journey
A progressive Christian encounter with the Easter story that situates it within the longer story of sacred love and within our lives today.
Traditional Christianity has missed the point of the Easter story. The miracle on Easter wasn’t that Jesus was physically or spiritually raised to sit at God’s right hand until he could one day return to judge humanity. The miracle was his followers recognizing that they could continue to proclaim the message of God’s Reign on this earth even once Jesus had been crucified.
Our Earth is sacred and does not belong to us. When we recognize that we are merely stewards of creation which has been entrusted to our care, it shifts our outlook. We cannot continue to ravage the earth, deplete its resources, and consume without restraint while claiming to be faithful to our God. The Gospel is one of interdependence. All of creation is woven together in a delicate web that we must nurture faithfully.
It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, “Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.” Mark 14:1-2.
We are living these days under what feels like house arrest, as we observe "social distancing." That's an oxymoron, if there ever was one. Human beings are soft-wired – if not hardwired – to be together. Nowadays, the kindest thing we can do for each other is to keep our distance.
According to the Torah, on the Sabbath you can pick up an apple that naturally falls from a tree onto the ground, but you can’t pick it from the tree. Mindful Christian meditative prayer practice is very similar. In it, we take time to see things as they are, without interfering with them or trying to fix or change them.
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Rabbi Brian reminds us that the point of Easter and Passover is that we are forgiven, liberated, free. We forget that, cause we know the story too well. Imagine if you didn't. And, imagine what you need freedom from?
The profundity of Christianity is that nothing in it has but one meaning. So it is with Easter Week.
Are you envious because of my generosity? The question seemed to jump off the page. Far too often, I have felt envious because someone got something I felt I was entitled to – and I realized that I, like the laborers in the vineyard, begrudge God’s generosity. And, of course, envy and entitlement are major impediments when it comes to living a truly grateful life.
Every Sunday I stand at the altar and preside over a mystery. A mystery that has its roots in the events we remember this Holy Thursday. On Maundy Thursday, we gather together to contemplate MYSTERY. We know what will happen tomorrow as Good Friday plunges us into darkness. So is it any wonder that we cannot fully comprehend this MYSTERY.
This week we mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Last month was the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre and this June we will reach the 50th anniversary of the killing of Robert Kennedy. These events remembered within the martyr account in the gospel's passion narrative give us reason to look more deeply into the meaning of Easter, beyond a childish hope for eternal life, there is the challenge to be a prophet who refuses to be afraid.
Remember that resurrection is more than mere resuscitation! It is life transformed! It is faith in possibilities, when others are convinced of inevitability.
O God of empty tombs and resurrection living: Make us mindful of the pervasiveness of hope, the determination of faith, and the persistence of love.
This is one of my favorite poems celebrating the unexpected splendor of new life out of anticipated death. Happy Easter, all you resurrection artists.
Mary Magdalene was the first person, male or female, to witness the empty tomb…the first to see angels who reported the resurrection…the
Featuring "Purpose in the Pain" by David GreathouseToday's Easter message consists of 4 vignettes coupled with 4 original musical compositions of David Greathouse.