Terrapin Station

Friday Five: Holy Week Favorites

(As posted by ME at RevGals.)

Holy Week is upon us.

Realizing that most of our readers are clergy, and that clergy don't necessarily have the opportunity to fully worship when they are responsible for leading (creating, writing, facilitating) worship:

I invite you to share five favorite Holy Week things, five things that are truly worshipful for you.  It may be that it's the way they are done in your congregation (or were done in a previous one).  It may be your personal preparation for certain services or observances.  

Breathe.  Be still.  Look to the week ahead, and Holy Weeks past, and imagine the worship.

1) Washing of feet on Maundy Thursday.  St. Francis in College Station would have stations around the worship space, with rose petals in the warm water.  People would approach one another and go to the stations and spend as long as they wanted in loving attention to each other.  During that time, there was worshipful singing.  In my memory, this could take hours.  probably not.  but that's how I remember it. 

2)  Stripping and cleaning of the altar at the end of the Good Friday service.  Heartbreaking.

3)  Good Friday, which I usually take off.  This gives me a day to consider just what the whole week means, and to take some time sitting quietly in the Triduum. This time of year, outdoors is a good place to do it...so much new life, so much promise of Resurrection. I also do a good bit of housework, which is somewhat penetential for me :) and also gives me an opportunity to symbolically examine the deeply cluttered and dirty places of my heart, along with my home. 

4)  Looking at people, one by one, and thinking that God loves them every bit as much as me. Often I am not mindful of that. 

5)  Holy Week service project.  It is nothing official, but I always take some time during the week to do something for someone else.  The key is, they can't know it. 

Bonus:  a piece of music that "is" Holy Week for you.

The Exultet, which is chanted at the beginning of the Easter Vigil service, which takes the church family from darkness to light and from the misery of the Crucifixion to the glory of Resurrection and Easter. 

 

Text of the Exultet

The light of Christ.
People      Thanks be to God.

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels,
and let your trumpets shout Salvation
for the victory of our mighty King.

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,
bright with a glorious splendor,
for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church,
and let your holy courts, in radiant light,
resound with the praises of your people.

   All you who stand near this marvelous and holy flame,
   pray with me to God the Almighty
   for the grace to sing the worthy praise of this great light;
   through Jesus Christ our Lord,
   who lives and reigns with him,
   in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
   one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

              The Lord be with you.
Answer      And also with you.
Deacon      Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
Answer      It is right to give him thanks and praise.

Deacon

 

It is truly right and good, always and everywhere, with our

whole heart and mind and voice, to praise you, the invisible,
almighty, and eternal God, and your only-begotten Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who
at the feast of the Passover paid for us the debt of Adam's sin,
and by his blood delivered your faithful people.

This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children
of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the
Red Sea on dry land.

This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered
from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness
of life.

This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell,
and rose victorious from the grave.

   How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your
   mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you
   gave a Son.

   How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and
   sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy
   to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings
   peace and concord.

   How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined
   and man is reconciled to God.

Holy Father, accept our evening sacrifice, the offering of this
candle in your honor. May it shine continually to drive away
all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no
setting, find it ever burning--he who gives his light to all
creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 39

Healing the Blind Man at Bethsaida

Jesus empowers us to embrace our humanity in all of its beautiful complexity. The more we express our humanity in loving, healing, forgiving, serving, and rejoicing, the more our divinity or holiness is revealed.

No definition or doctrine fully captures who Jesus Christ is. We are left with an alluring Mystery. Our deepening desire to know, love, and serve Jesus Christ draws us into this mystery of God becoming human for us.

The Grace I Seek

I pray for the following grace: to know Jesus more intimately, to love him more intensely, and to follow him more closely.

Read

Read Mark 8:22–26 (healing of blind man at Bethsaida).

Why do you suppose he needed two doses? of healing I mean.  It reminds me of Naaman who had to wash 7 times.  What a mystery God is and presents to us. 

"I see people, looking like trees and walking." I very much want this to have some mystic significance.  I'm sure if I read commentaries I will find it.  But for now I will just think about it. 

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 38

Read John 2:1–11 (wedding feast at Cana).

For Reflection

Marriage and wedding feasts are metaphors used in Scripture to describe God’s salvation and the Kingdom of God. Here at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, John’s Gospel seeks to establish that Jesus is going to re-interpret and fulfill God’s promise to Israel. Jesus establishes the New Covenant. A hint about what this New Covenant will be like is made evident in the deed that Jesus performs. Asked to do something to address the awkward situation that the absence of wine at a wedding feast would create, Jesus’ miracle produces vast quantities of wine—six jars holding thirty gallons each are filled to overflowing with choice wine.

This lavish response to a simple human need is a vision for us of the abundance of God’s kingdom. It challenges us to respond generously when confronted with human need today. We respond as best we can, fully confident that God can transform our efforts, bringing the Kingdom of God to fulfillment among us.

The first day of re-interpreting.  The first day of publicly showing how different he would be.  The beginning of the beginning.   The beginning of turning the whole world upside down.

Some of my RevGal friends are re-ordering their order of worship this Palm Sunday (April 1) to do it all backward.  Mary Ann McKibben Dana is the first one I saw writing about this...read her blog post about it here. I am in love with the idea of re-ordering this...it would not work in the Episcopal Palm Sunday liturgy but oh, what I'd give to be a fly on the wall for this one. 

The thing about the extravagant excell of hte wine becomes very real as I look at the Springtime all around.  Birds:  I went to the library & then the pond yesterday, for wonderful peace and rest.  Flowers: I forget how many there are in the Spring, because most of the year it's HOT and the flowers are gone. People:  students on the campus, their foibles, their skimpy clothes and varied body decorations, I love to watch them.  Life's Rich Pageant.  An embarrassment of riches for our taking, if we don't forget to notice. 

 

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 37

Read Matthew 5:1–12 (The Beatitudes).
The beatitudes express the standard of Christ. Imagine that you are present in the crowd or with the disciples, watching and listening to Jesus. Allow his manner and words to affect you.

It's amazing how this man goes up a mountain to speak to us, and there are so many here and babies crying, and yet we can each hear his words perfectly. 

He gives me hope, because what he is saying is about us, about me.  "Poor in spirit" - that sounds familiar, with a sick husband who doesn't seem to get better.  With a world that seems to be going to hell in a handbasket: health care and Trayvon and Syria and Sudan and at-will. 

He says that if I continue to strive for what I've always worked for: clean heart, mercy, righteousness: that I will be given peace. 

Peace.  That's what I need.  Peace. 

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 36

The Grace I Seek

I pray for the following grace: to know Jesus more intimately, to love him more intensely, and to follow him more closely.

Read

Read Mark 1:21–39. Join Jesus on a busy day.

For Reflection

Jesus did not leave us a list of truths to affirm, but a task to carry out. We must try to discern in our time and place how God wants us to live our lives in this world in tune with God’s Spirit, the one divine action at work in this universe. This is what the discernment of spirits is all about. Followers of Jesus have been given a task to carry out and the means to do it. Impelled by God’s Spirit, they must try to live in this world with the conviction that with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus all the needful has been done, that God has won the victory he intends. Our task, therefore, is to follow the prompting of the Spirit, who has been poured out in our hearts, to follow the way of Jesus, the way of peace, of love, of the cross.

—William A. Barry, SJ, Spirit, Style, Story

 

Healings.  Jesus didn't sit down to do his work.  He got up and went and did. 

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 35

For Reflection

A Loving Disciple’s Offering
Eternal Lord of all things,
I feel your gaze on me.
I sense that Your Mother stands near, watching;
and that with You are all the great beings of heaven—
angels and powers and martyrs and saints.

Lord Jesus, I think You have put a desire in me.
If You will help me, please,
I would like to make my offering:

I want it to be my desire, and my choice,
provided that You want it, too,
to live my life as You lived Yours.
I know that You lived an insignificant person
in a little, despised town;
I know that You rarely tasted luxury and never, privilege,
and that You resolutely refused to accept power.
I know that You suffered rejection by leaders,
abandonment by friends, and failure.
I know. I can hardly bear the thought of it all.

But it seems a toweringly wonderful thing
that You might call me to follow you and stand with You.
I will labor with You to bring God’s reign,
if you will give me the gift to do it.

from http://ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises/an-ignatian-prayer-adventure/week-5/

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 34

The Procrastinator, the Compromiser, and the Truly Free Person

Imagine three persons of good will who are trying to serve God and grow in faith. They sincerely want nothing to get in the way of their relationship with God.

Imagine that each acquires something that is very attractive to him or her. Ignatius suggests a large amount of money, but you can imagine something especially attractive to you, such as a certain material possession, a place to live, a high-profile job, or a particular honor. None of these things is intrinsically evil; each one can be used for good. But each of the three typical persons is excessively attached to the possession in some way.

The one who procrastinates. The first person wants to let go of the attachment, but she never gets around to it. Even on her deathbed, she is still thinking about letting go of her attachment.

The one who compromises. The second person sincerely desires to be free of that excessive preoccupation; at the same time, he wants to keep the possession. So he does lots of good things and makes honorable sacrifices, but he fails to do the one thing that he really needs to do: free himself from his disordered attachment. This person is trying to negotiate with God. Rather than conforming his will to God’s will, the compromiser wants God to do what he wants to do.

The one who is truly free. In Ignatius’s words:

The person typical of the third class desires to get rid of the attachment, but in such a way that there remains no inclination either to keep the acquired money or to dispose of it. Instead such a one desires to keep it or reject it solely according to what God our Lord will move one’s will to choose, and also according to what the person himself or herself will judge to be better for the service and praise of the Divine Majesty. (SE 155)

Considering the important choices you have made, how have you resembled the three persons: the procrastinator, the compromiser, and the truly free person?

You see, my friends, it's not a posession I am holding on to: it's security, things as I have always known them, so that must be the way that things are supposed to be.  And I think not.  I think not. 

I want to be truly free. 

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 32 & 33

The Two Standards

read the prompt here http://ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises/an-ignatian-prayer-adventure/week-5/ - see Day 4. 

(The Opposition Leader): Consider the address he makes to them: How he admonishes them to set up snares and chains; how first they should tempt people to covet riches (as he usually does, at least in most cases), so that they may more easily come to vain honor from the world, and finally to surging pride. In this way, the first step is riches, the second is honor, and the third is pride; and from these three steps the enemy entices them to all the other vices. (SE 142)

***

In contrast, gaze in imagination on the supreme and true leader, who is Christ our Lord. (SE 143) Consider how Christ our Lord takes his place in that great plain near Jerusalem, in an area which is lowly, beautiful, and attractive. (SE 144)

Consider the address that Christ our Lord makes to all his servants and friends whom he is sending on this expedition. He recommends that they endeavor to aid all persons, by attracting them, first, to the most perfect spiritual poverty and also, if the Divine Majesty should be served and should wish to choose them for it, even to no less a degree of actual poverty; and second, by attracting them to a desire of reproaches and contempt, since from these results humility.

In this way there will be three steps: the first, poverty in opposition to riches; the second, reproaches or contempt in opposition to honor from the world; and the third, humility in opposition to pride. Then from these three steps they should induce people to all the other virtues. (SE 146)

The traps I see myself falling in here are fear and sloth. 

I'm not much on riches, nor honor (though maybe I'm just not seeing that).  But as an Enneagram 9 I tend (in unhealthy movement) toward sloth.  And fear is a core operator for me. 

I must practice moving, standing up, walking forward toward the thing I want (toward the leader I want to follow) and concentrating on the things that leader wants me to focus on. 

 

 

 

Friday Five: Vital Connections

Sally says at RevGals:  OK I'll admit it, right now I am exhausted, there is so much going on and so much to do that I fell like I am running around in small circles, add to that the fact that there is so much that I'd like to do ....

What I need to do is give myself permission (make myself) to stop and to refocus, to breath the air and smell the roses to get perspective and to rest in God's presence, and sometimes that can be hard to achieve but I know that the harder it gets, the more essential it becomes. Somewhere deep inside I hear the Spirit whispering to my soul:

Live in me, make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself, but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you are joined to me... (John 15: 4)

So I want to ask you:

1. How do you intentionally make a vital daily connection with God? What roots you and gives you life?  I go out in the morning to pick up the newspaper, and I face the sunrise, and I say good morning to God and give thanks for yesterday, today, and tomorrow...pray for the things that are on my heart at that time.  Ask that I might be God's person in the world today. 

2.  Do you have a favourite space/ place that you go to?  outdoors and birds are the constants.  I love to go outside, usually in my yard, or often I stop at a pond in a local park on my way home from Jazzercise and listen to birds.  The Cornell Red Tail Hawk cam has been fascinating me lately.    One of my favorite birds and it's such a gift to get to see them up close this way.  I've found a whole world of bird webcams through this site, but this is still my favorite.  It's a good meditation place for me.  

Watch live streaming video from cornellhawks at livestream.com

 

3. Is there a particular passage, phrase or prayer that brings you immediately into God's presence?  When I was a little girl, this was often used as the opening sentence as  Morning Prayer  began: "The Lord is in his holy Temple; Let all the earth keep silence before him."  (from Habbakuk).  And to me, that means, settle in; it's time to pray; God is in God's house and so am I."  Conveniently, I now experience God as anywhere that I am.  

(The Lord was definitely a Him when I was a girl.)

4. Music- essential ingredient or distraction- discuss

When I'm trying to pray and listen, music doesn't work.  Often when I'm working, it doesn't either.  But sometimes when I am working, it is a blessing.  It might be sacred music; yesterday I listened to about an hour of Bach cantatas on Spotify.  I'm also very fond of Pandora's Yaz channel. 

5. Silence and solitude or engagement with like minded others?  I really prefer to be on my own when it comes to refreshing. 

Bonus, a poem, piece of inspirational prose or music that speaks to you of that vital connection...

To Live in the Mercy of God

By Denise Levertov

To lie back under the tallest

oldest trees. How far the stems

rise, rise

               before ribs of shelter

                                           open!

To live in the mercy of God. The complete

sentence too adequate, has no give.

Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of

stony wood beneath lenient

moss bed.

And awe suddenly

passing beyond itself. Becomes

a form of comfort.

                      Becomes the steady

air you glide on, arms

stretched like the wings of flying foxes.

To hear the multiple silence

of trees, the rainy

forest depths of their listening.

To float, upheld,

                as salt water

                would hold you,

                                        once you dared

To live in the mercy of God.

To feel vibrate the enraptured

waterfall flinging itself

unabating down and down

                              to clenched fists of rock.

Swiftness of plunge,

hour after year after century,

                                                   O or Ah

uninterrupted, voice

many-stranded.

                              To breathe

spray. The smoke of it.

                              Arcs

of steelwhite foam, glissades

of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—

rage or joy?

                              Thus, not mild, not temperate,

God’s love for the world. Vast

flood of mercy

                      flung on resistance.

Denise Levertov, “To Live in the Mercy of God” from Sands from the Well. Copyright © 1996 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Reproduced from poetryfoundation.org

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 31

The Call of Christ, Our King (Continued)

We now consider the call of Jesus Christ. Note the repeated use of two phrases, the “more” (or “greater”) and “with me.” Christ summons the best from us, calling us to the magis, to greater service and generosity.

The Grace I Seek

I pray for the following graces: to listen more attentively to Christ’s call in my life; to become more ready and eager to do what Christ wants.

...

The second offering suggests an even more generous, more heartfelt response. The disciple devotes him- or herself not simply to laboring for the kingdom but also to being with Christ and imitating more completely his way of living:

Those who desire to show greater devotion and to distinguish themselves in total service to their eternal King and universal Lord, will not only offer their persons for their labor, but go further still. They will work against their human sensitivities and against their carnal and worldly love, and they will make offerings of greater worth and moment, and say (SE 97, emphasis added):

“Eternal Lord of all things, I make my offering, with your favor and help. I make it in the presence of your infinite Goodness, and of your glorious Mother, and of all the holy men and women in your heavenly court. I wish and desire, and it is my deliberate decision, provided only that it is for your greater service and praise, to imitate you in bearing all injuries and affronts, and any poverty, actual as well as spiritual, if your Most Holy Majesty desires to choose and receive me into such a life and state.” (SE 98, emphasis added)

Ask: What desires, dreams, concerns, fears, or hopes does Christ’s invitation stir in me? How am I moved to respond now?

My procedure with these prayer prompts has been to copy them into a blog post in the morning, pray on them, and then return in the evening to finish and post after the thoughts have percolated for a day.  

It is still morning.  I want to say now that what I hear this saying to me is that I need to ask sincerely of Christ, what the invitation he extends is calling me to do.  I have some ideas.  I just need to ask and listen and listen and listen. 

I can remember when I was a pre-teen, feeling like I didn't want to be one of "those" Christians (remember I grew up being taken to Charismatic churches and seeing "Jesus Freak" teenagers) because I didn't want to be a missionary.  HA.  Why I thought God would find me to be missionary material, I can't imagine. 

Anyway.  Set that aside and listen. 

...

What I heard today was more confirmation of what I have been thinking.  Unexpectedly so.  I think. 

 

Watching the RedTail Hawk cam seems to be a good way for me of getting quiet to listen (but I have to click on the videos tab to switch away from the chat!)  http://www.allaboutbirds.org/page.aspx?pid=2422&ac=ac  

More to follow this evening. 

...