Terrapin Station

Ash Wednesday 2016

I'm going to die, and you're going to die, and we're all going to die.

And what do we do in between?

I acolyted at the Ash Wednesday evening service yesterday. There had been a busy noon service, and then the afternoon Drive Thru Ashes were very well attended. I'm in tears looking at the photos of our young people imposing ashes on those who drove through. Take a look; you'll be glad you did.

http://www.stmartininthefields.org/drive-thru-ashes-at-st-martin-in-the-fields-in-kellersouthlake/

Praying the Front Page

A very simple prompt for your prayers today: pray the news. Local or international, front page or editorial page: pray through and for and about the news, knowing that "not one sparrow is forgotten in God's sight; even the hairs on your head are all counted" (Luke 12:6-7). I'm working on my prayer for today at my blog, "Faith and Water." -prompt by Rachel Hackenberg

Oh God! the news is so oppressive.

Those people on the Malaysian airliner: are they crashed? dead? drowned? Hostages somewhere? Political prisoners?

My knowing the specific answer is utterly inconsequential because: You know. You hold every one of those souls in your arms.

The crash of a drunken person's car into a crowd at SXSW in Austin

The dogs abused or neglected who now need care

The children who cannot receive proper food and education as political pawns

The disabled in countries where there are no services for them, but rather stigma and shame and abandonment

Every one of those sparrows, you have your eye on.

And me? Am I in there too, with my first-world problems and hurts and fears?

Help me to trust.

 

Writing to God

Today's prayer prompt begins with Jesus' lament in Luke 13:34 (NRSV): "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus leans on metaphors (especially parables) to teach fuller understanding of faith and of God. Here in Luke 13, a metaphor demonstrates the keenness of his love for the people despite the strident tone of his speech. For your prayer-writing today, create a new metaphor for Jesus. You might let yourself get carried away and write a list of metaphors; you might choose one metaphor that expands into a prayer. For inspiration with your metaphor(s), just look around you!

 

Unseen jet plane

streaking through a fading sky

reflected in the sun's dimming rays

I barely see your edge some days

and other days not at all

you are always there

you are mystery

Friday Five: Lent

 Jan asks at RevGals:

1. Oddly this year, the second day of Lent was Valentine's Day. How was this for you? Was Valentine's Day any different being in Lent? Nope. There were opportunities to eat chocolate and donuts, but I was already eschewing those, so no difference. 

2. Did you celebrate Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday this year? Any memories of memorable celebrations past? I managed to find and wear my Mardi Gras beads to work, and that was pretty much my observation. Usually I'm at a pancake supper, but see above. 

3. How about Ash Wednesday, past and/or present?  This year I was home on the couch feeling horrible, although I'd planned to go to church for the 7 pm service. I hate to miss that service; it means a lot to me, so I read through the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer and called myself to a holy Lent:

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great
devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and
it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a
season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided
a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy
Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of
notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful
were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to
the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation
was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set
forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all
Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the
observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance;
by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and
meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning
of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now
kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

4. Do you have a personal plan of give-ups, take-ons, special ministries, and/or a special focus for your own spiritual growth between now and Easter? There's something private I'm doing. Also, I'm writing daily prayers thanks to Rachel Hackenberg's prompts, and I'm reading the Sermon on the Mount each day. There's a group on FB doing the latter, and so far I find that pulling it out of my bag and giving a read each day is illuminating. I'll have to let you know how it feels after 40 days.

5. Do you have a book or a website you are reading often during Lent? Lent Madness!  I pray both collects daily.

Okay, change of plans for Lent...

The Ignatian Spirituality thing wasn't really jiving for me, and yesterday when I went to the site for the prompt I couldn't get in for a while.

So I am here to say that instead I am doing my private thing, and also writing prayers from Rachel Hackenberg's prompts. 

I started the latter before Lent, actually, and the first prayer I wrote was so personal I didn't feel I wanted to publish it on the blog. But it was very, very powerful! So, I may not publish everything I write...but I will try to write about the process. 

Here's today's prompt, read on my phone as I headed to a potentially difficult meeting. It gave me a rush of courage! that was only second to knowing that some praying folks had my back, too. 

***

Today's reading to prompt our prayers is Isaiah 10:21 (NRSV): "A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God." The prophet Isaiah foreshadows warring years for Jerusalem and a scattering of the people, but he also claims with hope that a remnant of the Israelites will be saved from the destruction in order to rebuild the nation. Despite all that will be lost, those who remain will be Israel's good news.

Many of us have experienced moments of devastating loss. Sometimes we've known long seasons of loss, when it feels that life is stripped bare and hope is a word only for the privileged. Life breaks us into pieces. To those seasons of our lives, Isaiah brings amazing good news: God only needs pieces to rebuild the whole. God can replenish a fire-devastated forest with just a few seeds, and God is fully capable of renewing life with just a few remnants.

In your prayer-writing today, observe the devastated or broken places of your life with God, and pray for God's blessing and renewal upon the remnants. (My writing is here: http://rachelhackenberg.com/lent-2-3/)

***

God,

There was a cataclysm of loss one day

in the very same room that feels so scary today.

I thought you had left me, then.

Today, I needed to remember that I lived through that.

In fact, I found my voice in it.

I learned to say, "What's the worst they can do...kill me?"  (with the certainty that it wasn't going to go that far!) 

I found grace in the love and support of others there,

the same as I did today.

I found confidence to remember my voice and speak. 

I held my head up and walked through it.

When I forget to ask your help, I am broken and alone.

Today, I walked on.

With your help, I can continue to walk.

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 10

These are the five steps of the Examen:

1. Pray for God’s help.
2. Give thanks for the gifts of this day.
3. Pray over significant feelings.
4. Rejoice and seek forgiveness.
5. Look to tomorrow.

Pray over Significant Feelings

In the third step of the Examen we look at our feelings. Ignatius believed that God communicates with us not only through mental insight but also through our “interior movements,” as he called them: our feelings, emotions, desires, attractions, repulsions, and moods. Feelings are neither positive nor negative: it is what you do with them that raises moral questions.

The Grace I Seek

I pray for the following graces: wonder at God’s ongoing creation; gratitude for the gift of God creating me and creating the world.

Aggravated as crap.  That's how I felt, partly, today.  There were several little things that came across like digs or slaps, and for some reason I was very ready to take them as such.  Paranoid much?  I found myself wishing there were something to eat in my office (yeah, that'd fix it!). 

Grateful for having started this exercise in the morning, and thus the reminder that I can step back and look at these feelings later in the day. 

Grateful for the resulting awareness, and the plan I've made to take the dogs for a walk once I get home. 

Grateful for the sunshine today, after a grey few days.  I put a prism in my window several days ago, and the rainbows are showing up around the room as the sun moves.  It's a delight.

Ignatian Prayer Adventure Day 8

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help

This week's work is on the Ignatian Examen. 

These are the five steps of the Examen:

1. Pray for God’s help.
2. Give thanks for the gifts of this day.
3. Pray over significant feelings.
4. Rejoice and seek forgiveness.
5. Look to tomorrow.

The Grace I Seek

I pray for the following graces: wonder at God’s ongoing creation; gratitude for the gift of God creating me and creating the world.

Read Psalm 121.
Pray the psalm slowly. Open your heart to God. Consider: What is God like? How can God help me?

God is soaring.  God is like the mountains.  God is unchanging.  The words of the psalm resound for me in so many ways...the first lines, from a poster I had on my wall as a teenager; the sixth verse, from the King James:  "The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night" gives the title to one of Madeleine L'Engle's best books (The Moon by Night). 

I think the thing that grasps me most here is vs 7-8:  "The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul/The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore." 

HE SHALL PRESERVE THY SOUL.  God doesn't promise that we won't be hurt, or broken hearted, or even killed.  But God will preserve our souls. 

That is a big promise, and yet not exactly what I want.  I would prefer that 'preserving me from all evil'  mean ... that!  I don't want it to include cancer, or worries over aging parents, or the world in a hell of a mess.  But God is not magic, and God does not promise all roses. 

My family's dealings with cancer treatment over the past year have been our hardest thing, so far. 

My friend Robin wrote a few days ago about how having treatment for breast cancer recently has been difficult for her, not so much because of that situation and the things that surround it, but because most in the breast cancer community are, with their diagnosis, facing the hardest battle in their lives.  And Robin is and was not, because Robin's precious son Josh died by suicide in 2008. And breast cancer cannot approach that. 

I pray for God's help for Robin and others who are facing their hardest thing ever, that they will know that their souls will be preserved. 

And for all of us, walking in our paths singing songs of ascent...that we may take comfort in the knowledge that, no matter what, happens, we will never be left alone.  No matter how alone we may feel.  "The LORD is thy keeper; the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand."

 

 

 

Alleluia in Lent

The first time I did it, I was 26. 

I was in Boston for a training session, and prior to the first event, I had some wandering time to myself.  It was Ash Wednesday, so I looked up the Episcopal cathedral and went for service. 

It was the first time I saw a female priest (!!! and that's a whole 'nother story!!!).  And it was the first time I really HEARD the Gospel from the Ash Wednesday liturgy. 

It's, like, crazy, man!  It says "do one thing," (wash your face, smile, don't complain)  and then the liturgy leads us to completely do another (get ashes on your face and walk around with them on you all day long).  WHAT!?

So I got my ashes, and I rode the train back to my hotel, thinking about that paradox, and noticing that I seemed to fit right in, in Catholic Boston; more people had ashes than didn't.  In my hotel room, I met my roommate and we watched TV news together.  The Gulf War was on and that night SCUD missiles were falling in Israel.  I learned that she was Jewish. 

Before we left for the opening reception, I washed off my forehead ashes.  My roommate hadn't remarked on them before, but she said, "I thought you were supposed to leave those on!"  I said, "I don't think there's really a rule about it." 

There's not.  And ever since then, I've washed away those ashes as soon as possible after I've received them.  It's important to me to get them, and to remember my mortality and that of those I love, and those I DON'T love, and everyone in the world.  To participate with my faith community in that liturgy.  And then, it's time to move on. 

The whole Ash Wednesday liturgy is a church history thing...not a Jesus thing.  It's a tradition, a practice.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say to do the things we do.  That doesn't mean they are bad; but it does mean we might want to look at them with new eyes to see how they really work for us.  In my tradition, we "bury the Alleluias" and do not use the word during Lent.  And mercy, does THAT sometimes get to be silly.  If it's accidentally uttered, oh no!  such comment!  We refer to it as "the a-word."  Oy. 

 

I don't "give up" things for Lent anymore, either.  It ends up not meaning much to me besides a contest of wills, which becomes an obsession.  I know that I can have the strongest will in the world; it's a way of showing off to myself.  But that doesn't get me any closer to Jesus. (My friend Songbird wrote a great homily from which I borrow the "show-off" language.) 

 Yesterday I posted a link about a positive way of looking at Lent.  And that really "hit me where I live" later,  in reading  my friend Kirstin's latest blog post.  Kirstin has metastatic melanoma.  She's been living (and I mean LIVING) with this disease for three years now and blogging her journey. She writes, for Ash Wednesday: 

I need to claim Easter now, because I have no idea if I’ll be here on the liturgical date. My hope is in the Resurrection; I’ll be damned if I’m putting that off for six weeks because the church tells me it’s time to. I’m with the Orthodox; why are we ever proscribed from praising? God’s nature does not change because of our season. 

What am I doing for Lent? Saying alleluia and living in the moment. Seizing the joys that I can find. Looking for perfect nows. Spending time with friends. Being alive and awake in love.

And I say, with Kristin and for Kristin, and for all of us in the world and our fears and pains and hopes:   Even at the grave we make our song:  Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Lenty

So, I'm sporting a new blogskin for Lent. 

It has flowers in it, because my world really does have flowers right now.  (To which I seem to be more allergic each year, bah.)   I saw a flock of robins on my walk to work today...really, a flock!  at least ten that I could count.  There's no denying the springing forth of the earth in my north Texas town. 

At the same time, the blogskin is lavender, the color of penitence.  I have entered into a personal time of ashes in an important relationship, and I am oddly grateful that the liturgical year has graciously followed along with me. Without saying more about this personal situation, I crave your prayers. 

 

(this is your optimist's look at Lent, thanks to the Church of England.  You can find the LLLL campaign on Facebook).  It follows gorgeously with my local parish's Jr. Daughters of the King Lenten project on Random Acts of Kindness during Lent. 

I'm not sure how things will look at the end of Lent.  I guess that is the point of it: that we don't know, we have to walk through the days, but at the very foundation of it we do know that there will be resurrection. 

(or, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it):  Lord Jesus, only you know where my path will lead, but I trust that, even if I do not know either the way or the destination, you are with me and before me, and I follow you with joy.

 

A great day

Grateful at this, the end of an excellent day. 

Good and engaging work, lots accomplished. 

Warm home at lunch with spouse and dogs who were glad to see me (though spouse did not jump up and turn in circles, I could still tell).

Lenten Program this year is a simple meal plus a variety of types of things.  Tonight's was a sing-a-long.  I grew up doing that and it's been a very long time since I got to.  We had two acoustic guitars and a bass and we sang...

As I Went Down in the River to Pray

Let it Be

Pass it On

Teach Your Children Well

Turn, Turn, Turn

and many others.

While this was probably not everyone's idea of a great time, I don't think they could have found a program I liked better. 

Deacon Freda Marie led us in Compline and it was a great day.