An Artist's Connection

artists often show
their understanding of unity and divinity
by expressing their connection with mother earth...

Seen above: "Reflection" by James Mangum

Winter In July

Spring time is birth time,
the time of quickening –
summer is the time of growth,
of fullness –
autumn sees maturity,
ripeness, and passing –
and winter is death.
— George W. Jones

Last Fall while attending the last game of the soccer season for the daughter of friends, we met another fourteen-year-old girl who was a friend of a member of the team. Her name was Sarah.

Talking with Sarah off and on during the game, we learned that she did not play sports – a bit clumsy, she loved music and was taking piano lessons, her family were going to Disney World in a couple of weeks. She was pretty and bright, but also polite, well-mannered, and courteous – traits that are often hard to find with today’s youths. I found myself thinking, what a wonderful girl this was and how we could use more young people like Sarah.

After the game ended and we were walking to the car, we learned that Sarah had an inoperable brain tumor. She had perhaps six-months to live. My heart sank. After that day, we would occasionally receive updates on Sarah as her health declined. On July 2, Sarah died. I only met her the one time, yet the sorrow was great. Here was a young girl on the threshold of life’s summer, and now she was gone.

In George Jones’ complete poem, he speaks of how our lives mirror the seasons. His focus is on those of “venerable age” who have reached their winter years. So, what of those whose winter comes too soon?

There was a young man named David that George Jones had known since David was a child at the mission church where Jones was the priest. He thought the world of David, but David was suddenly stricken with an illness and died. Jones was heartbroken. As he described it, “It seems that all the flowers in Sherwood’s valley withered when David died, that all strength turned to weakness.” He later told the following story.

“In the Mission garden, Florence was cutting roses after David died. There she pondered, as perhaps at sometimes do all, why often the fairest of the young must die – as our David or sweet little ones. Many wonder why David had to die at 23, the best boy, the best young man the Mission has nurtured.

“Florence though, how she loved all the roses, how she gathered those spent and withered and old into her basket and as cherished things rather than trash, tenderly put them away. But she further thought how in selecting roses for God’s altars and shrines and glory, she selected the fairest most perfect buds. When the Mission folk heard her story many better understood how God, Who loves us all and gathers all at last, reached into His Mission Garden and gathered David, so young, so fair, into His bosom for His glory.”

Sarah’s seasons have ended, her morning of song has come, and it is time to begin life anew.

Words and Image by Dan Hardison

Working Together

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny. We are free beings and sons and daughters of God. This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in His creative freedom, in our own lives, and in the lives of others, by choosing the truth. To put it better, we are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity. ...To work out our own identity in God, which the Bible calls "working out our salvation," is a labor that requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears. It demands close attention to reality at every moment, and great fidelity to God as He reveals Himself, obscurely, in the mystery of each new situation.

Words: Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Press, 1961): 32.

Image: "St. Francis" by James Mangum

Asking The Blessing Of Light

In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Whhich have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.

Words from "For Light" by John O'Donohue,
in To Bless the Space Between Us.

Image by The Rev. Scott Fisher

Consequences

Once you plant this seed,
do not expect
some other tree to grow:
each action bears its own unique fruit;
creates its own legacy.
Reach out to me,
and I will bloom in you.


Words and image by Diane Walker

Gift

My rock, my sacred place,
absorbs my prayer - my gift to life.
Rock too, as all creation does,
gifts back - opens, breaks -
and yielding itself broken and inwardly exposed,
offers its hidden treasure
as prayerful gift of beauty.

Words and Image by Brother Anthony-Francis, Hermit
All Rights Reserved.

Breaking Locks

“… To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.”

Words: John O’Donohue in “To Bless the
Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, 2008

Image: Gary E. Smith (Photographer)
C. Robin Janning (Painter)

The seedy center of things

Look closely:
that darkness you sense
at the center of your being --
the stuff you build
a thousand fragile walls around,
hoping one will hold --
it's not a solid mass,
or writhing with snakes:
it's just a mass of seeds,
waiting to be born in you,
hoping for attention
-- a little sunlight, a little water --
eager to burst into glorious flower,
to stretch out petals of startling joy
and flutter in the breeze.
Take your pick; Grab one! Plant it NOW!


Words and image by Diane Walker

Collaborative Art

The image shown above is a collaboration between a photographer and a painter. While the mechanics of how a collaboration might proceed are many and varied, it seems that what is absolutely required is the ability to see beyond the individual heart and into the universal heart. When this happens, what is born of collaboration will be art that speaks more than one language.

Infinite possibilities exist. Which means nearly an infinite number of chance collaborations never happen. To me, it makes those that do happen...and that do work magically and wondrously...infinitely special.

Words and image by James Mangum (photographer)
and C. Robin Janning (painter)

A Radiant Oneness

We gather around
this table you set
and feel the spirit move like wind.

We float suspended
on the wine-dark sea,
holding hands and circling round,
synchronized swimmers in fluid motion,
each life a pattern,
detected only from above.

Fed by your color,
nurtured by your light
we breathe in the delicate perfume of oneness.

Words and image by Diane Walker

The Disappeared

The Art Blog at Episcopal Cafe

The Disappeared, an exhibition from The North Dakota Museum of Art (curated by Laurel Reuter) is introduced this week at Episcopal Cafe.

The work above, by Luis Gonzáles Palma, was given to the North Dakota Museum of Art in honor of Elizabeth Hampsten, a long-time professor of English at the University of North Dakota, who has dedicated her life to human rights and to preserving the life stories of little-known women. She has translated key human rights books from Spanish into English. Among them are Uruguay Nunca Mas: Human Rights Violations, 1972 - 1985, and, most recently, Truck of Fools by Carlos Liscano.

In this 1997 diptych, Empty Shirt, also by Luis Gonzáles Palma, one frame contains the frontal image of a Mayan woman, the second, an empty white shirt which stands in for the disappeared husband.

Read more here.

Images: Luis Gonzáles Palma

Last Night In Alaska

... the people, the place
joined to celebrate Eucharist
and light at Eagle Summit

Image: Bruce Gadwah, St. Matthew's, Fairbanks

Summer Solstice

"Solstice" by Roger Hutchison

From gratefulness.org

Summer Solstice: The northern polar axis of the earth tilted most sunwards marks the advent of summer and long days of sunlight. Like the earth, may we bow before the spiritual sun, so that we are bathed always in its transformative light.



From George Harrison

"Here Comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes"



From Robert Louis Stevenson

"Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad He,
through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes."



From The Rev. Scott Fisher

Thou who first placed us in a Garden, and who calls to us from an Easter garden, hear our prayer for, like the plants and flowers of the Earth, we seek Light. Thou, who speaks from Mountains and who walks with us through Lonesome valleys, at this turning of the Earth, we give you thanks for the Gift of Light, seen and unseen, and pray your Company until we come to that Country where there is no darkness at all. In your Name Lord Jesus, who reminded us that WE are the Light of the World, we do pray. Amen.

Photograph by The Rev. Scott Fisher

Mercy

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms’ self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.

Words: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

Image: Nuestra Senora del Carmen by James Mangum

Flavoring Eternity

From a drop of rain,
an ocean will emerge.
From one small seed
an entire vineyard grows.
From a grain of yeast
generations will be fed
with the risen bread.

In just this way,
that tiny glimpse you have of hope,
the smile you share,
the cheek you turn,
the wrong that you forgive,
or choose not to avenge:
each speck of love
you toss like spice
into the dish of life
enriches all,
giving each
the flavor of eternity.

Words and image by Diane Walker

Borderless World

The Art Blog at Episcopal Cafe

This week at Episcopal Cafe, the Art Blog features the work of artists and spouses Chuck Hoffman and Peg Carlson-Hoffman, who work side-by-side on the same canvas.

Image: Borderless World by Chuck Hoffman and Peg Carlson-Hoffman

Beyond

Though you cannot hear the water or the wind,
you know they do not cease to exist.
And when the light is dying, you’re aware
that with the dawn the sun will rise again.
And though you cannot touch the air,
its spirit never fails to fill your lungs.
Just so, in that neverland beyond the stillness
where sight and sound
and breath and touch abate,
I wait for you with arms outstretched,
laden with unimaginable gifts.


Words and image by Diane Walker

Seeing As Blessing

"May you recognize in your life the
presence, power, and light of your soul.

May you realize that you are never alone,
that your soul in its brightness and
belonging connects you intimately
with the rhythm of
the universe."

Words by John O'Donohue, in Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Image: Photograph by Helen Belencan

Who Does She Think She Is?

The Art Blog at Episcopal Cafe

This week at Episcopal Cafe, Art Blog editor, Mel Ahlborn provides more than one answer to this post's question. Read it all HERE.

And to answer Mel's question: "Can You Name 5 Women Artists?" just take a look (right-hand column) at the list of our Contributors.

Click on the image above (a poster for the film) to go to the interactive "Who Does She Think She Is?" web site.

See?

O Divine Artist,
whose brush creates for us
this perfect blush of burgundy,
these shades of green;
inscribing a delicate calligraphy
of light and shadow,
balanced each to each
as if to say: "See?"
Even a shadow can be beautiful;
even a tiny patch of sunlight
can reveal a moment of pure joy...

Let your divine artistry echo in us,
that what we paint or draw,
sing, play or dance --
with pigment, voice, or instrument;
through body, pen or camera --
that each uniquely rendered song of dark and light,
of shadow, shade and flame,
may allow some fortunate observer
to see the spark of divinity that ignites us all.

Words & Image by Diane Walker

Ashes, Stones, and Flowers

In Memory of All Victims of War and Terrorism

For vibrant lives suddenly
and shamelessly sacrificed,
we lift up the ashes of our loss,
O Source of Life.

For the lives that continue,
haunted forever by the pain of absence,
we lift up the ashes of our remorse,
O Wellspring of Compassion.

For the conflagration of flames and nightmare
images forever seared into our memories,
we lift up the ashes of our pain,
O Breathing Spirit of the World.

For the charred visions of peace
and the dry taste of fear,
we lift up the ashes of our grief,
O Infinite.

For all the deaths that have been justified by turning
the love of God or country into fanatical arrogance,
we lift up the ashes of our shame,
O God.

As we cast these ashes into the
troubled water of our times,
Transforming One,

hear our plea that by your power they
will make fertile the soil of our future and
by your mercy nourish the seeds of peace.

For the ways humanity pursues violence
rather than understanding,
we lift up the stones of our anger,
O Breathing Spirit of the World.

For the ways we allow national, religious and
ethnic boundaries to circumscribe our compassion,
we lift up the stones of our hardness,
O Wellspring of Compassion.

For our addiction to weapons and the ways of
militarism we lift up the stones of our fear,
O Source of Life.

For the ways we cast blame and create enemies
we lift up the stones of our self-righteousness,
O God.

As we cast these stones into this ancient river,
Transforming One, hear our plea:

Just as water wears away the hardest of stones,
so too may the power of your compassion soften
the hardness of our hearts and draw us into a future
of justice and peace.

For sowing seeds of justice to blossom into harmony,
we cast these flowers into the river,
O Source of Peace.

For seeing clearly the many rainbow
colors of humanity and earth,
we cast these flowers into the river,
O Infinite.

For calling us to life beyond our grieving,
we cast these flowers into the river,
O Breathing Spirit of the World.

As we cast these flowers into this ancient river,
Transforming One, hear our plea:

Just as water births life in a desert and gives
hope to the wounded, so too may the power of
your nurturing renew our commitment to peace.

Words by Rev. Patricia Pearce, Pastor of Tabernacle United Church, Philadelphia, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director of The Shalom Center

Image: photograph by C. Robin Janning

Thread This Needle

If you would thread this needle --
pass through to the other side,
that we might stitch our life together --

You must first interweave
your own strands:
gather up your disparate parts,
bind them together as an act of love;
make of them
a single
solid
rope of oneness.

Any loose ends,
any frayed connections
will surely prohibit entry
through this narrow gate.

Words and Image by Diane Walker

Speaking His Own Name

"Unless He utters Himself in you, and speaks His own name in the center of your soul, you will no more know Him than a stone knows the ground upon which it rests in its inertia."

Words: Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation: 39.

Image: Viola by Ruth Councell

Refuge From This Love

I pulled a thorn from the fence of His garden,
and it has not stopped working its way into my heart.

One morning a little of His wine
turned my heart into a lion hunter.

It’s right that this separation He helped me feel
lurks like a monster within my heart.
Yet heaven’s wild and unbroken colt
was trained by the hand of His love.
Though reason is learned and has its honors,
it pawned its cap and robes for a cup of love.

Many hearts have sought refuge from this love,
but it drags and pulls them to its own refuge.

Words: Mevlâna Jalâluddîn, "The Pull of Love" in The Pocket Rumi, Translated by Kabir Helminski. (Shambhala, 2001) Read more here.

Image: Photography by Diane Walker

Our Story

We encourage and affirm creativity
in ourselves and in all persons.

Our mission of Unity calls us
to contemplate and express through the arts
A deeper awareness of our communion
with God and all creation.

We affirm the power and prophecy of the arts
and believe them to be an important ministry
for hope and healing in this critical moment.
of world transformation.

Words: VISION STATEMENT FOR MINISTRY OF THE ARTS, Sisters of St. Joseph in La Grange Park, IL

Image: Mary Southard, CSJ

Here With Us Again

Imagine this!

You are here with us again,
washing over us,
lapping at our feet:
a wave of pure joy,
bursting with bright flowers
wells up in our hearts,
equal parts
terror and remembrance;
anticipation and confusion.

Stand back,
catch your breath
and take a running leap
into the sea of love.

Words and Image by Diane Walker.

Theology Of Creativity

"I would suggest that the first step in reflecting on a theology of creativity is to understand that one of our fundamental creative acts is to create our conceptions of divinity. The tasks, then, of theology and the mission of the Church invite us to examine the concepts we create and how we carry out the call to be co-creators of goodness, truth, beauty, and holiness. Our ideas and thinking about God form the backdrop of all that we do and all that we create.

In the words of Miles Davis, one of the world’s greatest musicians: “I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”

Our faith in God rests on our belief that God is the Creator — the Uncreated Creator. As people interested in the power of creativity, we know deeply that we were created, are created, in the first place. And we believe we were created in the image of God.

I suspect that to be made in the image of God has to do with our ability to be rational, to be stewards of the earth, to represent God to each other. Called into covenant with God, the covenant could be read this way: I set before you life and death. Choose to create life, choose to create goodness, choose to create the beautiful, and choose to create the truth through the art of your actions."

Read it all here. The article also comes with a soundtrack: Miles Davis, Blue in Green, which you can listen to here.

Words: The Rev. Mark Bozzuti-Jones

Image: Assumed Into Heaven by C. Robin Janning

It Is Happening

"That's really the surprise of Easter. We don't have to wait until we get to heaven to experience it. It is happening all around us.

But of course, the problem is that because it is not fulfilled at every moment, we don't see it because of what's going on in the world. There's a chance that we could miss it by simply not being attentive and aware to the possibilities of reconciliation and peace… "

Words: from Easter Moments by Robert Hansel and Renée Miller

Image: Icon by Virginia Wieringa (based on an icon by The Rev. Peter Pearson in A Brush with God)

No Strings Attached

"Freedom is about choices: Freedom to choose less rather than more. It's about choosing time for people and ideas and self-growth rather than for maintenance and guarding and possessing and cleaning. Simple living is about moving through life rather lightly, delighting in the plain and the subtle. It is about poetry and dance, song and art, music and grace. It is about optimism and humor, gratitude and appreciation. It is about embracing life with wide-open arms. It's about living and giving with no strings attached."

Words: Sister José Hobday in "Simple Living: The Path to Joy and Freedom"

Image: "The Artist's Garden" by Roger Hutchison

Enlighten Me

Enlighten me.
Help me to understand
that though I am unique
I am still just another leaf;
that though I am one
I am still one of many
and together we are One
even as You are One.

Remind me
that through this stalk from which I stem
runs the lifeblood of energy
that feeds us all;
which, when it cycles into me
then cycles back again
enriching all.

Keep me open,
that this pure divinity which is love
may flow freely.

Words and image: Diane Walker

Miracles

"Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles
that seek no attention.

Be consoled in the secret symmetry
of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder."

Words: John O'Donohue in "To Bless the Space Between Us"

Image: Photograph by The Rev. Scott Fisher

Chains

Who can loosen
these chains that bind us,
ancient misunderstandings
set in stone?

Words & Image: Diane Walker

Redemption

in humble mirrors
nature reflects and shares our
Easter redemption

Image: photograph by The Rev. Scott Fisher

Our Tree Of Life

"As Jesus spoke His last words on the cross, 'it is finished,' it did not seem like a proper ending for his narrative or life's work. Could it be that His words were filled with a sense of longing, visions that went beyond His death on the cross, hope that would restore humanity, a peace beyond human measure? As the story unfolds, beauty is revealed through brokenness, upon a cross-woven easel of man's own design, creating the possibility for a sequence of events beyond the grave. A saving grace remains beyond grief and sorrow, awaiting the resurrection of God's own design.

In consideration of Christ's generosity, I realize that there remains a greater calling in life. It is not enough to seek out audiences requesting that they make further sacrifices. Rather, as artists we should be the lens by which they see the value and beauty of the sacrifices they already make. As a reflection of the Creator upon the created, every artist has the potential to become a curator of the message of truth, which serves to resurrect the underlying hope within the audience of mankind."

Words: Ron Kelsey in An Easter Tribute at Makoto Fujimura's Refractions

Image: Tree of Life by John Collier

A Witness To Life

"When Jesus rises from the tomb, he says to Mary Magdalene in the garden, “Go and tell Peter and the others that I have gone before you into Galilee and I will meet them there.” The words are prophetic ones for us all. Jesus does not promise to meet the disciples in Jerusalem, at the center of power and profit, as an Establishment figure of either state or synagogue, as the vindicated and recognized one. No, the last act of Jesus is to lead the disciples to the Galilee, to the backwaters of Israel, to the hinterlands of the poor and dispossessed, to the forgotten and the oppressed ones. Where he had spent his public life on behalf of the forgotten one, he expects us to spend ours."

Words: Sr. Joan Chittister in Ideas In Passing

Image: Life Is Just Outside The Door by The Rev. Earnest Graham

This Is How

as Jesus is pulled
from his earthly tomb
this is how we arise

this new green growth
crawling from the gnarled wood
of our own crosses

as blades of grass
pushing through
the stony path

on Easter

Image: Diane Walker

Words: C. Robin Janning

Exile And Return

Yesterday we were connected. Shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand, we stood together, we knelt, and we wept.

You would think after Good Friday's pain and suffering, there would be some relief. No. We are alone, the altar is bare, and we carry the cross of exile.

Holy Saturday is about exile. We don’t know what will be revealed tomorrow.

The revelation of return and the end of exile.

Image: "Crucifixion" by Barbara Desrosiers

Words: C. Robin Janning

This Jesus

Like many artists and photographers before me, I discovered this crucified Jesus beyond religion, through the lens of art and service.

This Jesus, I found, doesn’t leave. He stays with us and each day we decide if he will remain crucified, or come down from the cross to feed the poor, to shelter the homeless, to love the unloved, to walk in the world again.

(Note: The crucifix shown above sits on a side-wall in the sanctuary at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Plymouth, Michigan.)

Image and words: C. Robin Janning

Lament

Psalm 130*

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;

O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?

But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared.

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.

My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.

He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

*New International Version



Image: "Lament" by Connie Butler

This Faith

"When all of our own hopes have died, we still have this faith that seeks nothing for itself-not wisdom, not spiritual power, not rescue from suffering. 'Success' is not in its vocabulary. This faith seeks nothing but God, to whom it is willing to surrender everything-up to and including its own cherished beliefs about who God is and how God should act.

This faith is willing to sell all that it owns and bet the farm on one chance for union with God. This kind of faith, embodied by Jesus, is what makes him the Christ—God's own Being of Light, God's own Anointed One—whose self-annihilating love for us and for all creation is never more vivid than it is on this day.

Today, on the quietest day of the year, we have come to sit in the presence of one who was fully who God created him to be every day of his life—who loved God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength, and with all his mind—and who loved his friends so much that he stepped into the oncoming traffic of death in order to push them out of the way. He furthermore did it all with no more than the basic human equipment—a beating heart, two good hands, a holy vision, and some companions who could see it too—thereby showing the rest of us humans that such a life is not beyond our reach. Whatever else happens on Sunday, here is enough reason to call this Friday Good. Amen."

Words: Barbara Brown Taylor

Image: "Christ Dies On The Cross" by Gerard Di Falco

His Concern Is For Them

Tears. Wailing. Daughters. Mothers. Grief. Women beat their breasts and mourn openly, for the Son of Man, but his concern is for them and their children in the days of woe yet to come.

Words: "Stations of the Cross" from King of Peace Episcopal Church.

Image: "Station 8" by John Giuliani

Veronica's Compassion

"Jesus' journey is at times brutal. He has entered into the terrible experiences of rejection and injustice. He has been whipped and beaten. His face shows the signs of his solidarity with all who have ever suffered injustice and vile, abusive treatment. He encounters a compassionate, loving disciple who wipes the vulgar spit and mocking blood from his face. On her veil, she discovers the image of his face - his gift to her. And, for us to contemplate forever." (From the Stations of the Cross at Creighton University, more here.)

Image: "Station #6: Veronica Wipes the Face of Christ" by Gerard Di Falco

Hurt And Betrayed

"God of Peace, help me to forgive those who hurt or betray me and strengthen me to be worthy of others' trust in me. Let your steadfast love and compassion flow through me that I may be your presence in this world."

Words and Image by Kathrin Burleson from her The Way of the Cross.

Sanctuary

We seek the sanctuary of liturgy and commemoration this week. We need these places, sanctuaries, to bring our pain and find our hope.

As artists we go about the work of creating sanctuaries, and in today's Morning Prayer Rite II (as published in The Book of Common Prayer) we read this prayer:

"O God, who by your Holy Spirit give to some the word of wisdom, to others the word of knowledge, and to others the word of faith: We praise you for the gifts of preaching through visual representation that you gave to your servants Albrecht Duerer and Michaelangelo Buonarroti, and we pray that your Church may never be destitute of such gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns, with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

Image: Sanctuary by Barbara Desrosiers

Mother Of Worlds

have mercy on us
as we begin this walk
with your son

Words and image by C. Robin Janning

Take Me

Take me, I cried:
Take me!

She doesn't know
another road into town;
take me!

I'd have gone another way,
no pomp and circumstance for me
I'd have shied at the blaze of trumpets.

And if I thought he'd come this way again,
I'd weave these waving grasses into palm fronds
and set them at his feet in welcome.

But it's too late now:
she never saw
the crucifixion in their eyes.

Words and Image by Diane Walker.

Remember Again

"We are praying with great memories in our liturgy. There are scenes of violence, betrayal, surrender, and regret. We pray with the fidelity and trust with which Jesus walks towards his saving death.

We pray as well with the violence within and around us these days. Humanity is suffering from terrible insults to its being in Christ. We pray with our own sense of helplessness, as did his loving mother and even his friends who denied him and abandoned him. We are praying intensely with our desires to be freed again from the slavery of forgetfulness. We pray to remember again who Jesus is saying we all are by his life of faithful trust. We gather together to do the ancient rituals by which we are saved in our times." By Larry Gillick, S.J., in Daily Reflection, Creighton University. Read it all HERE.

Seen above: Altar Waiting for Palm Sunday by The Rev. Scott Fisher, St. Matthew's, Fairbanks.

Inheritance

"To be born is to be chosen. No one is here by accident. Each one of us was sent here for a special destiny...

This selectivity intimates a sheltering providence that dreamed you, created you, and always minds you."

Words by John O'Donohue in "Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom."

Image: "Inheritance" by Roger Hutchison