Category: Lent 2019
Easter Day – Do Not Help My Unbelief
It is Easter morning and the world is broken. Alleluia.
It is Easter morning and we have been told a lie: The crucifixion of a christ was a necessary injustice. Alleluia.
Read MoreDay 40: Whose Good News?
To some, the Messiah was predicted to be a political leader, a singular hero, liberation through the only means that liberation could come. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. And no one had a blueprint for what would come next.
Read MoreDay 39 – Open (Body)
“Food is shut within our bodies as in a very beautiful purse. When necessity calls, the purse opens and then shuts again, in the most fitting way. And it is God who does this because I was shown that the Goodness of God...
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Day 38 – Jesus’ Journey into the Wilderness
They identified with Jesus, because Jesus identified with them. Whipped, flogged, slapped in the face, crucified, hung.
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Day 37 – Creating Rituals
We each have our own multifaceted relationship to the rhythms that have shaped us. Some we keep, sometimes improvising and re-creating it as our patterns of life change. Others we discard, knowing that they aren’t right for our souls right now.
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Day 36: Praising God on Stolen Land
When I turned the corner into the quad and saw the trees, my heart broke open in aching grief for my mother, who died two years ago. History incarnated this space and made it sacred, immersing me within this small piece of my mother’s life.
Read MoreDay 35 – This Place of Worship, with Everything and Everyone In It
Lord, I stand here. Sit here. Kneel here. Exist in your presence. Lent is coming to a close, and here I am before you, as I am. Learning to worship, even after years of knowing you. I may not know much about you, but I do know you are a God of love.
Read MoreDay 34 – searching
three days
i searched for you
held my breath
dreamt of you
dead
your crown broken
flesh torn open eaten
by your friends
always there was blood
all over my hands
Day 33 – The LAWL’s Prayer
Hey
I thought I knew you sufficiently well enough
Then I thought I’d outgrown you
As the corset of the church got too constricting
So I denied you altogether
But that was also presumptuous of me
For how can I ever land on one side of a debate as old as history
Day 32 – Church
“Let’s go worship at church.”
It’s funny how this phrase has two completely different meanings depending on which community I’m in. Uttered in my bible study group it refers to sitting in rows singing praise songs in a converted office building on a Sunday morning. Uttered in my gay dodgeball team (we’re called the Deep Throwers) it refers to dancing to pop and dance music Saturday night on the crowded dance floor at Saloon, a local gay bar downtown.
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Day 31 – The Eucharist is My Coconut Dance
I would imagine at the Last Supper, it was more like a teddy bear.
Here, take this comfort item. There’s a scary scene coming up in the movie.
But I wasn’t at the Last Supper or the crucifixion, so the Eucharist is more like Maglalatik for me. For those who’ve never seen the Filipino coconut dance, it’s a fun one. Dancers strap coconut shells to their bodies and hold more coconut shells in their hands. They tap them together, click, click. They tap their own bodies, each other’s bodies. They bounce in different group formations and leap frog over each other. The music is light. Maglalatik is performed at big group gatherings, so picture yourself watching it while surrounded by your extended family and community.
Read MoreDay 30 – Holding More Than The Dust
I have a two-year-old son who is new to the ways of the world. He is a voracious eater and a passionate lover of “boo-booberries,” “stwawberries,” and “’nanas”. When he sits down to eat and we may be busy in the kitchen, he’ll demand, “Mommy, eat! Daddy, eat!” And when we sit down, he’ll hand us some of his treasured fruit. Much to the chagrin of my partner, I joked one day, “Son, don’t you know that if you give us some, it means less for yourself?” He had no idea what I meant, but unconcerned with the economy of selfishness, continued to place a blueberry in front of me.
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