Reading through Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

Last night, we read Mark 14:1-52. I had planned to stop at verse 31, but we were both so into the story that I just kept going. Two things (apart from the young man fleeing naked at the very end – unwise choice on my part to stop there!) really caught my daughter’s attention: Judas’ [...]

Reading through Holy Week: Wednesday

Today’s reading: Mark 14:1-31 In Mark’s gospel, this is the part where the story really picks up and gets moving. (Well, the whole book is kind of fast-paced, but this is where everything starts to accelerate towards the climax!) So I think we’re just going to read big chunks and let the story wash over [...]

Reading through Holy Week: Tuesday

Our walk through Holy Week continues! My five-year-old daughter and I read Mark 11:12-33 tonight. She was distracted and I was tired, so I was afraid it was a wash — until, while we were looking at my study Bible picture of the Temple, she commented, “I have a picture of this story in my Bible!” [...]

Reading through the events of Holy Week

This evening is Palm Sunday, and as always, it feels like this week has snuck up on me. In my ideal world, I would have cleared my calendar for the week; already have Easter baskets done; have the menu for Easter dinner mapped out and a shopping list complete; and be ready to settle in [...]

Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell

Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell, Denise Levertov Down through the tomb’s inward arch He has shouldered out into Limbo to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber: the merciful dead, the prophets, the innocents just His own age and those unnumbered others waiting here unaware, in an endless void He is ending now, stooping to tug [...]

Friday’s Child

Friday’s Child, WH Auden (In memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred at Flossenburg, April 9th, 1945) He told us we were free to choose But, children as we were, we thought– “Paternal Love with only use Force in the last resort On those too bumptious to repent”– Accustomed to religious dread, It never crossed our minds [...]

Looking at Stars

Looking at Stars, Jane Kenyon The God of curved space, the dry God, is not going to help us, but the son whose blood spattered the hem of his mother’s robe. excerpted from Collected Poems, Graywolf, 2005

Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis

Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis, Denise Levertov Maybe he looked indeed much as Rembrandt envisioned Him in those small heads that seem in fact portraits of more than a model. A dark, still young, very intelligent face, a soul-mirror gaze of deep understanding, unjudging. That face, in extremis, would have clenched its teeth in a grimace [...]

A Poem A Day for Holy Week: East Coker

As I’ve mentioned before, I love Holy Week. It’s quite possibly my favorite week of the whole year. And yet, this year, my Holy Week is burgeoning with obligations and responsibilities and I’m feeling their pull away from quiet, from meditation, from preparation. So this week, in place of posting a review, I’m going to [...]