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Monday of Easter Week

I wanted to say thank you this morning to all of you who followed my Lenten reflections. Without you, I’m sure my discipline would have flagged. Perhaps that’s true of most Lenten disciplines – they flag without community support for the act.

When we look at the lectionary readings around the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, we have a story from Revelations about the Queen about to give birth and from Luke the story of Mary’s visit to her cousin Eliz

                This past Friday, Janet and I went to see the production, Galileo, by the Kansas City Metropolitan Theater Assemble. Galileo believed that the earth was not the center of the universe but simply another planet revolving around the sun. The production was a very good depiction of Galileo's struggle with the Church authorities, who refused to believe that the earth was not the center of our solar system, despite Galileo's observations of the stars and planets.

            As I sit here at my desk on the evening before Holy Week begins, I hear sirens two blocks away. Rain taps against the window. Snow is predicted for Palm Sunday. Life, and celebrations, are rarely what we think they 'should' be.

"Life got complicated," a friend recently said.

Indeed.

For most of us, life has been entirely too complicated in too many ways. For example, the last four weeks seem like a blur. Oh, there are the high points like four days in Baltimore and Barack Obama winning the election and a financial meltdown, but for the most part, my head has been fog-bound in a much too complicated world.

I keep thinking time will slow down a little - we'll have time to stop, smell the roses as they say.  Only the roses are in their last blooming and I've not had time to get out there lately.

I received an email yesterday that an old friend of mine had died.  She and I were friends when we both worked for Armed Forces Recreational Services in Germany in the mid-70s - she at the Rec Center and I at the Craft Shop. She was two years older than I. 

I've been out of town - and out of mind, for that matter - for several weeks in June.  Our family now consists of six siblings, children, and grandchildren and spouses - about forty all told.  We gather every few years and this year I invited them home to the farm.

The farm is where we siblings grew up and where the older grandchildren spent a lot of summer time.  It's a family corporation and many of the younger ones had no idea what they owned or where it was.  This was the year to find out.

Tonight was our healing service.  After the healing and the discussion and the time together, I came upstairs to the computer and to the next layer of getting the web site operating seamlessly. 

 And as I sit here working on the computer and with the electronic world, I remember the simplicity and silence of the laying on of hands for healing.  Such a simple thing, this laying on of hands; such a complex thing this electronic sorting of pixels and bites to make a web site for you our reader/watcher. 

This Sunday, May 11th is the feast of Pentecost. It is the celebration of the Spirit descending upon the disciples of Jesus.

The Hebrew word for wind and spirit is the same word, ruah (roo-ah).

Wind is something we cannot see, but we can see the effects of the wind. The wind can be refreshing, gentle and soothing. The wind can also be fierce, formative and life-altering (hurricanes and tornadoes).