as we enter holy week
lent is almost over. already. this has been a very different lent, different from what i expected. time moved very fast. we were on Spring Break for a few weeks and i was sick or dealing with wisdom teeth for another two weeks. and we’re expecting house guests tomorrow. so i’m not feeling as prepared as i had hoped.
still, still. there has been such sweetness. encountering the writing of Roberta Bondi and Elizabeth Johnson. many wonderful conversations with Andy. rich, beautiful letters from Susan. learning to be weak and accept the grace my children bring.
i haven’t kept to my four cornered devotions very well. fixed hour prayer still alludes me. i think i will keep it as an aspiration. Roberta Bondi talks about a kind of prayer she calls kitchen table prayer. it’s very simple and not at all formal. she says that in every relationship some of the most important sharing we do with each other happens in the silence that we share together, the simple time around the kitchen table. she describes sharing our lives with God in just such a way: “this time spent with God is not listening; it does not need attentiveness; it is sitting in each other’s loving presence, glad to be together, whatever else is going on.”
and i haven’t made much headway with Nouwen’s Here and Now (though so much other profitable reading has happened). i read the first few chapters, and then circled back to the first chapter to find a few gleanings to share. may they illumine your path this week as we wait in hope.
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we must learn to live each day as a unique opportunity to make everything new.
(sounds like Susan’s plan for the rest of the school year)
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showing gratitude, kindness, forgiveness, gentleness, and affection…these are ways of saying “it’s good that you are alive; it’s good that you are walking on this earth. let’s be glad and rejoice. this is the day that God has made for us to be together.”
(can you imagine greeting our children with these words? this really is the day God has given for us to be together, and it is good, and we should rejoice. sounds like When You Receive a Child by Judy Brown Hull )
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to pray is to listen to the voice of love. obedience comes from the Latin word ob-audire, which means to listen with great attentiveness.
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in my home country, the Netherlands, you still see many large wagon wheels, not on wagons, but as decorations.
(sounds like The Wheel on the School by Meindert de Jong!)
To you my darling girl–“it’s good that you are alive; it’s good that you are walking on this earth.” Have a wonderful visit with Phan and Steve and a Happy Easter.