Holy Week

If you've ever had some personal spiritual direction you know that one of the directors' common techniques is to ask you to reflect on a scripture passage from the point of view of one of the key people in it. For instance, in the parable of the prodigal son you could look at it from the viewpoint of the father, the wayward son, or the obedient son who stayed home. It's a very fine technique and, to look at scripture stories from a women's point of view can also be quite eye-opening, especially for women themselves, who did not write the scriptures!

This weekend I was asked to read the gospel for Sunday--the one where Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem. It made me think about the differing "views" in the story and, in a rather unusual one, the experience from the donkey's viewpoint. I know that sounds very funny, but Mary Oliver wrote a lovely reflection from just that. Here it is....blessings on your Holy Week.

The Poet Thinks about the Donkey

On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.

How horses, turned out into the meadow,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, splashed with sunlight!

But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.

Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.

I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.

Warmer and sunnier days

 

As the snow is staying away, pretty much, and the days are already longer and warmer, we're starting to be able to get into some of our spring/summer patterns--and we got to do one of my favorites this weekend: walk our Seven-Mile Creek path. And while we're walking, slowly, we're studying the creek to see what's new, what's old, what's happened since last October. 

This weekend the water was really "roaring" as we had quite a rainstorm the night before. But it looked quite clear and every time we go down there we run into fishermen and women, often carrying the long fish they've just caught! I think the creek has pretty much been clear all winter, so no ice fishing this year, just regular fishing!

The photo above is a look at a huge old tree that fell across the creek, maybe last year or so, and is just getting smaller each year now. The photo below is the end of the tree on the creek path. Can you see the patterns from insects inside? Very cool.

Finally, just a note about our continuing number of guests that are coming every day now. Very nice people. They enter into all our prayer, meals, etc. Next week will be the apex of the year for them: some overnighters and some locals that just come for the Triduum and Easter Sunday. Welcome all.

Spring Equinox

This is one of those poems by Mary Oliver where she combines her love of nature with the spirituality that she so often expresses so beautifully in her writing. Appropriate this year, as the first day of spring is close to Holy Week. 

Spring

Faith
is the instructor.
We need no other.

Guess what I am,
he says in his
incomparably lovely

young-man voice.
Because I love the world
I think of grass,

I think of leaves
and the bold sun,
I think of the rushes

in the black marshes
just coming back
from under the pure white

and now finally melting
stubs of snow.
Whatever we know or don't know

leads us to say:
Teacher, what do you mean?
But faith is still there, and silent.

Then he who owns
the incomparable voice
suddenly flows upward

and out of the room
and I follow,
obedient and happy.

Of course I am thinking
the Lord was once young
and will never in fact be old.

And who else could this be, who goes off
down the green path,
carrying his sandals, and singing?

The Annual Trifecta is Coming

 A female cardinal that's been frequenting my feeders lately.

So far during six days in early March we've had more snow in those days (6.3") than we had in January and February combined! What a crazy winter this has been. Every time you see a storm on the Weather Channel crossing the country in the upper Midwest you can be sure that it will either hit us (which it hasn't lately) or be pushed by the winds, usually north and east of us. Unfortunately that theory doesn't seem to work as well for Buffalo, as they are currently in first place in the Golden Snowglobe contest which keeps track of the winter snowfall for cities with populations over 100,000.  See the latest here.

Tonight we had a treat: Girl Scout cookies, though we only had four of the 13 listed kinds: thin mints, peanut butter tagalongs, trefoils and samoas. Delicious!

Otherwise things are pretty "every day" around here. Next weekend the pace will pick up a bit as the annual trifecta of March saints will be upon us--and a weekend on top of that: Patrick (17), Joseph (19) and Benedict (21).  We celebrate all of them in some way or another....maybe even with some green beer on the first.

March honors women

Our annual Women's Art Show opened this weekend. If you're local, stop out sometime in the next 5-6 weeks, it's a lovely show this year...."eclectic" the organizer called it!

The west end of the ch. 57 gallery.

The east end.

Sister Valerie's original cross stitch of our stained glass windows. 

My cross stitch of mason jars and wild flowers.

The ice floes that accumulate along our shoreline, down on the Glinodo side 

of our property...but not this year, the lake never froze over for very long.

Anniversaries

I know I've used this before, but I don't care. I love it. And I'm all for "sharing our Catholic devotions" with those who haven't had the pleasure! One of those "pleasures" for many Christians, is Ash Wednesday. So what did yours look like last week?!

Throughout the month of February a few of my friends and I have noted a number of anniversaries---anniversaries of our parents' passing from this life to the next. Many of us keep track of these dates, primarily through the funeral home death cards we receive. It's a casual, yet very meaningful experience for us to note these annual death anniversaries. It almost always leads to some storytelling of the parent remembered, and since we didn't grow up together here in Erie, we didn't know each others parents, especially when they were young and "parenting." It's really a very touching and special time to hear about them in that way: what a father brought home from work for the kids, what a mother did to celebrate birthdays---or to hear about family vacations, trips to relatives, etc. because this is the background of the friends we have now, what helped form them into the people we met when we were already all grown up. It's a lovely sharing.

Book report

 

I'm having an experience with a book (Paschal Paradox: reflections on a life of spiritual evolution) that I have never had with any book I've read: I finished it and immediately started it all over again! It's all about an evolutionary view of life, the planet, the past, present and future and how human beings' obsession with control and power is almost laughable...note the COVID experience and how we all went around saying things like, "Well, I guess we can tell who/what's really in control and it's not us"!

It is so great and I want a better chance to remember its messages and ideas better.  

Here is an excerpt that might give you an idea of one of its subjects--institutional religions:

"The early decades of the 21st c., what we are now witnessing, is not merely a set of sexual deviations, linked to a gross abuse of clerical power. It is the crucifixion of clericalism itself throughout the Catholic Church, a dark night of excruciating pain....

"The Church of the people of God will rise from the proverbial ashes, and no doubt God will visit and empower the people once more...

"I wager my faith that this new breakthrough will honor the ground-up faith long known to the Catholic people of God, who will rediscover the empowerment of the reign of God, not in a church cut off from the world, but in faith communities deeply grounded in nature itself. In our dream to save the world, we will discover anew the unconditional love of God calling us to be God's people walking our earthly pathway of grace and beauty."