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LENTEN DEVOTIONALS
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Why Musings?
- The Musings Page will be a place to consider thought-provoking, evocative, sometimes polemical but not overtly political, writings, quotes, ideas, and poetry on the Christian life in all its facets: spiritual, religious, ethical, and practical.
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Leavings. XI.
posted on November 30, 2011 by Musings
XI.
Though he was ill and in pain,in disobedience to the instruction he would have received if he had asked,
the old man got up from his bed, dressed, and went to the barn. The bare branches of winter had emerged through the last leaf-colors of fall, the loveliest of all, browns and yellows delicate and nameless in the gray light and the sifting rain. He put feed in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs, sent the dog for them, and she brought them. They came eager to their feed, and he who felt their hunger was by their feeding eased. From no place in the time of present places, within no boundary nameable in human thought, they had gathered once again, the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog with all the known and the unknown round about to the heavens’ limit. Was this his stubbornness or bravado? No. Only an ordinary act of profoundest intimacy in a day that might have been better. Still the world persisted in its beauty, he in his gratitude, and for this he had most earnestly prayed.
“XI.” by Wendell Berry, from Leavings. © Centerpoint, 2010. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
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Filed under: Faith, Nature
Dover Beach
posted on July 27, 2011 by Musings
We have taken a break from the brutal heat by letting our poetry postings of the last few days take us on a trip to the beach. The ocean strikes primordial, spiritual chords deep within most of us, and the beach calls up childhood memories of sunny days, shells, and sand castles. Sometimes, though, it rains at the beach, and today we thought we’d post a melancholy beach poem.
The poem is 160 or so years old but could have been written last week. The changes wrought by modernity that destroyed Arnold’s romantic understanding of the world still trouble many today. Arnold himself was religious if not orthodox in his Christianity. In God and the Bible, he wrote: “At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is.”
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The Beach at Big Salt
posted on July 25, 2011 by Musings
“The Beach at Big Salt” by Jessica Goodfellow, from A Pilgrim’s Guide to Chaos in the Heartland, © Concrete Wolf http://concretewolf.com/index.html and posted here with permission.
JESSICA GOODFELLOW was awarded the Three Candles Press First Book Prize for her book The Insomniac’s Weather Report. Her poetry chapbook, A Pilgrim’s Guide to Chaos in the Heartland, won the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Competition. Jessica’s work has appeared in the anthology Best New Poets 2006 and multiple times on the website Verse Daily. Her poems have twice been featured on NPR’s “The Writer’s Almanac” hosted by Garrison Keillor. She is a recipient of the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal. Jessica’s work has been honored with the Linda Julian Essay Award as well as the Sue Lile Inman Fiction Prize, both from the Emrys Foundation. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jessica lives in Japan with her husband and sons.
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Table Talk – Good Friday and Earth Day
posted on April 7, 2011 by Musings
Monday April 11 will be the second of the Lenten Table Talk discussions on three days in Holy Week. Much like our sisters and brothers of the Reformation, these conversations will take place around tables with food and drink. Discussions will be held at 6:30 pm at Ristorante Giuseppe, 4800 Line Avenue in Shreveport. The discussions will be led by Pen Peery. This week the discussion will focus on Good Friday passage from the Gospel of John, which is excerpted below (full passage at Good Friday John 18-19) and the convergence with Earth Day.
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ and striking him on the face. (John 19: 1-3)Good Friday and Earth Day: A Providential Convergence A Theological Op-Ed for Lent William P. Brown and Stanley P. SaundersSo they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. (John 19: 16b-18)
After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19: 28-30)
They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. (John 19: 40-42)
By a rare coincidence Earth Day falls on Good Friday this year, the first time ever. (The next time is in 2095.) “Good Friday” is the day Christians commemorate Christ’s crucifixion. Earth Day calls attention to the continuing crucifixion of our planet. While some may consider this chronological convergence a rude distraction from the Holy Week of Christ’s Passion, we believe the coincidence is providential. Both Good Friday and Earth Day draw our attention to suffering, death, and the hope of redemption.
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With Earth Day converging on Good Friday this year, a lesson is to be learned. It begins with the dawning awareness of a connection that has long been forgotten, namely, the indissoluble bond between Christ and creation. Christ, the Word made flesh, dwelt in a world made of flesh. Christians call this the incarnation: when God saw fit to become a part of creation. Faith in the incarnation takes seriously God’s creation.
While it is tempting on Good Friday to look away from the cross toward Easter’s empty tomb, we must remember that Christ’s resurrected body still bears the scars of his crucifixion (John 20:27). Our planet, too, bears lasting scars. During this time of Lent, may we reflect on the magnitude of our sin against God and God’s creation. As we tremble at the foot of the cross on Good Friday, may we tremble also at the cross the earth now bears on account of our greed, consumptive habits, and toxic policies. May we hear the groans of our bruised and battered world echoed in the cries of Jesus on the cross.
To tremble at the cross and repent is what makes this day “good.”
The full reflection can be read at GoodFriday,GoodEarthDay
William P. Brown and Stanley P. Saunders are founding members of Earth Covenant Ministry (www.earthcovenantministry.org) and teach at Columbia Theological Seminary.
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Filed under: Bible, Faith, Nature
Nothing Gold Can Stay
posted on April 3, 2011 by Musings
Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
Poem by Robert Frost
Photograph by K.R. Ranjith
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Pied Beauty
posted on March 2, 2011 by Musings
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
This poem has been depicted by many photographers and visual artists. Below are links to some that caught our fancy. If you have a photograph or image that reflects the Glory that God bestows on us, please share it with our community.
http://julielarios.blogspot.com/2010/04/earth-day-gerard-manley-hopkins-pied.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_ulOQ5ivU&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKjy7YrT2vs&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGbqxu1vXDI
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Little Prayer in November
posted on December 1, 2010 by Musings
That I am alive, I thank no one in particular; and yet am thankful, mostly,although I frame no prayer
but this one: Creator Spirit, as you have come, come again, even in November,on these short days, fogbound.
Poem: “Little Prayer in November” by Lee Rudolph, from A Woman and a Man, Ice-Fishing. © Texas Review Press. Reprinted with permission. Tweet