In this Lenten practice I have chosen to engage in for 46 days, every Sunday has the same word for photographers to reflect on and snap: celebrate. I have chosen to write daily on these words and invite readers to check out the images people post at #rethinkphotos or #rethinkchurch.org. I have already been blown away by the creativity of the photos, the depth of people’s ability to take a single word and find so many images that illuminate it. What a wildly creative world we live in!
Celebrate. There has long been a pattern in the Christian household to withstand saying one of the chief words of celebration, “Alleluia”, during the season of Lent. Except on Sundays. During the week, Monday through Saturday have been meant to be days of solemnity,prayer and even penitence. But on Sunday we were called to remember that there are moments of resurrection,of new life, present even in the deepest times of self-reflection. In our worship, we name God’s presence in the wide swath of life….the joy and sorrow, the hope and the healing, the life and the death….which deserves a great, big old Alleluia. I guess that is cause to celebrate, isn’t it?
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says: “People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation.” I like to believe we have moments of this kind of celebration in our worship. It is what we hope for, plan for, pray for as we give shape to words, music and actions that create worship. As people bring the fullness of whatever has happened to them in the past week and offer it to one another and to the Holy, it is an act of reverence and something that creates sacred moments and space. In some ways worship is a suspension of time that creates a container unlike most of us experience during our daily walk. In that act of being engaged in reverence we can express appreciation for what it means to be creations of the Great Artist and connected to all the other elements of this amazing Creation.
Of course, you don’t need to go to church or a place of worship to engage in this act of expressing reverence or appreciation. Many of us have had this experience staring out at the ocean or listening to the call of a loon on a summer’s morning. Right now I am celebrating the way in which the snowflakes are falling so gently out my window. They look like tiny white feathers fallen from the wings of an angel. But I have found that the practice of coming together in a circle of other life-travelers all making some meaning out of life, all trying to name the More, is a good thing, a very good thing and for that my heart swells with gratitude.
In fact, it might even be gratitude enough to warrant and “Alleluia!” in the beginning days of Lent. And for that I will celebrate.
***I wonder what images of ‘celebrate’ there will be at #rethinkphoto #rethinkchurch?