"Lately I’ve been thinking hard about what works to suggest to my children from the vast literary realm we call spiritual writing. This question has serious ramifications, for ideas are food and one becomes, to a greater extent than many realize, what one reads." Philip Zaleski, The Best American Spiritual Writing

I sat with my spiritual director yesterday and talked about a desire to be stimulated intellectually and spiritually. Perhaps it is the gray days of March or our emphasis on being pilgrims that has caused me to be nudged to learn something new. I want to read something that challenges me, something that causes me to see the world with new eyes.  Often this desire grips me in September when school begins again, having been so a part of that learning rhythm my whole life. But whatever the reason, this desire has taken up residence in me during these dreary days before spring’s awakening.

I have been blessed my whole life to be surrounded by life long learners. By mother is an avid reader. She mostly reads novels and through our conversations  I have learned that novels hold not only good stories but great lessons to be learned. I think of the many voracious readers in my circles of friends, those who often begin conversations with: "Have you read….?" or "The other day I was reading.….." I am blessed to be in two book clubs and those circles always bring great suggestions for the next best read. The words we have read together have built a rich soil for the growth of our friendships.

While I am not completely sure what I am searching for, I do know I want something that stimulates my intellect while deepening my spiritual journey. Yesterday while thinking about this quest I had the same sensation you have when you are hungry for a certain taste but just can’t quite come up with what it is.You open cabinets, then the refrigerator door, only to close each without finding what you wanted, needed. I have made similar trips to my bookshelves.

So, I am asking you for your suggestions. What are you reading these days that stimulates and inspires you? Is there a certain author that is challenging you to think new thoughts, ask new questions? Has a certain book grabbed you and caused you to find extra minutes of every day so you can steal away and read? What book is deepening your faith these days?

You may not have noticed but these musing now allow for your comments. And so I invite you to send along your book suggestions by clicking on "Comment on this" at the end of the daily writings. If the book isn’t the one I’m searching for perhaps it will be just the perfect one be for someone else. This process could yield a reading list that feeds us all.

Some people call them ‘ear worms’, those little bits of a song that get stuck in your head and plays itself over and over like a vinyl album that continues to go round and round on the turntable and never turns off. Many people enjoyed their Easter brunch with "Christ the Lord is Risen today" playing background music, heard only by an audience of one. Others had the Hallelujah Chorus providing the soundtrack for their Monday commute.

It is the Wednesday after Easter and I still have an Ann Reed song from our sunrise service accompanying  me  every where I go.  As I drive on busy freeeways, when my mind wanders in a meeting, while I’m eating my breakfast, cleaning this morning’s frost off the windshield, these are the words playing in my head: "Oh, it is time,  I will live out loud and open my eyes to the great divide. I’m walking my path. Finding my way and every step’s a Leap of Faith". Given some of the ‘ear worms’ that have traveled with me before, this one is a blessing.

Leslie Ball led us on this song and as her smoky, rich voice provided the lead, I watched as people sat up straighter in their seats. Snow was falling outside the windows, not a particularly welcome sight on Easter Sunday. Those who were there had risen in the wee hours of the morning, maneuvered icy streets, braced against a cold wind to welcome the day. The song was a moment of transcendence, a time when usually static Minnesotans allowed their tired, bundled-up bodies to sway in their seats as they claimed these words for their own. Every step’s a Leap of Faith and along the way I will live out loud.

It might not have been a traditional message of resurrection but it worked for those who were there. In that gathered body of people there were those I knew who were struggling with great loss, unimaginable loss. There were those who were surrounded by their children and grandchildren together in one place, a great joy. There were those who have new found relationships in their lives and those who had just seen the end of something they thought would last. There were elders and children, young and middle aged. So many life stories singing together proclaiming their path as sacred…..step by precious step.

As I go out into the world today to do my daily tasks, I pray this musical mantra continues to accompany and remind me of its message…..and that moment when ordinary people were lifted to something higher and more beautiful than they could have imagined.

Well, here we are on Easter Monday. Lent is over, Holy Week is in the past and the alleluias of Easter still rings in my ears. I have admitted in this space that Lent and I weren’t in sync this year, blaming it on how early Easter was, how close it came to Christmas. That early part I ended up being very happy about in the end. I was happy because even people on the street-literally a news guy was out on the street asking people-had the opportunity to learn how the date of Easter is derived, a date that is based on so much more than any particular theology or doctrine. In case you didn’t get the word…..first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

My inability to connect with Lent this year could have been partially about the early date. But mostly I think it was because I was being a kind of spiritual brat. You see, I struggle with many of the atonement messages of Lent and Easter. The message doesn’t fit my experience, my own personal theology, my world view. And for what ever reason I always dig my heals in during Lent until by the time we get to Holy Week I have pretty much worked myself into a tizzy about it all. I was happy to read Garrison Keillor’s editorial in yesterday’s Star Tribune:"Oh, ye of faltering faith:It’s Easter" in which he expressed some similar sentiments.

But several things happened to me on the way to Easter this year that opened my eyes…actually my heart. On Maundy Thursday we followed the reading from the gospel of John in which Jesus washes the feet of the disciples as a way to explain to the disciples how it is they are to live their lives. At our service we offered people the option of having their hands or feet washed. As I washed hands gnarled by arthritis, beautifully manicured, smooth and soft, rough and hard, I came face to face with the scriptures."God bless you. And may you love yourself and others as God has loved you." Looking into the eyes of those I have known well and those who were strangers, the doctrines I want to argue with fell away and melted into the puddle of ‘not important’. In that moment, the presence of the Holy overwhelmed my stubbornness.

Then on Good Friday evening we were led in worship by our youth telling the story of Jesus on his final day. As these young people and some of their parents read the scriptures and slowly extinguished candle after candle, the darkness grew around us until all that was left was one candle representing the presence of Christ in our midst. That candle was carried out as we sat in the  lightless place listening to the thirty-three chimes representing the year’s of Jesus life. Slowly, in total silence the Christ candle was carried back into the sanctuary lighting the sweet, beautiful face of a young girl, her face glowing with the amber candlelight and the promise of her life.

That’s when it struck me. It takes all of us to tell this life drama, this story of hope, of promise, of mystery, of unimaginable love. It takes those who are skeptical, those who are certain. It takes those who hang their faith on the literal interpretations and those who live their questions with great passion and pain. It takes the simple faith and the intellectual curiosity, those well read and those uneducated. It takes each of us to keep this story alive and living. That’s what it means to be the church.

On Easter morning it was my role to carry the Christ candle in the Easter procession. While my face is not as young or beautiful as Audrey’s was on Friday night, I was blessed to do my part, to carry the light, to keep the story alive.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen in-deed!

There are many traditions and rituals that surround Good Friday. Beginning with Holy Thursday services last night, Good Friday, including the Holy Saturday vigil observed by some, through to the arrival of the celebration of Easter with the sunrise of Sunday morning,is known as the Triduum of Easter, the ‘three days’.Today people will worship at services that use the service of Tennebrae, a ritual of light that moves into the darkness, reading the scriptures that tell of the crucifixion and death of Jesus. I will participate in all of this but what has become a part of my Good Friday observance will begin at noon today with…..enchiladas.

On the west side of Saint Paul at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, the community serves meatless enchilada dinners on Fridays throughout Lent. For the last few years I have attended this meal with friends and family. I can honestly say that this is not something I would ever have associated with the observance of Good Friday. But today, even as the snow falls valiantly outside my window, I plan to bundle up and head over to the social hall of this beautiful church whose congregation is made up mostly of Mexican and Hispanic immigrants and their American born families. The food is good, the pride and service impeccable and the experience joyful and welcoming.

After lunch I will walk through the sanctuary of the church. Groups of people will be covering the statues of saints with black cloth preparing for the darkness of today’s readings. Outside the sanctuary,Our Lady of Guadalupe, the namesake of the church, will be decorated with beautiful flowers for what I assume is a part of an Easter procession. The dark,beautiful face of Our Lady inspires and strengthens this community to remember who they are in this land of Anglos and to proclaim the faith of their experience.

It is a powerful visual image that allows me to see the embodiment of both the darkness of Good Friday and the beauty and light of Easter. And isn’t that what we are present to each day if we really allow ourselves to see? This world in which we are privileged to live holds both the darkness of death and the light of resurrection each and every day. "Finally, the word of the cross is not uttered in the past tense. Every time we abuse the poor, every time we pollute our God-given planet, indeed every time we act selfishly, God dies naked on the cross of our ego." writes Huston Smith in The Soul of Christianity. As those who profess the Christian faith, it seems as if our work is to bring more light to the world and contribute less to what brings death. That is the call of each Easter morning, isn’t it?

So as we move into  these ‘three days’, may we all be held in the Spirit that invites us to the land of living. May we recognize fully those places that are shrouded in black cloth and work to uncover them. May we also contribute to planting the seeds that bring beauty, color, wholeness and hope. Blessed Easter!

"In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed, an apple tree, in cocoons a hidden promise:butterflies will soon be free. In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see. In our end is our beginning, in our time, infinity, in our doubt there is believing, in our life, eternity. In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see." Hymn of Promise, Natalie Sleeth

"To your table you bid us come. You have set the places, you have poured the wine, and there is always room, you say, for one more. And so we come. From the streets and from the alleys we come. From the deserts and from the hills we come. From the ravages of poverty and from the palaces of privilege we come. Running, limping, carried, we come. We are bloodied with our wars, we are wearied with our wounds, we carry our dead within us, and we reckon with their ghosts. We hold the seeds of healing, we dream of a new creation, we know the things that make for peace and we struggle to give them wings. And yet, to your table we come. Hungering for your bread, we come; thirsting for your wine, we come;singing your song in every language, speaking your name in every tongue, in conflict and communion, in discord and in desire, we come, O God of Wisdom, we come." Jan L. Richardson, In Wisdom’s Path

On this Holy Thursday many Christians will go to church to offer prayer and penance and will hear the story of Jesus sharing bread and wine with his disciples in what we have named The Last Supper.As the scripture writers have written the story there is in the implication that Jesus knew this would be his last meal with his friends, with those whom he had shown the Way. The fact of this is not as important as the idea that Jesus knew that the path he had walked was dangerous yet one he walked with integrity, being true to God’s call on his life. He was probably sure that the results of that would lead to the unfolding of his arrest and  even the possibility of his execution.

Last suppers. Today I am thinking about all those who have sat down to a supper without the knowledge that it would be their ‘last’. Yesterday we marked five years of being at war, a war that is complex,infused with missteps and disagreements, with mistakes and perhaps even some out right lies. But this drama we are all engaged in contains real people who have sat down at table with their families and their friends. And as those same people gather for an Easter, Passover or other special meal, nearly 4000 Americans will find that there is an empty place at the table. For those Iraqis who gather for family meals, we do not even know the number of chairs that contain only the memory of the loved one who once sat there.

I wonder, would those who sat at the table have done anything differently, said anything more had they known it was their last supper? Would those who surrounded them have tried to mark the moment with important words? Perhaps these are pointless questions but I do wonder. Five years is a long time. In that course of time children have been born and have started school. Others have moved from being gangling adolescents to college freshmen. Still others have moved from the protective world of school and home to the real world of work and ‘making a living’.

But in towns and cities, in farmhouses and apartments, in shanties and tents, five years has caused the world to stand still. Parents sit remembering. Wives and husbands try to reconstruct. Children cry themselves to sleep.  Because in those homes there is an empty place at the table.

"If wakeful Christians harbor a wish for heaven to fulfill, they wish not for an escape from reality, but for a deeper acquaintance with reality. When wakeful Christians lament this life, they grieve this world’s trivialization of itself that obscures the more profound reality of the kingdom of God in our midst. Yet, more often wakeful Christians celebrate life, finding the mark of God’s hand in this world and beginning their praise with the discovery of the holy here. "Holy,holy,holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory"(Isa.6:3).the seraphim sang. Wakeful visions of other worldly praise reveal angels singing of God’s reign on earth as in heaven." A Wakeful Faith by J. Marshall Jenkins

Today Christians find themselves in the midst of Holy Week. Last Sunday, Palm Sunday told of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the beginning of drama we live out each year that tells of his coming face to face with a ‘deep acquaintance of reality’ which led to his arrest, torture and death. Tomorrow will find churches everywhere re-enacting the celebration of his last meal with his friends. Friday will hold the somber telling of the story of his death.Roman Catholics among us will spend Saturday in a vigil that tells of the whole story of God’s involvement since the beginning of Creation in the cycles of birth,life,death and rebirth which includes the fullness of the gospel.  All this leads to Easter Sunday morning with churches filled to capacity as worshipers once again proclaim that there is a power greater than death.

I have a blunt confession to make. I haven’t quite gotten into the observance of Lent this year. I have talked to others who have had difficulty as well. Perhaps it is because Lent came so quickly after Christmas and Advent this year. The date of Easter is determined by the lunar calendar as the 1st Sunday after the 1st full moon after the Spring Equinox. Unless you are 95 years or older, Easter has never been this early in your lifetime. It will not be this early again until 2228. Something about all this allows me to let myself off the hook with my lack of enthusiasm for Lent this year.

I have fond memories of Holy Week as a child. Growing up in a small town with small churches and few resources, Holy Week was the one time a year when the churches came together to create something larger than their individual congregations. Beginning on Palm Sunday night and every night during the week, we traveled from church to church for worship. There was special music at each church and a sermon. The one rule: no one could preach or sing in their home church. As I think about this I am not sure what the total appeal was for me. But I did love it and went even when my parents didn’t go.There was the chance to hear things in new ways from voices I was unfamiliar with, whose way of interpretation didn’t always reflect my own. But there was also something rich in the gathering of these people whose lives were bound by a common heritage, a common faith story, and the chance to share in that message.

As we move into the next few days, I pray for the grace to be present to the story that unfolds….through the scriptures, through the music, and through the faces and lives of those who gather to create a little glimpse of heaven on earth. This Jesus who calls for us to be open to God’s movement and to live likewise did so with his very life. I can only pray that in the year 2228 someone, somewhere will still be telling the story in one form or another. Perhaps it will be infused with a ‘wakefulness’ we can only imagine.

I knew the weather forecast for today and I was not particularly pleased with it. Snow. Like many, perhaps even like most, I am at the end of my fascination with snow. As I wrote yesterday, I am ready for green. So as I looked outside in the early morning darkness I was not overjoyed with the sight of white. Trying not to look too often out the window, I moved around the house, reading the paper, drinking my coffee, getting ready for the day’s meetings that were ahead.

And then I walked outside and was stopped in my tracks. Silence held the morning captive. Even the cars moving by seemed to have muted tires. My eyes moved from the heavy, wet snow on the ground upwards until they were startled with the overwhelming beauty of the snow clinging to the tree branches. I stood in my driveway looking up and down the street, nestled in a lacy, white doily. Walking underneath the maple tree that brings us such joy when it turns brilliant red in the fall, I could see the buds peaking out from under the chantilly flakes. "Not yet, not yet," they seemed to be saying, "But soon, very soon."

My son who has just returned from Mexico and is also finished with winter came outside to head to school. We stopped and looked together at the trees holding what may perhaps be their last heavy coat of snow. "I always think I should take pictures on days like this," he said. I silently agreed and tried to memorize the scene to save for one of those hot, humid days in August when we will be finished with summer.

The great gift of living in a place that moves through the seasons is that you have the opportunity, the blessing to notice the cycles of Creation. Birth, life, death, rebirth, over and over again. Sometimes we are ready when those cycles arrive in our lives, and sometimes we want to hold them off or stop them all together. Other times we want them to come sooner than would be best. Trusting in the internal rhythms of seed and soil, rain and sun, wind and breath, we come to be surprised by the beauty of it all. Always on our way from ‘not yet’ to ‘very soon’ and finally to the amazing ‘now’, we are held in the wonder of the world.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted." Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

"Lord of All Nations and All Peoples, we rejoice today in a special servant of Yours, St. Patrick. Irish or not, Catholic or not, we all dance a gleeful jig on this his joyous feast day. His green feast day gives us all a chance to wear the green of spring and life. Four days from now our old friend winter will loose his lease of life. Packing up his ice and snow, his chilly winds and frosty breath, he’ll soon be gone. The green of this day foretells of rich vegetation soon to grace our countryside; proclaims the fresh and new to the tired and weary; announces to one and all that spring is on her way! Lord of All Seasons, winter is on his deathbed, but songs and mirth are greening all around us. Blessed be St. Patrick, bishop and man of prayer. Blessed be all saints, and the wee folk as well." Edward Hays, Prayers for the Domestic Church

Ah, St. Patrick’s Day. I have just driven down the streets in Saint Paul where green is being worn by every man, woman and child. Though the city, and certainly the church celebrated on Saturday due to the day falling during Holy Week, there was still a ‘wearin’ of the green’ for as far as the eye could see. And what a welcome color it was with the skies as gray as a goose and peppering the people and streets with slushy snow. How we long for green right now….and so are thankful for this celebration that allows us to pull out all the green clothes we own, put them on and head out to create a little interruption of the monochromatic to the world.

As I attended the St. Patrick’s Day mass at the Cathedral on Saturday morning, I was struck with the joy that green can bring into a room. Looking around there was kelly green, forest green, lime green,pale green, green feathers, hats, shirts, pants, jackets, even a few heads of hair that had been dyed green. All that beautiful, rich color even outshone the priests in their Sunday-best vestments.

St.Patrick’s Day is a celebration adopted by many for all kinds of reasons. But I would venture to say that a part of the attraction is trading the browns and blacks of winter in for a brilliant green, at least for one day in our snowiest month of the year. Ask a person who has just returned from a warm weather vacation what the best part was. Almost all will say ‘the color!’  After a certain amount of time we simply crave the sheer beauty and stimulation of color and its residual effect on our spirits.

And so if you haven’t already, I invite you to search for your green clothes and put them on. It doesn’t even matter if they don’t match very well. Put them on anyway. And head out into the streets to join the others proclaiming the message. "Winter’s work is over. The spring lies waiting to be born. St. Patrick has given us the signal. Wear green and coax the new life to begin." I promise you will be well received.

"Then God said,"I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey." Exodus 3:7-8a

A land flowing with milk and honey…..what a wonderful image…that earthly place that is filled with what will sustain, bring joy, feed the spirit.I believe each person has within them that place, that land, perhaps the place they were born or the place of their ancestors. This land is the place where their soul rests and finds recognition in the soil that fed their bloodline. It is the place that is in their DNA whether they are aware of it or not. We are, after all, earthbound beings and this is our home.

Last week we sat and listened to a woman named Dorothy who told us about her people, the Gullah people. These people are the direct descendants of the slaves brought to our country who reside in the island areas of South Carolina. They have worked hard over the years to maintain their identity, culture,language,music,food and to keep their ties to the land that was forced upon them. She told us how the people had built their cemeteries on the shore, near the water, because they believed that when they died and were buried, their spirits would be able to cross the water and go home again, to Africa. I was mesmerized by this idea, by her story, by this deep longing for the land. Now with development and some complicated land ownership laws, these cemeteries are being removed to make way for beach houses and other buildings to support the local economy. How will their spirits find home again?

The scriptures are filled with stories of people who are displaced, in exile, enslaved, who are trying to make their way home  It is one of our common human stories even when we are unaware of it. We each carry the cell memory of our ancestors deep within us that calls us to prefer mountains over water, prairie over desert, the sand over stone. Some people have spent their lives searching for ‘something’ that is just outside their reach only to arrive in a place they have never been and feel completed.

Where is your land of milk and honey? Where does your spirit find its home? Th poet John Soos writes: "To be of the Earth is to know…the restlessness of being a seed, the darkness of being planted, the struggle toward the light, the pain of growth into the light, the joy of bursting and bearing fruit, the love of being food for someone, the scattering of your seeds, the decay of the seasons, the mystery of death, and the miracle of birth."

No matter the soil of our home, this is the miracle of who we are.

Have a blessed weekend………………………….

"Every long journey is made of small steps
Is made of the courage,the feeling you get
When you know it’s been waiting, been waiting for you
The journey’s the only thing you want to do.
We cannot know what you go through or see through
    your eyes
But we will surround you, the pride undisguised
In every direction whatever you view
You’re taking our love there with you."
                            – Ann Reed

At the beginning of Lent I began to create a file of songs about pilgrimage, being a pilgrim, and songs that spoke to being on a spiritual journey. The file is filled with hymns, camp songs, folks songs and other songs that fit our Lenten theme of ‘Passport for Pilgrims.’  Journey is a subject of countless songs no doubt because it is a theme we all recognize so fully in our lives. This song by Ann Reed was one of the favorites that I found.

I thought of it again this past Tuesday when one of my co-workers brought her new baby in for us to see. As we passed this beautiful little one, so new to the world, around our circle we each offered her an unspoken blessing by our exuberant welcome. As we ‘oohed and ahhed’ it would have been nearly impossible not to make note of this journey both she and her parents were beginning. "Every long journey is made of small steps….." The small steps she makes each day in her growth is a beautiful beginning to a yet uncharted journey.

This song could provide such a blessing for so many of life’s big moments..birth, baptism, first day of school, marriage, graduation, leaving home, so many moments of transitional joy. It could also provide a blessing for those life moments we don’t plan….illness, divorce, failure, despair, death, so many moments of equally transitional sorrow. In some way each of us awakes to an uncharted journey each and every day. The small steps continue to take us to places we have planned and those we would not have chosen. It is the way of life.

For me, the true beauty of this song is in the final few lines:"But we will surround you, the pride undisguised, in every direction whatever you view, You’re taking our love there with you." In the many times I’ve headed down a new path or been pushed there, what has given me the courage to continue when the going gets tough and when I feel discouraged, is the deep knowledge that I am held by this unconditional love and compassion. Even when I have not necessarily received it from those I expected to offer it, I have somehow known that the One who breathed me into being extended that blessing with an unimagined grace.

My prayer is that it may also be that way with you….in your small steps, in your big life, on your sacred journey.