Our new pastor at my church is bringing fresh ideas and new traditions. Today, we experienced a beautiful practice: Flowering the Cross.
Flowering the cross is a Western Christian tradition practiced at the arrival of Easter, in which worshippers place flowers on the bare wooden cross used in the Good Friday liturgy to symbolize “the new life that emerges from Jesus’s death on Good Friday.”
What a beautiful reminder and image that Easter is about new life and Hope. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow.
❤️trish
Today, I felt myself drawn to the tangible aspects of the day. I have a crown of thorns hanging on my bedroom wall, and I have often stopped to feel its sharpness and imagine the uneven and jagged thorns pressing into my head. Somehow, this year, it feels more honest with the tangible around me.
put a sponge to Jesus’ lips with vinegar or sour wine. It brought me back to when I had a Sedar dinner, and we tasted the vinegar. The tangible bitter taste came back to me as they read the words. I was grateful for the tangible experience I had.
Lastly, tonight, again, I heard the nails pounding into the cross. I heard the pounding while we listened to the clarinet sorrowfully play the tune to the words, “Sorrow and love flowed mingled down.” I could close my eyes and feel the moment in some realness. I am grateful for the tangible ways that Good Friday came to life for me this year.
But this is a woman who, 71 years ago, really was on her way to experience a new world. As a 10-year-old girl, she walked onto a ship and ventured to America.
So often, we strive to become something or someone. Becoming often includes changing, adding, reshaping, or striving for change in small ways or sometimes experimenting with more significant changes. Over the years, these changes can cause people to lose their sense of self. Sometimes, it is in the smallest of ways and other times; they may feel unrecognizable through their own eyes or the eyes of others.
Tomorrow, the 26th of March, is six years since my Dad had a seizure that began his last seven weeks of life. Of course, we did not know that at the time. But what continues to amaze me is how my body holds the memories.
My Facebook memories will remind me of the updates we posted. So many good friends shared good prayers and words of peace; they comfort our hearts still six years later. And so, this is a season of remembering the days of living before the dying, remembering the tension of living fully present before saying goodbye, holding the sweet moments in the sorrow, and being grateful for all my Dad offered us in day-to-day living. Six years later, the grandkids seem grown and have become delightful young adults.
I am sure others remember the song…I am a promise, I am a possibility, I am a promise with a capital P, I am a great big bundle of potentiality!
Perhaps nothing more needs to be said.
BE ASTONISHED: I used to think that not much astonished me. Then I realized it was because I did not pay very close attention. When I began to be curious about things around me and pay closer attention, my astonishment grew exponentially. I stopped to watch an ant colony busy at work. I learned about my Mom’s moonflowers that bloom every evening, but each bloom lives only one evening. I paid attention to the daily healing of incisions following my knee replacement. So many things became truly astonishing when I stopped to pay attention.