NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Where were YOU on Good Friday?  I was in a Community Care Clinic at the time most church services were starting, seeing where the real meaning of that first Good Friday is actually being played out. In our world today, it is in places like hospital emergency wards, community care clinics, prisons and palliative care facilities where we meet up with what the disciples were experiencing so long ago on that first Good Friday. They were scared, They were afraid. Their lives had changed in an instant. They didn’t know what was going to happen to them. The one person they had invested themselves in, [giving up family, friends, occupations, and homes] was gone. What were they going to do? How were they going to put their lives back together again? And so they huddled at the foot of the cross, not alone, but with others who also shared their grief and disbelief. You can almost heard them crying out ‘How could this be happening to ME?’ So we go to church on Good Friday and we t...

There was a loud bang on the window beside our bird feeders. Nothing unusual there as it is a weekly occurrence for birds to fly into it on their way to or from the feeders. However this time when my husband looked out to see what had happened a bird was lying on the bush beneath the window with its head pointing at an unnatural angle. He checked again later while having a coffee and yes, the bird was still lying there, motionless. It was our first fatality at the feeders and we both felt badly that, despite the stickers to warn the birds we have on the window, this had happened. Later on that day, when he was refilling the bird feeder, he happened to glance over at the bush again and saw the bird was still lying there in exactly the same position as before. However as he was watching, it stirred, gave itself a shake, and flew off. A Resurrection! Everyone has similar resurrection stories from their own experiences, whether or not they have actually ever been acknowledged as suc...

"I am rooted, but I flow" ~Virginia Woolf I suspect the Easter services  culminating with Easter Saturday's lighting of the new fire began hundreds of years ago when the general population were unable to read, and even if they could, print copies of the Bible didn't exist. And so the theatrics of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Saturday were there to tell the Easter story dramatically in both word  and actions, along with some stage props. What would it look like today, in Canada, for us to be waving the 'palm fronds' show our support of Jesus' message, I  wonder. There are no answers. In fact the questions isn't even out there. When, today, do I find myself in the 'upper room' of Maundy Thursday? What is or have been the Good Friday's in my life? What opportunity for transformation was there? Did I take it? And if not, why didn't I? What got in the way? How did, or do, I cele...

“I am rooted but I flow.” ~ Virginia Woolf (Here are some thoughts/questions this Lenten season as I try to come to grips over the next 3 weeks with my reactions and how they have changed.) Why do I react so differently to the liturgy for high holy days than I do on ‘normal’ Sundays? Things don’t have to be literally true to be true on normal Sundays… and more importantly I am able to give myself that latitude. I know [intellectually] that the same thing applies on high holy days. But it still bothers me! And that is the cause of my angst.  Do I perhaps deep down still want those special days to be truly special in the same way they were in my childhood or the first time I experienced them? Am I afraid of the loss if I am no longer able to see them in the same way? Is the whole package of liturgy, hymns, readings, and my expectations and memories around these events just too much for me to handle? Am I grieving the loss of my religious innocence? [Sounds trite...