Seventh Saturday - Day Forty

And is this how it ends?

That might have been the question that Jesus' friends asked when they witnessed the final days, hours and minutes of Jesus' trial and execution. On a much less important scale, it is also the question I am asking in this my final blog entry in this season of Lent. As I predicted a couple of days ago, the last few entries have been in some ways the hardest to fit in to a busy schedule, but as it turns out they were not the hardest to do. A number of incidents have occurred in the past few days that have reasonably easily led me to a blog topic. The hardest times were a couple of weeks ago when I was very tired and just wanted to go to bed but could not because of the commitment I made to myself and others to keep this as my Lenten discipline. It was then that I found myself asking the questions about whether it was a worthwhile exercise to have a Lenten discipline that seemed more like a chore that had to be done than a spiritual exercise that could possibly lead me to a deeper relationship with God.

Now that I've kept my commitment to the spiritual discipline, I can honestly say that there are other ways that I think would have helped me to accomplish the deepened relationship with God. However, this discipline has also been worthwhile for me. I feel good about having achieved what I said I would do. I feel particularly good about the first couple of weeks of entries. It was then that I was able to spend some focused time on the topic of discipline and those first few entries will be a helpful guide for me in times to come - as background material whenever I have occasion to talk about the importance of keeping a discipline, and as a guide and a distance marker for me in my own self-directed spiritual journey. Perhaps it will also be helpful for me as a resource in any future spiritual direction that I undertake.

Rather than enter a wilderness at the very beginning of this journey, the wilderness came to me in the latter part. That's okay and it is a helpful learning for me in case I ever choose this form of Lenten discipline again.

That's what is on my mind late into these final hours of Holy Week. I've been particularly appreciative of the second discipline I chose for this week, namely the walk through Holy Week that has been provided for me in the entries of Iona Dawn: Through Holy Week with the Iona Community. I've been both affirmed and strengthened by the things the writers there have offered to me - affirmed because often their words about particular incidents or situations in the gospel stories have matched my own and strengthened because I've also been given helpful new perspectives.

I am going to take a few days off now, from making entries in this blog. I will return however and give a more considered reflection on just how the Lenten portion of this blog has been for me. I am going to do this as much for myself as for anyone because I really do want to spend some time in reflection and analysis into the process of writing something every day for a specified period of time.

Blessings to all who have been reading here.

I will be back in a few days.


Holy Saturday,
Yellowknife,
April 3, 2010

Seventh Friday - Day Thirty-nine

Good Friday
 The news today called this the most important day of the year for Christians. I'm not sure about that. Despite its significance, I'm sure that commercially, retailers would say that Christmas is the most important day and theologically I think it is still Easter.

It was probably the busiest Good Friday I've spent in twenty years of ordained ministry. I got up and went to work about the same time I usually do. Then I spent some time changing the arrangement of the chairs for Good Friday worship so that it was a bit more compact. We are hoping to webcast the worship service on Sunday so that family members who can't be here on Sunday when Tekerra is baptised can join via the web. So, I spent some time assisting the fellow we've invited to help us with that.

After the Good Friday worship service I went quickly home for lunch and then I was back at the office for baptism preparation with Steve and Coral and their friends Adam and Nicole whom Steve and Coral have invited to be Tekerra's godparents. We were also joined by Marg and Lloyd as representatives of the YKUC congregation.

After the baptism preparation I spent an hour working on some of the technical details of the webcast with moderate success and then got ready for a rehearsal with the YKUC Players - a small group of children who've been working on a couple of dramatic presentations thar will be part of Easter morning worship. The rehearsal went reasonably well and left me feeling pretty good about something that has been a bit of a worry for me over the past couple of weeks.

Then it was time to return home for Easter Dinner with all of our Calgary and Edmonton guests, plus a couple of others as well. It was a busy, happy time together at table.

I mused the other night that it was going to be a challenge to fit this blog into the schedule. I was right. I have one more entry to go to have fulfilled my commitment to make it a Lenten discipline. I expect to make it.

Was it a Good Good Friday? Yes - busy, very busy - but good.

Yellowknife
April 2, 2010

Seventh Thursday, Day Thirty-eight

The Night of Questions

As I understand it, the tradition of observing the Passover Seder is one that is guided by the questions of children. In this way, the story gets told, and one can assume, because it is the children who ask the questions, that the story also gets remembered better. It's a wonderful tradition, in that it honours the children as ones who are always welcome at the table, and it gives them an important - one could say vital - part to play in the drama that unfolds. It is a deeply rich meal not in proteins and nutrients for the body (although it could also be that) but in proteins and nutrients for the soul. The tradition is important and retelling it helps to build the tradition generation after generation after generation.

And so we gathered this evening for our version of the Seder - the meal of Passover, complete with macaroni and cheese playing the role of manna, but also with the traditional symbolic elements. It was a wonderfully rich evening not only because of the food shared but because of the conversation shared.

It seems entirely appropriate on a night when the questions of children (scripted though they might be) are the ones that lead us through the tradition, that my night should have been enriched with a most penetrating question from one of our young congregation members. She watched the drama that the youth group portrayed - telling in summary form the story of Moses - how he came to be in Pharaoh's family circle, and then how he defended his people, ran away and then heard the call to lead his people, the Hebrew people out of Egypt. The drama ended with a depiction of the various plagues ending with the most dreadful of them all, the one that killed all the Egyptian firstborn male children, but "passed over" every Hebrew household that had a smear of blood from the sacrificed goat or lamb on its doorposts.

My young questioner was obviously listening and watching very intently. I know this because of the questions she asked. What if a family of Egyptians had not enslaved the Hebrew people? Why would God kill the Egyptian children even if they had done nothing wrong? Wow, it's the kind of question that leaves you grasping for the right words to say. And of course she asked it within earshot of her parents, who were also listening to how I would answer that one. We talked about God's love for everyone - that was the basis for the injustice she perceived in the story already, so that was not a hard sell. We talked about how different people in the story would understand it differently. The Hebrew people certainly understood that God was on their side. But God doesn't take sides! How would the Egyptian people understand the story? How could they understand an impartial God if their oldest son was killed even though they had done nothing wrong? In the end, I felt reasonably good about what I said - despite some fumbling thoughts as I tried to answer the questions - for I said that I did not have all the answers, but I asked my young conversation partner to never stop asking those kinds of questions, for it is those kinds of questions that drive us more deeply into our faith, it is those kinds of questions which lead us to work more earnestly for justice, it is those kinds of questions which help us to understand God differently. I asked her if she thought that God every cries. I asked her if she thought that God might be crying over what happened to the Egyptian children. She said that those kinds of questions are the kind of questions that make her head hurt, but I think she accepted my suggestion that she should keep on asking them.

Yellowknife,
April 1, 2010