"The Crucifixion," by Enrico Manfrini, Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption , San Francisco, Calif. That Easter Sunday evening at Westminster Abbey,  Sister Judith CSC, then eighty-nine, conducted; sunlight streamed down through windows high above. “It's a big space to fill,” she said,  her stoop barely allowing her to see over the podium,  “so have a good yell.” The hymn began,  “Jesus Christ is risen to-day, Alleluia!...” In the gospel reading from Luke 24,  Jesus' disciples seemed not to expect a crucifixion:  “...But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel....'” They also seem not to expect a resurrection:  “'...Moreover, some women of our group astounded us....  they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels  who said that he was alive....'”  Later in the gospel reading:  “...When he was at the table with them,  he took bread, blessed and broke it,  and ga...

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris was dark.  I walked along Rue de la Cité—as I recall—  Good Friday evening.  Silent worshipers poured out across  Place du Parvis and into noisy streets.  The week before that night  I'd finally been broken by a love I thought might last.  Awed by Paris itself,  I was perhaps prepared somewhat to notice  incongruous realities.  Some imagine Jesus mostly as example.  For them, the crucifixion has  some saving spiritual lining  on the way to power and success.  When I was 12, I adopted lots of rules.  Mine was a judicial universe  where God's wrath must go somewhere  and Jesus makes account for human sin.  And there are many “teachers”  happy to tell others what to do.  Until the weight of all my rules  and the falsehoods “teachers” sometimes tell  became untenable.  Good Friday night I wonder why  this story ...

Cathédrale de Notre-Dame de Paris, Holy Saturday, 2011. In place of fame a cross and tomb,     An unexpected fellow sufferer. The king of thorns, dead on a tree;     Lamb not passed over;      Day turned to night, the veil split.     A psalmist's and a pagan's intuition. “...this was the Son of God...” Previous  §  Next

The Light with whom existence is shot through Stands in the night of our exile and death, Amid the bloody aching mess of birth, All that went wrong, that's left, and still might be. In Mary's arms, in Cain and Abel's stead, Creator into His creation breaks, Becoming creature, scandal, strange, Sharing in sister's grief, called brother forth, Bearing Adam's thorns, hung on a tree. And with wheezing thieves beside, Pulls up to breathe against the spikes. Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris Previous  §  Next

"Christus,"  Peter Eugene Ball ,  Winchester Cathedral ,  Winchester, U.K. When King Herod murders infants in Bethlehem,  Matthew's gospel uses words from Hebrew poet Jeremiah,  perhaps the only words that can express  the desperate, writhing vacancy of death.   “A voice was heard in Ramah,      wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children;      she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” Jesus, who escaped Herod that night  later cries out from the cross in the words of Psalm 22,  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The gospel writer seems to see Jesus's credibility in part  through the crucifixion's recapitulation of this Psalm:  The mocking crowd: “All who see me mock me;      they sneer at me; they shake their heads; 'Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—      let him rescue the one in whom he delights!...

Song of created things: light, fire, stone, earth, wind, rain. Serpents,  God-planted trees, exile. Circumcision, promises, and wandering. A burning bush,  yet unconsumed. Call to experience by name. Stone tablets, giants, kings, temples,  and forgetfulness. A promised rest, prayer, lions' dens, and silence. Previous  §  Next

Balsam root and lupine bloom along the glacier view trail,  Horse Lake Reserve, Wenatchee, Wash. Physicist and priest John Polkinghorn  speaks of “A creation in which creatures are allowed 'to make themselves.'” He's trying to explain how human moral evil  and suffering might come to be.  He also observes: “...the problem of evil is too profound  to be dealt with ... by any form of moral bookkeeping,  as if one were simply casting up creation's ethical profit-and-loss account....” For me, against the weight of all the world's suffering, the only satisfying possibility  is the idea God might somehow enter in. Previous  §  Next

Altar of Stadtkirche Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany,  altarpiece by Lucas Cranach; baptismal font in foreground  by Hermann der Ältere Vischer   In her essay “Facing Altars” the poet Mary Karr writes,  “Like poetry, prayer often begins in torment,  until the intensity of language forges a shape worthy of both labels:  'true' and 'beautiful.'” In churches I grew up in, there were hints that we expected  God to be physically at work.  We'd pray for healing.  And Pastor Dennis Cooper every month would read, "...But let a man examine himself,  and so let him eat of that bread,  and drink of that cup...." (1 Corinthians 11:28-29). When I was baptized,  I felt the water,  and I heard the invocation,  "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." When I moved back to Coulee City from Oklahoma City  and was confirmed at Bethel Lutheran Church,  I was surprised that I desired sacraments. Karr continues, “...the ...

Mission of the Sacred Heart, Old Mission State Park, Idaho Scholars tell us Deuteronomy, the last part of the Torah, takes the shape of Hittite treaties  between emperors and peoples they ruled. Into this person-shaped reality,  this God seems to present as person and not a set of platitudes or principles or laws.  And if God is the creator of everything—and its ecology— a paradox might make sense  that God also contains community.  Previous  §  Next