Archive for the Lent category

When I moved to Atlanta for seminary, I inherited Edward. Edward and my sister, Sally, had worked together when she lived in Atlanta. Sally had moved away by the time I arrived in Atlanta, and though I couldn’t step into her shoes, I had the privilege of being the resident Richardson sister for Edward. A […]

In her book Do What You Have the Power to Do, Helen Bruch Pearson reflects on this woman who anoints Jesus. She writes, “Jesus accepted her silent acts of intimacy and devotion with profound respect and reverent silence. Perhaps Jesus longed for the warmth and comfort of another’s touch. Perhaps the cool ointment cascading from […]

In my vocation as an artist who often works in churches and related settings, I often encounter the perception that the creative life is a luxury—that it’s what we do if we have time for it and money for it and the gift for it. Creativity and the arts are often considered tangential to the […]

Essential: of the essence. Basic. Fundamental. Necessary. Inherent. The woman who anoints Jesus knows what this means. She has sensed the need—the need of Jesus, her own need—and moves with grace to give what is perhaps costliest to her, perhaps the only thing she can give. In her hands she bears essence—perfume—but she also bears […]

A woman, a vessel, a table, a man. Each of the Gospels contains a story of a woman who anoints Jesus. Opinions differ as to whether these are four stories about one woman or about several. The basic elements, however, run through the stories: a woman approaches Jesus as he is sharing in a meal, […]

A Woman Anoints Jesus © Jan Richardson As our Lenten journey draws us toward Palm Sunday, our theme this week comes from a chapter of Sacred Journeys titled “Loving Beyond the Boundaries: The Woman Who Anoints Jesus’ Head.” Invocation Compassionate God, you beckon us to touch and to heal. Move through us, so we may […]

Some years ago, in need of a change of scenery and fewer distractions as I entered the final stretch of working on a new book, I went to Miami and spent a week in the home of friends. I had taken along my copy of An Interrupted Life. At the time, this abridged version of […]

“We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.” These were the closing words in the final entry of Etty’s diary. I don’t know that we can expect to be a balm for all wounds. Yet I am haunted by Etty’s willingness to pour herself out: how she lavished her words upon […]

Here is one of the qualities I treasure most in Etty Hillesum: For all the grace and intention she brought to doing her soul work, and for all the skill she possessed in navigating and negotiating the relationship between her inner and outer worlds, she never presented herself as someone who had mastered the spiritual […]

This week we are traveling in the company of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman who in 1941 began to keep a diary, nine months after the Nazis invaded her homeland of the Netherlands. To pick up the thread of this week’s reflections, visit Monday’s post. This is a Week of a Million Things. […]