Archive for the Lent category

Litany of the Blessed © Jan Richardson As we cross into the fourth week of Lent—and approach the halfway point of the season—the readings for this week come from a chapter of Sacred Journeys titled “Stirring the Ashes: Elemental Blessings.” Invocation God of fire, earth, wind, and water, embrace the elemental wounds we bear. God […]

As with any emotion, anger can be a map. Within the landscape of our life, the presence of anger reveals where our passions lie, whom we love, what we consider important.  Anger shows us where we are vulnerable, where there are cracks or wounds in our soul, where there is brokenness within us or around […]

So what happens when the one we are angry with is God? Mary and Martha had, at least, God in the flesh and in front of them; they could look Christ in the face and say what they needed to say to him. How about for us? We are nervous sometimes about letting ourselves be […]

To a friend who angered me I think your most valuable gift to me has been a space—a safe space—to share my voice. Through your willingness to hear, you have helped me to speak. I suspect that some days that may have felt like a mixed blessing to you—days when my voice spoke more pain […]

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus hears these words first from Martha, then from Mary. The sisters do not hesitate to say to Jesus the words that are on their minds and their hearts. In today’s reading, Martha and Mary challenge us to consider how we speak and […]

In which we continue to reflect on the challenge and gift of anger as we contemplate the story of Mary and Martha in John 11 . . . For both women and men, anger can be a complicated emotion to sort through, and the Christian tradition has not always made it easy to acknowledge and […]

This week, as we revisit the Lenten section in Sacred Journeys, the readings come from a chapter titled “Tender Anger: Mary and Martha.” In this chapter we reflect on the story of the raising of Jesus’ friend Lazarus, with particular attention to the exchanges that Jesus has with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus. […]

Today we come to ending of this week’s story—and, as with last week’s tale of the daughter of Jephthah, to a beginning. How will we remember this woman, and where will our remembering lead us? In Judges 19, we read that when the husband receives no response from his concubine whom he has found lying […]

As we approach the end of this week of reflections on the woman of Judges 19, today’s reading invites us to consider doorways and dreams . . . In Anne Michele Tapp’s article “Virgin Daughter Sacrifice” in the book Anti-Covenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible, she notes that in this story and that […]

We continue the story of the woman of Judges 19. In the scriptural account, we read that on the morning after the attack, the woman’s husband “opened the doors of the house, and when he went out to go on his way, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her […]