Harp of Love

This is a painting by my mother and favorite artist, Martha Vogel . It is called "Harp of Love."
Happy Easter to all.

Good Friday

What language shall I borrow
to thank Thee dearest friend?
For this Thy dying sorrow
Thy pity without end.
O, make me Thine forever
and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never,
outlive my love to Thee.

The Example

I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.
John 13:15

Three Crosses

Three crosses
like three Valentines
on the hill
flourishing on a green stage
reminding

fifty miles farther
into the Virginias,
three crosses
like three birds on a branch gazing down,
singing

thirty miles towards Ohio,three crosses
like three grace notes
in the symphony of sheltering trees
calling

a small wooden cross
plastic flowers, a name and a date
steps from the highway
buckle up

 a palm frond cross
hangs from the mirror
my hand floats to my throat, a silver cross
remember

Easter

Good Friday

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him. "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!"

But the other criminal rebuked him, "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong."

Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."

Luke 23:39-43

A Joyous Easter to All

Eggshelland Update

We were out and about the other day and visited the 2010 Eggshelland. The theme is "we can fly" - all birds! My favorite little creatures on earth. Happy Easter!

Holy Week

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee dearest friend
for this thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me mine forever and should I fainting be
Lord, let me never,never outlive my love to Thee.

(anon, from the hymn O Sacred Head Now Wounded.)

Eggshelland

At Eastertime in the northeast Ohio town of Lyndhurst you can visit Eggshelland. It is located about a mile from where I used to live and where I raised my children, so we visited often. Ron and Betty Manolio have put on this free display in their front yard since 1957. Every year there is a new theme to add to the everpresent fifty-foot cross and the Easter bunny. In the beginning they saved their own egg shells by putting a dime-sized hole in the bottom and draining the contents before enameling. Now they get new shells from local restaurants.
The displays often include over 50,000 colorful egg shells, with an annual average breakage loss of 1500. In 1998 a hailstorm destroyed 10,238 and an ice storm and six inches of snow damaged 11,941, but the Manolio's are undeterred.
Imagine how many smiles they have evoked from children and adults over the years.

Easter Morning

Jesus of Nazareth - worth your ten minutes today

Click HERE.
Happy Easter to all my readers.

Maundy Thursday

The Hand Song

This song is as powerful of an Easter song as I can imagine. I would sing it in church but I don't think I'd make it through. It is by the now defunct group Nickel Creek - Sara Watkins, Sean Watkins, Chris Thile)

The boy only wanted to give mother something

and all of her roses had bloomed.

Looking at him as he came rushing in

without knowing her roses were doomed.
All she could see were some thorns buried deep

and tears that he criedas she tended his wounds.

And she knew it was love, it was what she could understand.

He was showing his love and that 's how he hurt his hands.

He still remembers that night as a child on his mother's knee.

She held him close as she opened her bible

and quietly started to read.

Then seeing a picture of Jesus he cried out -

Mama! He's got scars just like me.

And he knew it was love. It was what he could understand.

He was showing his love and that's how he hurt his hands.

Now the boy is grown and moved out on his own

when Uncle Sam comes along.

A foreign affair but our young men are there

and luck had his number drawn.

It wasn't that long til our soldier was gone,

he gave to a friend what he learned from the cross.

But they knew it was love. It was what they could understand.

He was showing his love - and that's how he hurt his hands.

Lent in Your Messy House

I have been reading "Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith" by Kathleen Norris. Norris takes faith words, or religious words, and discusses a different one in each chapter. Today is Ash Wednesday so I flipped through for an idea. When I got to "repentance" it seemed to fit. I have always been a Protestant and so giving up something for Lent has never been stressed, but it always seemed to me that giving up something is sometimes viewed as a sort of self-punishment for the sins we've committed during the previous year - or it could be a matter of focus, of not letting that beloved little addiction distract us from the meaning of the days leading up to Easter.

In the "repentance" chapter Norris tells a story of a little boy who wrote a poem called "The Monster Who was Sorry".

He began by admitting that he hates it when his father yells at him; his response in the poem is to throw his sister down the stairs, and then to wreck his room, and finally to wreck the whole town. The poem concludes - " Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself - I shouldn't have done all that." My Messy House says it all: with more honesty than most adults could have mustered, the boy made a metaphor for himself that admitted the depth of his rage and also gave him a way out. If that boy had been a novice in the fourth-century monastic desert, his elders might have told him that he was well on his way toward repentence, not such a monster after all, but only human. If the house is messy, they might have said, why not clean it up, why not make it into a place where God might wish to dwell?

I always think of Lent as a chance to clean up the messy house inside me, but more importantly to remember that God is waiting to be invited into my house every single day whether it's messy or not.

Easter in September

Okay all you real gardeners out there - is it normal to have an Easter lily blooming in September? Or is it just there to remind me that every morning is an Easter morning? (I think it looks especially nice next to my dead shrub . . . an Easter resurrection probably will not be occuring for the poor little shrub.)

Changes

As I think back on Easter I realize that I continue to grow in accepting change in my life. We all desire what's familiar and comforting to us. If you had a nice, stable, traditional childhood, maybe that makes it a little more difficult. You had an indelible image in your mind, a permanent dream in your heart of what life was going to be. I went blindly along for 35 years living in the same area, same people, same church and then Whammo! Everything changed. God made me totally dependent on Him. I had no choice - but boy did I fight it.

We have most holidays at our house and I am always grateful that everyone comes from both sides of our families and they are all wonderful people - but completely different people in a different house than I ever imagined at one point in my life. After over 40 years in one beloved church I now celebrate Easter in a new church. It's not the same. Different people and place there too. We don't sing the Hallelujah Chorus, there are no trumpets, my children are not there, my husband is not there. None of those things seem right to me. I still ache for things to be the way I think they should be. But it was still Easter in my heart.

If you are a parent you will be pushed and shoved into change. You take a little step every day as your children grow before your eyes. You know big changes will come, but you can't imagine how it will be. It will be heart-wrenching and wonderful all at the same time. Maybe God shows us through our children that nothing can stay. Nothing we have is immuned to being taken or changed - except what we believe, except love. Traditions change, children grow, loved ones die, life turns out different than we expected. That is why I can't imagine life without the one unchanging God. That is why I celebrate the eternal message of Easter.

It's Friday . . .

but Sunday's comin'.