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A Door Between Worlds

October 31, 2019

Image: A Gathering of Spirits © Jan Richardson

“Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living;
for to him all of them are alive.”
—Luke 20:38

I have long loved this trinity of days we are moving into: Halloween, All Saints, All Souls. They are a thin place in the turning of the year, a space where a door opens between worlds that often seem terribly far apart. In the wake of Gary’s death, this time of year has become especially tender and hopeful for me. More than ever, I am grateful for these days that invite us to remember that, in the body of Christ, death does not release us from being in relationship with one another.

As we enter into these days, I want to share this blessing with you again. It’s one I wrote shortly before Gary’s death, not knowing how much I would need it for myself, and how soon. But that’s how a blessing works: it moves within time and also beyond it, spiraling around to meet us in the ways we most need.

Wherever these days find you, I pray they will hold deep grace, wondrous solace, and a thin place where heaven and earth meet.

God of the Living
A Blessing

When the wall
between the worlds
is too firm,
too close.

When it seems
all solidity
and sharp edges.

When every morning
you wake as if
flattened against it,
its forbidding presence
fairly pressing the breath
from you
all over again.

Then may you be given
a glimpse
of how weak the wall

and how strong what stirs
on the other side,

breathing with you
and blessing you
still,
forever bound to you
but freeing you
into this living,
into this world
so much wider
than you ever knew.

—Jan Richardson
from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

Registration now open!
ILLUMINATED 2019
December 1-27

I would love for you to join us for this new online Advent retreat! The Illuminated retreat intertwines writing, art, music, and community, creating spaces of reflection and rest that you can enter into from anywhere you are, in the way that works best for you. With an elegant simplicity, the Illuminated retreat fits easily into the rhythm of your days. Individual, group, and congregational rates are available.

Info & registration: Illuminated Advent Retreat

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “A Gathering of Spirits,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of Luke, mystery, sacred time | 1 Comment »

An Illuminated Advent – 2019

October 22, 2019

ILLUMINATED 2019
An Online Journey into the Heart of Christmas
December 1-27

Friends, I am thrilled to say that registration is now open for the new Illuminated 2019 Advent Retreat! I am so looking forward to sharing the season with others who want to engage the hope and grace that call us toward Christmas. This online retreat will intertwine writing, art, music, and community, creating spaces of reflection and rest that you can enter into from anywhere you are, in the way that works best for you.

Info & registration:
ILLUMINATED ADVENT RETREAT

This online retreat is not about adding one more thing to your holiday schedule! It is about helping you enter deep into this season that shimmers with mystery and possibility. Offering a space of elegant simplicity as you journey toward Christmas, the Illuminated retreat fits easily into the rhythm of your days. I love hearing from people who say this retreat helps them breathe and engage during what can be a chaotic season.

Individual, group, and congregational rates are available. Questions? Be sure to visit our FAQ page for the retreat.

I wish you so many blessings as Advent approaches.

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Christmas, sacred time | Leave a Comment »

Easter Sunday: Where Resurrection Begins

April 21, 2019

Image: While It Was Still Dark © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter Sunday:
John 20.1-18 or Luke 24.1-12

John’s Gospel tells us it was still dark when Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb and found it empty. I love that detail—that Easter began in the shadows, well before sunrise. This is the way resurrection works: it gathers itself in the darkness, beginning in such secrecy and hiddenness that when it happens, it can be difficult for us to recognize it at first.

This seems to be how it was for the Magdalene on that first Easter morning. Perhaps it was because of her tears or the early hour that she mistook Jesus for a gardener, but the truth is that despite the promises Jesus had made about his return, nothing could have prepared Mary to see him standing before her, speaking her name.

With the sound of her name came recognition, and with recognition came a choice: would Mary attempt to hold on to Christ and the life she had known, or would she accept his call to leave the empty tomb and proclaim what she had seen?

We are here because of the choice Mary Magdalene made on that Easter morning. As Easter arrives once again, what threshold will we choose to cross, that we may tell what we have seen?

The Magdalene’s Blessing
For Easter Day

You hardly imagined
standing here,
everything you ever loved
suddenly returned to you,
looking you in the eye
and calling your name.

And now
you do not know
how to abide this hole
in the center
of your chest,
where a door
slams shut
and swings open
at the same time,
turning on the hinge
of your aching
and hopeful heart.

I tell you,
this is not a banishment
from the garden.

This is an invitation,
a choice,
a threshold,
a gate.

This is your life
calling to you
from a place
you could never
have dreamed,
but now that you
have glimpsed its edge,
you cannot imagine
choosing any other way.

So let the tears come
as anointing,
as consecration,
and then
let them go.

Let this blessing
gather itself around you.

Let it give you
what you will need
for this journey.

You will not remember
the words—
they do not matter.

All you need to remember
is how it sounded
when you stood
in the place of death
and heard the living
call your name.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

Easter bonus: Some years ago, Gary and I created a video that intertwines my series The Hours of Mary Magdalene (inspired by the life and legends of the Magdalene and by illuminated books of hours from the Middle Ages) with his gorgeous and haunting song “Mary Magdalena,” which appears on his CD House of Prayer. I would love to share it with you this Easter. To view/listen, click the icon below, and it will take you to the video on the Vimeo website.

For previous reflections for Easter Sunday, visit Easter Sunday: This Is Not the End.

Using Jan’s artworkTo use the image “While It Was Still Dark,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, lectionary, sacred time | 6 Comments »

Women’s Christmas Retreat 2019 – A Gift for You

January 3, 2019

Image: Wise Women Also Came © Jan Richardson

Happy New Year and Merry Epiphany, almost! In celebration, these three wise women are stopping by with a gift for you. You might know that some folks celebrate Epiphany (January 6) as Women’s Christmas. Originating in Ireland, where it is known as Nollaig na mBan, Women’s Christmas began as a day when the women set aside time to enjoy a break and celebrate together at the end of the holidays.

It has become a tradition for me to create a new retreat each year that you can download as a PDF and use on Women’s Christmas or whenever you need some time for reflection and regathering. The new retreat is hot off the press and waiting for you! It’s titled “By Way of the Heart” and includes readings, art, questions, and blessings.

There is no cost for the retreat. It’s my Women’s Christmas gift to you, with gratitude for your presence on my path. You can do the retreat alone or share it with friends. (And it’s not for women only!) To download the retreat, visit this page at my Sanctuary of Women blog:

Women’s Christmas Retreat 2019: By Way of the Heart

I’d be delighted for you to pass along the gift by sharing the link with others.

I send much gratitude and many blessings for you. Merry Women’s Christmas!

P.S. Our festive Advent discount on annual subscriptions to the Jan Richardson Images site continues through Epiphany Day! An annual subscription enables you to download any images for use in worship during the year. Advent rate: $125 (regularly $165). Extended through January 6. Click Subscribe to sign up.

[To use the Wise Women Also Came image or order it as a print, please visit this page at Jan Richardson Images.]

Posted in Christmas, Epiphany, holidays, sacred time | 2 Comments »

An Illuminated Advent – 2018

October 25, 2018

ILLUMINATED 2018

An Online Journey into the Heart of Christmas

December 1-28

With Advent not far around the corner, I want to let you know that I will be offering a new online retreat for the season! It’s been a few years since I’ve done this, and I am so looking forward to sharing the season with others who want to engage the hope and grace that call us toward Christmas. The Illuminated 2018 retreat will intertwine writing, art, music, and community, creating spaces of reflection and rest that you can enter into from anywhere you are, in the way that works best for you.

Info & registration:
ILLUMINATED ADVENT RETREAT

This online retreat is not about adding one more thing to your holiday schedule! It is about helping you find spaces for reflection that draw you deep into this season that shimmers with mystery and possibility. Offering a space of elegant simplicity as you journey toward Christmas, the Illuminated retreat fits easily into the rhythm of your days.

Individual, group, and congregational rates are available. You can also give the retreat as a gift!

I wish you so many blessings as Advent approaches.

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Christmas, sacred time | 2 Comments »

Easter Sunday: This Is Not the End

March 29, 2018

Image: Risen © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter Sunday, Year B:
John 20.1-18 or Mark 16.1-8

If you are looking
for a blessing,
do not linger
here.

—from Easter Sunday: A Blessing for the Rising
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2016

This is the place we have journeyed toward all these weeks, the destination we have been bound for all these days—more than forty now, if you count the Sundays. I am partial to John’s telling of the story of Easter morning, and of what happens between Mary Magdalene and Jesus here at the garden tomb—how at the sound of her name, Mary’s weeping gives way to seeing, to recognition, to the astounding joy of resurrection.

I would want to linger here, to stay and savor this miracle of reunion and return. But we know that Jesus asks something other of Mary Magdalene. Though this may be a garden, this is not a place to put down roots. It is a place of calling, of consecration, of sending as Jesus urges the Magdalene to go and tell what she has seen.

Mary has to choose whether she wants this calling, this consecration; she has to decide whether she truly wants to be sent from this place. I feel a catch in my own chest in this moment of decision, this threshold that will change everything from here.

This day, this empty tomb: this has been our destination all this time. But we see, with Mary Magdalene, that this is not a place to stop. This is not the end toward which we have been traveling.

This is the beginning.

* * *

For this day of beginning, I have gathered together a collection of reflections I’ve written for Easter Sunday across the past decade. I offer these with deep gratitude to you for traveling this path with me, and with blessings and hope for the road that leads us on from here.

Easter Sunday: While It Was Still Dark
Easter Sunday: A Blessing for the Rising
Easter Sunday: Seen
Easter Sunday: Out of the Garden

I also want to share with you a song that Gary wrote for this day. It’s called “I Am With You Always,” and it’s from a CD he had nearly finished at the time of his death. Particularly on this side of his dying, the song comes as an achingly beautiful reminder that even in the heartrending leave-takings we endure in this life, we are not alone; we are accompanied always. To listen, click the play button in the audio player below. (For my email subscribers: if you don’t see the player below, click here to go to The Painted Prayerbook, where you can view it in this post.)

O my friends. Happy Easter!

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Risen,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, Gospel of John, lectionary, sacred time | 7 Comments »

Holy Saturday: Breathe

March 28, 2018

Image: Holy Saturday II © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Holy Saturday:
Matthew 27.57-66 or John 19.38-42

Holy Saturday is not a day for answers. It is a threshold day, a day that lies between, and so resists any easy certainty. It is a day of waiting, of remembering to breathe, of willing ourselves to turn to one another when grief lays hold of us.

—from Holy Saturday: A Day Between
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2008

Just in case the days have blurred together, it’s Saturday, she writes. I thought you might not know that.

On the day I receive these words in a message from my friend Peg, I am in a hospital room, keeping vigil for Gary. It has been nine days since the surgery from which he will never wake. It is, as it turns out, the halfway point of our vigil.

It’s Saturday.

On that day, Peg’s words arrive as a gift, something solid amid the wrenching fear and aching hope. On that threshold, her words remind me to breathe, to remember that others are breathing with me, and with Gary; that we are not alone.

It’s Saturday.

We have journeyed far in this season of Lent. We have, most likely, carried our own fears and hopes as we’ve traveled through the wilderness spaces of these past weeks. Lent generates its own field of intensity, one that seems only to quicken as we move through Holy Week, with its wild mix of celebration and grief.

And so I am here to give you the words Peg gave to me:

It’s Saturday.

If we have grown weary in this season. If we have become overwhelmed. If we are living with fear or anxiety or worry about what lies ahead. If the swirl of Holy Week has become intense. If time is moving strangely. If grief has been a traveling companion. If the ground beneath us has given way. If resurrection seems less than certain.

It’s Saturday.

This is the day that calls us to breathe. This is the day that invites us to make a space within the weariness, the fear, the ache. This is the day that beckons us to turn toward one another, and to remember we do not breathe alone.

It’s Saturday.

* * *

For this day, I’ve gathered up a collection of the reflections I’ve written for Holy Saturday across the past decade. In the waiting, in the vigil, may you be blessed.

Holy Saturday: Vigil
Holy Saturday: In the Breath, Another Breathing
Day 40/Holy Saturday: Therefore I Will Hope
Holy Saturday: The Art of Enduring
Holy Saturday: A Day Between

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Holy Saturday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 6 Comments »

Good Friday: Speaking, Still

March 27, 2018

Reading from the Gospels, Good Friday: John 18.1-19.42

Each time we stretch out our arms in love to one another, every time we open our hearts, we find the shadow of the cross, but also a glimpse of the open tomb. We are nailed indeed. It is our keenest grief, and our deepest joy.

—from Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2008

That he can still speak.

That in the depths of his pain and his dying, he does not cease to say what he needs to say.

That as he lets go, he leaves them with words of comfort and release, of lamentation and love.

Forgive. You will be with me. Behold. Forsaken. Thirst. Finished. Into your hands.

Knowing that these are his last words, but not his final ones.

That after this, there will be a span of silence. And that soon the silence will come to an end.

For now, we watch, we weep, we bear witness, we wait.

* * *

For this day, I’ve gathered together a collection of reflections I’ve written for Good Friday over the past decade. I offer them with gratitude and many blessings. Deep peace to you in these days.

Good Friday: Still
Good Friday: A Blessing for What Abides
Day 39/Good Friday: They Took the Body of Jesus
Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Good Friday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 2 Comments »

Holy Thursday: At the Table, Speaking of Love

March 26, 2018

Readings for Holy Thursday/Maundy Thursday:
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19;
1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 13.1-17, 31b-35

A blessing is not finished until we let it do its work within us and then pass it along, an offering grounded in the love that Jesus goes on to speak of this night.

—from Holy Thursday: Take a Blessing
The Painted Prayerbook, April 2011

As this season has been unfolding, we’ve been talking about the wild language of Lent, noticing the words that have tugged at our attention, the vocabulary that has helped us make a map through these wilderness days.

Now the language intensifies, and the vocabulary takes on an urgent edge as it traces a path through these days of horror and of hope. Moving into Holy Week, we listen close and more closely still to the words being said now, as one does before a death.

Holy Thursday draws us to the table, in the company of Jesus and the disciples as he begins to speak his final words on this side of his dying. The disciples will not understand everything Jesus has to say, will not be able to comprehend fully the import of what he is telling them, but his words will sear themselves into their hearts nonetheless. These are the words that will return to the disciples later, in that bewildering time known as after. These are the words that will comfort them and also stir their courage for the path that waits for them still.

But for now, they, and we, are at the table. As the night unfolds, we will see that the word at the center of Jesus’ vocabulary is this:

Love.

In John’s Gospel, in what’s known as the Farewell Discourse (John 13:31-17:26), Jesus will speak the word love thirty-one times. In these final hours before his death, the word will ring repeatedly, a potent echo of the moment when Jesus rose from the Jordan River, the waters of baptism dripping from him, and heard himself named Beloved. This night, he will give this word to his friends, passing along to them the love he received at a moment he needed it most.

But Jesus does not begin there. As he works to convey what he most wants his companions to know, he does not start with spoken words. Instead, he takes a towel, a basin, water. He begins to wash the feet of his friends, the drenching itself another echo of his baptism and his naming as Beloved.

Perhaps more than anything Jesus could say this night—and he goes on to say quite a lot as he opens his heart at the table—this washing speaks to the hearts of the disciples. In this sacramental gesture, we see Jesus’ vocabulary in action. Word made flesh.

The love that Jesus enacts and speaks this night is an extraordinary gift and grace. But, as the disciples will hear Jesus say at the table, such a grace is not reserved solely for them. They are to pass the gift along: to enact this word, to live this word, to give flesh to this word in this world.

For I have set you an example, Jesus tells them as he returns to the table after washing their feet, that you also should do as I have done to you (John 13.15).

This is my commandment, Jesus will say to them a little later, as they linger at the table, that you love one another as I have loved you (John 15.12).

As we approach the table this week, how will we listen for the love that meets us there? How will we allow ourselves to receive the gift and the grace of this love? When we leave the table, how will we carry this love with us? How will we enact this love, giving it flesh for the life of the world?

Here at The Painted Prayerbook, where we are celebrating our tenth anniversary, we have traveled through Holy Week many times. In a series of posts this week, I’ll be gathering up reflections I’ve written for Holy Week across the past decade, as well as for Easter Sunday. In the links below, you’ll find a collection of reflections for Holy Thursday. I’m tucking them beside your plate, grateful for your companionship at this table. Blessings.

Holy Thursday: Blessing the Bread, the Cup
Holy Thursday: Take a Blessing
Day 38/Holy Thursday: Cup of the New Covenant
Holy Thursday: Feet and Food

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Holy Thursday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 2 Comments »

Women’s Christmas Retreat 2018 – A Gift for You

January 3, 2018

It’s become a tradition for me to create a new retreat each year that you can use on Women’s Christmas or whenever you need some time for respite and reflection, alone or with others. This year’s retreat is titled “The Path We Make by Dreaming” and includes readings, art, questions, and blessings. You can download it as a PDF.

There is no cost for the retreat. It’s my Women’s Christmas gift to you, with such gratitude for your presence on my path. (And it’s not for women only!) For a link to the retreat and more about Women’s Christmas, visit this page at my Sanctuary of Women blog:

Women’s Christmas 2018: The Path We Make by Dreaming

I would love for you to pass along the gift by sharing the link with your friends via Facebook, Twitter, or any other way you’re connected.

I pray that in this new year, you will find wondrous dreams to live into. I am so grateful for you and am sending many blessings your way.

[To use the Wise Women Also Came image or order it as a print, please visit this page at Jan Richardson Images.]

Posted in Christmas, Epiphany, holidays, sacred time | 3 Comments »

The Painted Prayerbook

Archive for the ‘sacred time’ Category

A Door Between Worlds

An Illuminated Advent – 2019

Easter Sunday: Where Resurrection Begins

Women’s Christmas Retreat 2019 – A Gift for You

An Illuminated Advent – 2018

Easter Sunday: This Is Not the End

Holy Saturday: Breathe

Good Friday: Speaking, Still

Holy Thursday: At the Table, Speaking of Love

Women’s Christmas Retreat 2018 – A Gift for You

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