Archive for July, 2012

Gathering the Fragments

July 22, 2012

Image: Gathering the Fragments © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Pentecost +9, Year B: John 6.1-21

He told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over,
so that nothing may be lost.”
―John 6.12

It is part of the miracle: how Jesus, with such intention, cares for the fragments following the feast. He sees the abundance that persists, the feast that remains within the fragments. We might think the marvel of the story is that there is enough for everyone. And yet for Jesus, enough does not seem to be enough. There is more: a meal that depends on paying attention to what has been left behind, on turning toward what has been tossed aside.

Call it the persistence of wonder, or the stubbornness of the miraculous: how Christ casts his circle around the fragments, will not loose his hold on what is broken and in pieces. How he gathers them up: a sign of the wholeness he can see; a foretaste of the banquet to come.

Blessing the Fragments

Cup your hands together,
and you will see the shape
this blessing wants to take.
Basket, bowl, vessel:
it cannot help but
hold itself open
to welcome
what comes.

This blessing
knows the secret
of the fragments
that find their way
into its keeping,
the wholeness
that may hide
in what has been
left behind,
the persistence of plenty
where there seemed
only lack.

Look into the hollows
of your hands
and ask
what wants to be
gathered there,
what abundance waits
among the scraps
that come to you,
what feast
will offer itself
from the fragments
that remain.

―Jan Richardson

2017 update: This blessing appears in my new book, The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief.

For a previous reflection on Matthew’s version of this story, click the image or title below.


A Gracious Plenty

And also see this related reflection, which includes “Blessing of Enough.”

[To use the image “Gathering the Fragments,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary, Ordinary Time | 21 Comments »

Come Away and Rest

July 15, 2012

Come Away and Rest
Come Away and Rest © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Pentecost +8, Year B (July 22): Mark 6.30-34, 53-56

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer
for five short minutes.
―Etty Hillesum

He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves
and rest a while.”
―Mark 6.31

Before I wrote this blessing I took a nap. Spent time with a novel. Lay on the couch and looked out on the sunlit street. Made a cup of tea. Breathed.

I do not know what restores you, where you take your rest, how you find the sustenance that enables you to meet those who wait for you with their insistent hungers. But whatever it is, whatever soothes you and brings you solace, may you find it in the rhythm of this day, as close as the beating of your heart, as quiet as the space between the beats.

Blessing of Rest

Curl this blessing
beneath your head
for a pillow.
Wrap it about yourself
for a blanket.
Lay it across your eyes
and for this moment
cease thinking about
what comes next,
what you will do
when you rise.

Let this blessing
gather itself to you
like the stillness
that descends
between your heartbeats,
the silence that comes
so briefly
but with a constancy
on which
your life depends.

Settle yourself
into the quiet
this blessing brings,
the hand it lays
upon your brow,
the whispered word
it breathes into
your ear
telling you
all shall be well
all shall be well
and you can rest
now.

P.S. Sunday, July 22, is also the Feast of Mary Magdalene! Last year, Gary and I collaborated on a video slide show in celebration of the Magdalene. Click the thumbnail below to see The Hours of Mary Magdalene on Vimeo, and may you have a splendid feast day.

[To use the image “Come Away and Rest,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of Mark, lectionary | 9 Comments »

The River of John

July 8, 2012

The River of John
The River of John © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Pentecost +7, Year B (July 15): Mark 6.14-29

Here at the ending of John the Baptist’s life, I find myself thinking back to its beginning. How the angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to tell him of the longed-for son who will bring joy and gladness. How the joyful John leaps in his mother’s womb when the pregnant Mary comes to visit. How the neighbors rejoice at his birth. How, on the day of her son’s circumcision, Elizabeth declares, “He is to be called John,” to the befuddlement of those who assumed he would be named after his father. How Zechariah, struck mute months earlier when he had expressed his incredulity at Gabriel’s news, reaches for a writing tablet and insists,

His name is John.

It is the name that had accompanied the angel’s stunning news, the name that Gabriel had told Zechariah and Elizabeth to give to their son, the name destined for him. I imagine Zechariah writing it for his neighbors in large letters, scored heavy with emphasis. His wife was not mistaken in the name she gave.

His name is John.

John absorbs the insistent clarity that his parents display in their naming of him. Their strength of purpose passes into him, is borne in his blood, infuses everything that will follow. As he enters the scene as an adult, we see that the one who has been sent to prepare the way, the one who will be known as the Baptist, has himself become like a river whose course is directed not merely by its banks but by an underlying sureness of purpose. John the Waymaker does not waver from the course that is his call.

His name is John.

John had met Jesus when they were in the waters of the womb, had met him again at the waters of the Jordan, had been borne along by the sureness of his call and by the living water he found in his cousin the Christ. At the last, when we meet him in today’s gospel reading, what flows in John’s life is not water but blood, a horrendous libation spilled out at Herod’s feast. I imagine that John goes to his death with the same clarity and steadfastness that marked his birth and his life. That perhaps he heard again the voices of the parents who named him. That before the felling stroke there came an echo of the song that his father, no longer mute, had lifted on the day of John’s naming:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1.76-80)

Death does not have the last word in John’s story; blood is not the final legacy of the Baptizer. John had succeeded in making a way for the dawn that his father sang about at his birth. The one who “came as a witness to testify to the light” (John 1.7) had completed his purpose and his call, giving himself with complete abandon. “He himself was not the light,” the Gospel of John points out, yet the Baptist shimmered with steadfast purpose and with the joy that had marked his life from the moment he met Jesus.

His name is John.

The life of John the Baptist was utterly intertwined with the life of Jesus. And yet something about his love of Christ and his singleness of purpose enabled him to remain so much himself. In the fierce and focused rhythm and flow of his living and his dying, the Baptizer beckons us to reckon with what it means to divest ourselves in the service of Christ without becoming diminished, without giving up the self that God created.

His name is John.

And what name is ours? What distinguishes and directs the flow and focus of our lives? What is the purpose we are known for—or that we struggle toward and long for? How do we abandon ourselves to this purpose and to the One who calls us to it, and move ever more deeply into the self that God created us to be?

Blessing

May your life be a river.
May you flow with the purpose
of the One who created
and called you,
who directs your course
and turns you ever
toward home.

May your way shimmer
with the light of Christ
who goes with you
who bears you up
who calls you by name.

May you move
with the grace of the Spirit
who brooded over
the face of the waters
at the beginning
and who will gather you in
at the end.

[To use the image “The River of John” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of Mark, lectionary, Ordinary Time | 18 Comments »

Are You Coming or Going?

July 1, 2012

Are You Coming or Going?
Are You Coming or Going? © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Pentecost +6, Year B: Mark 6.1-13

Are you arriving or leaving? I found myself asking this figure-on-the-threshold when it began to take shape in the studio. How do we answer this question in our own lives? Choosing where we will go, and when, is among the most powerful human freedoms. Yet in ministry—and in life—figuring out whether God is calling us to remain in a place or to leave it can be one of the sharpest edges of discernment.

In this week’s gospel reading, Jesus affirms this freedom—this power to stay or to leave—as he sends the disciples out into the world. “Wherever you enter a house,” he tells them, “stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” Aware of the challenges of the road—including the decisions it requires—Jesus sends the disciples out by twos, a reminder that we are not meant to discern our path alone. Jesus knows that such discernment can be complicated; it calls us, after all, to perform such feats as sorting through our attachments, asking what we really want our life to be like, and dealing with those occasions when the decision about staying or going is not ours alone. In his wisdom, Jesus gives us one another as we search for those places where we can offer our gifts.

In my own ministry, which is a decidedly off-the-beaten-path sort that invites continual discernment about where and how I will go, I treasure those places that have offered a space of welcome. Later this summer, Gary and I will be traveling to one of those places, and we would love to offer the hospitality of that place to you. In the Cascade Mountains of Washington State there is a wondrous retreat center called the Grünewald Guild. Devoted to exploring and celebrating the connections between art and faith, the Guild is a place where Gary and I “find our tribe,” as one of my friends puts it.

Each summer, the Guild offers week-long classes in a delicious variety of media, from pottery to printmaking. What’s most compelling about the Guild, though, is that the classes take place in a rhythm of community life, with shared meals, morning and evening prayer, community gatherings, and lots of conversations in the in-between places. As someone whose vocation often involves explaining what I do, and how it is (in fact!) a ministry, the Guild offers a community where I don’t have to do much explaining. In the company of my tribe, I can savor the connections with others who know what it means, in their own lives, to live in the intersections of creativity and faith. What I find at the Guild helps sustain me the rest of the year, as I continue to discern where the Spirit is leading.

I’ve taught at the Guild for many years and am excited to be returning once again for the Guild’s third annual Liturgical Arts Week. I’ll serve as the keynote speaker, and Gary and I will teach a class that I’m especially excited about. Titled “Advent Portfolio: To Illuminate the Season,” the class will offer a creative space to dive into the lectionary texts for Advent and Christmas and to find new treasures in the story of the Incarnation.

Gary and I will join a fantastic team of Guild faculty that will include an amazing trio of our friends: Kristen Gilje, Gilly Sakakini, and Laurie Clark. All of us would love to welcome you to the Guild! There’s more information about the week here: Liturgical Arts Week: A Spiral-Shaped God. Please know that you do not have to think of yourself as an artist to come to the Guild! The Guild draws a wide variety of folks, including many who don’t think of themselves as artists but who are hungry for a more creative way of being in the world—and in the church. Among the folks who find their way to the Guild are an increasing number of clergy who come as part of a renewal leave or sabbatical.

If you visit the Guild’s page about the Liturgical Arts Week, you’ll see that housing on campus is tight that week. We do have some spaces in the classes, so don’t let the housing crunch deter you. There are still several options for housing, including camping out by the river (which is a popular choice) or staying off-site but nearby, and some on-site housing may yet be available.

I’ve put together a slide show to give you a glimpse of the Guild. Many of these images are from last year’s Liturgical Arts Week. [For blog subscribers receiving this reflection by email; if the slide show isn’t visible, just click The Painted Prayerbook to go directly to the blog post, where you can view the slide show.]

[Show picture list]

And while I have Washington on my mind, I want also to let you know that Gary is putting the finishing touches on his Pacific Northwest Song Chapel tour. During our time on that side of the country, he’ll be traveling around Washington as well as Oregon for concerts. He has just a few open dates still available; if you’re in that area and would like to schedule a concert, or know of churches he might connect with, I’d love to put you in touch. You can contact Gary through his Song Chapel website, where you can also learn more about his ministry and hear some of his amazing songs.

Wherever this day finds you—staying, leaving, or discerning between the two—may the peace of God be with you, and may you find—and create—a place that welcomes who you are.

For a previous reflection on this story, click the image or title below.

Mapping the Mysteries

[To use the image “Are You Coming or Going?” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Gospel of Mark, lectionary, Ordinary Time | 4 Comments »