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Epiphany 4: Litany of the Blessed

January 23, 2011


Litany of the Blessed © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany 4, Year A (January 30): Matthew 5.1-12

Blessed.

The first time we encounter this word in the story of Jesus, it is in Luke’s gospel. Elizabeth offers this word—repeatedly—when Mary comes seeking sanctuary with her elder kinswoman amidst their mutually miraculous pregnancies.

Blessed are you
among women,

Elizabeth says to Mary,

and blessed
is the fruit
of your womb.

And blessed is she,

Elizabeth says soon after,

who believed.

Blessed, Elizabeth says to Mary: once, twice, and yet a third time.

Blessed blessed blessed.

Barely beginning to take form, Jesus feels the jolt that goes through Mary when she hears this word, blessed. Something in the growing Jesus feels the way the word settles inside Mary when she recognizes it to be true. When she knows it in her bones. When she claims the word for herself as she sings the Magnificat:

Surely, from now on
all generations will call me
blessed.

Blessed. Jesus absorbs this. Blessed seeps into his forming cells, blessed passes from Mary’s flesh into his own. From the womb, he knows the power of receiving a blessing, of living within it. He understands what it means to inhabit this word, to dwell within one who has been named blessed.

Jesus knows this word from the inside. And so there comes a time when he begins to say it. Again. And again.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
Jesus says to his disciples on the mountain,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn,
he tells his followers,
for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,
he says to his friends,
for they will inherit the earth.

Again and again, Jesus says blessed, speaks blessed, proclaims blessed, pressing and imprinting it upon his listening disciples.

Blessed the hungry
and thirsty for righteousness,
he says.
Blessed the merciful.
Blessed the pure in heart.

The peacemakers:
blessed.

The persecuted for righteousness’ sake:
blessed.

And you—
you, when people revile you
and persecute you
and utter all kinds of evil
against you falsely on my account;
you—
rejoice and be glad.
You:
blessed.

What Elizabeth did for Mary, Jesus does here for his disciples. What Elizabeth spoke to the one who bore Jesus into the world, Jesus speaks to these whom he will call to become his body, to continue to bear him in this life, to become his hands and feet after his flesh is gone.

Jesus will not cease to say blessed after this passage, this litany, in Matthew 5. He will speak it yet again. When the imprisoned John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus tells them to return to his cousin and tell him what they see and hear, of the healing that comes to the blind, the lame, the lepers, and more.

And blessed,
Jesus says to John’s disciples,
is anyone
who takes no offense at me. (Matthew 11.6)

When Jesus’ disciples ask him why he speaks in parables, he speaks of those who have shut their eyes and closed their ears.

But blessed
are your eyes,
Jesus tells them,
for they see,
and your ears,
for they hear. (Matthew 13.6)

When Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” and they begin to tell of those who say he is the now-slaughtered John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or another prophet, Jesus asks them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus says to him,

Blessed are you,
Simon son of Jonah!
For flesh and blood
has not revealed this to you,
but my Father in heaven. (Matt. 16.17)

Most often, the word blessed—from the Greek makarios—is linked with seeing, with hearing, with understanding. Jesus says blessed to those who recognize him and have responded to his call. He says blessed to those who have opened themselves to him, who have received him. He makes clear that being blessed is available to all. As he is teaching one day, a woman cries out to Jesus,

Blessed is the womb
that bore you
and the breasts
that nursed you!

Jesus responds to her,

Blessed rather
are those who hear
the word of God
and obey it. (Luke 11.27-28)

What Mary did—hearing, seeing, opening, receiving, responding—Jesus invites all his hearers to do. The blessing that imbued Mary—the blessing that Jesus absorbed in the womb and proclaimed throughout his ministry—Jesus tells the crowd is available to them as well.

We often talk about being blessed as if it is a reward, as if good fortune comes to us as just desserts. Much of Christian culture equates blessing with prosperity, with health, with satisfaction and obvious abundance. While it’s tempting to equate these gifts with the favor of God, this notion comes with a corresponding fallacy that says that those who are sick, those who are not prosperous, those whom misfortune has visited: these are not blessed.

With the beatitudes, Jesus utterly disrupts this line of thinking. Being blessed is not a reward for a job well done or for the accident of being born into fortunate circumstances. It is likewise not an accomplishment, an end goal, or a state of completion that allows us to coast along. And although the Greek makarios can be translated also as happy, being blessed does not rest solely upon an emotion: blessing does not depend on our finding or forcing ourselves into a particular mood.

Here in the beatitudes and throughout his ministry, Jesus proclaims that blessing happens in seeing the presence of Christ, in hearing him, in receiving him, in responding to him. And because Christ so often chooses places of desperate lack—those spaces where people are without comfort or health or strength or freedom, those places where they hunger for food or mercy or peace or safety—it is when we go into those places, when we seek and serve those who dwell there, that we find the presence of Christ. And, finding, then carry him with us.

To be blessed is not a static state. There is a dynamism within the word blessed: it implies an ability to be in the ongoing process of recognizing, receiving, and responding. To be blessed is to enter a kind of pregnancy: to take Christ in, to let him grow in us, to bear him forth, then to receive him and bear him yet again in our acts of mercy, of compassion, of solidarity, of love.

And you? Who or what do you name as blessed? Where do you encounter the blessing of Christ in this world? How do you seek to embody the blessing of God in your own life—to see and to hear Christ, to recognize him and bear him? Do you think of yourself as blessed? Who has given you this name? Who have you named as blessed?

May we have eyes to see and ears to hear, and may Christ have cause to say to us:

Blessed are you.
Blessed are you.
Blessed are you.

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

P.S. Coming Attractions: I’ve recently updated my Upcoming Events page. Would love for you to join us for any of these events if you’re in the vicinity!

Posted in art, Epiphany, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary | 4 Comments »

Epiphany 3: Catch of the Day

January 16, 2011


Fresh Rainbow Trout © Scott Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany 3, Year A (January 23): Matthew 4.12-23

Summer nights, Granddaddy would stand at the white enameled table on the back porch of the lake house, cleaning the fish he had caught that day. There was a rhythm to it as he removed the heads, scraped the scales, gutted the fish, sliced the fillets that would later be fried along with the hush puppies that Mommaw made in the small kitchen of the lake house. As a young girl, I once asked Granddaddy for the eyes of a trout he was cleaning; I thought they were like jewels. I still remember the crinkle of his nose as he declined my request (to his credit, without laughing), telling me the eyes would soon stink.

More than three decades later, the blade of my grandfather’s knife glints across next Sunday’s gospel passage. I find it difficult, after all, not to imagine the logical conclusion to Jesus’ call to the fraternal fishermen: “Follow me,” he says to Simon and his brother Andrew, “and I will make you fish for people.” And likewise to Simon and Andrew’s fishing colleagues James and his brother John, who immediately leave their boats, their nets, their father.

We know what happens to fish once they’re caught. And so how do we avoid wondering what the outcome of our fishing—or of our being netted—will be? How not to think of Christ standing at a white enameled table, his blade poised over the day’s catch? Or of ourselves, helpless beneath the gutting knife?

Yet it is no logical call that Jesus extends. To be sure, following Christ can, at times, leave us feeling filleted. The gospels and other writings of the New Testament have plenty to say about the losses and leave-takings involved in pursuing Christ, the letting go that he asks of us, the dying to all that is not of God. As Simon—soon to become Peter—and his fellow fisherfolk would learn, taking up with Jesus would not place them on a logical path with a predictable end. Jesus, in calling them to a different kind of fishing, likewise had a different sort of result in mind, though not without its hazards.

The image of the fish, so pervasive in the Gospels and in the early centuries of Christianity, often appeared as a symbol of life, of resurrection, of the miraculous, as Gail Ramshaw notes in her (must-have) book Treasures Old and New. Think of the feeding of the five thousand, or the stunning catch the disciples bring in after a long night of empty nets; think of the fish bake that Jesus shares with his disciples after his resurrection. The fish even became a symbol of Christ himself, owing, in part, to the fact that the Greek word for fish, icthus, is an acrostic for the title Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

Christ means for us to share in the life and resurrection and presence of the miraculous that attends his path. We find a clue to this, a sign of this, within the placement of this passage. Jesus’ call to the fishermen falls close on the heels of his baptism in the Jordan, which we have just commemorated. I think of medieval images of John’s baptism of Jesus; of how, in so many of the depictions, the waters of the Jordan rise up to meet Jesus. And in those medieval paintings, fish swim in the baptismal waters, leaping in the presence of the drenched Messiah. (For one such image, see this page from a 13th-century English psalter.)

And we who share in Christ’s baptism are likewise gathered up in the life-giving waters. He draws us not for death and destruction, nor for mere consumption, but rather to find sustenance in the waters of baptism and in the presence of Christ, who offers living water. We see this notion in the Treatise on Baptism by Tertullian, from which Gail Ramshaw quotes in her reflection on fish imagery in the scriptures: “We, little fishes,” writes the early church father, “after the example of our icthus Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in water.”

Though following after Christ will bring its perils and parings, and the gleam of the knife casts its presence yet across this passage, the knife does not have the final word. As this lection begins with words of hope, so does it end. Opening with Jesus’ quotation of Isaiah’s stunning words about light and life coming to those who have sat in darkness and death, the passage closes by telling of how he “went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” It is for life, finally, that Christ gathers us up; it is for wholeness that he sends us out.

Where does this week’s gospel leave you? What draws you to Christ? What sustenance do you find with him? Are there times you feel like you’re under the fisherman’s knife, and what do you do with this? As you contemplate Christ’s own call to you, in your own specific context and vocation, what images arise for you? What symbols capture the life and wholeness that Christ desires for us—for you?

I’m pleased to have a guest artist this week: my brother, Scott Richardson, who, along with our lifelong friend Lee Deaderick, owns a seafood market called Northwest Seafood in Gainesville, Florida. (Check them out at Northwest Seafood; these “Fanatics of Freshness” will ship anywhere in the U.S.! You can also find them on Facebook.) My artful brother makes the signs that hang in their store window. I have coveted these signs, and Scott gifted me with one last year. As we ponder the piscine passage this week, it’s a treat to share Scott’s sign with you.

In the coming days, may Christ gather you up, bless you with the depths of his love, and sustain you as you follow him. Blessings.

For a previous reflection on this passage, visit Epiphany 3: In Which We Visit Our Inner Library.

And for my reflection on Mark’s account of this story, see Epiphany 3: Hooked.

Posted in art, Epiphany, food, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary | 4 Comments »

Epiphany 2: What Are You Looking For?

January 15, 2011


Who Gave You Your Eyes? © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany 2, Year A: John 1.29-42

Who gave you your eyes? asks J. Ruth Gendler in her book Notes on the Need for Beauty. “Inside this question,” she goes on to write, “are several other questions. Who taught you to see? Who taught you what to see? What not to see? What are you paying attention to? What is beautiful to you?”

I’ve been spending time seeing, lately. After last year’s extraordinary outpouring of energy, I have devoted some space, in the opening days of this new year, to filling my creative well. Resting and restoring. Absorbing. Looking. Giving my attention to what feeds my eyes, grabs my imagination, renews my vision.

This involves books, of course. One of the books I’ve been keeping company with is Leslie Geddes-Brown’s marvelous book about Angie Lewin, an English printmaker whose work first crossed my path in a Seattle bookstore several years ago. I left the shop with a fistful of her cards, just because they made my soul and my eyeballs happy. The pages of Angie Lewin: Plants and Places, just recently published (and a post-Christmas treat to myself), brim with Lewin’s remarkable wood engravings, linocuts, lithographs, and screenprints, along with her working sketches as well as photographs of some of the places that inspire her art. The book, in fact, is thematically divided into sections that take their names from these places: woodland and hedgerow, river and loch, meadow and garden.

In images and in Lewin’s own words, the book reveals some of the sources of her seeing. She tells of landscapes she has sought or stumbled upon, along with artists whose work has helped her develop her distinctive vision. The book closes with a wonderful, offbeat bibliography (with photos) of books that are among Lewin’s favorites; she comments, “Many of the artists who inspire me have also illustrated books and designed textiles and ceramics, so this list is an eclectic mix of 1940s natural history books and obscure titles collected for the artwork regardless of their subject.”

The book, which came into my hands at about the same time as Ruth Gendler’s book, reads something like an extended meditation on the question that Gendler poses: Who gave you your eyes? Together these two books have prompted me to pay closer attention to how I see, what I see, where I look, what inspires me, how my seeing might need to stretch in new directions.

And into the midst of this strolls Jesus in this Sunday’s gospel lection, where we meet two of John the Baptist’s disciples who, after hearing John speak of Jesus as the lamb of God, begin to follow after Jesus. “What are you looking for?” Jesus asks them. They answer his question with a question: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Jesus responds to them, “Come and see.”

Come and see. In all of the gospels, this is one of the most profound and challenging invitations Jesus will extend. Jesus is not beckoning them to a superficial seeing; what he offers them will demand more than a glance or a cursory look. The Greek word translated here as see comes from horao, which can be translated as perceive, understand, recognize, experience. Jesus is calling these disciples to the kind of seeing that opens a door, a seeing that draws us into a journey that will change us in ways we cannot know or imagine at the outset.

During Advent I wrote about getting stuck in my studio (“The Luminous Night”), and how getting stuck always seems to mean that a shift is brewing in my artwork. I’m in the early days yet of that shift, not clear what it means, but am feeling more excited than panicked about it. I know the shift is an invitation to a deeper seeing, a call both to extend my range of vision outward—to look beyond my usual lines of sight—as well as inward, to tunnel into layers of soul and guts and heart and see what—and who—is there. Lewin and Gendler’s books are good companions in these days; they not only feed my eyes and imagination but have also helped propel me into the studio, where I’ve begun to experiment with new colors and follow some different lines. Who knows where it will lead? The mystery and the risk are the price, and the gift, of learning to see—of being given our eyes, again and again and again.

What are you looking for? Jesus asks. Like that duo of disciples, I want to know where he is staying, where he is dwelling; I want to find where Christ makes his home. Come and see, he says. And in my studio, in my home, in my marriage, in my friendships, he keeps showing up; in the communities I’m part of, in the things I wrestle with, in the strangers who cross my path, in the questions and dreams and doorways that open onto places I could never have predicted, Christ lies in wait. Inviting me, beckoning me, challenging me to open my eyes wide, and wider still.

What are you looking for in these days?

Blessing

May God,
who comes to us
in the things of this world,
bless your eyes
and be in your seeing.

May Christ,
who looks upon you
with deepest love,
bless your eyes
and widen your gaze.

May the Spirit,
who perceives what is
and what may yet be,
bless your eyes
and sharpen your vision.

May the Sacred Three
bless your eyes
and cause you to see.

[The blessing is from In the Sanctuary of Women © Jan L. Richardson. For a previous reflection on this lectionary reading, visit Epiphany 2: Come and See.]

[To use the “Who Gave You Your Eyes?” image, 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, Epiphany, Gospel of John, lectionary, mystery | 6 Comments »

Baptism of Jesus: Following the Flow

January 4, 2011


Following the Flow © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Baptism of Christ/Epiphany 1, Year A: Matthew 3.13-17

From Genesis to Revelation, water arcs through the Bible, courses through the scriptures, shapes the landscape of the sacred text, surfaces again and again in the story of the people of God. Nearly always it is a sign of God’s provision, God’s providence, God’s care for those whom God has claimed. By the time we see Jesus meeting John at the Jordan in this Sunday’s gospel lection, we have already been swimming in the stories: of God giving a stream to Eden, of Hagar receiving wellsprings in her desperate wilderness, of Moses striking the rock that gave water to a thirsty and wandering people. We have read the tale of Jacob meeting Rachel by a well, the psalmist’s words about still waters that comfort and restore, and the prophet’s proclamation of the God who “will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground.” Again and again, God’s provision breaks through and springs forth in the form of water.

And here, the first time Jesus takes the stage as an adult, we see him come to the Jordan. This is the river in which, generations before, priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood, stopping the waters so that the entire, long-journeying children of Israel could pass through to the other side. This is the river that Elijah struck with his mantle so that he and Elisha could cross, moments before Elijah’s dramatic ascension amid the blazing horses and chariots of fire. It is Jordan that Elisha tells the leprous Naaman to wash himself in and be cleansed, Jordan that King David crosses with all of Israel as he prepares to fight the Arameans, Jordan that traces a path through Israel’s history. It is a mythic river that Jesus wades into, and we watch him become drenched in its very real waters as he receives John’s baptism.

As Jesus rises from this ancient river, he is the recipient of all the graces that water signifies, imbued with the layers of symbolism and story and blessing that these waters convey. Yet he is not only recipient of this; as the waters of baptism roll off him, Jesus is also sign: this drenched and dripping Messiah embodies and shows forth in fullness just how far God will go to provide for and restore God’s people.

Here at Jordan, I find my eye drawn to the yielding that takes place in this river. When Jesus first approaches him, John challenges this baptism-seeking savior: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” he says to his cousin. “Let it be so now,” Jesus urges him, his words an echo of the “Let it be” that his mother offered to the angel long ago, on the day that the same Spirit descended upon her. And just like that, the locust-and-honey-eating Baptist of the wilderness, who only a few verses earlier was railing at the Pharisees and Sadduccees and speaking of vipers and axes, winnowing forks and fire, falls silent. Gives in. Yields to Jesus like a stone yielding to the river that washes over it.

Jesus, too, does his own yielding. He places himself in John’s hands, leans into the liminal space of the ritual, gives himself up to the river and what it offers, gives in to the path that lies ahead of him. It is not a passive action that Jesus undertakes here. This is not the gesture of a man resigned to his fate; he is not letting his circumstances wash over him. Christ does not take part in—or call us to—blind acceptance. The yielding that Jesus engages in—and John, too—requires a different kind of strength, a different set of muscles than those involved in straining and striving and struggling to move forward. This yielding calls forth a courage born of recognizing the path to which we are called, and ceasing to fight against it: to give ourselves to its flow, to let it work on us, as the river does with the stone.

As we move into this new year and this new liturgical season, what muscles are you using? In the midst of working and reaching and pushing, is there a place where God might be inviting you to yield, to give in, to give yourself up, so that the grace of God may wash over you? Is there a ritual, a sacramental act, a liminal space that you need to lean into? Who could you ask to meet you there; who could help you say, “Let it be”?

As we approach this Sunday’s celebration of the Baptism of Jesus, I invite you to spiral back around some earlier art and reflections for this day. Click on the image or the title below to find your way to them.

In these days, may you know when to push, and when to give in, and may the grace and the power of God drench you and bear you along. Blessings.

Epiphany 1: Baptized and Beloved

Epiphany 1: Take Me to the River

Epiphany 1: Ceremony (with a Side of Cake)

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

Bonus round: As you ponder these things, click the player below to hear “Hymn of the Stone” by my husband, Garrison Doles, from his CD One Man.

P.S. NEW YEAR, NEW BOOK! As we move into this year, my new book, In the Sanctuary of Women, provides good companions for your path. In the spirit of Sacred Journeys, this book draws from the often hidden wellsprings of women’s wisdom in Jewish and Christian traditions, inviting us to engage the mysteries that lie at the heart of who we are. Not only for personal reflection, In the Sanctuary of Women also offers a space to engage with others, whether in an organized setting such as a book group or prayer circle, or with a friend across the country or across the table.

The companion website, sanctuaryofwomen.com, offers info on where to purchase the book, and inscribed copies are available by request. More than being just about the book,  the site is designed to foster conversation and community through features including a guide for reading groups and an interactive blog. I would love for you to stop by and to join with others in the conversations that are happening about how we can create sanctuary for and with one another in the coming year.

Posted in art, Epiphany, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, sacred time | Leave a Comment »

Epiphany: Where the Map Begins

December 30, 2010

Image: An Ancient Light © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany ABC: Matthew 2.1-12

I love this time between Christmas Day and Epiphany. Although the prospect of moving beyond the holidays is always a bit poignant for me, I take comfort in knowing that the festival of Christmas lasts not for one day but for twelve, and there is still cause for celebration before we leave this season. This year in particular I am grateful for the opportunity to rest and reflect, and to do some dreaming as well as playing before I dive into the coming year.

In these blissfully quiet days, I have spent time curled up with a few books. One that I am especially savoring was a Christmas gift from my parents. Mapping the World: Stories of Geography, written by Caroline and Martine Laffon, is a beautifully produced book that traces some of the history of how we humans have sought to chart the universe, and our place within it, over millennia. With images of maps from ancient to contemporary times, the book reveals how maps are never neutral documents: they provide a glimpse of the beliefs, myths, legends, and sometimes prejudices of those who created them.

I have spent much time this year thinking about maps. In retreats, workshops, worship, and conversation, the question has surfaced again and again: In a world that we enter with no map in hand, no blueprint, no book of instructions, how do we find our way? In the Wellspring service, the contemplative worship gathering that Gary and I lead, we recently finished a five-part series titled “Mapping the Mysteries of Faith.” As we explored this theme and the questions that it stirred, the conversations we had at Wellspring were rich and refreshing. We didn’t leave with many answers—that’s not the point of the Wellspring service—but I found myself reminded once again of how crucial it is to have the company of wise travelers as we make our own maps.

With Epiphany on the horizon, I find myself thinking of the magi, those ancient travelers who went in search of the Christ. Wise to the heavens, they still possessed no map, no ready-made chart that laid out their course.  As Matthew tells it, all that the magi had to illuminate their terrain and guide their way was a star. This was where their map began: with a burning light, with a step taken, with the company of others gazing in the same direction.

In that spirit, here’s a new poem. Composed while I was curled up among the books, it’s for Epiphany, and for you.

Where the Map Begins

This is not
any map you know.
Forget longitude.
Forget latitude.
Do not think
of distances
or of plotting
the most direct route.
Astrolabe, sextant, compass:
these will not help you here.

This is the map
that begins with a star.
This is the chart
that starts with fire,
with blazing,
with an ancient light
that has outlasted
generations, empires,
cultures, wars.

Look starward once,
then look away.
Close your eyes
and see how the map
begins to blossom
behind your lids,
how it constellates,
its lines stretching out
from where you stand.

You cannot see it all,
cannot divine the way
it will turn and spiral,
cannot perceive how
the road you walk
will lead you finally inside,
through the labyrinth
of your own heart
and belly
and lungs.

But step out
and you will know
what the wise who traveled
this path before you
knew:
the treasure in this map
is buried not at journey’s end
but at its beginning.

—Jan Richardson

As we travel through these Christmas days toward Epiphany and the coming year, where do you find yourself in your map? What are you giving your attention to? Are you looking in a direction that enables you to see possible paths? Is there a turn you need to take in your map? Where might you begin? Who can help?

As we travel toward Epiphany and beyond, blessings and good company to you.

[2016 update: The blessing “Where the Map Begins” appears in Jan’s new book, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons.]

For previous Epiphany reflections, visit Feast of the Epiphany: Blessing the House; Feast of the Epiphany: A Calendar of Kings; Inviting Epiphany; and The Feast of the Epiphany: Magi and Mystery.

[To use the image “An Ancient Light,” 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, Christmas, Epiphany, Gospel of Matthew, holidays, lectionary, mystery, sacred time | 6 Comments »

Into Advent

November 22, 2010


Where Advent Begins © Jan L. Richardson

The elves and I are busy in the studio, happily painting and plotting as we prepare for Advent to begin this Sunday. During the coming season, I’ll be posting new reflections and artwork over at The Advent Door instead of here at The Painted Prayerbook. I’ve already added a couple of entries there and would be delighted for you to stop by. I’m planning to post at The Advent Door several times each week and look forward to sharing the coming days with you. I have lots of other resources for Advent and Christmas; you can find out more here.

I am also thrilled to say that my new book, In the Sanctuary of Women, was published last month. You can find more info and place orders on the Books page at my main website, where inscribed copies are available by request. I have also launched a companion site for the book at sanctuaryofwomen.com. More than just a site about the book, sanctuaryofwomen.com is designed to foster conversation and community through such features as the Guide for Reading Groups and the Sanctuary blog. I’d love for you to visit!

And if you live in central Florida, please join us for a special holiday evening to celebrate the book’s publication. The gathering will be Friday, December 3, at 8 PM at First United Methodist Church of Winter Park (near Orlando). For further info, visit Sanctuary Celebration.

In this week in which we celebrate U.S. Thanksgiving, know that I am grateful for you. Many blessings to you as we cross into Advent.

Posted in Advent, art, books, Christmas, lectionary, sacred time, writing | Leave a Comment »

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch…

September 20, 2010

I’m sorry to be absent from the blog for a bit. Gary and I were away leading a retreat last week for an amazing group of folks who were recently commissioned as ministers in the Florida United Methodist Conference. I took some desperately needed Sabbath time over the weekend and am spending this week on some things that need my attention as my new book nears its publication date, including finishing a website that will accompany the book (and will include a blog—another way to connect with you!).

So—know that I am missing being more present to you here but have been pondering the gospel lections with you in absentia, looking longingly at the drafting table and imagining what I would create and write if I could just fashion a few more hours in the day. I look forward to returning here in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, I’m thrilled that the new book, In the Sanctuary of Women, will be available on October 1. It’s already available for pre-order online at such places as Amazon and Upper Room Books. I would love for you to stop by and check it out! I am excited about offering this not only as a book for personal reflection but also as a resource to foster conversation and community, whether in established groups such as book groups or study groups, or in informal conversations with friends or family members. I created In the Sanctuary of Women out of the understanding that a book can offer a place of sanctuary for our souls, and with the hope that it will invite readers to think about where we find sanctuary, and where we are called to create sanctuary with and for others.

On another note, I’ve taken the plunge and set up a Twitter account recently; if you’re on Twitter, I’d be pleased to connect with you in this way. You can find me at twitter.com/JanLRichardson or by clicking the Twitter icon in this blog’s sidebar.

Sending much gratitude and many blessings your way in these days!

Posted in books, Ordinary Time | 5 Comments »

In the Presence of the Angels

September 5, 2010


In the Presence of the Angels © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Proper 19/Ordinary 24/Pentecost +16, Year C (September 12): Luke 15.1-10

In one of my earliest memories, I am perhaps five years old. I am standing in my parents’ bedroom with a stack of my artwork. Drawings in pencil and crayon, paintings in tempera and watercolor and finger paint: these are the pieces that my mother has gathered up and saved. The entire collection. And I am systematically tearing up each one.

The most vivid part of the memory is when my mother walks in. I have made it nearly to the bottom of the stack by this point. Horrified to see the pile of shredded paper, she asks me why I have done this. “Because they weren’t any good!” I tell her, amazed that she can’t see this for herself.

I don’t know where I got this idea; it didn’t originate at home, where my family valued and supported creativity. Call it a precocious inner critic.

It would be many years before I began to understand myself as an artist, to connect with and claim that part of my soul. I long thought that an artist was someone who could draw or paint well, and although I made forays into these media from time to time, I still carried with me that inner critic who had shown up so early in my life.

Just as I was about to graduate from seminary, I started seriously playing with paper, and was transformed. In the process of cutting and tearing and pasting—those basic skills I had picked up in kindergarten—something magical happened that did not depend on painting or drawing. I had found my medium. In the practice of collage, I discovered a path to a place where it became harder to hear the voice of my interior critic.

That path eventually led me to become the artist-in-residence at a Catholic retreat center, where a Franciscan friar named David had opened the door for me to create a ministry that brought all the pieces of my vocation together. As I worked with David in the studio one day, he asked me, “Where did your fascination with paper come from?” The long-forgotten memory of the five-year-old who shredded her artwork suddenly resurfaced. I told David that story, and then said that perhaps becoming a collage artist was my way of putting those pieces back together.

As I moved deeper into the artist layer of my soul, I came to experience paper collage as a spiritual practice—a form of prayer—and as a metaphor for the creative work that God does in my own life. In much the same way that I sit at my drafting table and piece together the scraps to create something new, God does this within me. God takes everything: experiences, stories, memories, relationships, dreams, prayers—all those pieces, light and dark, rough and smooth, straight and torn—and creates anew from them. I’ve learned to think of God as the consummate recycler: in God’s economy, nothing is wasted. The broken as well as the beautiful, the torn as well as the whole, the pieces that we treasure as well as those we might prefer to throw away or bury or forget: everything—everything—can be used. Transformed. Redeemed.

This image of the God who reclaims and redeems lies at the heart of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel lection for next Sunday. Telling parables was Jesus’ artful way of putting pieces together, of taking everyday experiences, juxtaposing them in new ways, and revealing patterns of hope and possibility. In these two parables that he offers at the beginning of Luke 15—the parables of the search for the lost sheep and the woman’s finding of her lost coin—Jesus provides vivid images that depict God’s penchant for searching out what is lost in order to reclaim it and restore it to wholeness.

For those of us who live in a culture devoted to rugged individualism, with its emphasis on pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps and making our way in the world by relying on our own resources, these parables pose a challenge. For while these stories remind us that God calls us to participate in our own redemption by repenting—by acknowledging how we, by our own actions, have perpetuated the brokenness of the world—we cannot achieve our redemption and wholeness all by ourselves. These parables remind us that redemption is always God’s work, God doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The most we can do is turn ourselves Godward—and the act of turning lies at the Greek root of the word for repentance, metanoia—and pray that in our turning, we will—like a sheep, like a coin—be unlost. Be unhidden. Be found.

These parables call us also to remember that redemption does not, cannot, happen in isolation. Redemption restores us to the community and continually challenges us to work toward the flourishing of those whose lives are bound together with ours. Yet while God continually pulls us toward community, redemption is not about conformity: being restored to the circle does not mean thinking or acting or looking like everyone else, and making all our pieces look the same. Repentance and redemption invite us instead to discern what we have to offer, what distinctive gifts God has placed within us that no one else can bring, the pieces that, when brought together with the richness of the pieces that others offer, transform the brokenness of the world into a pattern of beauty.

And when this happens, as Jesus illuminates in these parables—when what is broken and lost is restored and redeemed—it is worth a celebration. Is not complete, in fact, until some rejoicing gets under way.

Where do you see this kind of restoration happening in the world and within the landscape of your own life? Are there pieces you have lost—scraps of your story that you have buried or forgotten or let slip away—that God might see as treasures and be yearning to incorporate into a picture of your life that is more integrated and complete? Where do you see cause for celebration? How might the act of celebrating—of noticing where pieces are coming together and rejoicing in this, even in the midst of ongoing brokenness—be part of your journey toward wholeness?

As you contemplate these questions, I invite you to listen to a remarkable song called “Redemption” by clicking on the arrow in the player below. It’s by my singer/songwriter husband, Garrison Doles (from his CD Whenever I’m with You). As you listen and ponder and live into this week’s lection, I wish you blessings and pray that in the coming days, God will provide glimpses of wholeness taking hold in your life and in the world, and of the angels who rejoice when pieces come together.

[To use the “In the Presence of the Angels” image, 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 Luke, lectionary, music, Ordinary Time | 6 Comments »

The Shape He Makes

August 29, 2010

The Shape He Makes © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Proper 18/Ordinary 23/Pentecost +15, Year C (September 5): Luke 14.25-33

And so we come to one of the most wrenching and challenging passages that Jesus will ever utter. It’s as if he’s been saving up hard things to say, and now, with what Luke describes as “large crowds” traveling with him, Jesus takes this opportunity to lay these hard things on the masses. He speaks of what is necessary to lay aside in order to follow him: he tells of hating one’s closest family members, of hating life itself, of carrying the cross, of giving up all our possessions.

One might well think he’s looking to thin out those crowds that are following him.

It’s tempting to want to tone Jesus down here, to ratchet him back a bit, or to try to explain away the harshness of his words. But the Greek word that’s translated as “hate” really does mean hate. Miseo is the Greek root; it can also be translated as to pursue with hatred or detest. It’s the same word that Jesus used earlier in Luke, when he said, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man” (Lk. 6.22).

In commentaries on this passage, the word hyperbole comes up; Jesus is being excessive, the commentators say, in order to make his point. It’s true that it does help to read this passage alongside its parallel in Matthew 10.34-39, a passage that is no less difficult—it’s the one where Jesus talks about bringing not peace but a sword and about setting family members against one another—but Matthew does frame Jesus’ words a bit differently than does Luke. In the Matthew parallel, Jesus speaks not of loving him instead of loving our family members but rather of not loving him less than we love them.

I don’t find myself particularly interested in trying to explain Jesus away, disturbing and wrenching though his words about family and cross and possessions may be. But I can tell you a few of the things that I found myself thinking about during the many hours that I sat at my drafting table this week, pushing pieces of painted papers around while I—a woman deeply entwined with family and other treasures of this life—struggled with this passage.

I thought of how Jesus involved himself with such intentionality in the lives of those around him: how he knew real human friendship—think of the siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, for instance, whose hospitality and companionship he enjoyed. I thought of how, in his agony on the cross, one of his last actions was to give his mother and the beloved disciple into one another’s care: “Woman,” he says to the one who bore him and raised him and who, as Simeon had promised so long ago, now felt the full force of a sword piercing her heart, “here is your son.” And to the beloved disciple standing beside her, Jesus says, “Here is your mother.”

Sitting at the drafting table, working with the pieces, I thought of the stunning pages from the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels, those remarkable books created in the early centuries of Christianity in the British Isles. In particular I thought of the carpet pages, where all manner of creatures and symbols interlace and intertwine and entangle themselves with one another in configurations from which it would be impossible to extricate them. Always, the cross lies at the heart of these intricate pages: the entwining and entanglement serve to reveal the cross in both its simplicity and its complexity.

I can tell you that I thought of one of the books I’m reading right now, Strangers to the City, a reflection on the Rule of Saint Benedict by the splendid Michael Casey, a Cistercian monk who writes with such engagement about what he calls the “creative monotony” of the monastic life. Small wonder, perhaps, that I should be reading his chapter titled “Dispossession” while wrestling with Jesus’ words about attachments. Casey writes about how the poverty to which Christ calls us is rooted in poverty of spirit, and that this is intimately linked with humility—that lesson that Jesus had for us in last week’s gospel lection. Casey writes of how, without this humility in which we acknowledge our absolute dependence upon God, our practices of dispossession—of giving away what hinders us from God—can become a source of pride, which becomes its own obstacle to seeking God.

I thought of my friend Dee Dee Risher, who wrote an article years ago in the lovely, much-missed magazine The Other Side, about her journey to do what Jesus speaks of in this passage: to give away what clutters her path to God. In the article, titled “A Spirituality of Contentment,” Dee Dee told of occasions when she felt self-righteous for her chosen self-deprivations, realizing later that the smugness she felt in simplifying her life masked a deeper discontent. She began to recognize, as she puts it, that “my external changes had far outpaced my internal transformation.” And she began to give prayerful thought to the deeper practices that God was inviting her toward—practices that included honoring her home as a place of hospitality for her own soul, and for God as well.

As the collage finally began to take shape, I thought of what I have allowed to enter my life: the people, the places, the possessions. I thought of all that I am entangled with, the intertwinings and interlacings that mark my life. I am unwilling to hate the people I hold precious; I am reluctant to let go completely of the loveliness that God offers to us in the tangible things of this world. I think of the furniture my grandfather made for me by hand, the painting my friend Phyllis gave Gary and me for our wedding, the books that feed my soul and mind, the soft bed I share with my beloved. Yet I take Jesus’ words to heart, his fierce call to follow him and love him with a whole and undivided heart. And so I carry some questions with me. These entanglements that twist through my life with a complexity that sometimes rivals a page from one of those luminous Gospel-books: like one of those books, do they reveal the shape of a cross imprinted upon my life? All that I let enter, all that I choose, all that I allow to pierce me: does it create a pattern of life that takes on the same configuration as the Christ who gave himself with such abandon to those whom he loved?

The cruciform life—a life that seeks to follow the Christ whose path intersected so completely with our own—is not one that can be imposed upon us. It is a mystery that we can enter into only by choice, and that we must navigate with a spirit of discernment. Carrying the cross is not about casting about for a heavy burden to pick up; neither does it require us to seek out situations of pain and danger that will cause damage to the person God calls us to be. It’s about seeking the pattern of life that will open us the most fully to the God who created us in our particularity. The shape the cross takes for me—artist, writer, minister, wife, and in all my other particularities and peculiarities—will be different than it takes for you. The things I need to let go of, to choose against, to turn away from in order to make a space for Christ at the center of my life may well be different than what you need to let go of. And what I need to allow in, to reshape me, to pierce me—as Mary chose, as Jesus himself chose—will be particular to my own life as well. I think again of the carpet pages in those ancient Celtic Gospel-books, how they are remarkable in their differences, each one revealing the cross in the stunning distinctiveness and intricacy of its particular pattern.

The Gospel lection this week doesn’t leave me with a lot of coherence; what I have are these questions, these pieces that showed up at the drafting table. How do these pieces of the gospel lection sit with you this week? What are you allowing into your life right now? The people and possessions and habits that twine through your days: What shape do they make of your life? Amid the complexities of your living, what configuration will make space for Christ to be the center, the source that creates something whole from the pieces? Are there pieces you need to release, to turn away from? Are there pieces you need to invite in?

May Christ bless your path—and be your path—in the days to come.

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

Related artwork: Finding the Focus.

Posted in art, Celtic, lectionary, Ordinary Time | 9 Comments »

The Humble Seat

August 22, 2010


The Humble Seat © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Proper 17/Ordinary 22/Pentecost +14, Year C (August 29): Luke 14.1, 7-14

Ah, the endless wisdom of the table! Throughout Jesus’ ministry, we see again and again how in much the same way that he never passes up an opportunity to share a meal with others, he rarely misses the chance to use a table as an occasion to teach. Whether it’s welcoming a woman who anoints him, or using the table as a way to talk about the kingdom of God, or employing the elements of a meal to describe who he himself is: the table, for Jesus, is always about right relationship, about how we are to live in community and communion with one another.

At the table that Luke tells of in next Sunday’s gospel lection, Jesus turns his attention not only to the kind of hosts we are to be—inviting those who owe us nothing—but also to the kind of guests we ought to be. When we receive an invitation to share in the table of another, Jesus says (a wedding banquet, in this case: Jesus’ ultimate image of the kingdom of God) we should come with no expectations, no intent to grasp at a seat of honor—from which, Jesus says, we might be ejected. When approaching the table, Jesus says, our stance, is to be one of humility, a posture that leaves room for surprise and for grace.

When it comes to humility, and discerning how we are called to embody this sometimes perplexing quality as the people of Christ, I often find myself turning back to the desert mothers and fathers, those ammas and abbas of the early church who articulated this disposition with such clarity. Of all the practices and habits that these early Christians engaged in, humility was the one that surpassed all others, and upon which all other practices depended. We see this, for instance, in Amma Theodora. In The Sayings of the Desert Fathers we read that Amma Theodora said, “Neither asceticism, nor vigils nor any kind of suffering are able to save, only true humility can do that.” She went on to say, “There was an anchorite who was able to banish the demons; and he asked them, ‘What makes you go away? Is it fasting?’ They replied, ‘We do not eat or drink.’ ‘Is it vigils?’ They replied, ‘We do not sleep.’ Is it separation from the world?’ ‘We live in the deserts.’ ‘What power sends you away then?’ They said, ‘Nothing can overcome us, but only humility.’ ‘Do you see how humility is victorious over the demons?’” Amma Theodora recognized that without humility, all our practices become hollow.

The desert folk, however, understood humility in a rather different way than we tend to in the 21st century. Where we sometimes equate humility with being a doormat, Roberta Bondi points out in her book To Love as God Loves: Conversations with the Early Church that “humility did not mean for them [the ammas and abbas] a continuous cringing, cultivating a low self-image, and taking a perverse pleasure in being always forgotten, unnoticed, or taken for granted. Instead, humility meant to them a way of seeing other people as being as valuable in God’s eyes as ourselves. It was for them a relational term having to do precisely with learning to value others, whoever they were. It had to do with developing the kind of empathy with the weaknesses of others that made it impossible to judge others out of our own self-righteousness.”

At the root of humility is the Greek word humus. Earth. The earth that God made and called good, the earth from which, as one of the creation stories goes, God fashioned us. Humility is our fundamental recognition that we each draw our life and breath from the same source, the God who made us and calls us beloved. Humility does not only prevent us from seeing ourselves as more deserving or graced or better than another. It compels us also to recognize that we are no less deserving or graced than another. For women, so often conditioned to take on roles and attitudes of subservience, this is a particular point that the desert teachers would have us understand. Humility draws us into mutual relation in which we allow no abuse, no demeaning, no diminishment of others or of ourselves.

And when we bungle it, or see others bungle it, humility gives us a break. “When it comes to living together,” Bondi writes in her book To Pray and to Love, “humility is the opposite of perfectionism. It gives up unrealistic expectations of how things ought to be for a clear vision of what human life is really like. In turn, this enables its possessors to see and thus love the people they deeply desire to love.”

Humility invites us to stay low to the ground so that we can find the treasures there. Not so low that we become a doormat, subject to whatever treatment others may mete out to us. Instead, humility helps us remain grounded in the best sense of the word: centered in the humus from which we have been created, the gloriously ordinary earth from which God made each one of us. Humility enables us to recognize our dependence on the One who fashioned us as well as our kinship with those who share this earth, this humus. In practicing humility, we leave room for the surprising and graced ways that God works—beyond expectation, beyond privilege, beyond status—at the table and in every place beyond it.

So how’s your humus these days? In what are you centering and grounding yourself—your earth? Are you leaving God enough room to work beyond your expectations and assumptions? How might God be challenging you not only to offer hospitality but also to receive it in ways that bring wholeness?

Blessings to you at the table and beyond.

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

For more table imagery, visit this page.

Posted in art, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, Ordinary Time | 7 Comments »

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