The Painted Prayerbook

Testimony © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany 6, Year B: Mark 1.40-45

Last week the news came that a friend of mine has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. It is large, and it is grim; the doctors measure his life in months, perhaps weeks. A stained glass artist who has devoted his life to finding beautiful ways to capture light, Joe—making his own path as ever—is finding other ways to measure and mark these remaining days. The threads of community that he has tended across the years in such places as the Grünewald Guild are gathering around him now to support him and to make it possible for him to be in places he loves; friends and family have enabled him to return to his home and studio at the artists’ community where he lives, and folks from the Guild are plotting a trip where they’ll bring Joe back up there.

Living on the other side of the country, I am missing being present for this but am grateful for the words that come across the miles, words that tell of how Joe is entering his dying in much the same way that he has entered his living. The tumor has impacted his speech and visual recognition skills. But a note comes from a friend who writes of how even when Joe struggles with words, “he seems, to me, even more himself than ever. He’s almost translucent with grace. And I have been so moved by the ‘random’ words that, at times, come instead of the one he’s trying for. It’s almost as if the words that he has most often expressed come easily; blessing, blest, grace, friends, church, my voice, your voice…”

I gather up these words as I ponder the words that Mark offers in the reading from his Gospel this week, words about a leper who finds healing in his encounter with Jesus. “If you choose, you can make me clean,” he says to Jesus. Stretching out his hand and touching him, Jesus says, “I do choose. Be made clean!”

It is a mystery to me how Jesus chooses, and where, and why. I cannot fathom how he chooses at times to stretch out his hand, and at other times seems to withhold it; how he chooses against the restoration that he offers with such ease in stories such as this one. Why the leper, and not Joe? Why the mother-in-law of Simon, as we saw last week, and not millions of others across the ages who have lived with illness and pain?

I know, of course, there are few answers to these questions in this lifetime. And I know that it is better to look for the miracles that do come, including the daily wonders of connection in the midst of a world that pushes us toward isolation, the marvels of friendship and community that return to us and gather around us when life breaks us open.

I do not let Christ off the hook for the ways he sometimes chooses. And yet I think about my friend across the country, speaking the words that have come most easily to him. Blessing. Blest. Grace. How in the midst of the tumor that grows and the days that dwindle, there is something in him that is fiercely intact and persistently whole. Friends. Church. That knows still how to capture the light. My voice. Your voice. That rises up to freely proclaim, to offer testimony in the luminous way he has always done and will do until the last breath leaves him.

Joe is having an exhibit at his studio this weekend, wanting to have this chance to share with friends his artwork from across the years. “Bring food. Bring joy,” Joe says in the invitation.

This day. This hour. In each moment given to us, may we bring sustenance. May we bring joy. Whatever illness we bear, whatever wounds we carry, may we be ministers of healing to one another, and may the wholeness that persists within us rise up and shine through, offering testimony in the ways that only we can offer.

What the Light Shines Through
A Healing Blessing

For Joe

Where pain
does not touch you.
Where hurt
does not make its home.
Where despair
does not haunt you.
Where sorrow
does not dwell.

Where disease
does not possess you.
Where death
does not abide.
Where horror
does not hold you.
Where fear
does not raise its head.

Where your wounds
become doorways.
Where your scars
become sacred maps.
Where tears
become pools of gladness.
Where delight
attends your way.

Where every kindness
you have offered
returns to you.
Where each blessing
you have given
makes its way back
to you.
Where every grace
gathers around you.
Where the face of love
mirrors your gaze.

Where you are
what the light
shines through.

Joe in the studio. Photo by Kristen Gilje.

P.S. For a previous reflection on this passage, visit The Medium and the Message.

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

Image: Shimmers Within the Storm © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany 4, Year B: Mark 1.21-28

In his brilliant essay “To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing,” John O’Donohue writes, “The force of a blessing can penetrate through and alter the inner configuration of identity. When the gift or need of the individual coincides with the incoming force of the blessing, great change can begin.”

This kind of change and reconfiguration means that a blessing is not always a comfortable and cozy thing. Sometimes the blessing most needed is one that involves confrontation and calling out, that requires standing against what is not of God. Such a blessing may be difficult to give—or to receive. It calls us to acknowledge and challenge and grapple with forces that thrive within chaos, forces that often work in ways that are exceedingly subtle and cloaked and require even more wisdom and discernment of us than when such forces take clear and obvious forms.

But, as Jesus shows us in this passage where we see him healing a man in the grip of a destructive spirit, such a blessing—the blessing that comes in facing the chaos rather than turning away from it, the blessing that comes in naming what is contrary to God’s purposes rather than letting it persist unchecked—makes way for the wholeness we crave. It brings release to what has been bound; it invites and enables and calls us to move with the freedom for which God made us.

“The human heart,” writes John O’Donohue in his essay, “continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.”

Is there some part of you that has become bound—that recognizes what is holy and craves its blessing, but fears the change that would be involved? Is there a habit, a belief, a relationship, an aspect of your life that has you in its grip, that confines you, that limits the freedom with which you move through this world—perhaps without your even realizing it? Can you imagine what release would look like? Is there a destructive force at work in a person or system or institution you’re connected with, that you might be called to engage? Can you identify a first step that would help you confront what confines you or those around you?

Here is a blessing I’ve written for you. This day, this week, may you give and receive a blessing that will help you and yours enter more deeply into wholeness. Peace to you.

Blessing in the Chaos

To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be
a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,

that go with you
even to the
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you
cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.

—Jan Richardson

Thanks for noting that while “Blessing in the Chaos” has circulated widely as being by John O’Donohue (due to some folks seeing his name in the post and assuming the blessing was by him), it’s by me.

2016 update: “Blessing in the Chaos” appears in my new book The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief.

For a previous reflection on this passage, click the image or title below:

Epiphany 4: In the Realm of the Spirits

Also, I have a new blog endeavor at Devotion Café and would be delighted for you to stop by and visit; click Devotion Café.

And—I’ve recently added a feature that enables you to subscribe to The Painted Prayerbook. If you’d like to receive these blog posts via email, fill in the “Subscribe by email” box in the sidebar (near the top, a bit below my photo). After you submit your email address, you’ll automatically receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Once you’ve confirmed this, you’ll begin receiving these reflections.

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Shimmers Within the Storm,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. 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. If you’re using them in a worship bulletin, please include this info in a credit line:
© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.

The prose quotations from John O’Donohue are from his book To Bless the Space Between Us.

Casting © Jan L. Richardson

Readings for Epiphany 3: Jonah 3.1-5, 10; Psalm 62.5-12; 1 Corinthians 7.29-31; Mark 1.14-20

I marvel at how quickly they leave their nets, these fisherfolk who meet Jesus as they labor by the Sea of Galilee. What do Simon and Andrew hear in Jesus’ voice as he calls; what do James and John see as Christ beckons them to cast aside all they have known?

Perhaps, listening to Jesus, they remember the story of Jonah. Perhaps they think of the first time God called that reluctant prophet, and what happens when we run in the opposite direction of God’s call; how we are likely to wind up in a place that is dark and dank and lonely. A place that presses clarity upon us and inspires us to respond differently—as Jonah does—when the invitation comes again.

Get up, go
God says to Jonah.
So Jonah set out
and went.

Perhaps, encountering this man who immediately compels them, Simon and Andrew and James and John already know in their bones what Paul will later write about in his first letter to the Corinthians: how following Christ will mean letting go of what they have relied upon, will mean living without what they have become attached to.

And those who buy
as though they had no possessions,
Paul says to the church at Corinth;
and those who deal with the world
as though they had no dealings with it.

In the days, weeks, years to come, these four—and the eight soon to join them—will live into that initial burst of letting go. They will learn, and learn again, what it takes to follow Christ: how they will have to continually practice the art of leaving. And in their leaving, in their letting go, they will find their sustenance and their true home.

God alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken
sings the psalmist to the Holy One.
On God rests my deliverance and my honor;
my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

Follow me
Jesus says to Simon—
whom he will name Peter,
the Rock,
infused with God’s own being.

Follow me
he says to Andrew,
to James and to John.

Follow me
Jesus says to us.

What will we say in return?

Blessing the Nets

You could cast it
in your sleep,
its familiar arc
embedded in your
muscle memory
after months
years
a lifetime
of gathering in
what you thought
would sustain you
forever.

You would not
have imagined
it would be so easy
to cast aside,
would never have believed
the immediacy
with which your hands
could release their
familiar grip,
could let it go,
could let it simply continue
its arcing path
away from you.

But when the call came
you did not hesitate,
did not pause,
did not delay
to follow,

as if your body
had suddenly remembered
the final curve
of the arc,

as if the release
begun in your hands
now passed through you
entirely
and you let go
of everything

to cast yourself
with abandon
upon the waiting
world.

P.S. For a previous reflection on Mark 1.14-20, click the image or title below:

Epiphany 3: Hooked

For a reflection on Matthew’s account of this story, see:

Epiphany 3: Catch of the Day

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