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Epiphany 1: Baptized and Beloved

January 3, 2010

Baptized and Beloved © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Epiphany 1/Baptism of Jesus, Year C: Luke 3.15-17, 21-22

A few nights ago, I had a dream. In the dream, I was sitting by a lake. A woman came and sat down beside me. She looked like a woman on whom life had been especially hard. Turning to her, offering my hand, I told her my name and asked hers. “My name,” she said as she took my hand, “is Fayette.”

Fayette. It’s the name of a woman who has haunted me for years and whom I have never met in waking life. I first learned of her in a story told by Janet Wolf, who used to serve as the pastor of Hobson United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Hobson UMC is a wildly diverse congregation that includes, as Janet has described it, “…people with power and PhDs and folks who have never gone past the third grade; folks with two houses and folks living on the streets; and, as one person who struggles with mental health declared, ‘those of us who are crazy and those who think they’re not.’”

Years ago, a woman named Fayette found her way to Hobson. Fayette lived with mental illness and lupus and without a home. She joined the new member class. The conversation about baptism—“this holy moment when we are named by God’s grace with such power it won’t come undone,” as Janet puts it—especially grabbed Fayette’s imagination. Janet tells of how, during the class, Fayette would ask again and again, “And when I’m baptized, I am…?” “The class,” Janet writes, “learned to respond, ‘Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she’d say, and then we could go back to our discussion.”

The day of Fayette’s baptism came. This is how Janet describes it:

Fayette went under, came up spluttering, and cried, ‘And now I am…?’ And we all sang, ‘Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she shouted as she danced all around the fellowship hall.

Two months later, Janet received a phone call.

Fayette had been beaten and raped and was at the county hospital. So I went. I could see her from a distance, pacing back and forth. When I got to the door, I heard, ‘I am beloved….’ She turned, saw me, and said, ‘I am beloved, precious child of God, and….’ Catching sight of herself in the mirror—hair sticking up, blood and tears streaking her face, dress torn, dirty, and rebuttoned askew, she started again, ‘I am beloved, precious child of God, and…’ She looked in the mirror again and declared, ‘…and God is still working on me. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll be so beautiful I’ll take your breath away!’

Beloved, the voice from heaven had proclaimed as the baptismal waters of the Jordan rolled off Jesus’ body. Beloved, the voice named him as he prepared to begin his public ministry. Beloved, spoken with such power that it would permeate Jesus’ entire life and teaching. Beloved, he would name those he met who were desperate for healing, for inclusion, for hope. Beloved, echoing through the ages, continuing to name those drenched in the waters of baptism. Beloved. Child of God.

Fayette—beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold—haunts me, blesses me, goes with me into this season. She challenges me to ask what it means that—like her, with her—I have been named by God’s grace with such power that it won’t come undone. As I remember the Baptism of Jesus, how will I reckon with the fact that I, that we, have shared in those waters—that in the sacrament of baptism and as members of the body of Christ, we, too, are named as beloved children of God? How will we live in such a way that others will know themselves as named by God, beloved by God—especially those who have been given cause to think they are less than loved, less than children of the One who created them?

In the coming days, may the waters of our baptism so cling to us that in their depths we see who we are, and from our depths reflect to others their true name: beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.

Blessings to you.

[Janet Wolf’s story is from The Upper Room Disciplines 1999 (Nashville: The Upper Room).]

[To use the “Baptized and Beloved” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. For all my artwork for the Baptism of Jesus, please see this page. Annual subscriptions for unlimited downloads from janrichardsonimages.com are available at a special holiday discount through Epiphany (January 6). Visit subscribe for more info. Your support of JRI helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

For previous reflections on the Baptism of Jesus, please see these posts:

Epiphany 1: Take Me to the River
Epiphany 1: Ceremony (with a Side of Cake)

Posted in art, Epiphany, Gospel of Luke, lectionary | 10 Comments »

Feast of the Epiphany: Blessing the House

December 31, 2009

Image: The Wise Ones © Jan Richardson

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

In the rhythm of the liturgical year, the season of Christmas comes to an end with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. The word epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphaneia, meaning manifestation or appearance. In Western Christianity, we observe this day primarily as a commemoration of the wise men who journeyed to see Jesus. In the East, Epiphany is a major feast day that celebrates not only Christ’s manifestation to the world through his birth and to the magi in their visit but also the way in which he showed himself forth in his baptism and in his first recorded miracle, the changing of water to wine at the wedding at Cana.

In doing some reading about the Feast of the Epiphany recently, I’ve been intrigued by a custom that is often mentioned in connection with this day of celebration: the blessing and chalking of the house. Many versions of the ceremony that I’ve come across include these elements:

-The reciting of a blessing upon the house (or other dwelling) and those who inhabit it

-The blessing of a piece of chalk that is then used to write a formula above the entry of the house. The formula incorporates the current year with the initials of the wise men (whose names are not recorded in scripture but were given by tradition as Caspar [or Gaspar], Melchior, and Balthasar). This coming Epiphany, it would be written this way:

20 + C + M + B + 10

(Some folks note that “C M B” can also stand for “Christus Mansionem Benedicat,” which means “May Christ bless this dwelling.”)

-The sprinkling of the door with holy water

Although it seems to be an ancient practice, I haven’t found any explanation of the origin of the custom. I suspect that, like many rituals, it has several layers of meaning and that its origin has more than one source. Certainly it has much resonance with the visit of the wise men to the home of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and the manner in which they blessed it with their presence and their gifts.

So I’ve been thinking about house blessings as Epiphany approaches, especially since Gary and I will soon be in search of a house of our own. We’re engaged to be married next spring, and I’m daily praying that God will lead us to a (spacious) abode that will welcome two adults, each of whom needs a studio at home (and a copious measure of personal space), and Gary’s teenaged son. (Did I mention we’re looking for something spacious?)

At the same time that I’m thinking of (and praying for) a physical dwelling that we will inhabit and bless, I also find myself imagining the coming year as a house—a space in time that is opening itself to all of us. How will we inhabit the coming year? How will we enter it with mindfulness and with intention? How will we move through the rooms of the coming months in a way that brings blessing to this world?

With these questions in mind, I offer this blessing for you.

The Year as a House: A Blessing

Think of the year
as a house:
door flung wide
in welcome,
threshold swept
and waiting,
a graced spaciousness
opening and offering itself
to you.

Let it be blessed
in every room.
Let it be hallowed
in every corner.
Let every nook
be a refuge
and every object
set to holy use.

Let it be here
that safety will rest.
Let it be here
that health will make its home.
Let it be here
that peace will show its face.
Let it be here
that love will find its way.

Here
let the weary come
let the aching come
let the lost come
let the sorrowing come.

Here
let them find their rest
and let them find their soothing
and let them find their place
and let them find their delight.

And may it be
in this house of a year
that the seasons will spin in beauty,
and may it be
in these turning days
that time will spiral with joy.
And may it be
that its rooms will fill
with ordinary grace
and light spill from every window
to welcome the stranger home.

—Jan Richardson

Wherever you make your home, may it be blessed, and may you enter this Epiphany and the coming year in peace.

[For other Epiphany reflections, please visit my previous post. If you’re working with the lection from John’s gospel for this Sunday (Christmas 2), please see this reflection.]

[To use the “Wise Ones” image, which is from my book In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. For all my artwork for the Feast of the Epiphany, please see this page. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Epiphany, Gospel of Matthew, holidays, lectionary, sacred time | 25 Comments »

On the Sickth Day of Christmas

December 30, 2009

Magi and Mystery © Jan L. Richardson

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

I’ve spent the past few days dealing with an unexpected Christmas guest: a rare (for me) head cold. It’s one way to get a break, I suppose, but not the way that I’d planned to spend these lovely days between Christmas Day and Epiphany. I finally gave in and went to the doctor today and trust I’ll be back in the swing of things soon.

I had planned to post a new reflection for Epiphany early this week, and still have hopes of doing so before the week is out; we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, I invite you to visit my previous Epiphany posts: Magi and Mystery, Inviting Epiphany, and Feast of the Epiphany: A Calendar of Kings.

To see all my artwork for the Feast of the Epiphany, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

On this sixth day of Christmas, I wish you peace and good health!

Posted in art, Christmas, Epiphany, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary | 2 Comments »

On the Fourth Day of Christmas

December 28, 2009

The Hour of Vespers: Flight to Egypt © Jan L. Richardson

With Advent being my busiest season of the entire year, it comes as something of a comfort to me that Christmas is not just a single day: in the rhythm of the liturgical year, Christmas lasts for twelve days. There’s some variation of opinion as to when the Twelve Days of Christmas begin; some say Christmas night, others begin the count on December 26. Regardless, the season of Christmas ends with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. No matter how you count it, the days of Christmas invite us not to be too hasty in bringing an end to our celebration of the Incarnation. For me, this celebration includes giving my incarnated self some rest and savoring the delights that the season yet offers to us.

The Twelve Days of Christmas include several feast days that help define the season. December 26 was the Feast of St. Stephen (featured in the carol “Good King Wenceslas”), the first Christian to die for bearing witness to the one who had come as Emmanuel, God with us. Yesterday was the feast of St. John. Today, December 28, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents—the male children slaughtered by the soldiers of King Herod, as told in Matthew 2.16-18. (The Eastern Orthodox Church observes this on December 29.) This grim feast day reminds us to acknowledge the shadow side of the Christmas season: amid our celebration of the Christ who came as the light of the world, the presence of evil persists. To truly celebrate the birth of Christ means working against the forces that perpetuate suffering.

The Massacre of the Innocents appears often in medieval artwork, usually in gruesome detail and sometimes in connection with the Flight to Egypt (Mary, Joseph, and Jesus’ escape from the soldiers). The image above is from my Advent Hours series and depicts an intriguing variation on the story of the Flight to Egypt that incorporates St. Brigid, the famed Irish saint. Many ancient prayers and legends from Celtic lands refer to St. Brigid of Kildare as the foster-mother of Christ and the midwife at his birth. Even for the wonderworking Brigid, this would have been a great feat, as she was born in the fifth century. Yet in a culture in which the bond of fostering was often stronger than the bond of blood, this notion reveals something of the deep esteem that Brigid attracted, and it’s a way of describing how she helped to prepare a way for Christ as the Christian faith took root in Ireland. A particularly lovely legend tells that St. Brigid, upon seeing Herod’s soldiers enter the city to slaughter the young boys, quickly fashioned a wreath of candles. Placing it upon her head, she began to dance, distracting the soldiers and allowing the Holy Family to flee to safety.

On this feast day, Brigid’s legend and the story of the slaughter of the innocents calls me to consider what I’m doing, or need to do, to help protect those who suffer most in our world. As I rest for a bit in this Christmas season, as I linger with what the season continues to offer, how might this be a time of discernment and preparation for the work that lies ahead?

What’s stirring for you as we move through the Christmas season? What might this Twelve-Days-Feast have yet to offer you in the way of both delights and questions for your path ahead?

If you didn’t have occasion to visit The Advent Door during the past weeks, I invite you to stop by there as we move through these lingering days of Christmas. As we journey toward Epiphany, may you find in these days a continued celebration and the sustenance you need to walk in the way of Christ, the Word made flesh. Blessings and peace to you!

[To use this 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, Celtic, Christmas, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, sacred time | 2 Comments »

For All the Saints

October 26, 2009

A Gathering of Spirits © Jan L. Richardson

I am coming into the home stretch of my new book, thanks be to God, and am looking forward to finishing up all the final details in time to start blogging on a more regular basis in time for Advent (over at my other blog, The Advent Door). It’s lovely also to be getting ready to celebrate my favorite trinity of days in the whole year—Halloween, the Feast of All Saints, and the Feast of All Souls. For a long while, this trio of days has been a sacred time for me—what the Celtic folk call a “thin place” in the wheel of the year. As we approach the Feast of All Saints in this year that has been particularly intense with laboring on the book, I am especially mindful of and grateful for all the sources of help, encouragement, prayer, and good cheer I have received along the way from sainted folk on both sides of the veil.

As the Feast of All Saints draws near, I invite you to visit the reflection that I wrote last year by clicking here: Feast of All Saints: A Gathering of Spirits.

Also, if you’re working with Mark 12.28-34, the gospel lection for Proper 26B/Ordinary 31B/Pentecost + 22, I invite you to visit the reflection I offered last year for Matthew’s version of this story: Crossing the Country, Thinking of Love.

Many blessings to you in these sacred days.

Posted in art, Celtic, lectionary, mystery, sacred time | 6 Comments »

Art for the Journey

October 4, 2009

Mother Root © Jan L. Richardson

Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by this past week and to those who sent lovely words via a comment or an email. It was great to get to provide support in word and image to folks preparing to celebrate World Communion Sunday. I’ve thought of all of you on this day that invites us to remember that each time we gather at the Communion table, we celebrate not just with our own community but also with sisters and brothers around the world and with the Communion of Saints across the ages. It’s a wide, wide table to which Christ invites us, with all its challenges and delights. I hope you had wondrous celebrations.

Although I’m blogging more sporadically these days while I work to finish my new book, I’d love to support you in whatever way I can, particularly with artful resources. Images are always available at janrichardsonimages.com. I designed this website to make my artwork easily accessible for use in worship, education, and related venues. If you’d like to use any of the artwork that you find here at The Painted Prayerbook, you can acquire it from the website. High-resolution files of single images are available for a nominal cost, or, with an annual subscription, you can have unlimited access to all the images (within the Guidelines for Use). Although I’m not creating new art for the lectionary readings right now (though I look forward to returning to this later in the fall), the cool thing about art, especially abstract art, is that it invites an array of interpretations. So of course you are most welcome, as always, to use an image even if it wasn’t designed for the specific scripture or theme that you’re pondering.

I welcome you also to stop by janrichardson.com, where you can find creative companions for your journey—or someone else’s—in the form of art prints, greeting cards, and books.

Your use of Jan Richardson Images and your purchases at janrichardson.com go directly to support my ministry, for which I raise my entire income. Your support is a crucial form of patronage that helps make it possible for me to continue in this ministry, including providing this blog, and I am tremendously grateful for those who sustain my work in this way. I invite you to find out more about being a patron at the Be a Patron page.

Thanks so much for visiting and for all the ways you share in my ministry, including the prayers and the words you send my way—they are tremendously heartening and are manna for my path. I wish you many blessings in these October days.

P.S. Advent’s not far away—if you’re planning ahead, I have lots of artwork for the season at janrichardsonimages.com (check out “Advent & Christmas” in the categories menu), and you can visit two years’ worth of art and reflections at my other blog, The Advent Door. I look forward to adding new work there as Advent unfolds this year.

Posted in Advent, art, lectionary, Ordinary Time | 2 Comments »

Divine Things and Human Things

September 6, 2009

Reading from the Gospels, Year B, Proper 19/Ordinary 24/Pentecost + 15: Mark 8.27-38

I am blissfully holed up in an island house with a group of my seminary girlfriends, where we’ve been been spending the holiday weekend, as planned, talking and eating and walking and resting and reading and talking and eating some more. Today has offered gorgeous weather. Seafood pasta will be on the table in a few minutes. I’m at the computer—briefly—and writing to the sound of lively conversation between the women at this table and the women in the kitchen and to the wondrous sound and smell of garlic and butter sizzling in the skillet. These friends, who have known me nearly half my life, are some of the folks who help me remember who I am and what I hold most important.

Next Sunday’s gospel lection beckons us to ponder what we hold important, what we give our attention to, and what we’re doing with, as Mary Oliver puts it, our “one wild and precious life” (from “The Summer Day”). As the garlic sizzles, I invite you to visit a couple of reflections I’ve written on Jesus’ words to Peter about divine things and human things, and losing one’s life and saving it. A slightly shorter portion of Sunday’s gospel turned up during Lent of this year (Mark 8.31-38); you can click on “Lent 2: In Which We Set Our Minds Somewhere” below to visit my reflection on this passage. Below that, “To Have without Holding” offers a reflection on Matthew’s version of this story (Matthew 16.21-28), which appeared as a gospel lection last year.

Time for that seafood dinner and savoring the pleasures of the table with good friends. May the coming week offer you much sustenance and many delights.

Lent 2: In Which We Set Our Minds Somewhere

To Have without Holding

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

Finding the Feast

September 3, 2009

Reading from the Gospels, Proper 18B/Ordinary 23B/Pentecost +14: Mark 7.24-37

Greetings in the midst of a quick turnaround between trips. I recently returned home from two weeks at the wondrous Grünewald Guild in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, where I spent a week teaching a class called The Soul of the Book—one of my absolute favorite things I do all year—and lingered for another week to work on my book-in-progress and to soak up the splendid community that the Guild attracts. With its focus on exploring the connections between art and faith, the Guild is a place where I find my tribe.

Separated from that community now that I’m back home, I’m in a bit of withdrawal, but I’ll have something of a remedy over the next few days—a little hair of the dog, as it were. I’m leaving today for my annual Labor Day reunion with a group of girlfriends from seminary. Each year we rent a house on an island off Savannah, Georgia, and spend our days talking and eating and talking and sitting by the pool and talking and walking on the beach and talking and napping and…

My time at the Guild, where I’ve taught for half a dozen summers, and my days with the seminary chicks, with whom I’ve gathered for more than fifteen years, always provide a feast for body and soul.

Sustenance for body and soul is the theme of this Sunday’s gospel lection, although, in the case of the Syrophoenician woman who pleads—with great wit—for a healing for her daughter, the feast is rather hard won. As I finish packing my bags, I invite you to visit the reflection I wrote last year on Matthew’s version of this story, where he describes the intrepid mother as a Canaanite woman. Click this link to pay a visit: The Feast Beneath.

Many thanks to those who have sent good wishes and prayers as I work on my book. I sent a portion of the manuscript to the publisher last month and am working to complete the remainder. The publication date is set for Fall 2010. Your continued prayers for this massive project are most welcome! I look forward to returning to my regular blog writing sometime this fall.

Blessings and peace to you in this turning of seasons.

[To use this image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Thanks!]

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

The Gastronomical Jesus

July 27, 2009

Reading from the Gospels, Year B, Proper 13/Ordinary 18/Pentecost +9: John 6.24-35

Following up on last week’s reading, the gospel lection for this Sunday offers us another image of provision and plenitude that come through Christ. Last week we saw him turn a couple of fish and five loaves of bread into a feast for the masses; this week he talks about his own being as bread: bread of God, bread of heaven, bread of life.

In the wake of last week’s stunning feeding, John tells us that the crowd dogs Jesus’ trail, with the air of people looking for seconds. When they catch up with him, Jesus tells them they are looking for him “not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes,” he cautions them, “but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

Jesus is clear in calling them to discern the difference between what fills the belly and what fills the soul. At the same time, he well understands the ways that the hungers of the body and the hungers of the soul intertwine, and how both are at play when it comes to food. This is, after all, the man who so loved to share a meal—with all sorts of companions—that his critics called him “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7.34). When he wants to convey the essence of who he really is, in word and in action, it is to food, to the gifts of the earth, that Jesus turns. Wheat. Bread. Wine. In his hands, food is more than food; it is an enduring symbol of, and gift from, the one who offers his very being to meet our deepest hunger and our keenest thirst. Yet it is food nonetheless.

The famed food writer M.F.K. Fisher offers a passage that captures the ways that hungers of body and soul, and the feeding of them, are bound together. In the introduction to her book The Gastronomical Me, first published in 1943, she writes,

People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?

They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft.

The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it…and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied…and it is all one.

I tell about myself, and how I ate bread on a lasting hillside, or drank red wine in a room now blown to bits, and it happens without my willing it that I am telling too about the people with me then, and their other deeper needs for love and happiness.

There is food in the bowl, and more often than not, because of what honesty I have, there is nourishment in the heart, to feed the wilder, more insistent hungers. We must eat. If, in the face of that dread fact, we can find other nourishment and tolerance and compassion for it, we’ll be no less full of human dignity.

There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love?

I find myself thinking, too, of Simone Weil, who wrote, in her book Waiting for God, “The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.”

What are you hungry for these days? What does your relationship with food have to say about your relationship with God—and vice versa? Are there meals that hold memories of connection and communion? Do you have habits of eating, or not eating, that reveal a soul-hunger that needs God’s healing?

May the Bread of Life, who knew the pleasures of the table, feed you well in these days. Blessings.

P.S. Deep thanks to those offering prayers and blessings as I work to finish writing my book. Know that I am tremendously grateful for every good thought and prayer that comes my way; they are manna indeed on this intense journey!

[To use this image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. For a print, visit Color Prints at janrichardson.com. Thanks!]

Posted in art, books, food, Gospel of John, lectionary, Ordinary Time | 3 Comments »

One Fish, Two Fish

July 20, 2009

Reading from the Gospels, Year B, Proper 12/Ordinary 17/Pentecost +8: John 6.1-21

For folks just tuning in, I want to mention that I’m mostly (though not entirely, as it’s turned out) taking a break from offering lectionary reflections this summer, as I’m up to my eyeballs working on a new book that’s due next month. Finishing a book in the midst of a hot and rainy Florida summer is proving quite a feat of endurance! Prayers are very, very welcome as I persist with the pages. Deadline pressures aside, I am glad to be so immersed in the making of a new book.

Every book seems to require and invite something different of me, and that’s certainly been the case with this one. One of the things I’ve especially felt a need to do has been to invite some folks to be in prayer for and with me. Writing is such solitary work that I sometimes forget that there are ways I can invite people into the process. In recent weeks I’ve become more intentional about doing this. The responses have been wondrous and heartening. Folks have offered not only prayers and blessings but also some tangible reminders of their presence in my life. My writing nook now holds such gifts as a prayer flag that artist friends painted for me, a string of prayer beads made by a friend who attached a St. Brigid’s cross of green marble from Connemara, a photo of my seminary girlfriends whom I gather with over Labor Day weekend every year, a buckeye (for luck) from a friend in Kentucky, a stone carved with the word “Presence,” and cards with wonderful words of support and blessing. My writer’s soul is feeling well fed.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about provision—how I seek it, how I offer it. Recognizing what I need can be a real challenge sometimes—and asking for it, even more so. Yet I’ve learned that in order to provide for others, in order to be a blessing to others, I have to discern what provision I need for my own self, and to seek it out. Though sometimes it comes unbidden, which is always a wondrous gift of grace, I find that it’s more likely to show up when I remember to invite it.

This Sunday’s gospel lesson about the feeding of the five thousand offers good food for thought as I continue to ponder what I need, what I’m hungry for, and what sustenance will carry me through these days, that I may in turn participate, like the disciples, in meeting people at the point of their own hunger.

I wrote a reflection on Matthew’s version of this miraculous feeding last year; I invite you to visit it by clicking this link: A Gracious Plenty.

This Sunday’s lection from John also includes a story of Jesus’ walking on the water. If you’re looking for some artwork to accompany this portion of the passage, I invite you to visit several earlier collages that I created for watery themes, including Matthew’s version of Jesus and Peter walking on the water (first image below). Clicking on each image below will take you to that image’s page at janrichardsonimages.com. Clicking the titles below will take you to the blog reflection where the collage originally appeared.

In these days, may we know and ask for the provision we need, that we may share in offering sustenance to others. Blessings to you!