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Holy Saturday: To Hold Our Anguish and Hope in the Same Hand

April 4, 2026

Image: The Sixth & Seven Words: It Is Finished/Into Your Hands
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Holy Saturday:
Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42

They took the body of Jesus.
—John 19:40

This is the day that calls us to breathe.

This is the day that invites us to make a space within the weariness, the fear, the ache.

This is the day that calls us to hold our anguish and our hope in the same hand.

This is the day that beckons us to turn toward one another and to remember we do not breathe alone.

In the Breath, Another Breathing
A Blessing for Holy Saturday

Let it be
that on this day
we will expect
no more of ourselves
than to keep
breathing
with the bewildered
cadence
of lungs that will not
give up the ghost.

Let it be
we will expect
little but
the beating of
our heart,
stubborn in
its repeating rhythm
that will not
cease to sound.

Let it be
we will
still ourselves
enough to hear
what may yet
come to echo:
as if in the breath,
another breathing;
as if in the heartbeat,
another heart.

Let it be
we will not
try to fathom
what comes
to meet us
in the stillness
but simply open
to the approach
of a mystery
we hardly dared
to dream.

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

_____________________

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image The Sixth & Seven Words: It Is Finished/Into Your Hands, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

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

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

Good Friday: Let All Stand Still

April 3, 2026

Image: The Crucifixion
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Good Friday: John 18:1-19:42

There they crucified him.
—John 18:18

All too quickly the breaking of the bread becomes the breaking of the flesh.

All too soon the cup offered at the table becomes the life poured out at the cross.

After the rending, after the emptying: an impossible stillness, an aching silence, an incomprehensible hollow for which no word will ever be adequate.

On this day that asks us to bear witness to what is breaking, may we not turn away.

Still
A Blessing for Good Friday

This day
let all stand still
in silence,
in sorrow.

Sun and moon
be still.

Earth
be still.

Still
the waters.

Still
the wind.

Let the ground
gape in stunned
lamentation.

Let it weep
as it receives
what it thinks
it will not
give up.

Let it groan
as it gathers
the One
who was thought
forever stilled.

Time
be still.

Watch
and wait.

Still.

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

_____________________

Also for Good Friday . . .

Once upon a time, Gary and I created a video that intertwines my Seven Last Words art series with his exquisite song “This Crown of Thorns.” I would love to share it with you. [For my email subscribers: if you don’t see the video below, click here to go to The Painted Prayerbook site, where you can view it in this post.]

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image The Crucifixion, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

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

Holy Thursday: The Final Word Is Love

April 2, 2026

Image: The Last Supper
© Jan Richardson

Readings for Holy Thursday/Maundy Thursday:
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19;
1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

It is Holy Thursday, and we are invited to the table with Jesus and the disciples as he speaks his final words on this side of his dying. What he speaks of the most at that table is love. Thirty-one times he uses the word. He enacts this love, too, as he washes the disciples’ feet and shares the bread and the cup one more time.

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

On this day, beloveds, this blessing is for you.

Blessing the Bread, the Cup
For Holy Thursday

Let us bless the bread
that gives itself to us
with its terrible weight,
its infinite grace.

Let us bless the cup
poured out for us
with a love
that makes us anew.

Let us gather
around these gifts
simply given
and deeply blessed.

And then let us go
bearing the bread,
carrying the cup,
laying the table
within a hungering world.

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

_____________________

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image The Last Supper, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Posted in art, blessings, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 4 Comments »

Lent 1: What a Desert Is For

February 21, 2026

Image: Gift of the Wilderness
© Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Lent 1, Year A: Matthew 4:1-11

As Lent has begun, I’ve been thinking about different kinds of deserts.

There are deserts we have chosen, and ones that we have not. There are deserts that seem devoid of life and sustenance, and ones that hold hidden wellsprings and remarkable beauty. There are deserts where we might feel completely alone, and ones where, to our surprise, help and company come to us in forms we did not expect.

Sometimes these are all the same desert, and we are the ones who become different as we travel deeper into it, able to perceive and know more clearly what the desert holds than we did when we first entered into it.

Always a desert changes us, if we allow it. And this is what Lent offers to us. This season provides a landscape that welcomes our own inner terrain: our fear, pain, and grief; our joy, solace, and hope; and the wild space within us where all of this lives together. Lent tells us that everything we carry in us—everything we carry in us—is met, held, and transformed in Love.

As we move into this season, this is a blessing for you.

Where the Breath Begins

Dry
and dry
and dry
in each direction.

Dust dry.
Desert dry.
Bone dry.

And here
in your own heart:
dry,
the center of your chest
a bare valley
stretching out
every way you turn.

Did you think
this was where
you had come to die?

It’s true that
you may need
to do some crumbling,
yes.
That some things
you have protected
may want to be
laid bare,
yes.
That you will be asked
to let go
and let go,
yes.

But listen.
This is what
a desert is for.

If you have come here
desolate,
if you have come here
deflated,
then thank your lucky stars
the desert is where
you have landed—
here where it is hard
to hide,
here where it is unwise
to rely on your own devices,
here where you will
have to look
and look again
and look close
to find what refreshment waits
to reveal itself to you.

I tell you,
though it may be hard
to see it now,
this is where
your greatest blessing
will find you.

I tell you,
this is where
you will receive
your life again.

I tell you,
this is where
the breath begins.

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

P.S. I want to let you know about this online event happening soon with Nazareth Retreat Center:

A CONVERSATION WITH JAN RICHARDSON
Virtual Retreat Hosted by Nazareth Retreat Center
Saturday, February 28, 2026, 2-4 pm (ET)

I am so looking forward to this online event offered by Nazareth Retreat Center on February 28! As we enter into Lent, we will explore how to notice God’s presence in the unexpected, to find grace in the quiet and in the chaos, and to embrace the unfolding mystery of life. We would love for you to join us from wherever you are!

Info & registration: https://nazarethretreatcenterky.org/programs/1939/a-conversation-with-jan-richardson.

If you have any questions, please contact Nazareth, and they will be glad to help.

_____________________

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image Gift of the Wilderness, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

Posted in art, blessings, lectionary, Lent, poetry | Leave a Comment »

Ash Wednesday: To Ask Where Love Will Lead Us

February 17, 2026

Image: Ash Wednesday Cross
© Jan Richardson

Readings for Ash Wednesday: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 51:1-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Life will continually lay us bare, sometimes with astonishing severity. In the midst of this, the season of Lent invites us to see what is most elemental in us, what endures: the love that creates and animates, the love that cannot be destroyed, the love that is most basic to who we are. This season inspires us to ask where this love will lead us, what it will create in and through us, what God will do with it in both our brokenness and our joy.

—Jan Richardson, from Ash Wednesday: What God Can Do with Dust
The Painted Prayerbook, February 2018

_____________________

In a time when so much is crumbling, is burning, I don’t want to romanticize the ashes that come with destruction and devastation. As we approach Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, I do want to keep asking what the Holy One can do with dust, and to keep looking for how I can be part of that. So many blessings to you, beloved ones, as the new season arrives.

Blessing the Dust

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.

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

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image Ash Wednesday Cross, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.

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

Posted in art, blessings, Lent, mystery, poetry | Leave a Comment »

Holy Saturday: Anticipate Resurrection

April 20, 2019

Image: Anticipate Resurrection © Jan Richardson

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

On this Holy Saturday—this threshold day, this day betwixt—I am thinking about a visit I had with a friend one Lenten day a few years ago. We had planned to take a walk, but on the day of our walk, it rained. So we sheltered on a friend’s beautiful porch, taking a more stationery pilgrimage as we shared some of the terrain we had each crossed since our last visit. In the time that had passed between that visit and this one, both of our husbands had died, both too young.

As we talked, tea and coffee in hand and the rain drenching the gorgeous spring landscape around us, that porch became for me what Phil Cousineau calls a secret room. In his book The Art of Pilgrimage, Cousineau writes that in every sacred journey, there is a hidden space we must find, a place along the path where we will begin to understand the deep mystery of our pilgrimage. He writes,

Everywhere you go, there is a secret room. To discover it, you must knock on walls, as the detective does in mystery houses, and listen for the echo that portends the secret passage. You must pull books off shelves to see if the library shelf swings open to reveal the hidden room.

I’ll say it again: Everywhere has a secret room. You must find your own, in a small chapel, a tiny café, a quiet park, the home of a new friend, the pew where the morning light strikes the rose window just so.

As a pilgrim you must find it or you will never understand the hidden reasons why you really left home.

As the season of Lent comes to a close, has there been a secret room, a space that prompted a moment of insight or inspiration, of wisdom or connection or delight? Have you had an experience that gave you a window onto your path and helped you see it differently? How did that secret room help you understand why you set out on your journey? What gift did it offer for the road ahead?

Deep peace to you as Easter draws near.

What Abides, What Returns

Anticipate resurrection.
—Terry Tempest Williams

In a season of stunning sun
we have chosen the only day
of rain,
and so we shelter on this porch,
each with a cup in hand
and in our heart a hole
in the precise shape
of our beloved.

I have not come here
to compare notes,
widow-to-widow,
that untimely word
still harsh in my ear

but simply
to sit together
in the stillness
at the edge of that wound,
the sound of our voices
a testament
to what endures,
to the unbearable
somehow borne.

Easter draws near
as we watch the rain.
We know the drama
and the pageantry
that lie ahead,
the commotion that is owed
to such a miracle.

Meanwhile, we go on
quietly raising the dead,
tending them as more
than a memory,
learning to live in
the curious marriage
of absence and presence
that settles into the bones
and the aching
but durable heart.

We know resurrection as something
not merely to be anticipated
but also daily lived
as we reckon with
what abides,
what returns
of the beloved
who cannot be unknown—
who, having passed into us,
will not be so easily shed.

Still, I think of Mary Magdalene
and the secret she carried
when she left
that empty tomb:
how resurrection is
a strange dance
of reunion and release,
how our loving
will always ask of us
a letting go,

yet in the asking
a promise
that what we love
knows how to find us,
even by the path
that will bear us
far away
from here.

—Jan Richardson

For previous reflections for Holy Saturday, visit Holy Saturday: Breathe.

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

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

Posted in art, blessings, Lent, mystery | 3 Comments »

Lent 1: In the Desert of the Beloved

March 9, 2019

Reading from the Gospels, Lent 1, Year C: Luke 4.1–13

How else to enter into the forty-day place that lay ahead of him? How else to cross into the wilderness where he would have no food, no community, nothing that was familiar to him—and, to top it off, would have to wrestle with the devil? How else, but to go into that landscape with the knowledge of his own name: Beloved.

—Jan Richardson, from Lent 1: Beloved Is Where We Begin
The Painted Prayerbook, February 2016

We have traveled through many Lenten seasons here at The Painted Prayerbook; this one will be our twelfth. For our first Sunday in Lent this time around, I wanted to share a blessing from one of those seasons past. I hold you in prayer and gratitude as we cross into whatever terrain these days will hold. May we enter with the name Beloved echoing in our heart.

Beloved Is Where We Begin

If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.

Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.

I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.

But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.

I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.

I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

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

For previous reflections for the first Sunday of Lent, including reflections on the related gospel readings:

Lent 1: Where the Breath Begins
First Sunday of Lent: And the Angels Waited
Day 2: Up from the Water
Day 3: Into the Wilderness
Day 4: With the Wild Beasts
Lent 1: A Blessing for the Wilderness
Lent 1: Into the Wilderness
Lent 1: A River Runs through Him
Lent 1: Discernment and Dessert in the Desert

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

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

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, Lent | 5 Comments »

Ash Wednesday: Dreaming in the Dust

March 6, 2019

Readings for Ash Wednesday: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51:1-17;
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

We are entering the season that begins with a smudge. That smudge is a testimony to what survives. It is a witness to what abides when everything seems lost. It is a sign that what we know and love may, for a time, be reduced to dust, but it does not disappear. We belong to the God who well knows what to do with dust, who sees the dust as a place to dream anew, who creates from it again and again.

—Jan Richardson, from Ash Wednesday: What God Can Do with Dust
The Painted Prayerbook, February 2018

Friends, as we enter into Lent, I want to share this Ash Wednesday blessing again. It’s been six years since I first wrote it, during what would turn out to be my last Lent with Gary. I have found that the question the blessing holds—”Did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?”—is a good one to ask myself anew each time Ash Wednesday comes around. And I can say now: I know what God can do with dust. And I am learning still.

As this season begins, what blessing do you need to claim from the ashes?

Blessing the Dust
For Ash Wednesday

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

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

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Ash Wednesday Cross,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible.

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

Posted in art, blessings, lectionary, Lent | 8 Comments »

Holy Saturday: Breathe

March 28, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Saturday.

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

It’s Saturday.

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

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

It’s Saturday.

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

It’s Saturday.

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

It’s Saturday.

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

Good Friday: Speaking, Still

March 27, 2018

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

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

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

That he can still speak.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

The Painted Prayerbook

Archive for the ‘Lent’ Category

Holy Saturday: To Hold Our Anguish and Hope in the Same Hand

Good Friday: Let All Stand Still

Holy Thursday: The Final Word Is Love

Lent 1: What a Desert Is For

Ash Wednesday: To Ask Where Love Will Lead Us

Holy Saturday: Anticipate Resurrection

Lent 1: In the Desert of the Beloved

Ash Wednesday: Dreaming in the Dust

Holy Saturday: Breathe

Good Friday: Speaking, Still

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