After Easter

“Look at our lives right now, and consider what it is we are building…”

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Unintentional Easter mash-up. Love triumphs over the rooster of denial.

1. “Like the women folding the altar cloths in that empty church, Jesus’ faithful followers are hidden in plain view. We see them in our friends, families, churches, and even ourselves. The women speaking out against injustice. The women reaching out to offer help. The women rallying their communities. The women caring for young and old. The women rising to serve and kneeling to pray. The women weeping at the news and asking, ‘God, what can I do?’” From my Good Friday reflection at (in)courage on the women who stayed with Jesus.

2. If you need a laugh: The Elementary School Disciplinary Record of Jesus Christ from McSweeney’s.

3. “When you read a story of how someone made good come out of evil, it’s not enough to admire them, whether you focus on the glorious end result, or dig down into the little steps that led them there. Out of sheer honesty, when we come upon a story like this, it behooves us to stop and take it personally. Look at our lives right now, and consider what it is we are building with the unremarkable actions that make up our days.” On Corrie ten Boom from Simcha Fisher: Tiny daily acts prepare us for great holiness.

4. Amy Bornman
   has become one of my favorite follows on Instagram for her poetry woven with everyday life. Parting Of The Red Sea is a perfect example (found via Sara Kay Mooney, source of abundant good poetry): “we do this all the time, you know / walk straight through something / that washes someone else away.” From Amy’s book There is a Future: A Year of Daily Midrash (which sounds incredible).

5. A lovely reflection on the backstory of the Serenity Prayer and even more powerful words from its author, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: “Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”