April Twenty-Eighteen

April Twenty- Eighteen 

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—

  When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;  

  Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush   

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring           

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;     

  The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush    

  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush      

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.                       

What is all this juice and all this joy?

-Gerard Manley Hopkins 

That’s why I want to think a bit more about one of the gifts of the church year that we often overlook: how it gives us a way to practice our faith even when we do not feel our faith. 

We are not asked, come February or March, whether or not we’d like to repent and make room for God. Lent simply instructs us to get to it.  

No one asks us whether or not we feel up to celebrating Easter. We’re not asked to peer deep inside to see if our souls feel like throwing a drain-the-bank party. 

No, Easter simply hands us a fifty-day feast and says, Go do joy. 

–Winn Collier, Love Big. Be Well

May you recognize in your life the presence, the power and light of your soul.

May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. 

May you have respect for your individuality and difference.

May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful and eternal happening. 

May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.

-quoted in The Road Back to You by Ian Cron 

You can't go back and change the beginning, 

but you can start where you are and change the ending. –C. S. Lewis 

Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people - your family, friends, and coworkers, and even strangers you meet along the way. -Barbara Bush

When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don’t go away; instead, they own us, they define us. Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending—to rise strong, recognize our story, and…choose how this story ends. 

-Brené Brown, Rising Strong

True friendship takes us by the hand and reminds us we are not alone in the journey.

God doesn’t drive us to achieve.

He simply asks us to come receive.

All great things are an overflow of His grace.

-Ann Voskamp 

She had a lively playful disposition which delighted in anything ridiculous. 

–Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice 

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you as you are to them. 

-Desmund Tutu 

It happens to all of us. God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over. ~Nadia Bolz-Weber  

Father of all, we give you thanks and praise that, when we were still far off, you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace and opened the gate of glory.  May we who share Christ’s body live his risen life; we who drink his cup bring life to others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world.  Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us so we and all your children shall be free and the whole earth live to praise your name, through Christ our Lord. Amen. 

–Book of Common Worship 

I know God to be one who is present in all that we go through.  He doesn't always make things go as we would hope-- there is death and loss and grief to face that he doesn't prevent. But what we do have is Him.  So, I'm praying for that gift of presence and the peace that comes with that.  –Heather Kwok