Dear Friend,

Lent began yesterday. This year our theme for Lent is Bread of Life, and I’ve been thinking about the connection between bread and Lent this past week. Lent is often understood to be a season when we shed things—we give things up either because in letting them go we sense we might have more time or space to draw closer to God, or because in giving something up, we remind ourselves that all that we need is God. But Lent is also a journey. If Advent is a journey to the stable and birth of Christ, Lent is a journey to the cross and the death and resurrection of Christ. It isn’t an easy journey. It’s a journey that asks us to look hard at our own impulses, our own tendencies and biases, our own willingness to go along to get along. And to sustain us on that journey, we need the bread. We need Jesus. Even as we walk with Jesus toward the cross, we remember that it is Jesus who sustains us, God who meets us in the most ordinary of ways, enabling us to go to the most extraordinary of places.

So as you journey through Lent this year, may your journey be full of reminders that God is in the very ordinary things that bring you life, and may you lean on those things whenever life’s journey is hard.

Blessings,
Pastor Sarah

God of Breath and Gravity

by Brian Bantum

I appreciated this author’s reflection on whether asking what God is like isn’t akin to asking what our breath is like, or what gravity is like:

“This is God to me today, breath and gravity, the rising and falling of my chest, panic when I feel myself without her, the inevitability of my feet coming back to the ground every time I jump. Tomorrow I may describe her differently, but today this description helps me to see the miraculous moving through my body, the transcendent stitched into my everyday, an unrelenting presence that gives me the courage to keep speaking, keep making space because I know I will always come back to the ground.”

Read the full article here.

National Anthem of Ukraine Played on Nyckelharpa and Hardanger Fiddle

Eric Rydvall and Olav Luksengård Mjelva

This is lovely, but mostly I was fascinated because I’d never heard of either of the two instruments being played. Google searches informed me that a Nyckelharpa is a Swedish key harp or keyed fiddle, and that a Hardanger Fiddle is the national instrument of Norway and is similar to a violin but with 8 or 9 strings and thinner wood. I love learning new things!

8-Year-Old Binita Chetry Stuns

Britain’s Got Talent

I had another video in mind to share today, but then this one popped up and I can’t not share it. This little girl is incredible. If dance isn’t your thing, skip to the two-minute mark and just watch from there to the end of her routine. She does moves that are astounding. 

Wilderness Blessing

Let us say
this blessing began
whole and complete
upon the page.

And then let us say
that one word loosed itself
and another followed it
in turn.

Let us say
this blessing started
to shed all
it did not need,

that line by line
it returned
to the ground
from which it came.

Let us say
this blessing is not
leaving you,
is not abandoning you
to the wild
that lies ahead,

but that it is loathe
to load you down
on this road where
you will need
to travel light.

Let us say
perhaps this blessing
became the path
beneath your feet,
the desert
that stretched before you,
the clear sight
that finally came.

Let us say
that when this blessing
at last came to its end,
all it left behind
was bread,
wine,
a fleeting flash
of wing.