Community, History

Valuable Advice for Today, from Abraham Lincoln

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Most of us learned in elementary school that the future sixteenth president of the United States was born in a one-room log cabin on the Kentucky frontier.  Stories of young Abe reading at night by firelight may lead us to romanticize his early years of hardscrabble poverty.  Beginning in childhood, Lincoln’s life was characterized by persistence and determination in the face of adversity.  When his mother died, she left her illiterate farmer/carpenter husband with two young children, Sarah,  eleven, and Abraham, nine.  He remarried quickly, to a widow he’d known since his youth.  The family’s living situation improved somewhat with her arrival.  She insisted on the addition of a plank floor to the small cabin, and she brought with her some furniture, more comfortable bedding, and crucially, several books.  Lincoln benefitted from almost no formal schooling, but his love of reading, encouraged by his step-mother, set him on an extremely effective path of self-education.  He would later study law on his own, pass the Illinois state bar in 1836, and work for years as a lawyer in Springfield.   He was well-acquainted with manual labor; his strength and talent for splitting rails is truth, not myth.  As a young man he worked a variety of jobs: flatboat operator, surveyor, storekeeper, militia leader, and postmaster.   He lost his first election, to the Illinois General Assembly, but  later served three terms in that body, as well as one term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  He was defeated in both attempts to become a U.S. Senator.  The series of seven famous debates with Democratic candidate Stephen Douglas during the 1858 campaign, however, brought him to national prominence as a powerful, principled orator and anti-slavery advocate.  

Largely because the country was bitterly divided over the question of slavery,  it was a very complex presidential election in 1860 that led to Lincoln’s unlikely win.  In addition to Lincoln, who represented the newly formed Republican Party, there were three other candidates.  Southern Democrats refused to back Lincoln’s former rival, Stephen Douglas, and so named their own candidate, John Breckinridge.  The fourth candidate, John Bell, represented the new Constitutional Union party.  Lincoln’s win was a narrow one.  He received not quite forty percent of the popular vote, and 180 Electoral College votes, all, not surprisingly, from Northern states.  The process of secession began almost immediately after the election.  

The new president consistently sought to unite rather than further divide. In his first inaugural address, on March 4, 1861, Lincoln reminded listeners of their shared heritage as patriots once allied in the war of independence.  He appealed to “the better angels of our nature,” and urged:  We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

Lincoln must have watched with deep sadness as those bonds of affection were repeatedly broken. That he led the U.S. during one of the  most difficult periods in our history was our gain, but his loss.

After the hard-won Union victory at Gettysburg, which resulted in over 7,000 total deaths, Lincoln again spoke about the need to honor the ideals set forth at our country’s founding.  His brief address at the dedication of the Union Cemetery at Gettysburg, on November 19, 1863, famously begins: 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

He continues: It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It’s the duty of the living to ensure:

that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In his second inaugural address, on March 4, 1865, just six weeks before his assassination, Lincoln anticipated the end to the war and urged his fellow citizens toward reconciliation:  

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan–to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

In this time of current political polarization, may the words of our founding Declaration, with its emphasis on our shared humanity and God-given dignity, inspire us to truly seek what is right, and to act accordingly.  This may require us to look within ourselves to question our own motives, to consider the perspectives of others, and even to admit our own errors.  May we take to heart Lincoln’s plea, and work toward that ideal of “malice toward none,” and “charity for all.”  May we, while we yet live, strive to do our part, so “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Community

A Declaration Worth Honoring, and Protecting

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As we all know, this year marks the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.  It’s worth reminding ourselves, as Americans, of the profound significance of this document, how revolutionary it was at the time, how remarkably well it has endured, and how crucial it is that we protect it and hold to its tenets.  

It famously begins: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

Our founders boldly repudiated the ancient chains of aristocracy.  They declared that the circumstances of one’s birth should no longer determine the path of one’s life.  As all men are equal in the eyes of God, no longer would some be born to govern, with others born to be governed.  The inhibiting, confining labels of peasant and aristocrat would no longer apply.  Legislative power would be achieved through election, not inheritance.  

Spurred on by this radical notion, the leaders of thirteen rather disparate new world colonies joined together at the Second Continental Congress and decided to form a republic separate from Britain.  We refer to July 4, 1776 as the birthday of the United States, but on that day, there was no new country, only the novel and admirable idea behind its existence.  That’s American optimism, for sure.  The forward-looking founders willed our democracy into existence, but it took seven years of hard-fought war to make it a reality.  There would be chaos, uncertainty, suffering, and immense sacrifice.  

In the two and a half centuries since we triumphed, against all odds, in that brutal war of independence, our democratic experiment has continued to evolve.  Expanding the term “all men” to include black men, as well as women, required another four terrible years of war and decades of civil rights activism.  

Today, we see efforts toward limiting the broad category of “all men.”    I watch with dismay at imaginative, persistent, and anti-Constitutional attempts to remove those so-called unalienable rights from certain people who are deemed less worthy than others.  I watch with disbelief as similarly stunning endeavors are made to erode our democracy in a myriad of ways.  I’m aghast as Congress lies supine in submission, having willingly relinquished all due power.  So much for those three co-equal branches of government.  That these lawmakers, elected by their peers, yield to a president whose only allegiance is to the twin black holes of his ego and greed, is all the more incomprehensible.  

In these baffling and mentally exhausting days, I find particular inspiration in the examples of two of the wisest, and unlikeliest heroes our country has ever produced: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Frederick Douglass (1818- 1895.)  Both men overcame huge obstacles on their winding roads to national prominence.  Both endured great personal tragedy, avoided bitterness, and offered words of encouragement that we’d do well to take to heart right now.

Next post:  Valuable Advice from Abraham Lincoln

Family, Memorials, Parenthood

First a Good Brother, then a Good Father

My father and grandfather, 1948.
My grandfather, 1948, in front of Freedman Brothers’ Shoes in Catlettsburg, KY, where he worked at the end of his life.

I’ve written repeatedly over the years about my parents.  I couldn’t have chosen two people whose daughter I’d rather be.  The older I get, the more grateful for them I am.  

As every Father’s Day rolls around, I’m especially thankful to be my Daddy’s girl.  He was kind, devoted and loving.  His own dad, though, was not a model father.  I never met him, but Daddy spoke of him now and then.  The Elks Club in Catlettsburg, Kentucky saw far more of him than his family did.  Daddy clearly loved his father.  He fondly recalled his good qualities.  He neither complained about his shortcomings nor tried to ignore them.  He usually enjoyed his company when it was available.  On the plus side, his dad was fun, charming, athletic and sociable.  On the negative side, he was known to take a little too much pleasure in a fight.  Daddy’s grandfather had made considerable money in timber and coal, apparently enabling his son to avoid a real career, buying a home or paying rent.  The family homestead was a big brick house on higher ground overlooking the railroad tracks, the town and the flood-prone Ohio River that runs through it.  My great-grandfather built homes for any of his twelve children who wanted to settle on the surrounding hillside property (a true “holler” in Appalachian parlance.)   My grandfather played minor league baseball in his younger years and worked various jobs when necessary.  To Daddy and his older brother Paige, he was more like a pal than a father.  To his daughter, I’m not so sure.  I need to ask my cousins, my Aunt Jill’s children, this question.  To his youngest child, my Uncle Oren, his namesake, I believe he was largely absent.  

My father, at far right, with his parents, older brother Paige and sister Jill, 1940, Catlettsburg. Evidently Jill wasn’t happy about posing for the photo. I recall my father as a dapper dresser; he wouldn’t have been pleased with his odd clothing here. Paige wears what appears to be a plaid wood suit with matching knickers.
Daddy, aged 13, with his baby brother Oren in 1943, outside their home in Catlettsburg.
October 23, 1949. My twenty-year old father with Oren, age six, and their mother, about a month after the death of their father.

My grandfather died suddenly, when Daddy was about to turn twenty.  At the time, my father was stationed in Regensburg  with the U.S. Occupational Forces following the end of World War II.  He told me how his dad appeared to him in a vision or a dream on the night of his death.  He stood silently at the foot of Daddy’s army cot.  My father knew he was saying goodbye.  He received the official news of his father’s passing the next day by telegram.  He flew home soon afterwards, but missed the funeral.  He recalled feeling helpless, at a loss to be of use in easing his mother’s deep sadness.  His brother Paige had left home, but she was left a single parent to Jill, age fourteen, and little Oren, only six.  

Daddy and Oren, 1949.

Daddy had expected, and hoped, to return to Germany, but instead he completed his military service in the states.  On visits home, he stepped in as a sort of surrogate father figure to Oren.  The two were very close all their lives, until their deaths in 2016.  Oren was thirteen years younger than Daddy, but he died only weeks later.  

Daddy, his sister Jill and brother Oren, 1950.
My father, his mother and brother Oren, St. Augustine, FL, 1953.

My father, I see now, began preparing to be a parent years before I was born.  He was generous in the time he spent with his much younger brother.  He happily taught Oren to catch and hit a ball; he answered his questions about social life and girls.  After my parents were married, the teenage Oren was a frequent visitor.  Some in the family had hoped Daddy would become a doctor, or a dentist like his uncle Jack.  My father, though, was squeamish at the sight of blood.  While he opted for a career in public health, Oren followed the medical path.  For three decades, he was a much-loved family practice physician in Ashland.  And as his mother’s youngest child, he remained her neighbor and fervent champion throughout his life.  She lived into her 80s and never remarried.  When Oren moved to a new home, he bought my grandmother a house a stone’s throw away.  

Daddy and Oren, Ashland, KY, 1955.
The whole family: Daddy (breezy in Bermuda shorts) with his mother, brothers Oren and Paige, and sister Jill, at Oren’s med school graduation from University of Kentucky in the late 60s.

The last time I saw Oren was in Atlanta at my father’s memorial service ten years ago this August.  He died just over a month later, in early October.  

One day, I hope my uncle and I together can thank Daddy again for always being the kind and caring father we needed, at exactly the right time.  

 

Community, Family, Memorials, Travel, World War II

Another Memorial Day, Another War

Memorial Day was established as a time to honor and mourn those who lost their lives while serving in our armed forces.   It’s tempting to ignore the solemn significance of this national holiday in the busy-ness of approaching summer, in the opportunity for a long weekend of travel and festivity, in the opposing tugs of obligation and urge for escape.  We do a disservice to our war dead, as well as to those currently serving in our military, when we let the day go by without confronting and pondering the very real human cost of war.  There are many, of course, whose grief for the military loss of a family member or friend is unabating.  I hope they find at least a small measure of comfort when they see others acknowledging their dear one’s ultimate sacrifice. 

In years past, I’ve written about the moving prospect of the miniature flags that decorate military graves in lovely Fairfield Cemetery in Spencerport, New York.  This charming Eerie Canal Village near Rochester is the home of my husband’s sister and her family.  My dog Kiko and I discovered the flag-adorned cemetery during an early  morning walk there seven years ago when we were visiting over the Memorial Day weekend.   

Every year since, if I’m not in Spencerport for the holiday, I ask my sister-in-law to send photos of the cemetery.

Her husband serves as a volunteer fire fighter.  She also sent this photo of the local fire department.  Flags are lowered to  half-mast to honor those who gave their lives fighting for our country, our rights and our freedom.  

And she sends photos of the Hometown Heroes banners that adorn the lamp posts along the town’s main thoroughfare, Union Street.  They bear images of men and women from the area who have served, or who currently serve, in our military.  While in the quiet haven of the cemetery, flag-decorated gravestones attest to lives lost in war, the banners in the heart of town remind us of the continuing potential for further sacrifice.

On this Memorial Day, our family is among the many who offer heartfelt thanks that a relative did his or her military duty with honor and returned home physically whole.  We think of our twenty-three-year old nephew, who served in the Marines.  Back in civilian life, he was able to attend our daughter’s wedding in April.  The last time I’d seen him, he was a restless little boy, happy to be rescued from an all-day Irish Dance event, in which his two sisters were participating.  He’s now a wise young man, thoughtful, soft-spoken and self-effacing.  He was deployed for many months in the Middle East, in dangerous locales that were kept secret.  At one point, his parents received word that there had been a death in his company, but the young soldier’s identity wasn’t revealed for a while.  The frightening reality of war was painfully evident for our family during those anxious days.  Our nephew, of course, lived with the stark truth of imminent danger throughout his deployment.  Hours of boredom might suddenly be followed by the sight of missiles soaring overhead like fireworks.  He saw all too clearly the physical and emotional damage of war.  He’s also seen the ineffectiveness of military might in changing hearts and minds. The experience of war has left him, like many of our returning servicemen and women, with a fresh appreciation for peace and peace-makers.

Every day now we hear conflicting reports about the progress, (or  its absence), of yet another all too ill-considered war.  We hear conflicting reasons for our country’s entry into this befuddling military campaign.  We’re told that earlier missile strikes “obliterated” Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon.  Then we’re told that Iran was, despite that absolute obliteration, somehow on the very brink of achieving such a weapon.  We’re told that the Strait of Hormuz is open.  Or maybe not quite yet.  But it certainly will be, very soon.  We’re extremely close in negotiating the deal to end all deals.  We’re told that the war is going “unbelievably well.”    

But wait.  We’re even told that this is not a war at all.  It’s nothing more than a mere skirmish.  To grieving families, is this a comfort?  No.  It belittles the circumstances under which their loved ones gave their lives.  To those mourning the thirteen recently deceased service members, it’s yet another slap in the face to hear that their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers perished in a little skirmish.  

How many more lives will be required during this conflict, this non-war, and to what end?   As next Memorial Day rolls around, how many more families will be grieving fresh losses?  Will we ever learn the value of working for peace, from those, like my nephew, who have lived the reality of war?  

 

 

Family, Nature, Parenthood

In Spring’s Resilience, Hope

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Our daughter and her fiancé had originally wanted a fall wedding.  They’d found a lovely spot and  were about to lock in a date in mid-October that would coincide with my husband’s and my thirtieth anniversary.  Then they decided to check out a couple more wedding venues, just in case.  They found an even more perfect locale, and it was fully booked in October.  They chose to marry in April, instead.

Once plans were underway for a spring wedding, I began to see the timing as fortuitous.  How fitting, to start a life together in the early days of a hopeful new season.  It seemed especially fitting after such a long, frozen winter, just as we were beginning to rejoice at the first signs of nature’s resilience. Yes, again there were daffodils,  cherry blossoms, colonies of purple and white violets amid their heart-shaped leaves, and vibrantly bright azaleas. Our newly planted London Plane trees did not perish in the extreme cold.   A springtime wedding seemed an appropriate antidote for these dispiriting days, when reasons to keep hope alive appear increasingly unsustainable.  

Now that the wedding is in the past, I’m looking back on photos I took of nature’s beauty just outside our doors, before and after the big event.  And I see them now through the lens of that celebratory day.  I see images that evoke renewal, rebirth and indefatigable persistence in the face of adversity.  

Outside our screened porch, rhododendrons dotted with raindrops recall the words of “Morning Has Broken,” the first hymn we sang at the ceremony: 

Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven,

Like the first dewfall on the first grass.

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,

Sprung in completeness where God’s feet pass.

During the song,  rain could clearly be seen falling through a large open window onto a bank of  flowers below.  We had watched the weather with alarm and dismay all that week, as the chance of showers increased to close to 100%.  As it turned out, the indoor ceremony in the  enormous, nave-like barn, with all windows open to the elements and rain pounding dramatically on the roof, felt absolutely perfect.  For our family, it was also unforgettable, which was the song our daughter chose for her dance with her father.   

The wedding flowers were all in season, locally grown at another nearby farm.  They happened to echo the colors of the three bridesmaids’ dresses, each one different, each the choice of its wearer.  

I’d feared that my husband had pruned this late-blooming lilac far too drastically last year.  Yet it rebounded triumphantly with a fabulous and fragrant show.

There were no peonies among the wedding flowers, as they weren’t yet blooming in our area.  Ever since I saw my first peony, on a walk in New Jersey, it’s been one of my favorite flowers.  Once we moved into our own home in Virginia, it was a gardening goal to dedicate a spot to these gorgeous blossoms.  For a while we had an array of productive peony plants.  Then a blizzard took out several, including the most dazzling example, a pink tree peony, with extra-large blooms.  Those that remained put forth only white blossoms.  Inspired by the pastel colors of the wedding flowers, I decided it was time to expand our peony palette.  That proved more difficult than I had expected, but this peachy Cora Louise and white Primavera with its lacy yellow center have been welcome new additions.   

The bright green leaves above are mayapple plants.  Native to Virginia, mayapples appear in early spring in woodland undergrowth.  Soon after sprouting, they look like closed umbrellas, which then open, creating a protective canopy for birds and small animals.  A single, delicate white blossom grows beneath the foliage, forming a small apple-like sphere.  The fruit, when fully ripe, is said to be a favorite of box turtles, who poop out the seeds to germinate in the soil of the forest floor.  My husband’s box turtle, however, was unimpressed.  Speedy, who has been with H since elementary school, stomped deliberately over the mayapple fruit we offered, circled back and stared at us, as if to say, “Really?” H has recently been treating Speedy with freshly harvested earthworms and lawn grubs, as well as the occasional bite of tender beef filet.  Our turtle may be living the high life, but the mayapple appears content in its unassuming humility.  I love watching their leaves unfurl every spring in our courtyard.  Quietly reliable, and easily overlooked in the company of the season’s more spectacular stars, the plants remind me of the virtue of humility.  Increasingly unappreciated and underused, humility is a valuable practice in marriage, as in every aspect of life.  This is a truth that becomes clearer to me with every passing year.  And just when I think I’ve gotten the hang of being humble, pride creeps in and I have to start all over again.  As I said, it’s a practice.  

Our Appalachian Red redbud trees abounded in early April with bright fuchsia buds.  The arctic chill of January and February was no match for their steadfast determination, a quality particularly evident in the showy flower clusters that burst forth directly from the trunk and large branches.

As spring progresses, the news from Washington and around the world teems with one ugliness after another: multiple wars, gun violence in houses of worship, sky-high costs of housing and basic necessities, environmental dangers, horrific disease, famine, mind-boggling government corruption and outright cruelty, among other perils.  We may be tempted to retreat to our own private islands of solace and despair.  We may be tempted to believe that evil is bound to win.  But just as each new day offers glimpses of transcendent natural beauty, it also offers opportunities to share in the power of community with old and new friends.  All around us we see spring’s glorious, dogged persistence, in the tendrils of the seeking vine, the now-leafy tree, the shaggy golden dandelion in the sidewalk crack.  May it prompt us to reach out, listen, join hands, stand up, speak out and act together for the greater good.  May it inspire us to be the reason that someone else is hopeful, for a change.    

Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning,

born of the one light Eden saw play!

Praise with elation, praise every morning,

God’s recreation of the new day! 

 

Morning Has Broken

Words:  Eleanor Farjeon, 1931 

Music: Traditional Gaelic melody

 

Lamentations 3:23:  Great is God’s faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.  

Community, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Parenthood

Mother’s Day 2026: With a Newly Married Daughter, a new Phase of Parenting

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May 1999, with my daughter, at five months, on the screened porch of my parents’ house in Atlanta.

It’s been just over two weeks now since our daughter’s wedding.  She and her fiancé were married in a very moving ceremony to which they’d given much thought.  Festive food, drink, and a rollicking dance party followed.  Several dear friends and family members present had attended my husband’s and my wedding thirty-one years ago.  All five of her young cousins on my husband’s side were with her at once for the first time ever.  The setting was a lovely working farm among the rolling hills of Loudoun County, Virginia.  We could well have been in the horse country of my native Kentucky.  

As the wedding day approached, I thought back on approximately twenty-eight years of motherhood, beginning with those first days when I discovered that I was expecting.  I kept coming back to the phrase I find myself thinking at every family milestone event:  our daughter is the daughter I’ve always wanted.  

Our first ultrasound image of our baby girl was telling:  she was upside down and doing vigorous scissor kicks.  This child would likely be a spirited, energetic presence.  

In those early days, I had a vague vision of what I hoped she’d be like, and the ways I might see my beloved parents, maybe even grandparents, in her.  I hoped we’d come to share a cherished friendship, much like the one I still enjoy with my mother.  

While I had wished she’d share a love for some of my favorite things, and she has, after her birth, I soon understood that it would be wondrous to witness the many ways she’d surprise us.  

It’s been a grand adventure to watch her move through various life phases:  especially bold around a year, suddenly shy at two.  Funny from the very beginning, able to laugh at herself.  As a toddler determined to try new things with minimal assistance.  How often she declared, “Self do it!”  Quickly, it was evident that she was gifted with courage, but also with kindness and compassion.  

As she grew, my husband and I saw how her character reflected traits from both of us, yet combined in novel ways.  She became the teenager who jumped into musical theatre while learning  BC Calculus, and then the University of Virginia student who chose a career in aerospace engineering and minored in astronomy.  

We’ve been blessed with almost three decades of being parents to our daughter.  Every once in a while, when I hear her call out “Mama,” past and present versions of her collide.  I get a sort of amazingly surreal time-warp sensation.  Sometimes when my husband and I reminisce about old times, we see her there with us.  Then it hits us that she wasn’t even born yet.  Seems like she’s always been a part of us.  And she always will be.

I marvel that our daughter does, indeed, carry in her traces of those who’ve gone on before.  My father was absolutely, resoundingly, overjoyed to become a grandfather.  Papa loved everything about our daughter.  In the curve of her nose, and in her gracious, humble confidence, I see him.  And she’s her Nana’s girl, too.  My mother, the practical realist, loves her granddaughter every bit as much as my father did.  Her role, though, has always been to  be the more subdued foil to Daddy’s sunny optimism.  Our daughter shares Nana’s willingness to face, and even to find humor, in life’s bitter and difficult aspects.

My husband and I, August 1998, at Mount Vernon, shortly after we moved to Virginia. I was five months pregnant with our daughter. (My facial expression is one I see on my mother in countless photos.)
January 5, 1999. With my mother and daughter, six days old, at our first townhouse in Virginia.
My mother and newborn daughter, January 7, 1999.
Happiness all around: my parents and daughter at 9 months, ready for Gymboree, September 1999.

With our daughter newly married, we’ve moved into another distinct parenting stage.  We’re absolutely delighted that she’s chosen a young man whom we happily welcome as a son.  They began dating in 2019, when they were both in college, but have been friends since 2014, when they met in high school drama. In their first shared theatre experience, she was among the citizens of Verona, and he played Romeo.  Our families, as drama volunteers and enthusiastic patrons, quickly became well acquainted. 

The newly married couple, April 25, 2026. (Thanks to my sister-in-law Julie for this photo.)

Our daughter and her new husband complement each other like colors on the color wheel.  At their wedding, I offered this toast:  May your love and respect increase with the years.  May you nourish each other, like the forest of plants you lovingly tend in your home.  May you strengthen and encourage one another, like two trees that flourish and thrive because they’re entwined together.  

A portion of the wedding banner I painted for the couple.

And may we, my husband and I, continue to grow as good parents to both our children.  And if we get the chance one day to be grandparents, may we embrace that role with as much joy and dedication as our parents did before us.  

Community, Faith and Spirituality

Christ is Risen!

 

Christ is risen! Shout Hosanna! Celebrate this day of days.

Christ is risen! Hush in wonder; all creation is amazed.

In the desert all surrounding, see, a spreading tree has grown.

Healing leaves of grace abounding bring a taste of love unknown.

 

Christ is risen! Raise your spirits from the caverns of despair.

Walk with gladness in the morning.  See what love can do and dare.

Drink the wine of resurrection, not a servant, but a friend;

Jesus is our strong companion.  Joy and peace shall never end.

 

Christ is risen! Earth and heaven never more shall be the same.  

Break the bread of new creation where the world is still in pain.

Tell its grim, demonic chorus: “Christ is risen! Get you gone!”

God the First and Last is with us.  Sing Hosanna every one!

Christ is Risen

Words: Brian Wren, 1984

Music: Polish carol; arr. by Edith M.G. Reed, 1926

 

May the loving spirit of the risen Christ urge us toward acts of mercy, kindness and grace, give us the courage to speak truth to power, and stand against evil and injustice.  

Happy Easter!

Community, Faith and Spirituality

Good Friday 2026

“It is finished.”  With that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

–(John 19: 30)

Jesus’s final words on the cross were not a cry of defeat, but a declaration of victory.  His earthly mission was completed.  He had broken down the barrier between us and God.  

With his help, our work as brothers and sisters in Christ, as God’s children, continues.

 

For  more on Good Friday, see last year’s post here.  

 

Community, Faith and Spirituality

Last Supper, Last Words

During his final meal with his disciples, Jesus knew his earthly life was nearing its end.  He used those last hours with his followers to stress the heart of the gospel:  love one another as he has loved them.  As he washed their feet, he urged them toward an active, audacious mission of caring for others, just as he cares for them.  Maundy Thursday marks the commemoration of this commandment, or mandate, to love one another. He knew he would soon be betrayed and executed, but he chose love.  

Let’s try to do the same.  Though the world may normalize violence, cruelty and retribution, let’s be radical.  Let’s do the hard work of choosing love.  

Last year’s post on Maundy Thursday remains as relevant as ever. See here.  

Faith and Spirituality

On Palm Sunday: a Tale (and a Choice) of Two Processions

Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of the holiest week in the Christian calendar.  It’s a celebratory day, when we commemorate what is often referred to as Jesus’s “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem at the start of Passover.  Jesus wasn’t the only notable person entering the city that day, to acclaim and fanfare, however.  This was the topic of our minister’s sermon today.  

The week-long Passover celebration brought thousands of the Jewish faithful from outlying areas to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple and make their annual sacrifices.  The population of the city swelled to four our five times its usual size.  Passover marks God’s deliverance of the Jews from slavery in Egypt.  To remind the Jewish population that even (and perhaps especially), during this charged time, they remained subjects of Rome, the Governor of Judea would enter the city with a grand military parade.  During Jesus’s day, the Roman Governor, of course, was Pontius Pilate.  He ruled the area from his palace in the pleasant seaside town of Caesarea, some sixty miles away.    

Pilate and his formidable entourage entered Jerusalem from the west, through the city’s largest, grandest gate.  His procession would have been similar to those associated with an imperial military victory, as I discussed in an earlier post on Advent.  There would have been warhorses festooned for battle, majestic chariots and legions of Roman soldiers.  The message would have been clear:  “We let you worship your own god, but never, never forget, that Caesar is truly in charge.”  

Jesus and his disciples entered from the opposite and eastern end of the city, from the village of Bethany or Bethphage near  the Mount of Olives.  Jesus was often in Bethany, as it was the home of his close friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  Not a place of prime real estate, it was a poor area, about two miles from Jerusalem.  Jesus’s mode of entry was nothing if not intentional.  At Bethany, he sent two of his disciples ahead to the next village, instructing them to return with a donkey and her colt, which they would find tethered in a certain spot (Matthew 21: 2-3).  

Jesus rode into the city on the donkey, with the colt walking along beside them.  By this time, after three years of ministry, Jesus had become a well-known, if perplexing figure.  It was said that he’d been born to an ordinary family in the backwater village of Nazareth.  While he lacked formal religious training, he clearly knew scripture.  He spoke with the authority of a learned rabbi, yet he had an air of humility.  Among his friends and followers were those that his righteous, upstanding fellow Jews tended to avoid, such as tax collectors, prostitutes and beggars.  He traveled around with a ragtag inner circle that included rough uneducated fishermen, and even women. His teachings, which attracted huge crowds, were often controversial and counter-cultural:  Blessed are the meek?  Love your enemies?  It seemed that he really had healed all manner of afflictions and diseases.  He’d cast out demons.  In addition to his friend Lazarus, it was said that he had brought two others back from the dead: a  a widow’s only son, and a twelve-year old girl.   He wasn’t especially concerned with Hebraic purity laws; he wasn’t afraid to touch the unclean as he healed them.  He even claimed to forgive sins.   Who was this Jesus, exactly?  More than a prophet?  An extremely talented fraud?  If he was a fake, what did he seek to gain?  Neither riches nor personal glory, it seemed.  This Jesus was an enigma.  

Our pastor urged us to imagine the two very different processions through Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday.  They approached from opposite ends of the city, and they were polar opposites in spirit.  One represented imperial might and earthly power.  Its intent was to subjugate through fear and awe.  The other represented a kingdom not of this world, a peace beyond our understanding, and a release from bondage, both physical and spiritual.  Jesus’s humble donkey (likely a nursing female, accompanied by her colt) was chosen not only to contrast with Pilate’s battle-ready military stallion, but also to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah about the future Messiah: 

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!  Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey. (Zechariah 9: 9).

The crowds that cheered Jesus on probably included some of the marginalized individuals he had healed.  They hailed him with these words:

Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest! (Matthew 21: 9)

The word “hosanna” means “save us.”  It implies a fierce urgency:  save us, and save us now! The exclamations of Jesus’s followers were a direct threat to Roman rule.  The Emperor was considered a god-like and divinely appointed figure.  He, and only he, could save the people.  He, and only he, was the true King.

Which of these two processions, our pastor asked, do we choose to attend and support?  He didn’t say this, specifically, but might we church folk pledge our allegiance on Sunday morning to Jesus’s path of loving our neighbors, of compassion and grace, while worshipping on weekdays at the altars of earthly prestige?  

Sometimes even the best-intentioned of us can get the two paths muddled up.  It’s especially easy to see where others have strayed while remaining blind to our own misguided meanderings.  

Our minister encouraged us not to make the spiritual leap from the high point of Palm Sunday directly to Easter.  If we want to keep on the disciple path, we must journey with Jesus through the dark valleys of this Holy Week.  The only way to Easter is through the cross.  

This week I’m asking myself what it means in my life to hail Jesus as savior on Palm Sunday, stick with him through the heartbreaking disappointment of betrayal on Maundy Thursday, and the terrible pain and sacrifice of Good Friday.  I will never do enough, of course.  No one of us mere humans can.  But Jesus came to share with us the transforming power of God’s grace.  May God bring us the courage we need, and the assurance that he walks with us through the lowest points of this week, as well as those we will encounter throughout our earthly lives.  

 

John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg discuss the two Palm Sunday processions and their implications in their book The Last Week, published in 2006.  

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