Lenten Devotional – Thurs, Feb 18: CROWDS
Right now, the term ‘crowds’ feels like a bad word. A no-no. As if it comes with fines and punishments. Don’t be caught in a crowd!
We’ve become somewhat accustomed to keeping apart from each other. To distancing. To isolation.
Yet as humans, we’re designed for socialization. For connection. For interaction. In a way, many of us will probably welcome crowds when it’s safe to gather again.
And yet, we’ve been connecting, one way or another, all along, haven’t we? Digital and virtual connections: email, messages, texts. Cards and letters. Phone calls. Zoom chats. Walks outside. Drive-by drop-offs and visits. Small quaran-team circles of connection.
Don’t you find, there’s a crowd in your mind and heart, even if you’re alone? Voices from the past. Personalities from the present. Your memory and your imagination populate life with folks that have something to say to you. Who have shaped your life. Influenced you.
Within that crowd, who do you choose as a leader? Mentor? Guide?
To whom are you listening? A crowd can be a mob. Or it can be a team and a community. Cultivate relationships that lead you away from the crowds that become mobs, and connect you to teams that form community. — Rev Gail
Meditations:
Walking into the crowd was like sinking into a stew – you became an ingredient, you took on a certain flavour. ― Margaret Atwood
I won’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose! ― Oscar Wilde
The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom. ― Osho
Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It’s being able to take it as well as dish it out. That’s the only way you’re going to get respect from the players. — Larry Bird
Two’s company and three’s a crowd, but seven can be an uprising. And the seven can become 70 or 700 or 7000 very quickly if the sense of being wronged is felt broadly and truly enough. — Michael Leunig
Challenge or Question: What word of kindness can you offer each day? Find at least one person you can compliment, praise, or thank. Try it again, every day, through Lent.
Beatitude Devotional: Wed, Feb 17 – SAW
WEEK 1: Scripture from Matthew 5: When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them …
Reflection on words from Beatitudes
Wed, Feb 17 (Ash Wednesday): SAW
To see. To be seen.
Today we burn palm leaves from last year’s Palm Sunday celebration. We burn away the innocent cheerfulness and euphoria — the ‘pomp and circumstance’ — of last year’s Hosannas. Truthfully, we may have a tough time remembering hosannas from last year — it has been a long twelve months. Symbolically, we burn away outer layers, veils and masks, and the external armor that hides us.
As we burn the leaves, we let go of something. We also reveal something.
The green leaves have dried and yellowed. They are only the memory of some portion of our lives that we’ve clung to — preserved for a year — now released by flames. In the flames, they curl and shrivel. Grow black and gray. Change to charcoal, soot and ash.
Today we gather up whatever is left, whatever didn’t go up in smoke. We scoop ashes. Combine them with the oil of anointing, and wear them.
Today is a confession. It’s a submission. It’s a surrender.
Today we bow our heads or fall to our knees, so we can rise again. Rise: known, named, claimed. Rise: beloved.
Oh, to be sure, we don’t become suddenly perfect as we confess. We’re as imperfect as ever. We’re as messy and broken as before, and also as beautiful and possible, as before. Yet we are also accepted and forgiven.
In this moment, we drop our guard. Look into the face of God, or ask God to look upon our faces. Doing so, we invite the experience of being fully seen, fully known.
Afterward, sooty leftovers grace our skin as thumbprints, crosses, or circles. We wear Christ’s fingerprints. Mark ourselves. Allow ourselves to be marked.
Thus, at our best, we are honest in these moments when we bare ourselves to holy Love. After all, what’s the benefit of hiding from Godself? We’ve been seen and known all along. The only ones from whom we really hide are ourselves, and maybe other people. God knows us, whether we choose to be known or not.
Yet it makes a difference, when we choose to participate, and to offer ourselves to the Love that sees us. Especially when we then turn toward the world, bearing the mark of being seen and known, and loved. — Rev Gail
Meditations:
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ― Confucius
The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. ― Meister Eckhart
Challenge: Look in the mirror. And with kindness, with compassion, meet your own eyes and tell yourself you are loved. If you have the chance, look someone else in the eye, and hold that gaze for 10 seconds, and at the end of it, tell the other person, “You are loved.”
Protected: Lenten Devotionals
Reflections on laughter as holy practice: themes from Luke and ministry of Christ
I commend mirth. — Ecclesiastes 8:15
A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. — Phyllis Diller
A child’s laugh should be
the butterfly wing,
the ripple-maker,
for all the world.
There are many children crying —
we hear them echoing
from news media.
It is time to pray
the change of the world
in children’s laughter.
— Maren Tirabasi
Questions to consider:
- Do you have favorite comics/comedians who are able to act in a prophetic way, stating uncomfortable truths, by using humor? What issues do they address?
- Have you ever experienced or used ‘gallows humor’ as a form of coping in tough times?
- In whose company do you relax enough to laugh? With whom do you let down your guard?
- When was the last time you belly laughed?
Songs about laughter:
- Jesus Laughing by Mark Lowry & the Martins (country Gospel)
- They All Laughed by Sarah Holland (musical by Gershwins)
- Live Laugh Love by Clay Walker (country)
- The Laugh of Recognition by Over the Rhine (country)
- Nancy (with the Laughing Face) by Frank Sinatra (croon/ballad)
- Make ‘Em Laugh performed by Donald O’Connor (from musical: Singin’ In the Rain, sampled from Cole Porter’s song Be A Clown)
- Laughter In the Rain by Neil Sedaka (pop)
- Laughter Lines by Bastille (rock)
Holy Humor
Satire, or any sort of humor for that matter, is tough to do right. … using humor as a prophetic, yet disarming, method for sharing with vulnerability, challenging the powerful, and tearing down idols. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses on this — from the prophets, to Chaucer, to Swift. Jesus too was a brilliant humorist, with a penchant for hyperbole—planks in the eye, camels through the eyes of needles, straining gnats and swallowing camels. (I love that God seems to find camels especially comical.) — Rachel Held Evans
It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart. — Martin Luther King Jr
I developed a sense of humor to protect myself from abuse and jeering. I learned to roll with the punches. There’s nothing like humor to help you do that. There’s a line in Plan B that “laughter is carbonated holiness.” Always my salvation was laughter–laughing with friends, with girlfriends, laughing in the dark. The name of my first book was Hard Laughter, about trying to keep one’s sense of humor and one’s head above water in extreme crisis, which at that time was my father’s brain cancer. So I’m not sure how much humor the hardship has given me. But it turned out that when hardships came, the sense of humor of my friends, and of my own, saved the day.— Anne Lamott
The Bible is funny. But it’s not a gag type of funny like Lucille Ball. The humor we experience in the Bible is more of a meeting of the tragic and the absurd. It’s a can’t-stop-laughing-at-a-funeral-because-the-honest-weight-of-our-mortality-is-too-much type of funny. It’s the slightly self-effacing type of funny we get to when we’re willing to see how absurd we are. The Bible offers us an “ouch” type of funny, an honest funny. — Nadia Bolz-Weber
If Christ laughed a great deal, as the evidence shows, and if he is what he claimed to be, we cannot avoid the logical conclusion that there is laughter and gaiety in the heart of God. [and] There are numerous passages … which are practically incomprehensible when regarded as sober prose, but which are luminous once we become liberated from the gratuitous assumption that Christ never joked. … Once we realize that Christ was not always engaged in pious talk, we have made an enormous step on the road to understanding —Elton Trueblood
A master storyteller would never forsake humor as a means to reach an audience. Jesus, who spent much of his ministry breaking down barriers between people, knew that humor does exactly this. Humor disarms and unites; it sets people at ease and leaves them receptive to the speaker’s message. — Father Tim
The opposite is also true, of course: if Jesus wept, surely he laughed. — Jennifer Johnson
Having mentioned the problems in the Middle East, he turned to me and said, “And what is this about chosenness?” I answered that Jews believed God chose them for a particular purpose, but it does not mean we are the only ones chosen; different peoples can be chosen for different things. He laughed, and said yes, it is true, Tibetans think they are chosen as well. It seems strange to say that a religious figure’s authority is dependent on his laugh. There is far more, but nonetheless His Holiness’ laugh is striking. Having met my share of religious leaders, I don’t think any of them is as un-self-conscious and as devoid of a sense of self-importance. Every now and then, if feeling particularly mischievous, he will stick his tongue out to emphasize the ludicrousness of it all. It reminded me of a comment by G.K. Chesterton, that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. — David Wolpe (about the Dalai Lama)
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. — His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
Laughter Is the Best Medicine (excerpt – full article) — Lawrence Robinson, Melinda Smith, M.A., and Jeanne Segal, Ph.D.
Physical Benefits:
- Boosts immunity
- Lowers stress hormones
- Decreases pain
- Relaxes your muscles
- Prevents heart disease
Mental Health Benefits:
- Adds joy and zest to life
- Eases anxiety and tension
- Relieves stress
- Improves mood
- Strengthens resilience
Social Benefits:
- Strengthens relationships
- Attracts others to us
- Enhances teamwork
- Helps defuse conflict
- Promotes group bonding
On Laughter
A smile starts on the lips, a grin spreads to the eyes, a chuckle comes from the belly; but a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, overflows, and bubbles all around. — Carolyn Birmingham
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. — Friedrich Nietzsche
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. — Voltaire
He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh. — Qu’ran
The moment of awakening may be marked by an outbursts of laughter, but this is not the laughter of someone who has won the lottery or some kind of victory. It is the laughter of one who, after searching for something for a long time, suddenly finds it in the pocket of his coat. — Thich Nhat Hanh
I have always felt that laughter in the face of reality is probably the finest sound there is and will last until the day when the game is called on account of darkness. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can. — Linda Ellerbee
Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy. — John Cleese