Meanwhile, in Verona...

A big wine event called Vinitaly. Dennis of psychology, politics, dogs, and wine fame probably knows about it.

Italy earthquake and family

As a few of you know, the far-flung Acts of Hope family has a few members in Italy. Two of them, Nephew the Younger and his Lovely One, live in the Abruzzi (a.k.a. Abruzzo) region of Italy, where a 6.3 earthquake just hit early this morning. Their town was not near the epicenter, though, so there was no damage there. As you have probably heard, the damage is severe in the city of L'Aquila, close to the epicenter. Nephew the Younger and Lovely One were actually out of town at a wine convention (both are in the wine biz and they live near Lovely One's family, who are vintners) but have of course checked in with family. Do send prayers and good thoughts to the people in the region of the earthquake. It was severe, and Brother of Acts of Hope says he and his Beloved even felt the tremors in Rome.

Palm Sunday foodie post

As they say under other circumstances, "it just happened." And it really is very simple.

See here for a French lentil salad. I just made some.

Believe it or not, I had never cooked with French lentils. But they were on sale in bulk at the food co-op, so I got some. I've cooked a lot with the regular U.S. brown/green lentils to make soup, and with orange/pink/yellow lentils to make dal (Indian lentil purée), but never with those dandy little French Lentilles du Puy. (Le Puy is a town in central France.)

Haven't served the dish yet (we eat our supper late here at Acts of Hope) so it is minus the walnuts (which I may or may not use, I tasted the salad and it really is fine on its own), and I didn't have green onions (scallions) in the house so I minced a little piece of a regular onion and it seems to work fine, especially since I had some fresh parsley, so the dish has green. How was that for a run-on sentence?

Two meditations for Palm Sunday evening

Two meditations for Palm Sunday evening

I wrote these meditations for tomorrow's Palm Sunday evening contemplative prayer at All Saints Episcopal Church, Greensboro, North Carolina. Someone (I can't be there as it turns out) will read these, slowly, on either side of a period of silence.

The meditations assume that those present will have been to the morning service and heard the gospel texts there, but perhaps they can speak to other people as well. You are welcome to use them privately or in public (with attribution if you use them publicly and have a printed worship leaflet, otherwise just use) and I would love to hear whether you make use of them or not.

I was going to wait till later to post the meditations, but since it is already morning in China and Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand I want our friends there to have them with plenty of time. Then on to European friends and then to these shores. Holy Week begins.

1.
Have you noticed that in the Gospels, in all those other stories we have heard, long before the Passion, Jesus doesn’t say “worship me?” Have you noticed?

Jesus doesn’t say, “worship me.” He says “follow me.”

Here we are in the gateway to Holy Week, on the Sunday of the Passion.

It is the Sunday when we remember that the people waved green branches to celebrate Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem. It is the Sunday when we walk in procession and wave palms.

But when we enter the gate to this week we call Holy, we discover that if we want to honor this Jesus, we must listen to him, and watch him, and walk with him.

Walk with Jesus. Follow Jesus.

This is a week of listening, watching, walking.

We will follow Jesus this week. We will try to stay awake. We will become impatient. We will weep. We will lose hope. We will discover Jesus’ faithfulness to us and to our humanity. We will grow silent.

“Follow me.”

2.
Only once a year do we remember the woman who appears in all four gospels and who anoints Jesus.

The story we heard this morning in the Gospel of Mark was probably the oldest of the four and thus the closest to the actual event.

The woman in this story has no name. We know her only as “a woman.”

Yet the Gospel author says, “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

We know the name of Jesus’ betrayer, Judas. We know the name of Peter, who fell asleep. We hear that this same Peter denied Jesus, not once but three times.

Yet we do not know the name of the woman who understood that Jesus’ life led to the cross, who knew that he was going to die, who demonstrated in her gesture the outrageous abundance of the love of God. This name we do not know.

“Wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

On our path of faith, on our walk with Jesus, whom have we forgotten? Whom do we need to remember? Whose actions, whose memory, will offer us a vision for living?

April 4: two MLK anniversaries and a third, with the Freedom Seder

The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 3, 1968, before MLK gave the last speech of his life. Photo: Ken Ross via American RadioWorks. He was assassinated the following day.


Today is the anniversary of the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.

It is also the anniversary of the "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech which he gave exactly a year before, on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York City.

Although I have posted the speech before, I post it here again for those who have not read or hear it. The link includes audio as well as transcript text. The speech is long but well worth pondering.

A good feature on the last year of King's life (the "Beyond Vietnam" speech, the Memphis sanitation workers' strike, et al.) is here, courtesy of American RadioWorks. It includes both text and audio.

And, with thanks to my colleague the Rev. Susan Redfern Spencer (also here), via Facebook, the note below from the Shalom Center and YouTube video:

On April 4, 1969, the first anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, the third night of Passover, hundreds of people of varied racial and religious communities gathered in a Black church in the heart of Washington DC to celebrate the original Freedom Seder. For the first time, it intertwined the ancient story of liberation from Pharaoh with the story of Black America's struggle for liberation, and the liberation of other peoples as well.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Seder and to address one of the greatest dangers ever to face the human race --the danger of "global scorching" worse than the traditional "Ten Plagues"-- The Shalom Center has initiated a New Freedom Seder for the Earth was scheduled to sponsor it in Washington DC on March 29, 2009. Here is more information on the original Freedom Seder and the New Freedom Seder for the Earth. (You can download the text of the Seder for the Earth at that last link.)