Easter is Here!

Dear Ones,

 

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen! ( I will post this again but I am moving my blog to a new website www.bishoprickel.com, please join me there!)

 

I want to thank all of you who took the time to join in the reading of "The Great Emergence" throughout Lent. It added a rich dimension to the season for me. Thanks to Bishop Rivera taking St. Mark's Cathedral through this Triduum, I was able to travel to several different congregations for Holy Week.

 

St. Clement's, Seattle for Maundy Thursday

Grace, Bainbridge for Good Friday

"Dancing in the Darkness" Good Friday, Commission for Emerging Ministries

St. Micheal and All Angel's, Issaquah, The Great Vigil of Easter

St. Columba's, Kent, Easter Day.

 

In those travels, at Grace, Bainbridge, I was blessed to get this poem, by Mark Jarman entitled "If I Were Paul" It moved me greatly and I offer it to you as my Easter gift to all of you.

 

Blessings,

 

+Greg

 

Consider how you were made.

 

Consider the loving geometry that sketched your bones, the passionate symmetry that sewed

flesh to your skeleton, and the cloudy zenith whence your soul descended in shimmering rivulets

across pure granite to pour as a single braided stream into the skull's cup.

 

Consider the first time you conceived of justice, engendered mercy, brought parity into being,

coaxed liberty like a marten from its den to uncoil its limber spine in a sunny clearing, how you

understood the inheritance of first principles, the legacy of noble thought, and built a city like a

forest in the forest, and erected temples like thunderheads.

 

Consider, as if it were penicillin or the speed of light, the discovery of another's hands, his oval

field of vision, her muscular back and hips, his nerve-jarred neck and shoulders, her bleeding

gums and dry elbows and knees, his baldness and cauterized skin cancers, her lucid and

forgiving gaze, his healing touch, her mind like a prairie. Consider the first knowledge of

otherness. How it felt.

 

Consider what you were meant to be in the egg, in your parents' arms, under a sky full of stars.

 

Now imagine what I have to say when I learn of your enterprising viciousness, the discipline

with which one of you turns another into a robot or a parasite or a maniac or a body strapped to a

chair. Imagine what I have to say.

 

Do the impossible. Restore life to those you have killed, wholeness to those you have maimed,

goodness to what you have poisoned, trust to those you have betrayed.

 

Bless each other with the heart and soul, the hand and eye, the head and foot, the lips, tongue,

and teeth, the inner ear and the outer ear, the flesh and spirit, the brain and bowels, the blood and

lymph, the heel and toe, the muscle and bone, the waist and hips, the chest and shoulders, the

whole body, clothed and naked, young and old, aging and growing up.

 

I send you this not knowing if you will receive it, or if having received it, you will read it, or if

having read it, you will know that it contains my blessing.

 

 

HOLY WEEK 2009

Dear Ones,

Yes, I did indeed "turn on the fire hose" on these last two weeks. And all of you handled it so very well! I am so sorry I have been a bit out of the discussion, but please know I have been watching and listening as they have come in. I cannot tell you how inspiring the posts have been. You have entered into this discussion with a depth I could not have imagined. What is probably most clear about this discussion is that a lot is not that clear. The Great Emergence, or whatever we might call it, something is happening, there is a change afoot. Perhaps more than anything this discussion with Tickle's offering as our catalyst has helped us learn a bit more about how to think, and not exactly what to think. I pray you have learned and grown and enjoyed our discussion. I hope we keep having it! I am already thinking of our next possible book. If you have ideas let me know.

 

For now, I hope you can let go of the intensive thinking on what is happening now and focus on the journey ahead of us on this week. In my sermon Palm Sunday I challenged those there to the following

"I would ask that in these first few days of Holy Week that you forget everything you think you know ABOUT these last days of Jesus life and instead of learning ABOUT Jesus this week, LISTEN TO Jesus and the events this week. Listen. "

I hope to also read in even more depth some of the fabulous posts here and to keep the conversation going .

 

Again, blessings in gratitude for your engagement in this little experiment,

 

Greg