7 Eastertide quick takes
What I've been up to lately: places, people, books, podcasts, music, links & more for your weekend downtime.
(1) an update on our friend Christine Warner
I hope that most of you had the opportunity to read my explanation for changing up the normal posting series here during Eastertide. Our friend Christine Warner suffered a near-fatal accident that led us to enter to practice resurrection through deep intercession for her life to be spared and to be fully restored to wholeness.
God has heard our prayers for greater, persistent healing in Christine's body. We're still praying and invite you to join us. You can continue to follow updates at the Christ Church website. You can still contribute to the fund to assist the Warner family here.
Thanks be to God! Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!
P.S., Here's a sweet video Christine's eldest son created for her in honor of her birthday.
(2) photos from Easter Sunday
I managed to take a couple of photos, but was mostly busy being grateful that the weather was somewhat springlike!
(3) books I'm reading
I'm deep into certification coursework to become a Spiritual Director. I'm about halfway through with graduation slated for May 2019. It's taken about a year to wear this role with some degree of confidence and I feel like I'm beginning to move on more cylinders now. I'm finding the reading full, rich, and time-consuming. That's part of the reason I haven't updated my What I Read posts all year! I'm reading a lot, but it's being processed more internally. I imagine one of these days I'll start having many words to say about it all, but for now, here's a current favorite.
- The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism by Bernard McGinn
- The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon - During Eastertide our church's reading group (Apostles Reads) dove into one of my favorite food-as-theology books, and then shared warm discussion during a two-hour dinner party. You can read the review I wrote several years ago after I was first introduced to this classic.
- Mending the Divides: Creative Love In A Conflicted World by Jon Huckins and Jer Swigart - I recently contributed a feature review at Englewood Review of Books for this 2017 IVPress release. You can read my review here: The Abundance of Wholeness, Completeness, and Fullness - A Feature Review of Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World
(4) photos from our Easter Sunday road trip to Madeleine L'Engle's Connecticut home
Our plans to visit home fell through at the last minute so Brian drove me to Madeleine L’Engle’s house (her beloved Crosswicks in Goshen, CT). We saw her Congregational Church and the General store her family ran for a few years. We also found a delicious lunch in Litchfield.
It was a good day.
(5) music links for songs & albums I've had on repeat the past few months (in no particular order)
- Pretty much everything from Leon Bridges - like this performance on SNL and, especially, this music video for his gorgeous song River.
- Every single song and video released by The Porter's Gate Worship Project. You can hear the whole album here: Work Songs
- Sufjan Stevens' newly-released single Tonya Harding. I'm so glad I heard the song before we saw the movie, I, Tonya. It felt like a prayer I could carry into the theatre with me. I wrote about the song in a best-of-2017 post for Think Christian.
- Speaking of Think Christian, I feel like the writers have been hitting it out of the park with commentaries on new musical releases in the past year. For instance: Calexico's Thread That Keeps Us - Music Without Borders by Aarik Danielson, 4:44 - Hearing Jay-Z's Confession by Chad Ashby, Open Mike Eagle and 'Brick Body' Temples by Aarik Danielson
- On the worship music front I've been especially grateful lately for Andrew Peterson's Resurrection Letters and Sandra McCracken's Songs From the Valley and Steadfast Live. This song from Peterson, in particular has been on repeat since Easter. Our wonderful worship leader taught us this song last week, and I just keep listening to it.
(6) photos from our kid-visiting tour of Texas
We're keeping the tradition of visiting Texas in April. We were a bit late to see the bluebonnets at full peak, but enjoyed the sunshine all the same. We made it to Denton to see Kendra, Fort Worth to see the newlyweds (is 2 1/2 years still new?), and to Austin to see Andrew, and a Lego session with our godson Emmett. We managed to be there in time to catch Andrew's comedy gig with the Moontower festival (thanks to the friends who joined us!). We also got to visit Alex in his classroom and Kendra at her church. (Ask me sometime about how I made a grand entrance to Kendra's church by sprawling across the sidewalk in the most ungraceful fall ever. Eyeroll....) We even had enough time to catch up with a couple of friends and still sneak in a get-away for just the two of us. A good trip with people we love.
Texas trip
(7) blog posts from the archives
2017 - 50 ways to Practice Resurrection during the 50 days of Eastertide ("Choose 1 idea or 50, but whatever you do, do it with gusto!")
2017 - Practice Resurrection 2017: send me your photos and captions! ("feasting is a discipline, too. We take in the good with gratitude and contentment without making an idol of the gifts. This requires us to depend on the Creator as much (maybe more so) as any other spiritual exercise.")
2016 - Practice Resurrection: Resist frenzy ("To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is in itself to succumb to the violence of our times.")
2015 - 7 quick photo takes from New Mexico trip ("7 New Mexico takes from the trip Brian and I took in March 2015. Spoiler alert: New Mexico is beautiful.")
2013 - What I'm Into Lately, April 2013
2011 - Tuesday is for Hospitality: peace be with you (" I never set out to learn this lesson, it seems to be happening to me without even my permission, an unexpected new layer of healing what has been so deeply wounded in me.)
2007 - Livingpalm's Blog (Long, long ago back when this blog had a different name and we used clever nicknames for ourselves instead of our first names, Brian wrote a sweet post about me. I don't ever want to forget it.)
Also: Quietly passed by the twelfth anniversary of my First post ever - April 10, 2006.
3 years ago
That time when Brian and I made a snap decision to get away to a deserted mountain cabin in New Mexico to get our last breath before he graduated seminary.
May your week ahead include true, good, and beautiful things, friends!
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