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Lent XI

Switchfoot. Standing here on the brink of Holy Week, I’m glad to be headed in to hear the music of Switchfoot in a live concert in Cincinnati, Ohio at The Underground. Since early November when Switchfoot released their newest album, Hello Hurricane, I’ve been playing it almost daily.

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Lent IX

Spring in Minnesota. I just came in from wrapping up the fifth round of interviews with seminarians who are completing their formal education and moving toward ministry. We held the interview at the Collegeville Institute adjacent to the campus of St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN.

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Lent VIII

Sunshine and Rain: I’ve been out walking in sunshine this late afternoon. And just breathing it all in. This week’s Hebrew Bible text from Isaiah reminded me of a short meditation I wrote five years ago after the “hundred year rain” fell in Death Valley and Joshua Tree, California. Today’s temperatures in the Twin Cities and the blue skies also reminded me of that amazing trip we took during Holy Week 2005.

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Lent VI

Standing in the den two nights ago my husband rubbed his hands through his hair, looked at me and said, โ€œHave I come undone?โ€ I said, โ€œWell, Iโ€™m sure you have. Listen to this. . . .โ€ I opened a book and read something Iโ€™d found earlier that very day. Stumbled across it really. โ€œLetโ€™s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite oneโ€™s best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the otherโ€ (Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, 2004, 19).

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Lent V

shining sun and skies azure
praying in time with my own beating heart
the smell of my daughterโ€™s hair
remembering the rhythms of work
soup for dinner
pumping weights and running three miles
listening to the lament of crows
(opening notes. . . of a requiem . . . for grief)

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Lent IV

Lenten Lament on Grief
Yesterday was the first day since Lent began that I did anything Iโ€™d call productive for work. Why? Well grief keeps kicking my backside. And all my other sides, for that matter. Iโ€™m attending to it. Iโ€™m not rushing to get back to things. But it keeps spurting out in surprising and unsettling ways. So Iโ€™d like to write an honest lament about griefโ€™s effects on me.

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