As we enter these last days of Lent and move into Holy Week and Eastertide, it's important to become aware, not only of the liturgies we engage, but also of the ways we process the thoughts, words and inner musings that arise from our external experiences. This Sunday we celebrate what is called Palm or Passion Sunday. It marks the beginning of the last week of Jesus' life, his entry into his passion,  joy, suffering, final days and ultimate death and resurrection to new Life. This is, for many, an event that took place two thousand years ago. It can also become a metaphor of what we all go through in our lives as we stumble along in our everyday experiences........ 

What are the pains and sufferings you've experienced in your days, weeks, months, years and decades of life? What are the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes you've had to endure and how have you embraced these 'little 'deaths' in your decades of life here in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? What are the new births, beginnings, that you've been given to carry you through to new ways of being and doing? How have they enlightened your life and those of others you've known? How have you been reviled and condemned, celebrated and transformed, thus bringing New Life to yourself and others? 

Might this be a time, not only to remember Jesus and his life, death and new life, but also what it represents for you in your everyday life? Could it be that a new life is opening for you as you wander through your own deserts and difficulties? Might it be a recognition that no matter how difficult and disconnecting life can be, that In Christ, the anointing and blessing of Divine Presence, you can die to the old and live into the new?  Isn't the gift of life always available to us, no matter what the difficulty? Isn't Jesus' ending and beginning not only his story but also your story, my story and our story as we embrace everything to renew? 

Ultimately, Holy Week and Eastertide is a glimpse into the wonder of a Divine milieu that can always turn death into life, sadness into joy and loss into gain again and again and again. Let us then, in these weeks of remembrance, enter into the sorrow of loss and the joy of gain in new ways of seeing and experiencing the world. Let us see through the profusion of confusion into the new beginnings of a transformed Life. What do you say? Could you make today and everyday that day? ? ?

Blessings All Ways In Spiritus,

F. W. Rick Meyers +