Dear Five O' Clock Friends,
Sometimes you just need to slow down. Sometimes you just need to pare down. Lent is slow down kind of season. A time to clear away. A time to make space. A time to pare away to the bone. That's what we've been doing at Live at Five this month. Paring away. A bare-bones approach to worship.
We're focusing on the essentials--hearing together our shared story, spending time in song and silence, praying in the soft light of the late afternoon. You'll notice our usually lively worship has taken on a different key. Our lenten worship begins with a simple chant--Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom--either sung or said. We sing fewer songs. We spend more time in silence. We close each service not with a blessing but with a prayer--a solemn prayer--over the people. And then we depart in silence.
One of my favorite lenten songs is Tom Conry's "Ashes to Ashes". It starts like this:
We rise again from ashes,
from the good we've failed to do.
We rise again from ashes,
to create ourselves anew.
If all our world is ashes,
then must our lives be true,
an offering of ashes, an offering to you.
Every time we sing this song together, I'm reminded that my failures, my shortcomings, my lapses are not the end of the story. And neither are our failures and disappointments the end of our shared story. And so I pair this song we sing each lent with a prayer poem by Walter Brueggemann. Perhaps tomorrow--the second Wednesday of Lent--you will pray it with me:
This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes---
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
of more war casualties, more violence, more cynicism;
we ourselves are ashes to ashes,
dust to dust;
we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around
on our tongues....
On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen ways to you--
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we with for the Risen One who comes soon.
from Prayers for a Privileged People 27-28.
Susan +
Sometimes you just need to slow down. Sometimes you just need to pare down. Lent is slow down kind of season. A time to clear away. A time to make space. A time to pare away to the bone. That's what we've been doing at Live at Five this month. Paring away. A bare-bones approach to worship.
We're focusing on the essentials--hearing together our shared story, spending time in song and silence, praying in the soft light of the late afternoon. You'll notice our usually lively worship has taken on a different key. Our lenten worship begins with a simple chant--Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom--either sung or said. We sing fewer songs. We spend more time in silence. We close each service not with a blessing but with a prayer--a solemn prayer--over the people. And then we depart in silence.
One of my favorite lenten songs is Tom Conry's "Ashes to Ashes". It starts like this:
We rise again from ashes,
from the good we've failed to do.
We rise again from ashes,
to create ourselves anew.
If all our world is ashes,
then must our lives be true,
an offering of ashes, an offering to you.
Every time we sing this song together, I'm reminded that my failures, my shortcomings, my lapses are not the end of the story. And neither are our failures and disappointments the end of our shared story. And so I pair this song we sing each lent with a prayer poem by Walter Brueggemann. Perhaps tomorrow--the second Wednesday of Lent--you will pray it with me:
This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes---
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
of more war casualties, more violence, more cynicism;
we ourselves are ashes to ashes,
dust to dust;
we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around
on our tongues....
On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen ways to you--
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we with for the Risen One who comes soon.
from Prayers for a Privileged People 27-28.
Susan +
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