"Out Like a Lamb" Grab Bag

on my reading list and my camera roll

It’s nearing the end of March (whaaa???) which means it’s time for a catch-all post: stuff that’s worth sharing but doesn’t warrant its own article-length post. I pulled from my recent photos as well as my reading list. Enjoy:

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This Sunday’s lectionary text is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Diana Butler Bass recently preached on this text and offered some exciting and provocative thoughts about Lazarus’s sister Mary, whom she called Mary the Tower. (Welcome, by the way, to folks who joined the Blue Room by way of The Cottage—I’m very grateful for DBB’s recent recommendation!)

Anyway, I recently got Casey Wait’s powerful rendering of Mary the Tower hung in my study at church. I loooove her:

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Speaking of art by friends, I was installed as associate pastor at Trinity two weekends ago, and in celebration, a wonderful soul sister made me this needlepoint inspired by a favorite Indigo Girls song. “If the weather holds, we’ll have missed the point; that’s where I need to go.”

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When your friend knows just what to say on a tough day. Thanks K.

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If I’m quick enough on the draw tomorrow evening when registration opens, I’ll be running a 5K every hour for 24 hours this fall. (Or as many as I want to do, which makes this low-key, high-foolishness race very appealing. Plus you can wear costumes.)

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For a variety of personal and pandemic-related reasons, I’m doing a lot of reading about grief. That may sound depressing but I find it oddly… energizing? Mari Andrew helps me think about grief as an expression of aliveness:

Singing in the dead of night

The word sadness calls to mind images of crying or moping around aimlessly while listening to the Magnetic Fields, but we all know that sadness can be expressed in so many other ways. The origin of ‘sad’ comes from the Old English sæd which means “full”—it’s where we get our words satisfied and sated.

When I think about sadness as fullness, it reminds me that to be the most alive person who has ever lived means allowing sadness to fill me to the brim…

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This aliveness is a helpful antidote to the numbness that can set in, individually and collectively. There’s so much hard stuff going on, it’s understandable to want to check out. How do we keep from doing that, while not getting sucked under by the constant swirling riptides of misery and injustice in the world? (I’m really asking!) 

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One way is through therapy, though it’s not for everyone or every situation:

Maybe You Don’t Need to Talk to Someone

(P.S. health care access is hugely unequal, especially when it comes to mental health.)

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Another way we cope is through understanding How to Build a Healthy Brain, currently on my bedside table. (Fun fact: the author was a contestant on the Great British Bake Off.) 

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When I’m tempted to take life too seriously: Baxter, the cat in the hat.

Are you still learning how to people again? Here are some conversational shortcuts and prompts.

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Two slides from a recent training I attended:

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Masha Gessen talks cogently about trans rights and identity. Please read and consider with an open heart and mind. People I love—perhaps people you love—are suffering under the raft of bills sweeping across the country. People just want to be themselves. Struggling to understand? Would you like to talk more? I’m here.

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I love my Blue Room community. After a recent post mentioning my affection for tea, a reader sent me some of her favorites:

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And finally, one of the most hopeful things I’ve read recently. Thank you Rebecca Solnit:

A monastic once told me renunciation can be great if it means giving up things that make you miserable.

This vision, I think, is what has been missing when we talk about the climate crisis — and how we should respond to it.

Much of the reluctance to do what climate change requires comes from the assumption that it means trading abundance for austerity, and trading all our stuff and conveniences for less stuff, less convenience. But what if it meant giving up things we’re well rid of, from deadly emissions to nagging feelings of doom and complicity in destruction? What if the austerity is how we live now — and the abundance could be what is to come?

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What I’m Up To

• We had a wonderful Zoom conversation last night with Sarah Scherschligt about the pandemic—griefs and lessons, what we bring with us and what we leave behind. Paid subscribers will receive the recording and list of resources in Monday’s bonus post. Please check out Sarah’s lovely book, God Holds You: A Pandemic Chronicle.

• The Crown and Anchor is open for discussion of the most recent Ted Lasso episode! And I wrote about Ted Lasso’s kindred cousin, Shrinking, for paid subscribers the other day.

• The wonderful Patrice Gopo is my guest on this week’s Blue Room podcast, talking about hope and story.

• And speaking of podcasts, I was a guest on the Food and Faith podcast.

Steady on.