Christ is risen and your resurrection stories
Image: Life-New Life by Corita Kent - Source
Dear friends,
Thank you for walking together this Holy Week with our annual Retrieve Lament series. It’s been a gift to introduce each guest to you and to hear how you’ve welcomed their stories. (Note: I apologize that the comment feature hasn’t been working. I’m trying to fix that! On the upside, I was happy to be a moderator as you sent your thoughtful notes through me to each other.)
Easter Sunday kicks off a week in the liturgical calendar known as the Easter Octave and a seven-week festival called Eastertide or The Great Fifty Days. Each day for the first eight days of Eastertide I publish one Daybook Meditation with daily scripture reading and prayer plus a video that celebrates new life and beauty in a variety of ways. (For example, here’s the video I featured today.) After the first eight days of Eastertide, I post one new meditation each Sunday with art, daily scripture readings for the week, prayer, and a song playlist I’ve curated for us. If you’re not currently a Daybook Meditations subscriber, we’d love to have you join us!
One of my greatest hopes is to encourage all of us to lean into the celebration of ALL FIFTY DAYS of the season. During Lent, the phrase retrieve lament captures me through the words of Rilke. During the Great Fifty Days of Easter, it's the lovable contrarian Wendell Berry exhorting my imagination with two words (plus many more): Practice Resurrection.
Using Wendell Berry’s poem to help us keep paying attention to resurrection, we keep an Eastertide tradition at A Sacramental Life by sharing snapshots of all the ways we practice resurrection during Eastertide. Each photo story you share represents a moment (or more) you've made "the deliberate decision to believe in and participate in resurrection life." (Eugene Peterson)
To get the photo-sharing party started, I’ve created an 8-day Instagram challenge for the first week of Eastertide. Use the prompts in the photo above as simply or creatively as you’d like, add the hashtag #practiceresurrection2021 and tag me @a_sacramental_life!
Can’t wait to celebrate NEW LIFE together this week, friends! May you know new life, peace, and hope today, tomorrow, and forever.
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!
Tamara
p.s. In previous years, we've celebrated the Great 50 Days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday (aka, Eastertide) with a series I've dubbed Practice Resurrection after the Wendell Berry poem. All of those stories and more are archived on our Resurrection Stories page.