Dear Friends,
Something readers of this newsletter probably don’t know about me is that I love to cook. In fact, all kinds of food topics have been amongst my special interests for my entire life. From memorizing Food Network schedules to learning more about cooking techniques and specialty ingredients, cooking has always been a preoccupation.
That being said, I’m fussy about very particular, often boring foods. I won’t eat spaghetti, I’m the odd millennial who doesn’t like avocados, and while I like popcorn alright, I can’t eat it without choking. Of all the foods I don’t or won’t eat, though, one of the only ones that stands out from my childhood is pork chops.
I really don’t like pork chops.
To be fair, I’ve probably had very few properly cooked pork chops in my life (sorry, mom), but I remember complaining about them all the time. My dad and at least one sister didn’t seem to like them either, which meant that my mother was met with nothing but whining whenever she’d make them. In fact, as a teenager, I remember asking her why she made pork chops if no one liked them.
“Because I like them,” she replied.
Oh, right. As much as she accommodated various preferences around the table (I only liked canned, french cut green beans, my middle sister only liked fresh ones; my dad liked peas, but no one else did; etc, etc), she only occasionally took her preferences into account. And we complained about it when she did.
I thought about the pork chops this week, or more accurately about the complaining, as I read the Old Testament selection from the lectionary, in which the Israelites complain to Moses about their journey through the wilderness.
“Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”
They were tired and hungry and resentful – and they were also probably very frightened. But this is still rather early in their story.
Poor Old Moses
Moses is such a special figure because so much of his story is high drama, from birth to death, all 120 years of his life. But those forty years in the desert, in particular, it wasn’t just that his life was difficult. His life was difficult and made all the more challenging by everyone else’s complaints. Moses had freed them from slavery and this was the thanks they gave him?!
I think it’s easier to empathize with the Israelites seemingly bad behavior as fellow-travelers when we reframe their frustration and whining as an expression of deep fear. Would they die out here in this wilderness, far from anyplace they knew, left behind by everyone they cared about? God may have been with them when Moses parted the Red Sea, but did Moses really know what he was doing? Was this really what God wanted for them?
How many times have you complained or felt annoyed or frustrated – maybe you’ve even thought you were angry with God – when deep down what you really felt was afraid? It’s safer to be angry or impatient then it is to be afraid, or to have others know that you’re afraid. But God already knows.
What are you afraid of? What do you want to say to God about it?
Mid-Lent Check-In
How’s your Lent going?
I am in a season of reflection, certainly. I am putting my life in order (which sounds more morbid than it is, but mostly just means a lot of notebooks). I am continuing to find out what work has been given me to do.
There’s something reassuring about the way Godly Play talks about Jesus’s life and ministry. There’s an emphasis on his discovery process. That Lenten time wandering and being tempted in the desert? That’s Jesus figuring out what to do next and how to be in the world.
This time of reflection stands in contrast to our understanding of Jesus as knowing he is trodding a preordained path.As much as we see all of these moments of clarity – think of the way Jesus speaks to Mary when she calls on him at the wedding in Cana to address a serious problem: they were out of wine. It’s not time, he tells her, before conceding to her will. In that moment he seems to have some notion of what his work is. But it’s not all certainty. He didn’t hold his ground for a reason.
Jesus regularly retreats, or tried to retreat, to reflect and be alone, and I think that is a big piece of how I am experiencing this Lent. It’s an attempt to retreat in a world that objects to such practices, a world that demands our constant activity. That activity turns us away from seeing ourselves in our identity as children of God, and instead roots us in worldly identities.
Which brings me to a lovely little book I’m excited about, out this April:
God Made Me from A to Z by Allison Bemiss
Allison Bemiss’s charming new book of faith-based affirmations ties messages about who God created each of us to be with key stories and ideas for STEAM activities, simple family devotions, and other opportunities for discovery. It’s designed to be easy to use at home, but also rich in resources that will have you returning to it again and again.
(One note that it does use exclusively male pronouns for God, but in the way we all know how to navigate in our reading and that, in tiny chunks of text, does avoid some of the awkward phrasing we encounter by avoiding pronouns altogether. Which is to say, I get it and it’s easy to mix up the pronouns as you go, especially since it’s not a book that’s necessarily designed to be read straight through.)
What else is grounding me this Lent or helping me prepare for Holy Week, which is nearly upon us?
Is anyone planning to use the new Storytelling with Shapes materials for Holy Week & Easter from Illustrated Ministry? I’m so curious about these - I’d love to hear about your experience with it on the other side of things!
This week my parish’s Lent devotional (which is linked to the book Wild Hope by Gayle Boss), is focused on animals whose lives are endangered by migration-related issues. In particular, it highlights the Monarch Butterfly and the North Atlantic Right Whale.
I particularly love this module because there’s a beautiful intergenerational throughline to Holy Week here. While this week looks at interventions like planting milkweed and other necessary native wildflowers to support monarch populations, in Holy Week, the monarch reappears in my materials via Jacqueline Romo’s The Passion of Monarca Migrante. If you’re looking for a new angle on the Passion narrative and the traditional Stations of the Cross to use with youth and adults, this is a beautiful option.
If this idea of creation care and migration are interesting to you, you can engage in a unique practice by ringing the fish doorbell! The fish doorbell is a Netherlands-based livestream that addresses a manmade problem: some fish who need to migrate up this waterway are blocked by an underwater gating mechanism. People watch the livestream and when fish appear, you can press the “doorbell” to let them through! Our modern lives create issues, but we can also solve them in novel ways. I wonder what conversations the fish livestream might create in your home or classroom?
Easter sales can be great to grab beautiful items for your home or parish on a budget (and heads up that I spend a lot of time on Catholic marketplaces because they know what they’re doing). Some of my favorites -
Be A Heart is having a 20% off sale. Look at their beautiful Good Shepherd wooden puzzle, designed for toddlers. They’ve also got some precious punch needle kits for your budding fiber artists, and cloth Holy Family dolls.
This is not going to be everyone’s aesthetic, but the Shining Light Dolls brand is very cute, they make a beautiful wooden eucharist playset, and maybe most importantly they have a fantastic array of free digital downloads. Plenty of it isn’t going to work in your context, I guarantee it, but if you’re into teaching about the Saints or need some quick coloring pages, you’ll find something here,, including some Holy Week activity sheets and a set for St. Patrick’s Day, which is just around the corner!
Anyway, let’s call it a day for now! Drop me a line with any pre-Holy Week needs and questions and, looking ahead, tell me what your favorite Easter candy is. My mother of the aforementioned pork chops, for example, will *only* purchase Just Born jellybeans. Essential things!
Peace,
Bird