Mary Oliver says: Pay attention/Be Astonished/ Write about it so here it is: And a Little Child Repairs A family heirloom is shattered… Shards of legacy lie scattered across the tile A diaspora of remembrances The exquisite urn was thrown in anger A misunderstanding born of irreconcilable difference Terminated by misused power Force because expeditious As the combatants went to their respective corners They might have missed the child in their preoccupation Who silently and practically imperceptibly collected the fragments  She held two previously conjoined pieces to the light then gently placed them on a table adjacent to each other very close touching in spots As the “adults” returned to self righteousness Her tears fell into the jagged crack between the remains blessing the beginning of repair.                                                   ...

  Blessed be God who animates our lives and breaks our hearts open that we might anoint God with our deep love and devotion. AMEN If this is Lent 5 then Next Sunday is Palm Sunday and Holy Week begins. Some of us ask are we ready? Some ask ready for what? We know intellectually that Easter is around the corner; we just have to hold on. And we know in our hearts that this is when the wilderness journey gets even tougher. We think we may have done enough, prayed enough, fasted enough, and yet our lectionary this morning calls us to ponder not just a counting off of days until Easter, but to contemplate any glimpses of a fullness of time which we might have encountered and to risk embracing them. Our Gospel today reminds us that before death and before the Passion there may be an outpouring of precious tenderness to anoint resurrection life. Marking calendars doesn’t change us; staying in this space and turning toward Jerusalem with a deeper devotion and resolve does. And so I was str...