Dear Friends,
Ancient practice has Easter morning worship starting with “Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, Indeed!” Yet the first Easter began more like: “What is going on?” “What is going on, indeed!”
On Sunday we will see old friends and people we don’t know as we gather for worship. One church I served had an Easter tradition of people bringing their pet parakeets to worship Easter morning and sitting in the balcony. There will be the traditional Easter Egg Hunt following worship here.
The question of how we welcome one another, friends and strangers, seems ever more apt in the country these days and no less so in our church. What Easter practices can we adopt? Extroverts, introverts, autistic, “normies,” in all our beautiful difference and diversity, wherever we come from on the planet, whatever pronouns we use, we will be welcome and welcoming at First Church on Easter morning (all in our own unique way), which will include all who come to share in the Heartfelt Cafe’s special Easter meal in the labyrinth Easter morning (everyone is invited!).
If you are up to it, connect with someone you haven’t seen for awhile and, if it works for you, perhaps make a new friend!
On Palm Sunday six congregations gathered together on Pine Street to begin making our way through Holy Week. While most people there didn’t know folks from other congregations, there was also a lot of delight as people saw someone they recognized and others met someone new for the first time.
On Holy Monday, there was a gathering in the Parlor with the Illuminators, someone from the Police Chief’s office, a photographer, people from the Denver Community Foundation and the Community Foundation of Boulder, students from Naropa, a reporter from The Camera, the E.D. of the Boulder Library Foundation – it was a delight. It wasn’t a meeting, it was a chance for strangers to get to know one another and become friends, people who are housed and people who are not. People shared their stories, ate together, and had to be pushed out of the building as it was getting late. A beautiful vision of a holy night.
What is going on? What is going on, indeed!
Keep tellin’ the Story,
Mike
If you have a chance, watch this whimsical musical production – I see in it the joke and wonder of Easter! Meister Eckhart says “God laughs and Plays” – well so do these musicians!
Here are the four takeaways from this week’s Loop:
- We will be strangers and old friends gathering together Easter morning.
- Re-connect and newly connect.
- On Palm Sunday, we began this by gathering in the streets.
- We continued on Holy Monday with a gathering in the Parlor, sharing stories, shaping community.