Praying barefoot has become one of my favorite ways to pray. Most often I pray barefoot in the garden, or in a park, or along a sandy beach. These are pretty easy ways to begin. But over the past month I’ve been sensing the need to walk barefoot through the business area of my community. It took me a while to actually do it. It sounded like a great concept, but “what would the neighbors think”?
Resurrection is all well and good, but what does it mean for my neighborhood? That may sound a bit irreverent, but that thought kept running through my mind as I planted seeds for our garden. Over the past few years I’ve been exploring the idea of gardening with God and neighbor in mind and what it means to move from boundaries to hospitality in the garden…
There are a lot of big ideas out there about what we can do to celebrate Earth Day, ideas about how to get involved in the grand movements we need to pull our world back from the brink of self-destruction. Please don’t neglect the big picture! But as I reflected on this, I wondered what it would look like to make a list of Earth Day practices for the neighborhood. Here’s a short list of what I came up with – please share your ideas in the comments section on my blog. This list begins with the things I’ve done (1-5) and moves toward the things I hope to put into practice by the end of the year (6-10) – remember, stewarding God’s creation is a lifestyle, not a one-off event.
We’ve arrived at Holy Week. The grand procession is finished – misunderstood but completed. We think we know what God is up to, but we’ll miss the point repeatedly as the divine confronts empire in our systems and our souls.