Friday, March 25, 2016

A Hard Lent




March 25 is the Feast of the Annunciation for Orthodox, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics. The story of the Feast of the Annunciation is found in Luke 1:26-39.

Mary said, “Be it unto me according to thy will,” and then, in the famous words of the Magnificat, she said, “My soul doth magnify the Lord…”
 
It is often difficult to say either or both of these things, or to mean them when we say them. The Spirit reminds us that our yearnings are resolved only in the Holy One, and our desires fulfilled only in His plan for us. 

Lent is our spiritual reset button. Our mortality is impressed upon us. Our frailness recognized. This is a time to submit anew to the Triune God and whisper praises for the comfort God speaks to our hearts as we struggle to repent. 

Ed Pacht explores the hardness of a Lent formally or informally observed in this poem.


It Has Been …

A hard Lent,
a thoughtful Lent,
a less than pious Lent,
with less time in church,
less formal prayer,
less meditative reading
than in other Lents,
but with a sharpened knowledge
of the weakness of the spirit,
and the frailness of the body,
and the shortness of the time
that one is given on the earth –
it is a Lent of sickness,
of myself and others around me;
a Lent where death is near
and several die around me,
where sickness in a church
brings changes that seem wrong
but have descended willy-nilly on it;
a Lent of laws that work injustice,
of discouragement and near despair,
of depression, but of hope:
for behind the negativity of life
there is the hand of God,
there is the gateway of the cross,
there is a pathway from the trials of this life
that surely leads unto the throne of God;
there is a will to good I cannot see,
to glories never to be seen with eyes,
to a presence seldom fully realized,
but never absent from a Christian’s life;
and in the hardness of this Lent,
in the midst of burdens I can’t really bear,
at the heart of all my unhappiness,
I give thanks:
for God is good,
His goodness never fails,
and even now I walk and dwell
in the arms of One who’ll never let me go.

-ed pacht


Related reading: John Donne's Annunciation

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Rayanne Sinclair's Flight Risk


Rayanne Sinclair's latest novel Flight Risk is a dramatic story of crisis in the air and on the ground set in Alaska in the mid-20th century.

This is a compelling story of committed love between a beautiful Nuxalk woman of the Bella Coola Valley of British Columbia and a manly bush pilot who grew up in Alaska. They meet during an aviation crisis and their relationship grows stronger as they face one crisis and challenge after the other.

As an anthropologist, I was especially interested in the excellent details the author provides about the native cultures of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. It is evident that Rayanne Sinclair did her homework!

The characters are well drawn and the plot moves quickly. The book is full of good news, especially for women who have reason never to trust men.

If you know someone like that, give them the book as gift. They will thank you one day. Trust me.

Alice C. Linsley


Other books by Rayanne Sinclair:

Page Turner
Beso Dulce
Steal Away