I have not been so faithful about writing weekly during Lent. I had grand aspirations. My hope was to write the whole series before Lent began and schedule the posts to ensure this series actually got finished!! But, sadly that didn’t happen, and life did happen. So here we are, a series half finished and Lent on its way out. Oh well, I guess.
But this week is a week commonly referred to by Christians as Holy Week. A specially sacred time set apart (holy) to remember the myths of our traditions and meditate on how they apply to our lives.
Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday.
For weeks we have reflected, fasted, prayed, served. We have slowed down, quieted down, made room.
This week we remember deeply.
We remember Passover, when God led the Israelites out of slavery and bondage in Egypt.
Remember Jesus’ final Passover meal, when he remembered, celebrated, and taught his friends that God’s salvific and redemptive work did not end in Egypt.
Remember the day Jesus was arrested as a rabble-rouser, as a troublemaker, as a threat to the state. Jesus’ followers claimed that he was the messiah, the king of the Jews, come with power and a sword to bring deliverance from the Romans! Passover had long been a remembrance of deliverance and a hope for deliverance. The Romans knew Passover was the ideal time for a reformer to rise up among huge crowds and excite them to rebellion against the authorities. Thus, they were on strict lookout. Jesus was a threat. The prefect Pontius Pilate dealt with political threats swiftly and without remorse. Jesus was no different.
We remember the day that Jesus died for love, the day when the powers of greed, selfishness, and pride arrested this man of love. Remember the day when he did not back down from his message of redemption and radical acceptance. Even unto death, he did not forsake God’s love and truth. As he hung on the cross, his oppressors mocking, still he loved them. This image of God loved even unto death.
We remember darkness. Remember sadness. Remember grief. Acknowledge the darkness, sadness, and grief in our lives and in our world. Acknowledge all the ways that we kill Christ over and over and over in our thoughts and in our words, in what we have done and in what we have failed to do.
This week, we see darkness. We feel darkness. We remember darkness. We welcome darkness. Pain is not bad, and we will not run from it.
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On Sunday, Palm Sunday, we celebrated. We celebrated Jesus entering the holy city, the capitol, to the welcome of a king. We celebrated joyfully and welcomed Christ into our lives.
Tomorrow, the crowd will shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Historical accuracy aside, I am concerned with what we can learn from this story, what this story teaches us about who we are.
This story speaks to the ever-changing nature of humanity. We shout loud hosannas one day, only to crucify God the next.
We march for justice one day, only to go home and yell at our children.
We cook at soup kitchens one day, only to drive past the homeless the street corner the next.
We welcome Christ in so many wonderful ways, but forget to keep Him with us. We welcome Christ, and then in small and simple ways, crucify him over and over again.
We are not faithful. We are not steady. We are not consistent.
But God is.
God IS faithful.
God IS steady.
God IS consistent.
And more than that - God’s LOVE is faithful, steady, consistent.
And that’s what next Sunday is about - Easter. Easter says that no mater how bad it gets, no matter how dark, no matter how hateful - love and life will reign victorious. We killed this Christ, and he rose again, exalted on high. He rose to even greater power. He rose and gives us another chance to welcome him. On Sundays we welcome. During the week, we so often fall short and crucify him.
We are not faithful, but God is faithful. God’s love abides whether we are welcoming him or crucifying him. God loves us wherever we are on the journey. This is a cyclical journey, not a linear one. We will welcome and crucify Christ many times over the course of our lives. We will never get it right. But God will love us through our weak human efforts. And God will love those who are hurt by our lack. Sunday will always come. Jesus will rise victorious, ready for us to welcome him into our hearts and homes, ready to give us another chance.
On the Sundays of our lives, we are joyful and triumphant in our welcome of Christ and our proclamation of Love. On the Thursdays and Fridays of our lives, we kill the Christ and mourn for the darkness of our world. But all hope is not lost, because Sunday will always come back around, giving us another chance. God is forever tries.
As a new member, I used to pray often that I never lose sight of how grand and glorious a blessing the gospel is.
Well, it didn't work. This year, my baptism anniversary totally caught me by surprise. I have not been reflecting all week about what baptism means to me or how this past year has gone. Nope, haven't thought about it a bit.
What does baptism mean to me? Particularly, what does my believer's baptism into the LDS church three years ago mean to me?
That day was the first time I really made a decision for me, regardless of what anyone else said or thought I should do. Some people told me I shouldn't join the church, that I didn't know enough, that it wasn't safe. I said I'd never know "enough" to commit myself to any church, and I was choosing this one on faith. I know I might get hurt, but I took the risk anyway, believing that life will hurt me wherever I got and trusting that God would be with me through the hurt.
And I have been hurt. Not necessarily by the church. Just by life. And I think God has been with me. Or perhaps God is truly with us whenever we think to acknowledge God's presence. Really, I believe God is everywhere, all the time. That's the kind of God I believe in. A lot of times we feel without God simply because we have failed to see what's right under our noses - plenteous provision.
Baptism. A forgiveness. A rebirth. A cleansing. Baptism means that my past has no power over me. My past before my baptism, and my past since. Baptism means that the best is yet to come.
Baptism. A testimony. A loud proclamation of what God has done in my life and what God will do. In the waters of baptism I publicly proclaimed my belief in the Savior God, proclaimed His work in my life, and proclaimed bright hope for what lay ahead. Baptism is a testimony of God's faithfulness - past, present, and future.
Baptism. A covenant. A covenant to always remember the Lord and the work He has done for me. To always remember how the Lord has delivered me and saved me. How the Lord has given me worth when I felt I had none. How the Lord has organized and been sovereign over the details of my life. Remember.
Remember. Re-member. Come together, Baptism is a covenant to come together, with knowledge of my true self, with my God, and with God's people. At baptism I covenanted to re-member myself to God, and God promised to always re-member me. God promised to never leave my side. I promised to never forget God's presence at my side. How intimate and holy.
At baptism, I also covenanted to re-member God's people, to be present and vulnerable and true with the communion of saints. To take God's people as they are. To pursue authentic community, not just superficial "Hi, how are you?" This might be what I have failed most at. I'm not really a people person, or so I like to say. We're all people persons. God made us that way, to live in community, to live in relationship, to live face-to-face with other humans. That's why we Christians often describe God as a community - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - because that description rings to true to a reality that we have experienced in our lives.
For the past six months, I have been working in a Methodist Children's Ministry. Teaching children who God is, helping them discover God's character for themselves, sharing stories of Jesus, trying to answer brilliant questions, and honoring the season of Advent and Lent as a community. This has all been a joy. I have had the opportunity to research and think deeply about what I believe, who I am, and where God may want me. I don't think I'm Methodist, and that's okay.
I have loved immersing myself deeply into the liturgical calendar, which I'd never given much thought to in the past. I love the cycle of honoring seasons and seasonal changes. Our God is the God of seasons. Our world has seasons, how can we worship a God without or live a life without seasons? I love the liturgical calendar for the rhythm it gives me, the way it grounds and centers me to thinking deeply about certain subjects. In Advent and Lent, we have meditated on darkness.
In Advent, the world was dark and waiting for light. And then - light came! Just after the winter solstice, as light is returning to earth, we celebrate the birth of God's Light in our world! Then we had a short season of meditating on the life of Jesus and the things he did in a mortal body just like mine. What wonderful stories.
And now, we rest in Lent. We wait for Easter. We wait for spring. We wait for resurrection. We wait for God to bring new life.
We wait for baptism. We wait for April showers and May flowers. We wait for God to bring a cleansing on our lives and on our world. We wait as God does work that we cannot see, trusting that work is being done and that we will see the May flowers.
Spring is a time of baptism. Easter is a time of baptism. I now see why the Catholic tradition baptizes yearly on Easter Sunday. It makes so much sense.
You're the God of Seasons, my Lord.
Through summer and winter, through desert and harvest, though Advent and Lent,
You are there.
My Lord and my God, I trust that you are working, even when I cannot see.
Work in me, Lord. Work in me and work in my life. Let me be a tool in Your hands.
Bring life from death, and let me be a field hand to aid Your work in the lives of others.
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:19
God is always doing new things. God has been doing some new things in my life for several years now - always taking me somewhere I didn’t expect to go.
I began this blog as a place to recount my adventures as a young Mormon woman.
Then, I left the church, and religion altogether.
Then, God started pulling me back to something more, something new, something deeper.
Recently, God set me up as a teacher to Methodist children. Much of what I read now is from a Methodist perspective. I study Methodist theology in depth, digesting it enough to simplify it so first graders can understand.
Other than that, I read books authored by Baptists, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, nondenominational Christians - and I agree with all of them. I attend Jewish shabbat services, traditional Christian masses, energetic Pentecostal worship services. I visit God when I do yoga in the forest. There is no tradition that completely satisfies me. Rather, I visit and learn from many people.
Mormonism is my spiritual home. I do not believe everything the LDS Church teaches, and I do not agree with all of its policies. But it is my home. I did not choose it; it chose me.
Nevertheless, I am no longer simply a young Mormon woman. This blog is no longer about the life and lessons of a true-believing Mormon convert.
The Mormon waters are rough. I love the Church, but it is not all that I love. I experience and learn form many teachers. I want this to be a place where I can write about all the places I find God - not just the Mormon places, and maybe even not just the Christian places.
Because of this, I have decided to relaunch as “Sacred Sprinkles.” This is a place where sprinkles are holy and heaven is found in a bowl (or cone) of ice cream. God is everywhere. Let’s not limit God. Let’s believe that God will show up wherever God sees fit. Let’s learn from God everywhere - in churches, in synagogues, in mosques, in temples. God is not confined to our temples or our churches. God is sprinkled all over this great big world.
Easter. Spring. For as long as I can remember, this time of year has been my favorite. Maybe it's just because my birthday is this time of year - spring is the first thing I knew. Maybe it's Easter eggs and bright colors and cute chicks. Maybe it's the gentle warm breezes that pull us out of a crisp winter. Maybe it's new life and sunshine and redemption and hope and promises.
As a kid, I liked spring. Maybe it was bright colors, or pretty flowers, or buying a new Easter dress. Even when I was in the traps of my eating disorder and bound by heavy depression, I still liked spring.
But when I came back to life, Easter and spring gained a new significance.
Though I began treatment in the fall, I embraced recovery in the spring. A year later, I was introduced to the gospel in the spring. Another year later, I was baptized, in the spring.
When I found the gospel, I was in the midst of a pretty bad relapse with my addiction and depression. I can remember one afternoon, sitting on the floor in my room, crying and desolate and desperate to just feel okay again. And I thought about the things I'd just head about Jesus Christ and realized - it would be okay. It's wasn't at the time, but it would be. And I would be okay. The gospel gave me permission to hope, something I hadn't done for a long time.
And that's what Easter is all about, to me. Hope. Redemption. Easter means that life can come out of the ashes. It means that like a phoenix, it doesn't matter how crushed our lives are, how much it looks like it's the end. Because of Christ, it doesn't need to be the end. Because of Him, we can ALL find new life.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of freedom, and specifically freedom in Christ. What does this mean?
It's important to understand what Christ brings freedom from. It's sin. Sin is what chains us down and makes us slaves. Satan "is seeking to hurl away [our] souls down to everlasting misery and endless wo" (Helaman 7:16). As one speaker said in our sacrament meeting, "Satan is not your friend."
When we sin, we let the devil into our hearts. And when we sin again, we let him stay, have a drink, put his feet up, and eventually make residence - "he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance. Yea, they are grasped with death, and hell" (2 Nephi 28:22). And, he is sticky. He doesn't like to leave. If we let him into our hearts, he won't leave. We can't kick him out. We don't have that power. Then, we have his evil, lying, deceptive voice in our heart, tempting us to do evil constantly.
When Christ performed the atonement, He broke those bands. He released us from the shackles from the devil.
When we accept Christ as Savior, when we exercise faith, and repent, feel godly sorrow for those sins, when we know that what we have done doesn't match up to our divine nature and potential - He can cleanse us. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18). Christ kicks the devil out. He can beat the adversary, because the devil never entered into Christ. Christ, the perfectly righteous man, is the only one qualified to get the devil out.
When that happens, when the devil leaves, we become free again. We are not trapped by the adversary living inside us. We can choose again. We can move forward, choosing to do good.
The freedom that Christ offers us is not freedom to do whatever we want. It's freedom that allows us to "shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and . . . arise" (2 Nephi 1:23). It's the freedom that breaks the grasp of the devil and allows us to "choose liberty and eternal life" (2 Nephi 2:27). When God says, "Ye are free to choose" (2 Nephi 10:23), He means the hold of our sins has been lifted and we are free to run towards Him.
So let's do that. Since our chains are broken, let's run to Him, as fast as we can, choosing righteousness and obedience all the days of our lives.
A prayer in the Methodist hymnal includes this line, which I love: "Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Joyful obedience. Not grudging or spiteful obedience, but joyful obedience. Imagine what would happen if you thought of the "can't" of the gospel as "cans" - when you say "no" to something of the world, you're saying "yes" to letting the Holy Spirit fill your life up more. Don't be upset when you can't do something "fun," be joyful that you're saying "no" to the devil and "yes" to our Eternal Father.
"Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life."
Easter is the most important day for any Christian. Of course I'll blog about it. I'm a day late because my Easter Sunday was spent with family. If I was a smart blogger, I would have written a post beforehand, knowing I'd be busy all Sunday. But I wasn't exactly in the Easter mood a few days ago. It would have been a really bad Easter post.
"Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.
But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.
No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come."
Last week was a Friday. A really long week, where my world was shattered and I was left to look at the pieces of what I thought had been glued back together. I thought I was healed, and then last week happened. I won't go into details about what I experienced, but it was bad. That's all that matters. It was bad. I had hope that the Lord would heal my life, but I didn't know when that would happen; I kind of assumed I'd be in a funk this week, too.
I received a priesthood blessing (I get a lot of those) on Monday night for my anxiety. I didn't really feel healed. I had faith in the priesthood, but I couldn't think a coherent sentence enough to know that I'd feel better (I could use this opportunity to talk about the faith to not be healed, but that's a whole post all by itself). Tuesday was hard. Wednesday looked up a little bit, but I fell apart again that night. Thursday, I was dying again. I received another blessing on Friday morning. Friday afternoon, I left school to spend Easter week at home with my family. Saturday was average.
But on Sunday morning, the power of the resurrection filled me. My family and I woke up with the sun to celebrate the Son. We sang of His rising, His victory, His living still today; We sang of His leading us through life, we sang He "is the life that will never, never die." We read scriptures describing that morning, when women looked for Him but the tomb was empty. He arose! We spoke of His atoning sacrifice, how He took our sins upon Him, that He gives us victory, that He gives us hope. We lifted prayers of hope and thanksgiving for the gifts of family and new life in Christ Jesus. I was filled with hope and joy and new life. The Savior lifted me out of my emotional grave with HIm on Sunday morning, and lifted me up to joy greater than I could have imagined.
I know that Easter is real, that Jesus Christ, my Savior and your Savior, did walk this earth, feel every pain and joy we feel, and did rise from His grave. Because of Him, we have help through the Fridays of this life. Because He lives, we know that Sunday will come. He rose from the grave, and so will we, the spiritual graves of sins and mistakes and sicknesses, and the physical grave. He is our salvation. He lives and He loves.
