the christian calendar on Landscape

…How still the Landscape stands! How nonchalant the hedge! As if the “Resurrection” Were nothing very strange!

When we turn toward Advent, the name on our lips is Emmanuel, God with us . So much in Christian faith relies on what the faithful actually mean when we say that name. Western Christianity has fo...

A few years ago, some friends suggested creating a wilderness rock garden as a visual reminder of the Lenten season. I loved the idea and continue to use it year after year. USING YOUR WILDERNESS ...

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. A voice cries: “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God Every valley shall be lifted up, ...

Christianity began in a culture where “desert” and “wilderness” were familiar environments, both respected and feared as the place where angels and demons might be found. In wild, desolate places God’...

At start of spring I open a trench in the ground. I put into it the winter’s accumulation of paper, pages I do not want to read. Again, useless words, fragments, errors. And I put into it the contents...

Reign and Rain down, Glorious One Salvation flows from your side Living water to our desert to our frail clay to our dust Creation flows from you New life springing up Hope and wholeness Budding and ...

The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you ...

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, Or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, Or weighed the mountains on the sca...

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory. Let me lear...

Leader: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place for all generations. From everlasting to everlasting, You are God." People: But in comparison, the days of our life on this earth are but a ...

“It seems, then,” said Tirian, smiling himself, “that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from without are two different places.” “Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “Its inside is bigger than it...

In a letter to his son, J. R. R. Tolkien famously wrote, “We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is...

By Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia, www.revlisad.com Prayer: Shall ONE: A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley sh...

Mount Calvary is the academy of love.

Leader: Come, let us be about our preparations for a new advent of love among us. people: The wastelands of life around us cannot shut out the promise of life-giving water. leader: Hatred and warf...

Leader: As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; People: the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the ...

Before we get to Easter, we need to linger: in the vulnerability of the basin and the towel at the remembrance and promise of the table in the struggle and betrayal of the garden in the shadows and sh...

A Digital Silent Retreat This spiritual exercise is from Laura Murray, ordained pastor, spiritual director, and TPW contributor. Laura is sharing a "Digital Silent Retreat" with us. We en...

The Need to Pray In light of the shocking Hamas attack on October 7 and the Israeli response, urgent prayer is needed by Christians for the people of Israel and Palestine. In numbers, 1,400 people we...

For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning - not home but the place through which we must pass if eve...

Reflection The television series Alone follows ten individuals who are left to fend for themselves and by themselves in the wilderness. Now, these aren’t everyday individuals plucked from Main St...

"Once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world."

“…the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, s...

Leader: Let us praise God, who gives living water, through which the faithful flourish. People: Like trees planted by the water, God, are those who trust in you. Leader: Like trees with deep roots a...

In this short excerpt from a series of sermons for the Lenten season, pastor and author John H. Baumgaertner shares this short poem about the Lenten journey: Opening our windows toward Jerusalem And...

In this season of Lent, O God, unsettle us. Increase in us that sense of gnawing that arises from the incongruity between our lives and the life to which you call us, and transform us in newness. Amen...

Home shall men come To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star; To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless...

Just as every natural event is the manifestation at a particular place and moment of Nature's total character, so every particular Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the ...

Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn Draw forth the cheerful day from night; O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born.