The preparations for Holy Week have begun in earnest. Yesterday our music director, Bianca De Maria, sang to me some of the pieces she'll be using for Good Friday, all of them hushed and still and achingly beautiful. Today I am preparing for Palm Sunday by working and praying with the woodcuts from Barry Moser's illustrated Bible. Moser's images are stark, formed from simple black and white lines, but they are still warm and alive, with real human faces looking out of every scene.
The Passion is full of drama, with trials and betrayals and terrible violence. If we're not careful with a story like this, it can send us into our worst cycles of behavior: blind anger, numb avoidance, self-damaging guilt.
Bianca's songs and Moser's images are inviting me into a very different place, an open space of great stillness. I'm discovering again why I need these forty days of prayer and reflection. It takes me a long time to become quiet enough inside to witness pain and respond with nothing but love.
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