Retrieve Lament, Day 26 with a time-share mogul, the Queen of Versailles, John Mark Mcmillan and the Prophet Jeremiah (+ suggested resources for Lent 2013)




"Once, ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent. Where can we find such customs now? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned.
That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve
the lament that we omitted." 
             -- Ranier Maria Rilke, from Requiem For A Friend
During Lent I'll share almost-daily meditations of Scripture, hymns, and art reflecting this time of tension between dying and birth.

Won't you join me?




March 14 , Day 26

Today's Old Testament lesson speaks warning.  In the middle of our current struggle to find the right sort of affordable, size-appropriate, Murphy family-friendly housing here in Austin, I am listening.  

 Photo collage of home-owners around the world:


Today show interview with David and Jackie Siegel, owners of the largest home in America:



Jeremiah 22:13-17, 20-23

The Message (MSG)
13-17 “Doom to him who builds palaces but bullies people,
    who makes a fine house but destroys lives,
Who cheats his workers
    and won’t pay them for their work,
Who says, ‘I’ll build me an elaborate mansion
    with spacious rooms and fancy windows.
I’ll bring in rare and expensive woods
    and the latest in interior decor.’
So, that makes you a king—
    living in a fancy palace?
Your father got along just fine, didn’t he?
    He did what was right and treated people fairly,
And things went well with him.
    He stuck up for the down-and-out,
And things went well for Judah.
    Isn’t this what it means to know me?”
        God’s Decree!
“But you’re blind and brainless.
    All you think about is yourself,
Taking advantage of the weak,
    bulldozing your way, bullying victims.”
..............................................................................

You’ve Made a Total Mess of Your Life

20-23 “People of Jerusalem, climb a Lebanon peak and weep,
    climb a Bashan mountain and wail,
Climb the Abarim ridge and cry—
    you’ve made a total mess of your life.
I spoke to you when everything was going your way.
    You said, ‘I’m not interested.’
You’ve been that way as long as I’ve known you,
    never listened to a thing I said.
All your leaders will be blown away,
    all your friends end up in exile,
And you’ll find yourself in the gutter,
    disgraced by your evil life.
You big-city people thought you were so important,
    thought you were ‘king of the mountain’!
You’re soon going to be doubled up in pain,
    pain worse than the pangs of childbirth.
Song of Response: Economy, John Mark Mcmillan

Suggested Resources for Lent:



                                                                           Source: amazon.com via Tamara on Pinterest



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    "Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east." Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland


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