While I was visiting Alaska earlier this month, I visited the wonderful Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.  It was a fascinating place, and we loved watching the seals and sea lions (and learning the difference), the seabirds, and the displays about the importance of fishing in the Bering Sea.

What really caught my attention, though, was a glass bowl next to the “touch me” tank — a bowl with a small colony of barnacles.  I’ve always thought of barnacles as sharp, hard nuisances on pilings and rocks — but a moment with a magnifying glass changed all that. 

The barnacles were wildly alive — opening and closing, and sending out delicate tendrils to sieve food out of the water around them.  They were not brightly colored, but the soft colors blended subtly into one another.   Their movements were not exactly coordinated (they are individual organisms, I think), but I felt as though they had some sort of pattern to their mutual dance.

I wonder how often I have looked at something and dismissed it as hard, sharp, and dead — and missed something beautiful and wildly alive?

Even though we are many weeks past our celebration of Easter, our brothers and sisters in the Orthodox traditions will be celebrating this Sunday, April 27!

The Orthodox tradition is rich in piety and liturgy.  I had the pleasure of worshipping at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in San Anselmo, California (pictured here), during my sabbatical in January.  My friend and I were warmly welcomed and we were touched by the beauty of the service, especially the music.

I bought their choir CD, and will take time to listen to it this Sunday — and send along our prayers for their sacred celebration of Easter.

Whatever else we have learned from the kerfuffle about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his impassioned sermons at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, it is clear that once a video is on the Internet, it is entirely out of the control of the person who is pictured.

We’ve been talking about podcasting (voice only) my sermons on our website, and I think that’s a good idea.  But I will confess to some worry about people who will misuse my words and misrepresent my theology based on "sound bites" taken out of context. 

Of course, I already have no control over my words once they are spoken.  When someone tells me they really appreciate what I said in the pulpit, I have learned to ask what it was that they heard me say.  Sometimes they report what I meant to say; sometimes they don’t.

But the Internet multiplies that effect hugely — and I will never get the opportunity to check on whether I have been understood or misunderstood. 

This is from a column I wrote originally for the Northfield News:

After any big holiday or holy day, there is always a kind of lull in the activity of congregations. Some of that is simple fatigue, I think – people are worn out from the preparations and celebrations that go with these special days. But I think we are more than just weary after holidays; I think we need some time to absorb the deeper spiritual messages that are part of all religious observances.

The reason that holy days are holy is that they remind us, in some important way, of the basic tenets of our faith. Holy days are not so much lessons about theology or doctrine as they are re-enactments of the stories that embody our beliefs about God (theology) and about God’s will for our lives (doctrine).

The poet Muriel Rukeyser put is this way: “The universe is made of stories, / not of atoms.” (from The Speed of Darkness, 1968). Every time we celebrate a religious holiday, we retell the story that goes with it. We may sing the story in hymns or anthems; we may recite it in litanies or liturgies. We bring forward works of art that illustrate it. In short, we use all of our imaginative facilities to invite the truth of that story into our time and our consciousness.

I once read that our muscles get stronger as we recover from exercise, rather than while we are actually exercising. I think the same thing is true of our spiritual selves: we grow stronger – and our faith becomes deeper – as we “recover” from our religious celebrations. It is only after the flowers have faded, the dishes are washed, and the religious items have been put away that we have time to reflect and be renewed by what has just happened. Perhaps our post-holiday tiredness is just as sacred as the holidays themselves.

Someone who read my description of our service last Sunday was uneasy with the idea of “blessing toothbrushes.” She couldn’t tell for sure whether we were serious or not about praying over the toothbrushes that our volunteers will be taking with them on a mission trip to Nicaragua.

We were serious – for at least three reasons. First, we recognize that this simple item – a toothbrush – can make a significant difference in the health of someone we will never know or meet in person. There is something satisfying about providing something that is so clearly needed.

Second, we recognize that donating toothbrushes is a way to participate in the mission trip, which is being sponsored by Interfaith Service to Latin America (ISLA). We become partners with our friends, even though we won’t be traveling to Nicaragua.

And third, we recognize that every time we pick up our own toothbrushes, we will remember that simple health practices are a privilege that we often take for granted. Our solidarity with our third-world neighbors has been increased.

So, yes, we were very serious in blessing the toothbrushes, just as in other years we have asked God’s blessing on vitamins, bandages, and medicines. God’s call to be servants of others can be lived out in many ways – sometimes as simple as donating a toothbrush.

In some churches you can count on the service going “by the book” - literally. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the Roman Catholic Missal, and the Lutheran Book of Worship all contain the prayers, responses, and readings that make up a Sunday morning worship service - every Sunday. Our church comes from a different tradition, sometimes called the “free church” tradition. Although our services follow the same general pattern from week to week, the exact words, songs, and prayers vary. When the planning is done carefully and skillfully, the service has a kind of unity, usually built around the scripture lessons for the day. Sometimes, like this week, it doesn’t.

On Sunday, the children of the church are presenting a musical called “It’s Cool in the Furnace,” telling the story of Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, and how they escaped death in a fiery furnace; it’s a story from the book of Daniel. The young people have worked hard, learned lots of songs, and are excited to share their talents with the congregation.

Curiously, the show has nothing at all to do with the church calendar, which marks this week as Palm Sunday. Our congregation, like many others, has a tradition of a palm procession, and our Eco-palms (grown in an ecologically and economically sound manner) are already in the refrigerator. It wouldn’t be Palm Sunday without a Palm Parade.

And just to keep things lively, we also have five members of our congregation who are leaving next week for a mission trip to Nicaragua. The Sunday School children have been collecting toothbrushes for the team to take with them. So we will also take a few minutes on Sunday morning to commission the volunteers and bless the toothbrushes.

Which brings me to the matter of “stump the minister.” Every week Lynn Rosetto Casper has a segment on her public radio program called “stump the cook.” Listeners call in with 5 ingredients from their refrigerator or pantry, and Lynn thinks up something good to make out of the combination.

Well, this Sunday feels like that to me: I have been given three ingredients (children’s musical, palm parade, and toothbrush blessing) and I am supposed to make something tasty out of the combination. I confess that I am still searching for the common thread that would make that possible.

The truth is, there isn’t a common thread in these events - and that’s even more true if you throw in (as we will) several prayers, the offering, and a few announcements. What will hold it all together is not a common theme, but a common community. These are the things we do in our congregation, and they often jumble together - not in a tidy sequence or a unifying theme - just bumping into each other on any given Sunday.

I know all of this is hard for the people whose hearts long for worship by-the-book; sometimes it is even hard for me. But eclectic Sundays like this remind us what treasures we have in the gifts of our members and friends, and that the Holy Spirit is just as inclined to work through disorganization as through liturgical tidiness.

I just sent off packages to my two grown daughters, each with a small silly gift from the Palm Sunday Duck. The PSD is not as well known as her friend the Easter Bunny, but she does get to come a week earlier.The tradition began with a joke between my mother and me when I was in college, and we took it up again when our children were small. It was fun to look through all the Easter merchandise and find the one or two things that had ducks (not chicks). Our collection of duckiana grew large enough to decorate one of our bathrooms with rubber-duck accessories.

But since I became a minister, there is another reason I send presents from the Palm Sunday Duck: Holy Week is just too busy and too solemn to do any of the bunny-dyed-egg-cellophane-grass activities. I will be taking communion to the homes of our shut-ins, attending the Maundy Thursday service planned by our Deacons, leading the Good Friday service, and reflecting on what to say from the pulpit on Easter that will communicate the wonder and mystery of that morning.

I don’t really mind that Easter has a secular “welcome-to-spring” theme as well as religious meaning. After all, Christmas is the same way. But I can’t quite manage to celebrate both parts of Easter at the same time. So I’ll keep welcoming spring a week early with my good friend the PSD, and save Easter for Easter.