liralen

Instead of our usual Maundy Thursday service, we had the local Sabbat come and take us through a Seder service. They did an excellent job with a printed booklet for all the bits and pieces of the meal and all the stories and questions and all the parts that we were supposed to do, including the singing. It was a simplified version and mostly in English, and the Hebrew bits were spelled out phonetically for us. I was surprised, a little, how much we had to participate, but the kids really got into it and that was very fun to do.

It was a wonderful way to celebrate the season, to be reminded of everyone's responsibility to free those who are enslaved; and that God wanted us to be free from oppression. It's a very basic tenant of Judaism and one that doesn't get passed on loudly enough, for me at least, to the Christian traditions; and I think it's the really big story of the Old Testament in many ways.



I'm tired of this Lent, it's been hard on the heart and body this year with all the death and illness, and I'm glad that spring is finally here, and Easter is Real Close Now. The service and the potluck after were really nice. The weather was weird, pellet snow and hard winds, and a gray cold day.

I spent most of this morning playing a bit with Jet, then getting my allergy shots and getting groceries so that I could make this wonderful Gumbo Z'herbes with kale, spinach, and flat-leaved parsley along with the usual Trinity and spices. It was zingy enough everyone noticed it, especially since it looks, at first, like nothing more than creamed spinach or something like that. The dish took most of the afternoon, but it was well worth the doing, and we kept enough of it for a few simple vegetarian meals. I love it on brown rice, and it's traditional for Good Friday, plus it just tastes so green.

I also painted sparrows and plum blossoms because I wanted to do so, and while I've been thinking about the cherry blossoms, they're still mildly intimidating to think of all those springy bits everywhere and how they attach to the branches. *laughs* It'll come.

incandescens was lovely enough to make me a really gorgeous informal Buddhist prayer beads or mala with the 27 beads of the quarter round rosary, so that I can just go back and forth on it. With her help, we designed it so that the two end beads are a different color as is the center bead, and the two sets of twelve to either side have three sets of four of each color, so it's really lovely and subtly different. I use them more as worry beads than prayer beads, but I may well learn a short meditation prayer just so that I can use it correctly. I have a jade mala, much like Jin's, but it's on a string that gets in the way sometimes. These are just on a wire that is very sturdy and strong, and it stays up on my arm when I push it up so that I can wash dishes or do other things.

In the mean time, it's just a good reminder that sometimes I have to just pray and figure out what needs to be done next instead of wishing or whining or whatever. *laughs*