Friday Five: Royal Wedding

Westminster Abbey Admittedly the media attention directed at a certain wedding is a tad askew given the challenges our world faces, yet for some it is an appreciated diversion. I'm at kathrynzj's house, along with her mom and sister, for a pre-dawn pajama party complete with scones! And while the DVR will cover us if we oversleep, the participants in the actual wedding had better have someone to get them to the church on time. With kathrynzj's help, here is a Royal Wedding Friday Five:

1) Will you be watching? If so, is this your first royal wedding? Alas there is no time to watch as life in the key of change is moving waaaaayyy too fast these days. I've caught passing glimpses on teh interwebs of the dress, the kiss, the titles...and this will have to stand.  I sawbits and pieces of the first one as well.
2) The bride has chosen as her wedding cake a fruitcake. Where do you stand on this pastry? My husband assures me that it IS possible to make good fruitcake, so I will assume she is having a good one.
3) The dress code for royal weddings has not seen the same sad decline as that for most other weddings. If you could design your own royal wedding hat, what color would it be and what special decoration would it feature? Perhaps I could jazz up my own wedding hat...the one with whom I had such a love hate relationship almost a year ago.  It's lovely really, cream with lace, old fashioned, but it tends to pull off with every passing breeze and hug. Maybe a little color and....a chin strap!
4) Any chance the Archbishop of Canterbury is using a Sustainable Sermon (tip of the mitre to the Vicar of Hogsmeade)? What would you tell the couple were you offering the homily? I'd tell them to never forget to keep talking, try to maintain a sense of humor and remember they are still people (can you tell royals that?)
5) Believe it or not, kathrynzj is getting up early mostly to see the wedding dress. By the time this post is up, the world will have seen it. Did you like it? It was pretty, I liked it better than Di's, less pretentious.

ALTERNATIVELY: If you don't want to play this, and think we are goofballs, that's okay. Instead of telling us we're goofballs, why don't you tell us something fun you're going to do this weekend. We promise to get around to visit all of you eventually You are both far too lovely to be goofballs! This weekend is the big packing blitz.  I don't think it can be called fun, but it might be satisfying and it WILL make the realtor very happy to see all those pristine rooms.  And I live to make the realtor happy! I can only hope she feels the same.

Friday Five: Moving Towards Resurrection

Dorcas says: "Though I am from a non-liturgical denomination, I find myself longing for some of the expressins others of you may experience at this time of year. The same thing happens to me during Advent. At both times I am drawn to the symbolism of darkness becoming light, of longing turning to joy. One of my favorite thngs at this time of year used to be draping the wooden cross at the rear of our sanctuary with a dark purple velvet cloth and adding a crown of (ouch!) thorns--and what a lovely thing it was to see that same cross on Easter Sunday morning, draped in glowing white with a golden, jewel-studded crown added. Not being a pastor this year, I am missing some of the symnbolism I always tried to employ. I may find a nearby Episcopalian or Lutheran congregation to visit at some point, acually.  Meanwhile, today I am asking for your thoughts on that movement from darkness to light. Tell us five ways in which you are anticipating, or your life is moving towards light, joy, hope--new things: new ideas, new hobbies, new people...and so on."

• One of the things that we have been so longing for in the cold, dark North, this year especially, are some signs of Spring.  It has been a very long Winter, and a hard one for many people, and with it has come a lot of darkness of spirit as well as the literal darkness of this season. I am happy to report that there appear to be some very real signs that we are coming into the light! The robins are back and are fat and sassy as they root around in the thawing yards for something good to eat as well as beginning to look for things to nest with.  The little green shoots are beginning to peep out in the warm places next to the house where the sun shines longest.  The trees have lost their stark winter look and have that blurry edge that tells us there are buds about to happen. The days are longer, and even when it snows (which it still will do, yes even in April) it's not long before it melts away.  Today was the first official "no-coat" day in which I went off to work in only my hoodie...brave me!
• I've had the opportunity to preach a couple times this Lent, and have been thinking about what happens when people were encountered by Jesus and all the various ways that he brought new life to those who met him...Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the blind man, Lazarus, to name just a few. 
• I've been thinking about all the changes in my own life...those that have been and those to come.  I spent last weekend cleaning (more like excavating) through the dressers and closets of a room that hadn't really seen much action on that front in quite some time.  It was kind of like a walk back through history with lots of  the attendant emotions. Although it's not always easy, it's really good to purge all that old stuff. It moves out some things to make space to let some light in.   It reminds me too, of how much more light is in my life now than there has ever been, of just how very much I have to be grateful for. Even the darkness these days is not as dark as in some of those times I'm looking back on.  God has blessed me greatly.
• There is movement afoot. Change is coming, big change that I can't say a lot about at this point.  But I am hopeful that it will be all about light and joy and the movement of God's spirit in a new way in our lives.
• There is the light at the end of the tunnel for the house projects.  This is truly a good and wonderful thing. We are down to one ceiling remaining to be painted and one toilet yet to be installed.  Then it's clean it and spiff it and we are DONE! External motivation is a good thing sometimes.  A bright and pretty environment can affect how we feel about our living space in the now as well as some pretty important things in our future, so it's a win-win all around!