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Wednesday Wanderings

A little journey through this topsy-turvy journey of joys and sorrows and hopes and dreams with plenty of grace from God along the way.

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This weekend (August 15/16), we will not only recognize, but celebrate, Mary, Mother of our Lord. One way she continues to impact our worship life is her Magnificat, the song of praise that emerges in Scripture while she’s visiting her cousin, Elizabeth, in Luke 1. My favorite setting of it comes from our treasured Holden Evening Prayer. This was composed by Marty Haugen, a rather prominent musician in Lutheran and Catholic circles (in fact, he’s responsible for the settings of “Healer of Our Every Ill,” “We Walk by Faith,” and “All Are Welcome,” among many others, in our Evangelical Lutheran Worship red hymnal). Holden Evening Prayer was brought to life by Haugen amidst the snowy landscape of Holden Village, a contemplative retreat center, in Washington in the mid-1980s. The collection of songs has been sung by numerous communities of faith throughout this country and around the world ever since. And although it is often brought to life during Lent, the message applies throughout the year:

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It has become an artform in of itself: the children’s sermon (or if you want to call it children’s time, children’s moment, or whatever we attempting-to-be cool churches wish to call it now to make it more inviting, I suppose). Entire books have been written about it. Seminary preaching classes will spend multiple sessions on it. We try to make it interesting enough for the children that they actually get something out of it, while also attempting to ensure a care-free laid-back nature to it, so that they may actually believe church isn’t supposed to be intimidating with the other high-and-mighty adults in a big room worshiping a high-and-mighty God. Safe to say, we’re still trying to figure this artform out, and not make it about satisfying the other…more life-experienced children-in-the-eyes-of-God in the big room.

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This past week, our Roman Catholic siblings in Christ made a bit of a churchy splash among us of the clergy sort, as numerous Bishops in the United States put forth new policies regarding funerals for their respective dioceses (equivalent to our geographical synods in our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). The links to the full text of the letter explaining the policies (with a YouTube video) and an article from the National Catholic Register are included below, but a few highlights:

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Today (July 22), the wider church celebrates Mary Magdalene, one of whom we children of God have not always honored and learned from, let alone celebrated as much as we could have over the generations. Instead, she has been vilified and her integrity compromised along the way, not just because of Da Vinci Code aftermaths, but numerous other instances as we humans attempted to add some extra reality television-like drama to individuals thousands of years ago. Regardless, today, the church celebrates Mary Magdalene, as well we should.

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Usually it’s the tune that sticks with me, whether it be hymns or even those Disney songs that our younger children prefer (for some reason), so much so that it seems as if it cannot escape me for days on end. But every once in a while, the words will lay hold of me just as much as the music. For some reason, it happened recently with “For the Fruit of All Creation” (ELW #679), specifically in the third and final verse: