Weekly Links: Lent, Empathy, and more!

Some good reading for your Sunday afternoon....

"Vegetable Stock and Easing into Lent":

We haven't stopped running since before Christmas and it is already a scorching 90 degrees in the Rio Grande Valley. The fact that we are a week into Lent seems impossible, I'm not getting any cues from my life my world that say, "it is time to slow down," and making space for quiet meditation is the last thing I have time for. 

But I suppose this is part of why we have Liturgical seasons. I may never stop hurrying and the seasons in south Texas may always feel out of sync with the rest of the country. Maybe a few times a year I need to be told to how feel because otherwise I would continue to race tripping over my own numb legs.

"They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain":

The pain doesn't go away; but somehow or other, empathy gives the pain meaning, and pain-with-meaning is bearable. I don't actually know how to say what the effect of empathy is, I can only say what it's like. Like magic.

"Undiscovered J.R.R. Tolkien poems found in 1936 school magazine": ooh, look, look, look!  I especially love the Christmas one.


"Sex on the Silver Screen":

Let’s begin here: What we see on the screen is both fact and fiction. When it comes to nakedness and sex in movies, we sometimes lose the fact in the fiction. What we watch is a fictional story, but one that has been acted out in real ways by real people. This has important implications when it comes to a bedroom scene. To film that scene, real people had to remove real clothes, bare real bodies, touch each other in real places, and move together in a real bed.

"And We Created Luncheon, and It Was Good"- whenever Anne writes about cooking, my mouth starts watering. A sample:

Yesterday, because I knew I needed to be about my business in a timely way, I pulled a capacious pot from the soothing cool of my fridge, placed it lovingly on my stove, and turned on the heat. Inside was half a pork roast, cubed and succulent, and half a head of cabbage, chopped and mellowed with chickpeas. Soup, in other words, and golden brown rolls ready to be heated in the oven.  The soup came back up to the boil, the bread softened and warmed, and the aromas wafted aloft to the heavens, gathering us all together for Luncheon.

Hope the rest of your weekend is restful and good!
-Jessica Snell

Easter earthquake

I was just standing outside talking to some neighbors, when I started feeling slightly seasick. "Do you feel that?" my neighbors asked. And I realized I did, and it went on and on and on, a horrible rolling motion that made me feel like I was on a boat out on the open sea.

It was long, and then when we thought it was over, it started again.  And I said, "that was big, and it wasn't close," because when they're close, earthquakes are terribly jerky, and when they're far away, they roll. But if they're far away and they're small, you don't feel them. So something that easy to feel, with that rolling motion, had to be big and far. 

When I came in, I googled it, and came up with a 6.9 in Baja. Yep. Far and big. And then I thought, wow, it's weird to have been in SoCal long enough to know how to interpret earthquakes.

But my immediate next thought was the people in Baja, where it hit. It's only about 10 minutes ago that it happened, so I don't know if it was in a populated area or not, or how much damage it did. But now I'm praying for them on this Easter Sunday. Would you too?

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica snell