Ascension Day, 2024

Happy Ascension Day! Frohe Christi Himmelfahrt!

This can be a day of opening your being time to God’s surprising and intimate involvement in the world. Jesus ascends that Eternal wisdom might fills all thing.

Or it might be just a good day to take some time off and go fishing. I have enjoyed learning that in some PA Dutch folk piety, fishing was and is a traditional way to do so. Enjoying an outing in nature, fishing in remembrance of the early disciples, engaging in what Izaak Walton called the “contemplative [person’s] recreation.”

Or maybe not fishing, but some quiet activity that will help you lift the eyes of your heart to the place where Christ is, and listen anew to the Word from whom all things were made making things new.

I’m cleaning up this home-built boat to take out rowing soon with friends. Maybe we’ll even try fishing. First I’ll clean up the interior, scrape, sand, and re-finish the inside with linseed oil and pine tar. I’ve decided I like this better than varnish. And I’ve decided this involves pulling it apart a bit, and making some interior repairs.

Garden beds are filling with green onions, garlic, and snap peas. After this little spell of heat, I’ll transplant some heirloom lettuce, and direct seed assorted greens and root crops. I won’t mess around sowing beans and squash until late May or early June.

I’m trying to follow the moon rhythms and tropical zodiac signs this year more. I find it helps me congregate my tasks in a more focused period of time, thereby opening time and space I would have otherwise littered with jobs and worries. It leaves these times and places open to receive, to just sit and think more clearly, empty to carry you through still waters and rough currents, empty like the darkness of the new moon we just passed, empty to be filled and poured out.

Later in the summer and fall, I’ll offer some classes and retreats. These may include:

• Prayer and Working with Your Hands

• Fiber Hand-Spinning or Woodwork Retreats

• 4week series of 1hr “Visio Divina”, praying with 4 works by a single artist, in a single genre, or on a single theme

I’ll provide more information here once these are more definite. Peace to you!

Music on an Ascension Theme (Psalm 8)