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I mentioned in my post on Friday the shape of this blog in the months to come, but I want to wait one more week for that rhythm of Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays to begin. For this Holy Week, I'd like to take a moment each day to set down some sort of reflection on the day's significance. These posts shall be short, I'm hoping more poetic than not, a way for me to keep the vigil of the season alongside you. Next week, the pace of exposition and story will begin, but, for now, this is my mooring.

I'm essay writing today. I'm baking unleavened bread. I'm asking what makes this night different than every other night. I'm sitting with this video by my friend, Debby Topliff, which features her visual lectio divina for Holy Week from the Gospel of Mark. I commend it to you, on this night that is different than every other night.

I don't have a poem today. I want to share a bit of my irrationality.

I bought a white candle on Saturday after I reread the parable of the ten virgin from the Gospel of Matthew:

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

I bought the candle because all I could think of was the five who did not have enough oil in their lamps, who missed Him when He passed by, who were not able to come to the feast.

So I bought a candle and I have been lighting it since Palm Sunday every time I am in my kitchen baking, writing, praying, because I've left it out as a sort of irrational icon, a lamp stand for the weary and the traveling and the ones who have already spent all their oil. I've set out a lit candle as a prayer for those whose lamps no longer light.

And this year, more than Scripture, more than written prayers, more than baking it out, this is what is keeping me faithful. This is what is making Holy Week holy to me. It's making me pray for the people I forget, it's making me tender to those who are slouching in their own darkness toward Jerusalem town.

Tonight, for Holy Wednesday, the Tenebrae liturgy, when all the candles are extinguished and the altar stripped, when we mark the coming death of Death, when the sanctuary is complete darkness, I need this candle here on my kitchen table keeping watch for the lost daughters of Jerusalem.

And here's the bit of irrationality: I'm not entirely sure of who they are. I'm not entirely sure whom I'm praying for. I'm just sure that they have run out of oil and maybe that was foolish but maybe they just ran out. Maybe they just needed someone else to hold a lamp for a little while.

So I bought a candle. And I'm calling this faithfulness. For this week, anyway. For now.

Meet Preston

Preston is a twenty-something once-upon-a-time conservative Southern Baptist from Texas who learned to read saints, cross himself, and move across the world to China, England, and Scotland. Since, he's been theologically conservative, oft politically liberal, but radically pro-life, a believer in sacraments and sacramentality, a sort-of Christian feminist, an idealist pacifist who also understands the need for civil defense ... and a handful of everything else in-between. He thinks of himself now as a haphazard and patchwork Bapto-Anglican, though he is becoming confirmed in the Anglican tradition. This blog is his repository of working this whole faith thing out day by day, bird by bird. His first book, Tables in the Wilderness, a memoir of God found, lost, and found again, is due out autumn 2014 with Zondervan.