All the Girls

All these girls. They have about ten minutes to shuffle awkwardly in front of the camera, and I have about ten minutes to make them shine. Posing and all that is not my usual game, but in this once a year opportunity that comes around every spring, I love to try to somehow show these girls, heading off soon into the big, wide world, how lovely they are.

Just a peek at some of these beauties...

Palm Sunday | When the Triumph is Missing from the Entry

When I was young, Palm Sunday was this weird, pre-Easter worship service that didn't make a ton of sense. All the kids got palm branches to wave around, and we talked about how Jesus rode into Jerusalem, hailed and celebrated for this crazy magical few hours as the king. But unless it was the first time you'd ever heard the story, you knew a few days later he was going to be betrayed, tortured, and finally crucified. So, the celebration seemed like a strange kind of party that as a kid I thought could not have meant much to Jesus himself. I always pictured him as extremely somber, and sort of sad while everyone around him was jubilant and, what seemed to me, kind of shallow in their adoration.

But for centuries the church has been remembering this somber and strangely celebratory beginning to the Holy Week, a week that has so impacted the world with it's events that it is still influencing and instructing even parts of culture that are not religious institutions. The recent film Calvary (2014) depicted an Irish priest and the events that took place in his small town of parishioners over the course of a week. The film was dark and gritty and not a little hard to watch, but no less so than the actual events that took place in that first Holy Week, and there was something impactful about the deeply human realities the film reflected. So as strange as this Sunday of celebrating a Triumphal Entry that really seems more like an anti-triumph is, there is something about it that shapes and informs us.

Henri Nouwen said this in his book, With Open Hands,

"When your life is more and more becoming a prayer, you notice that you are always busy converting yourself and gaining and ever-deeper understanding of your fellow [human beings]. You notice, too, that prayer is the pulse of the world you live in. If you are really praying, you can't help but have critical questions about the great problems the world is grappling with, and you can't get rid of the idea that a conversion is not only necessary for yourself and your neighbor, but for the entire human community."

I felt that this week. That feeling that the more my heart poured out and pored over prayers for people, the more it seemed I had so far to grow in understanding and loving them. And the world, both in my small localized community, and in the swaths of humanity at large-- the political mores of our homeland and our home here abroad, how could it not make me feel that anything less than conversion and renewal is still our greatest human need?

One of the students in our high school wrote a poem that took first place this week at the local Literary Festival. In it, she talked about how her life is one shaped by a family that calls upon the God we celebrate at Easter, and yet her heart is filled with questions about the sufferings and tragedies, the seeming unfair advantages she has been dealt in this world compared to so many. And at the end, she says that these questions won't go away, but neither will you, God. And that he came once and gave what was needed, not what was asked for, and this is what we look to when we don't understand the hand we've been given.

So Palm Sunday is about crying "Hosanna!" which means, Save, I pray.

I can't help but think on this remembrance of the Triumphal Entry, when inside I'm feeling less than triumphant about life circumstances, and sometimes not even sure about what the work of God looks like in this world, that this is not new territory. I remember the old old story, to speak to me about the one I'm presently living. Jesus walked into the city, a false celebration and misunderstanding rampant all around him, and surely he must have felt burdened about the way the world was turning. Surely the irony of circumstances was not lost on him. And yet he did not give in to cynicism or despair, but entrusted himself to the path laid out for him on that fateful week. He knew salvation was coming. He knew the cost.

Looking back, but living in the present, and wanting so badly for hope to shape how I walk forward into the future, how can I do less on this day than cry out, Hosanna... Save, I pray. It's a declaration, and a prayer; a living with the present realities, but walking in faith that we will never be resigned to them.

City Bones

Saturday here has been a bleak sort of day, with a cold drizzle of rain and traffic that ground slow and halting through streets jammed with slippery umbrellas, like patches of soggy mushrooms pushing up through the concrete jungle floor. With my man and our oldest away for a few days, it was just me and the three leftovers , their hair beaded with the sky's perspiration, shoes slogging through street-side puddles, errands to run and a day to get through.

"The rain stopped. And look... it's so beautiful!" Quinn's childish exuberance and genuine delight made me smile considering his age and the view...looking out over the city rooftops, a mixture of the old and new, a short history for short-sighted eyes.

The students in my classes this week, they stamped cityscapes with black ink, building a skeleton of a city out of prints held in their little hands. They were the architects, I told them, the artists who could create beauty out of building line upon line and block upon block. And only the one with a soul can impart soul into his work.

I think the bones of this city are haunted, even if it sees no ghosts. There is a soul dormant here that is made of more spirit than the mere bones of economy and political machines, or of the hardware of handheld devices and fiberoptic information. We spend our days in these hollowed out places, made hallowed by the Breath of Life. In a city teeming with so much man, numbers and figures seem more accurate than any individual narrative. But I have a hope for the stories to rise up like smoke and fill the air with a pungent reality.

| Surprised by Joy | A Gotcha Day Story

 Recently, a few people have asked if these sessions have become old hat to me. And I've thought a bit about it, because there are inevitable routine similarities that run through the stories of any Gotcha Day. It's true... I do know what to expect, and I'm not wiping as many tears out of my eyes and trying as hard to keep a soggy face from fogging up the camera.

But what has not become routine is these very real lives being knit together. In a swift moment. It breaks and builds up my heart every time. I walk away thinking about all the dynamics this new family will be dealing with, and then my own family, my kids, my parents, other families, children in this city, and the list goes on, until I come back to-- thank you. Thank you for each good creation of one family that reflects the heart of God.

Yesterday I had the intense pleasure of spending just a few hours with one such family. I loved their vibe from the first moment I met them. And they were so real, relatable, and intensely sweet with their new daughter, who in turn surprised everyone with her slow but then genuine turn to joy and sweet interaction. I was happy for them, and for her. Not everyone in the room had the same experience, and it was sobering to realize again that adoption is anything but glamorous. I was grateful we were able to get happy, light filled pictures for this family that truly reflected their first moments with their daughter. And it doesn't take away from the fact that this is just the beginning, that the road to being known and knowing your family is lifelong. But it was one sweetly, surprising good start.

Booe Gotcha Day from christine on Vimeo.

| Masala Making | a Friday Film

Masala Making from christine on Vimeo.

To see more films from the month of February, go check out:
http://francescarussell.com/blog/2016/2/29/a-year-of-moving-pictures-february-long-island-new-york-family-films

February

| February |

Bare and quiet, lonely but leaning in, shadowed but with a subtle promise of light.