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Join liberti for Ash Wednesday tonight

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

liberti-churchIf you find yourself in the Philly area, I just wanted to extend an invitation to you to join my church, liberti center city, tonight for our Ash Wednesday service. It will be a time of reflection, singing, prayer, imposition of ashes, and inviting into this year’s Holy Lent.

The service is tonight at 7pm sharp, at 17th and Sansom St. There is also free parking available.

A group of us will probably get dinner afterwards. So if you’re in Philly, and especially if Ash Wednesday is new to you, I encourage you to come on out and join us at the beginning of this Holy Lenten season.

Also, for the rest of the Lent season, liberti has put together a simple prayerbook to guide our times of meditation and reflection. The liberti Lent prayerbook is a highlight of my Lent every year, and so be sure not to miss out.

Weekend Photo Challenge: Home (the one to come)

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

scotland-grave-1

This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Home“. (I put up a funny response yesterday. Today is the serious one.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about death recently. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it’s because of that paradox of sanctification in which God grows us less by medicating us than by exposure therapy. Nothing exposes my inner-atheist like thinking about death and reminding myself of my shocking lack of confidence in the hereafter.

That’s why this prompt for this week struck me so much. Having moved a few times in my life to vastly different places, and with my parents having moved away from the last place in which I lived with them, I still don’t quite know what to call “home”.
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Weekend Photo Challenge: Home(screens) [a quick Android vs. Apple]

/ Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Home“. Tomorrow, I’ll have a serious post on this topic but, for the weekend, I wanted to put up this fun one. Beware: people are passionate about this topic.

For my new job, I’ve been given an iPhone. The generosity of my company is wonderful, but an added benefit is that I get to compare this iPhone with my much-beloved Android phone.

Even after a week of having to spend most of my day on the iPhone, I can safely say I strongly prefer the Android. (I put up a little Facebook status to this effect and it started an amusing comment war amongst a few fanboys that I thought was pretty funny.)

At the end of the day, I know this discussion is all about personal preference and is not an objective argument. But I just wanted to post these pictures up of my two phone homescreens and ask one question:
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Lent 2013 is on the way. What are you doing?

/ Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

Munch-melancholyNext Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, which kicks off Lent, the time of year in which we our sins and shortcomings weigh on our minds and shoulders a little more than usual, that we might feel their sting, and that might propel us to Christ.

Lent is always a very meaningful time for me spiritually. It is my most fruitful time of blogging and meditating, and I hope that today is similar. This is probably because I’m wired to be extra sensitive to the quieter, subtler movements of my own heart.

I can also be prone to despair over my inability to change or grow, but even in the midst of the difficulty and darkness of this season, there’s always the dawn of Easter ever-more cresting upon the Lenten horizon.

Historically, there have been many ways that the Church had engaged in this time, and so there is great freedom in how we might do that. This is how I’m engaging in Lent this season: Continue reading →

Death & Taxes: Converting the Purse, Rejoicing the Heart

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

paul-money-lent-12-02

On Friday, I finally got my W-2. Saturday night, I did my taxes. It was a very, very encouraging experience. And not just because I’m getting a refund. Tax night was a time of deep celebration, reminder, and reflection on how God moves and changes people, especially me.

I’ve always had a big problem with faithfully giving to other things, especially my churches. Though I grew up going to churches, this was not a discipline I was able to observe at home. Eventually, waiting tables through college and having spent most of my adult life living paycheck to paycheck, I became an expert of rationalizing my lack of generosity to my church and other causes.

Some may think that this is certainly not one of the bigger crises in one’s life. After all, we each individually know what our ability to give is, and no church should reserve the right to tell us otherwise, right? Well…

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Today, I’m leaving my job. Monday, a new one begins.

/ Paul Burkhart / 9 Comments

paul-city-bwWhen this is post goes live, I will probably be sitting in my near-empty cubicle at work, furiously trying to finish up the last bits of paperwork that has so consumed the past year and half of my conscious thoughts. Today is my last day of this job.

Back in 2011, I wrote about me getting this new job as a case manager (a.k.a. “social worker”–in Pennsylvania, you can’t call yourself a social worker unless you have a degree in it). It’s been an amazing experience, with some of the most knowledgeable and supportive supervisors and co-workers I’ve ever had the privilege of being around.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Love (beyond death)

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

grave-bw-flowers

This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Love“. The real “challenge” with this theme was try and find something not cliche; something you all would find “novel” and “creative”. As I perused my pictures, though, I fell on this one and all my notions of novelty and “coolness” went out the window. I realized I had a bigger, more important story to tell about love.

I had another client die last week. In my field, this is to be expected now and then, and I’ve had a few of my clients die in the past three years, and even more clients die that I knew from the caseloads of co-workers.

This death this past week has got me thinking about my work, my clients, life, death, and, you know, all those other light and airy topics we so enjoy thinking about (yeah, that was sarcasm). And it got me remembering the photo above.

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Nature shows us the Resurrection

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

As part of my own personal devotions, I use A Year with the Church Fathers by Mike Aquilina. In it, he offers a little introductory summary, followed by some words by a church father, and then ends with a question to meditate upon and a concluding prayer.

This one struck me yesterday, as doubt in the Resurrection is something I struggle with a lot. Thank God we live and grow and struggle in such a long, continual stream of godly men and women having walked before us. We stand on the shoulders of giants, to be sure. I hope this encourages you as well.
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Weekend Photo Challenge: Beyond (beauty beyond love)

/ Paul Burkhart / 5 Comments

scotland-glasgow-hill

This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Beyond“. Basically, the challenge was to find a picture that guides the viewer’s eye beyond the primary subject of the photo. I’ve chosen the above photo.

In the summer of 2006, between the sophomore and junior years of college (when my hair still looked like this), I did a Study Abroad program in writing art, and architecture in Glasgow, Scotland. It was my first time out of the country, and my first time flying by myself. For all my youthful expressions of confidence, I was still scared.

Anyway, after getting on the plane on one of the runways of Richmond International Airport, I noticed a group of older ladies having to talk across the aisle to one another.

They were funny and loud, but in an inviting way, and not annoying, but the most distinctive thing about them was their thick, barely-understandable Scottish accents. I eventually asked them, and discovered that we were all indeed hitting the same connecting flights, and ultimately heading to Glasgow. They told me to stick with them and they’d help me navigate.

We made the flight, survived the trip, and landed in Glasgow.

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Read Austin Ricketts’ Short Story “The Quiche”

/ austinricketts4 / 2 Comments

austin-ricketts-quiche-kindleOccasional contributor to the site (and full-time stud), Austin Ricketts, has a new short story that he has published in the online literary magazine, The Momongahela Review, Volume 8. This is the first fiction piece of his I’ve read in a long time, and… wow, it’s really good (especially the last half).

And I don’t say that lightly. Really. Especially after my own recent forays into fiction, part of my pride doesn’t like when I admire so highly a work in a similar field in which I create, done by someone I know.

It’s a story about time, relationships, memory, and how those things change us; it’s beautiful, sensual, and intellectual. It starts on page 70 of the journal (and the pdf). At least peruse the other pieces of the journal, as there are also some beautiful pieces of poetry and other prose pieces (that admittedly, I haven’t read yet).

You can download the pdf here, or read the full issue on Issu. All for free.

Did you catch that? Free. Good. Writing. You have absolutely nothing to lose by at least downloading and looking around.

Check it out: http://monreview.com. Remember, it’s Volume 8. 

Weekend Photo Challenge: Illumination (of Richmond & my Soul)

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

Richmond-GrandIllumination

This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Illumination“. One of the biggest benefits of this weekly photo challenge is the chance to go through some of my old pictures and bring to mind favorite memories from the past.

The picture above was taken in 2006 in Richmond, Virginia while I was in college. It was after one of my favorite Richmond traditions: the Grand Illumination.

Throughout the winter holidays, the skyscrapers in Richmond are all lined with lights, lighting up the skyline in a way that it is not during the rest of the year. These lights are turned on all at once at something called the Grand Illumination, which takes place in early December. Not only are the skyscraper lights turned on, but the annual Christmas display at the Omni Hotel is turned on also. This display has lit-up mechanical reindeer, a giant Christmas tree, and the bell tower plays Christmas music on the hour.

After watching the Grand Illumination lighting from the bridge to Belle Isle, one of my favorite spots in all of Richmond (see picture below), we drove through the streets to see everything up close. The picture above was taken around the Omni Hotel as we passed their display.

But that’s not all this made me think of…

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Epiphany is here! So what? (And another free Mixtape!)

/ Paul Burkhart / 7 Comments

epiphany-mixtape-coverIf you’re just looking for the mixtape, click here for the official Epiphany Mixtape page.

From now until Lent, the Church Calendar is in the season of Epiphany. Up until this year, I had never really given much thought or focus to Epiphany. In fact, I hadn’t ever really understood Epiphany until this year. I knew it had something to do with light and with Magi, but beyond that, I didn’t get it.

Basically, this season seems like it’s sort of a Church Calendar “junk drawer” to meditate and celebrate on all the other parts of Jesus’ life that happened between his Advent/Birth and his Death.

And don’t misread that. With me saying that, I hope that doesn’t diminish this season for anyone. Perhaps the most precious doctrine of the Christian faith for me is that of the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness to me. And this Righteousness in which I am dressed was not created out of thin air, nor was it created by Christ at the Cross, or even his Resurrection. It was built throughout his life of obedience to His Father.

And this is amazing. As I’ve written before, if Herod had been successful in killing the child Jesus, there would be an aspect of our salvation that’s missing.

And so, to try and help me spend some time meditating on this season, the best way I knew to think deeply about all this was to make another Church season mixtape. If I’m being honest, these things are more for me than all of you out there. This one particularly, though, helped me think through Epiphany and try and create something from it. I hope you enjoy it.

To read more about the specifics of Epiphany, the mixtape, and to listen/download it yourself, you can either read below or just go to the official Epiphany Mixtape page. Let me know what you think!

Here’s some more info, from the page:
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Merry Christmas Season!!!

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

wood-jesus-heart-christmas-humor

As of today, it is Christmas season!

Today, we turn our minds from the sin that required God to take human form in Jesus Christ, and we give ourselves the freedom to respond with unfettered joy to this fact. We give gifts in response to the gift that’s been given to us; we sing songs in response to the heavenly angelic song that inaugurated his birth; we eat good food with others in response to the body of Christ–the bread of life–having come among us.

Today begins the culmination of our thinking and meditating these past 4 and half weeks. This Advent, I’ve been trying to connect this time to parts of life that we may not usually associate with it. And so, if you have any time and interest, here are those posts from this year’s Advent series (and by the way, holy crap. I had no idea how much I had written this year until I made this list).

May they help you enter into this next Church season with depth and joy. (You can also check out last year’s series, if you want.) Continue reading →