2nd Week of Lent: Find your Juniper Tree
We’ve released worship music videos with lyrics for each song on the “Speak Boldly” album by Jenny LaJoye. You can find these worship music videos on our Juniper Formation YouTube Channel, and more easily in this “Speak Boldly” YouTube Playlist.
Each week during our Lenten journey we will highlight a worship video and offer accompanying ritual, scripture, and prayer for you to engage at home by yourself, with your household, or in congregational worship.
Artist’s Songwriting Reflection
"Juniper Tree" was inspired by 1 Kings 19:3-8, 16. The story of Elijah the prophet is totally compelling to me. It's about risking everything—losing it all—for the sake of telling the prophetic truth. When I first sat down to write this song, I read the passage over slowly and was immediately struck by how much resonance it had with my own recent journey of coming out as nonbinary. I felt like my coming out was such an inconvenience to everyone. I felt like I was risking the loss of some of my personal relationships because I demanding people hear the truth. And I *did* lose some of those relationships. I certainly lost some constructs that had kept me comfortable for a long time...but in my telling the truth, I felt like I could finally breathe.
The Juniper tree is not always an easy place to be...it makes us reckon with ourselves, our relationships, the world, and the Divine. And sometimes we lose everything on our way to its shade.
But the truth is always worth it.
Fill your lungs with something holy.
Scripture: 1 Kings 19:3-8
Then Elijah was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.
But Elijah then went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary juniper tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O God, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the juniper tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” Elijah looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again The angel of the God came a second time, touched Elijah, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” Elijah got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.
“Juniper Tree” Lyrics
I caused you trouble
I went too far
These off-white shoes don't have their soles, anymore
I crossed a desert
then crossed a line
unchecked the boxes, then I sent them up in fire
And I lost it all
on my way to the Juniper tree
And I filled my lungs with something holy
I hid my head
between my knees
I climbed a mountain, and I mourned myself in peace
I took communion
I took some rest
then heard a faint, familiar whisper in my chest
And I found my soul
at the foot of the Juniper tree
And I filled my lungs with something holy
Fill your lungs with something whole
Fill your lungs with something whole
Fill your lungs with something whole
I walked the desert
back to my home
and spoke aloud the words I needed you to know
I found my soul
in the shade of the Juniper tree
Come fill your lungs with something holy
Ritual: Find Your Juniper Tree
During the winter months, the natural world enters a season of hibernation and dormancy. Energy consumption, metabolism, and growth all slow down. To our human senses, this season can appear deathly with leaf-barren trees brushing the sky like brittle brooms, grass drained from luscious greens to frail straw yellow, and snow blankets pulled tight to cover up all that is life.
This is the kind of season that Elijah found himself in out in the wilderness. Yet he sought out the restful cover of a juniper tree to reconnect with God by confessing how far he had gone—too close to death.
God sent angels to take care of Elijah as he rested, they provided Elijah with the strength he needed to journey on, to share his gifts, and become a teacher of prophets.
Perhaps we find ourselves in need of our own juniper tree—a place for rest, rejuvenation, and courage to continue the journey. We are now a year into the COVID-19 Pandemic; wrestling together with white supremacy and learning how to become anti-racist within ourselves and our institutions and systems; on edge after an historic near democracy-breaking election season, needing a break, and yet having to maintain political attention and accountability because we know the danger has not passed; and so close to the end of one of the longest winters.
And yet, new life is emerging.
Ritual: As you listen to “Juniper Tree” (see video above) we invite you to reconnect with nature and find your own juniper tree.
Set aside time to be in nature, to find rest, rejuvenation, and courage to continue the journey. Some ways you might do this could include:
- Take a walk or wheelchair ride in nature;
- Literally go hug a tree. Embracing trees is good for our health and care for creation. Here are brief stories on: how to hug a tree, creation care through the tree-hugging Chipko Movement in India, and the health benefits of tree hugging;
- Visit a local greenhouse—Denver Botanic Gardens has a wonderful tropical conservatory; or
- Pull together your houseplants creating a nature-scape that surrounds and embraces you.
Whatever way you choose to commune with nature. Take the time to be in prayerful ritual:
- Begin by listening to your breath
- Deepen your breath. Breathe in the Holy Spirit, and breathe out the Holy Spirit. In a year of fear-filled breathing, fill your lungs full with something holy.
- Be present. What do you notice? Can you see spring approaching in the beginning buds of new life on bushes and tree branches, or the greening of emerging bulbs?
- How does this emerging new life make you feel? What do you sense in your body? Follow these senses, whether it is to smile and laugh, to shimmy and dance, to spin wheelies, to raise your eyes, hands, or heart in praise and admiration, to sing or yell, or to cry. Whatever you feel, let it loose, embody your full spirit, and resist the temptation to hide.
Reflective Invitation
We invite you to journey through Lent by drawing closer to God and one another by deepening your spiritual practices and awareness.
- What is dormant in your life that should remain in hibernation and be released?
- What is dormant in your life that needs resurrection?
- What signs of new life are emerging for you?
- How might you invite and cultivate new life?
For both your release and your invitation, may it be so.
Blessing
Beloved, you can not travel too far from God.
Mourn what is causing you grief.
Take rest and rejuvenation under a juniper tree.
Find communion and courage in God and one another
Breathe in the Holy Spirit, return home, and share the Holy Spirit with others.
Amen.
Support the artist and buy the “Speak Boldly” album online, here.
We invite you to make an offering today. An offering is a way we share with one another in support of the whole, and as a loving act of co-creating a new way of being together and with God as we prophetically reimagine the Church.
For all of the ways you give your spirit, heart, gifts, talents, and resources, we thank you.
