Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, 1852.

Today, the Palm Sunday worship service was observed from our home. I say observed. What really happened is I half-watched it on my laptop while every few minutes Charles would come in and ask me to go to the other room and watch him play with the dollhouse. I'm kind of bad at keeping track of weeks, so Palm Sunday usually catches me by surprise. Oh, we're already at Holy Week?! I thought I had mooore tiiiime to have an appropriately profound and meaningful Lent! And here we are, already at the gates of Jerusalem? Noooo.

This painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller titled "Palm Sunday" felt appropriate for today. I imagine the the family in this painting may very well have gone to church and in this scene has come back home. But I can also pretend that this family is like us. The whole family stuck at home maintaining their religious holidays in an enclosed space.

Another thing I appreciate about this image is the branches. Those are not palms. I tried to guess what they were but I'm just not familiar with identifying branches, certainly not which branches might have been used in Austria in the 1850s. I do know that before palm branches became available to those of us in colder climates via shipping, other, locally sourced branches were used. Box, olive, willow, or yew branches were known to have been used (Wikipedia).

Last year, my cousin shared this Radical Discipleship post, "Wild Liturgy: Coats and Branches," where the writer discusses this very thing--using locally available branches to avoid the carbon footprint of importing palms.

Do you think we could consider making a change at our churches? Or does it mean that much to us that it's worth the environmental cost?

My friend Beth shared this photo on Instagram today (below). Isn't it lovely? Can you picture waving a cedar branch?

View this post on Instagram

Some fresh greenery for #palmsunday to go along with #virtualchurch #physicaldistancing #stayathomestaysafe #supportyourlocalfoodbank

A post shared by Beth Sneyd (@photocanuck) on Apr 5, 2020 at 8:35am PDT

Or this live oak in Texas?

We don’t have palms but we have Oak. #PalmSunday2020 pic.twitter.com/SGZuThEgwp

— Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros 🌵 (@CisnerosCafe) April 5, 2020

How about the gorgeous ferns of Rev. Nancy Gowler in the Pacific Northwest?

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Palm Sunday in the Northwest during a pandemic. @fccpuyallup #hosanna #prayathome

A post shared by Nancy Gowler (@revnancyg) on Apr 5, 2020 at 9:31am PDT

Here in Iowa, there are not as many green options. Our ferns aren't up yet, or aren't large enough to wave, anyway. But we have some options. (I've even considered sacrificing a branch of my cat palm houseplant for the cause.)

What do you think?

How was Palm Sunday-from-home?