Oragami is HARD!!!

1 APRIL
Palm Sunday: Fold
your palm fronds into
a cross. You can learn
how to do it on
YouTube (“Making
a Palm Cross”).

Some of my fondest youth memories are of making palm crosses on the Saturday night before Palm Sunday. Our youth group use to get together and make hundreds of these (ok maybe not hundreds but  A LOT) . We made plenty for a them for the folks coming to church and or Sunday school on Palm Sunday. We got to stand with the ushers and hand then out of a basket for each parishioner to wear.

This was a "normal" activity for my church youth group. Our leaders took a festival, holiday or event and made it real to us. We would learn the bible story of the event, get a short lesson on what it meant to us "today" and then have a project to go with it.

The project was always for others. Maybe it was just for the other folk in our church or maybe it was a social justice lesson. Jesus and the two fish and five loaves of bread lead to helping feed the hungry. Maybe we were not preforming miracles like Yeshua BUT , we did learn about sharing, just like the young  boy giving up his lunch. 

So often today it seems like many people are putting God/dess and Yeshua, or many other spiritual prophets into the closet. By this I mean we go to church, temple or which ever spiritual place we go, for an hour or two a week, and then it is a over.

Did we earn a lesson? Did we take it home? I remember each year that cross stayed on my cork board til the next year. Once at a soup kitchen we ran into a class mate, so my brother and I started packing bigger lunches and inviting the boy to sit with us at lunch to share. Not only did he get food, but we made a new friend that ended up being one of our best.

If God/dess was  packed back in the closet when "church" was done, would we have learned anything?  Does memorizing the bible really tell you WWJD? People, especially around the south like to knock the fact that I learned the IDEAS of the bible but did not memorize them word for word. Does the old testament teach you to be a better person or just scare you? If it is scary is that why God/dess is shoved to the back of the closet? Shouldn't the lesson of must religions, which I believe is LOVE make us want to walk side by side with Him/Her. AND each other, because the Divine is with in each of us!

Jamie and I are making the crosses for our "diary" of the year tree!!!