Sunday Rumination

A departure from our usual Sunday Musings

Jun 14, 2025

TODAY IS THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST,
ALSO KNOWN AS TRINITY SUNDAY

Instead of our usual Sunday Musings, I’ve written a letter to you today from Europe ruminating on what’s going on in the world, theology, and two paintings by Rembrandt. I wanted to share what I’m thinking about — because I know this has been a hard and shocking week back home.

Sunday Musings will return in their regular form next week.

If you’d like to read a musing on one of the biblical passages for this Sunday, I’ve taken the paywall down from a reflection I wrote for paid subscribers on Proverbs 8, “The Wedding of Joy and Justice.”

The Proverbs 8 selection from the lectionary is below. And, scroll down this post for a couple of announcements about what’s coming up at The Cottage. At the very bottom of today’s letter is a poem from Cottage favorite, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Stavanger, Norway
June 14, 2025

Dear Cottage friends,

I’m writing to you from Norway. And this Sunday Musing has become a Sunday rumination. Because of everything.

Around the world, the news is bad. Very bad. Donald Trump has gone full authoritarian — and officials in his administration are talking about “liberating” California from their elected government and have sent military troops to occupy Los Angeles. From what I can gather, immigrant round-ups have escalated. As I write, Israel is attacking Iran. And we’re only hours away from Trump’s self-aggrandizing military birthday parade in Washington, DC. And “No Kings Day” rallies have barely begun in protest. We just heard of political assassinations in Minnesota. Everything is on a razor’s edge.

I’m not there. Instead, I’m staring out the window of my hotel and looking over the North Sea. My heart is heavy; my head hurts. I wonder what comes next, when I return home next week. Several people have texted notes like, “It is scary. Really scary.”

I wish I could tell you that everything will be alright. But I can’t. I don’t know that. I would, however, like to share a story with you.

Before arriving here, we spent two days in Amsterdam. And, of course, we visited the Rijksmuseum, one of the most beautiful museums in Europe.

It wasn’t my first time at the museum. I visited Amsterdam once before — in 1980. My first and only visit to the city and its glorious museum was forty-five years ago. Forty-five years! Then, I was a starry-eyed, optimistic 21 year-old wondering what the years ahead would bring and how my life might unfold.

During that long-ago trip, I loved exploring the Rijksmuseum — and was enthralled by Rembrandt’s paintings. No work, however, spoke more strongly to me than “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem.”

I don’t know exactly what moved me so deeply then. Perhaps it was my latent fear that the world would end before my life really began — childhood fears of nuclear destruction, teen-age evangelical fears of the Rapture and Armageddon. I stared at it for a long time, transfixed by the face of the prophet. An old man, surrounded by the wreckage of the city he loved and tried to warn, full of grief. It was too late. All was lost.

And so, forty-five years later, I stood in front of the painting that I never forgot, an image that etched itself in my soul-memory. I looked at it again, remembering then. The ancient lamentation went through my mind:

A horrible and shocking thing
has happened in the land:
The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?

My husband interrupted, “Does it still speak to you?”

I replied, “Differently. I’m his age now. I’m probably as old as the model for the painting. And I feel like I’m looking out on a landscape of destruction.”

He glanced at me. “It feels too close to home,” I said flatly.

I turned to walk away, lamenting my own country and the years that have flown by, when I noticed that Jeremiah wasn’t alone. He was hanging next to another painting, one that hadn’t even registered with me forty-five years ago:

The second painting is Rembrandt’s “Old Woman Reading, Probably the Prophetess Anna.”

She pulled me over. She drew me. As I had stared at the Jeremiah painting decades ago, I became lost in this one. Her kindness, her curiosity, and her diligence at reading. Her aged hand tenderly following the words on the page, no doubt her eyes failing.

Anna. Luke’s gospel tells her story in a few words:

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah and Anna. Two prophets. One lamenting destruction; the other awaiting a promise. Compared to her “of a great age,” Jeremiah was a youngster! She had seen much in her long life, and lost much, but she never gave up. She trusted and acted on hope — and she was, eventually, rewarded.

Jeremiah and Anna side-by-side, lament and hope. Grief and joy.

Once Jeremiah moved me to tears. And now? Anna does. The world is full of Jeremiahs these days — me included! But how I long to be that old woman who never stopped seeking after the promise. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Decade after decade. And then — finally — the Child.

Both prophets. One overseeing an end. The other glimpsing a beginning. Both are necessary. Both are spiritual callings. But we have too much of one right now and too little of the other.

As far as we know, Rembrandt painted Jeremiah once. And he produced at least eight versions of Anna — three painting and five etchings. Her story is so much shorter and simpler. Did he, too, as he grew older, tire of lament and long ever more for the promise of hope? Did he find more power in the old woman prophet? Is hope harder to craft?

It certainly appears to be more elusive.

I know which calls my heart now. It has taken forty-five years, but I finally understand.

Love,
Diana

PS: If you are going to a “No Kings Day” event, stay safe please! Be aware of your surroundings and watch for the safety of those around you. But don’t be afraid. Do raise your voice and vote with your feet.

INSPIRATION

Widows of Jerusalem, I too was once
young enough to believe my life mattered.
When I woke, the sun rose for me. I tucked lilies in my hair.
Now I am eighty years a temple dweller.

What a wonder of faith! they proclaim. Truth is,
I cry in the dark. I beg priests for bread

and pick insects from my hem. But today,
an infant came to be blessed. He curled

into the crook of my arm, and when his eyes
wandered to mine, I remembered every hope

stored in my childhood’s heart: gazelles
and henna shrubs, doves perched in the crags.

I touched his face —
that skin we were meant to wear forever

— Tania Runyan, “Anna the Prophetess,” from her book, Simple Weight

Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?

On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;

beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:

"To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.

Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.

Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—

when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world's first bits of soil.

When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,

when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,

when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,

when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;

and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,

rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race."

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Sneak Peek — Coming Up at The Cottage

I will be doing a summer series in July for paid subscribers. In the past, the summer subscriber special event has been really popular. One year, we looked at Wisdom lit together; another year, we revisited my book, Christianity After Religion. I’m not sure what topic yet — What would you like to explore together? What would be most helpful now?

The Cottage

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