Palm Sunday

If you follow the Christian liturgical calendar, you are aware that April 5 is Palm Sunday, the beginning of the Holy Week observances. Many within this tradition are familiar with the practice of waving palm fronds during a Palm Sunday service reenacting the triumphal entry of Jesus in the Christian Gospels. With palm branches in short supply, how can you still engage this traditional ritual?

Within many of our bioregions one will find a variety of fern (Tracheophyta), which has very similar features to the palm frond. In the spirit of bioregionalism, we can find elements within our own homescapes that express the meaning of these liturgical rituals while not over-burdening natural resources and adding to the transport carbon footprint. Other evergreen branches such as cedar, fir, or even herbs like rosemary or overwintering lemon balm can be used.

By yourself or with your family, go into your wild sanctuary and find a fern frond for each hand. I have enjoyed Sword fern for this ritual for its size and strength. Create your own processional march while waving the fern frond overhead. As you wave the frond, meditate on the hope we still hold for a triumphal entry that will bring about peace and justice for all. You might want to quietly say or sing, “Hosannah!” With meanings of adoration and praise, hosannah also is a cry for deliverance.

Bring your wild praise to the land. Honor the regenerative work it is doing on our behalf and on behalf of a flourishing future. Cry out for a deliverance from this pandemic and for what needs to be saved within us all to ensure our healing is done together along with the Earth.

As a final ceremonial act, lay down your fern frond, your branch, your herbs upon the ground. Place your hands upon the earth. Press your palms into the soil. What is it that you are being asked to lay down this Holy Week? What expectations, old ways, patterned thinking and behaviors need to be laid down so that our communities can emerge from this pandemic transformed? Jesus rode into Jerusalem to disrupt the status quo. To threaten the imperial economy with a cosmic ecology. He came with a message of our sacred belonging, a sense of HOME (greek: oikos), that threatened the transactional ways of the empire and invited profound transformation. Towards what transformation are you being called?

Lastly, might consider saving your frond and when it dries out, carefully burning it. You can capture and save the ash from the frond and use it for your own personal Ash Wednesday ceremony next year.