Not my mother,
Not my father,
but it’s me, O Lord,
standing in the need of prayer.
Not my brother,
not my sister,
but it's me, O Lord,
standing in the need of prayer.
~ African American Spiritual
Becoming a Bother (Into the Wild: Adventures in Prayer) - April 22, 2018
“…And if by prayer incessant
I could hope to change the will
of Him who all things can,
I would not cease to weary him
with my assiduous cries.”
~ John Milton (1608-1674)
Prayer 101 (Into the Wild: Adventures in Prayer) - April 15, 2018
“…prayer can only become unceasing communion when all our thoughts—beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful—can be thought in the presence of the One who dwells in us and surrounds us. To pray unceasingly means to think and live in the presence of Love…To pray unceasingly is to channel our thoughts out of their fearful isolation into a fearless conversation with God.”
~ Henri J. M. Nouwen
Praying as If We Believe (Into the Wild: Adventures in Prayer) - April 8, 2018
All difficulties in prayer
can be traced to one cause:
praying as if God were absent.
~ Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Immersed in Love: We are Raised - April 1, 2018 - Easter
“But from this earth,
this grave,
this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.”
~Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)
Immersed in Love: We are Buried - March 25, 2018 - Palm Sunday
Preparation for Worship
“As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a [person] he bids him come and die.”
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
Immersed in Love: We Are Welcomed - March 18, 2018
We cannot love God unless we love each other.
We know him in the breaking of bread,
and we know each other in the breaking of bread,
and we are not alone anymore.
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet too—
even with a crust—
where there is companionship.
We have all known loneliness,
and we have learned that
the only solution is love,
and that love comes with community.
~ Dorothy Day (1897-1980)
Immersed in Love: We Are Clothed
We have been called to be fruitful—
not successful,
not productive,
not accomplished.
Success comes from strength,
stress, and human effort.
Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability
and the admission of our own weakness.
~ Henri J. M. Nouwen
Winter Forum: Vintage Jesus - March 4, 2018
"Yet, as everyone knows, religious institutions do make their peace with the world, they do themselves become part of the regular order. So the prophet contends against the priest, protests the accommodations, calls forth fresh energies and challenges the unfeeling stones within structures.
This reform of religion in the name of religion, this growing edge, this refusal to let well-enough alone, is the role of dissent."
~ Edwin S. Gaustad, Dissent in American Religion
Immersed in Love: We Are Washed- February 25, 2018
Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again,
what is soiled is again made clean.
The dream explains why we need to be forgiven, and why we must forgive.
In the presence of God, nothing stands between [God] and us— we are forgiven.
But we cannot feel [God’s] presence if anything
is allowed to stand between ourselves and others.
~ Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961)
Immersed in Love: We Are Born - February 18, 2018
“What impressed Nicodemus even more than [Jesus’] speech was the quickening of his own breathing and the pounding of his own heart. He hadn’t felt like that since his first pair of long pants, his first kiss, since the time his first child was born or the time they’d told him he didn’t have lung-cancer but just a touch of the flu.”
~ Frederick Buechner
Pitching Tents - February 11, 2018
"Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home." ~ C. S. Lewis
"To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake—even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death—that little by little we start to come alive."
~ Frederick Buechner
Mixed Blessings - February 4, 2018
Tracy Hartman
“The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings.
It makes us patient, sensitive and Godlike.
It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering,
it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
~ Helen Keller
Big Expense - January 28, 2018
"If you love Jesus Christ more than you fear human judgment, then you will not only speak of compassion, but act with it. Compassion means seeing your friend and your enemy in equal need, and helping both equally. It demands that you seek and find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner, and comfort him and offer him your help. Herein lies the holy compassion of God that causes the devil much distress."
~ Mechthild of Magdeburg (ca.1207-ca.1294)
Big Calling - January 21, 2018
“The first words about the Christian life are not
about what we as individuals can experience,
but about the kind of society God intends.
The gospel, or good news, is that in Christ,
God’s coming kingdom is breaking
into the here and now—
in the depths of the believer’s heart,
but also in the world itself.
This kingdom encompasses
economic, material,
psychological, political,
social and spiritual existence.”
~ Charles Moore
Big Prayer - January 14, 2018
Lord, I do not know what to ask of you;
only you know what I need.
I simply present myself to you;
I open my heart to you.
I have no other desire
than to accomplish your will.
Teach me to pray. Amen.
~ Francois Fenelon (Little Book of Prayers )
Big Light - January 7, 2018
Preparation for Worship
When the song of the angel is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers and sisters,
To make music in the heart.
~ Howard Thurman (1900-1981)
Finding the Sacred in the Ordinary - December 31, 2017
Trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. ~ Teresa de Avila
This is it, don’t get scared now. ~ Kevin McAllister
How We Wait: Grounded - December 24, 2017
What the Donkey Saw
No room in the inn, of course,
And not that much in the stable,
What with the shepherds, Magi, Mary,
Joseph, the heavenly host—
Not to mention the baby
Using our manger as a cot.
You couldn’t have squeezed another cherub in
For love nor money.
Still, in spite of the overcrowding,
I did my best to make them feel wanted.
I could see the baby and I
Would be going places together.
~ U.A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009)
How We Wait: Believing - December 24, 2017 AM
Annunciation
This was the moment no one speaks of,
When she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
She did not cry, “I cannot, I am not worthy,”
Nor, “I have not the strength.”
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illuminated her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
~ Denise Levertov