Brothers and sisters, be at peace
We meet together to share this meal.
May it express our love for one another,
our commitment to each other
and point us beyond ourselves
to the needs of the world.
God make peace within us.
Let us claim it.
God, make peace between us.
Let us share it.
Amen
~ St. Hilde Community of England
The touch of your hand, will let me know
You take me in, and let me go
If not for love, why would we meet
How is it done, two into one
We're lifted up by angels
Higher than the world
Strong enough to leave it
Bound to leave the secrets
Angels never heard
We're lifted up by angels...
You understand, yet never say
How every plan would fade away
If not for love, where would you be
Ashes to dust, water to rust
Away from me
Close enough to heaven
Above the rain
Darkness cannot reach us
Let the angels teach us
Only love remains
We're lifted up by angels
Given wings to fly
Leave the night behind us
Trust the light to find us
Even as we rise
We're lifted up by angels ...
Close enough to heaven
Above the rain
Darkness cannot reach us
Let the angels teach us
Only love remains
We're lifted up by angels....
~John Farnham
So many angels surround me...I can almost hear your voices and feel your presence...
'Don't worry, Jesus will bend down real low for you.'
~Sophie
Another good read by Marva Dawn on the hope found in the resurrection.
Marva Dawn describes the importance of "community" in our worship in an article in Reformed Worship.
A New World Is Yet to Come
Henri Nouwen
You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.
Source: Circles of Love
My son stopped our cuckoo clock from ticking last night. I wish it was so easy.
Brad Boydston writes on his love for the Covenant Church after being at the Annual Meeting this week in Green Lake. Amen and Amen. It's good to be connected to a larger tribe.
"'I say! steady! Look what we're coming to!...'
...For now they saw before them the Caldron Pool and beyond the Pool, the high unclimbable cliffs and, pouring down the cliffs, thousands of tons of water every second, flashing like diamonds in some places and dark, glassy green in others, the Great Waterfall, and already the thunder of it was in their ears.
'Don't stop! Further up and further in...'
'This is absolutely crazy," said Eustace to Edmund.
'Isn't it wonderful?' said Lucy. "Have you noticed one can't feel afraid, even it one wants to? Try it...'
But before Jill had time to notice all things fully, she was going up the Waterfall herself. It was the sort of thing that would have been quite impossible in our world. Even if you hadn't been drowned, you would have been smashed to pieces by the terrible weight of water against countless jags of rock. But in that world you could do it. You went on, up and up, with all kinds of reflected lights flashing at you from the water and all manner of coloured stones flashing through it, till it seemed as if you were climbing up light itself--and always higher and higher till the sense of height would have terrified you if you could be terrified, but here it was gloriously exciting. And then at last one came to the lovely, smooth green curve in which the water poured over the top and found that one was out on the level river above the waterfall. The current was racing away behind you, but you were such a wonderful swimmer that you could make headway against it. Soon they were all on the bank, dripping but happy...
...Further up and further in..."
I went searching for something to soothe my soul yesterday and I found this in the final chapter of The Last Battle by CS Lewis. I can imagine you here Julie. The place of your death is now transformed into a place of beauty for me. There you are crawling up the waterfall with all its delights and glory.
I miss you and all that could have been. I grieve the photos that will never be taken because you are gone. I grieve the way that you saw the world is no more. I grieve the loss of the relationship we had and the familiarity I found in it.
I see the photos of John on the wall and I think of you. You will always be with me in them.
And when I go up north and hear the roar of the water over the falls, I will see your hand extended towards me, guiding me upwards to the hope that is found beyond this life through the Great Waterfall.
Someday we will meet again and you can show me the way...further up and further in...
Turning open my prayer book this morning helped ground me in this day. With feelings of numbness and sadness overwhelming me, the familiarity of the words reminded me of what is true.
The refrain for today's morning prayer was:
"Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom."
The words cut through my emotions to my heart.
May it be so for all of us.
The day was sunny and full of light. The air was crisp and clear. The boy was sleepy yet ready. The girl was knocking at the door, bright and talkative as ever.
I remember the day like it was yesterday.
I watched my friend gently interact with my son, making friendship right in front of my eyes. With each shutter release, she created scene after scene of my son's life for the camera to forever capture.
I am deeply grateful for that day.
I am deeply grateful for knowing my friend Julie.
Everyday in my e-mail box I receive a posting from Inward/Outward, a blog hosted by the Church of the Saviour in Washington DC. Today's post was so good, here it is in its entirety.
Last week Kayla was at a writing workshop in Minnesota facilitated by Eugene Peterson, so we decided to offer an excerpt of an interview with Peterson by Christianity Today managing editor Mark Galli, published in March 2005:
CT: Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God.
That’s a naive view of spirituality. What we’re talking about is the Christian life. It’s following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we’ve been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It’s just ordinary stuff.
This promise of intimacy is both right and wrong. There is an intimacy with God, but it’s like any other intimacy; it’s part of the fabric of your life. In marriage you don’t feel intimate most of the time. Nor with a friend. Intimacy isn’t primarily a mystical emotion. It’s a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency.
CT: Doesn’t the mystical tradition suggest otherwise?
One of my favorite stories is of Teresa of Avila. She’s sitting in the kitchen with a roasted chicken. And she’s got it with both hands, and she’s gnawing on it, just devouring this chicken. One of the nuns comes in shocked that she’s doing this, behaving this way. She said, “When I eat chicken, I eat chicken; when I pray, I pray.” If you read the saints, they’re pretty ordinary people. There are moments of rapture and ecstasy, but once every 10 years. And even then it’s a surprise to them. They didn’t do anything. We’ve got to disabuse people of these illusions of what the Christian life is. It’s a wonderful life, but it’s not wonderful in the way a lot of people want it to be.
CT: Yet evangelicals rightly tell people they can have a “personal relationship with God.”
That suggests a certain type of spiritual intimacy. All these words get so screwed up in our society. If intimacy means being open and honest and authentic, so I don’t have veils, or I don’t have to be defensive or in denial of who I am, that’s wonderful. But in our culture, intimacy usually has sexual connotations, with some kind of completion. So I want intimacy because I want more out of life. Very seldom does it have the sense of sacrifice or giving or being vulnerable. Those are two different ways of being intimate. And in our American vocabulary intimacy usually has to do with getting something from the other. That just screws the whole thing up.
It’s very dangerous to use the language of the culture to interpret the gospel. Our vocabulary has to be chastened and tested by revelation, by the Scriptures. We’ve got a pretty good vocabulary and syntax, and we’d better start paying attention to it because the way we grab words here and there to appeal to unbelievers is not very good.
CT: This corruption of the word spirituality even in Christian circles—does it have something to do with the New Age movement?
The New Age stuff is old age. It’s been around for a long time. It’s a cheap shortcut to—I guess we have to use the word—spirituality. It avoids the ordinary, the everyday, the physical, the material. It’s a form of Gnosticism, and it has a terrific appeal because it’s a spirituality that doesn’t have anything to do with doing the dishes or changing diapers or going to work. There’s not much integration with work, people, sin, trouble, inconvenience.
I’ve been a pastor most of my life, for some 45 years. I love doing this. But to tell you the truth, the people who give me the most distress are those who come asking, “Pastor, how can I be spiritual?” Forget about being spiritual. How about loving your husband? Now that’s a good place to start. But that’s not what they’re interested in. How about learning to love your kids, accept them the way they are?
CT: You make spirituality sound so mundane.
I don’t want to suggest that those of us who are following Jesus don’t have any fun, that there’s no joy, no exuberance, no ecstasy. They’re just not what the consumer thinks they are. When we advertise the gospel in terms of the world’s values, we lie to people. We lie to them, because this is a new life. It involves following Jesus. It involves the Cross. It involves death, an acceptable sacrifice. We give up our lives.
It involves a kind of learned passivity, so that our primary mode of relationship is receiving, submitting, instead of giving and getting and doing. We don’t do that very well. We’re trained to be assertive, to get, to apply, or to consume and to perform.
This impatience to leave the methods of Jesus in order to get the work of Jesus done is what destroys spirituality, because we’re using a non-biblical, non-Jesus way to do what Jesus did. That’s why spirituality is in such a mess as it is today.
One test I think is this: Am I working out of the Jesus story, the Jesus methods, the Jesus way? Am I sacrificing relationship, personal attention, personal relationship for a shortcut, a program so I can get stuff done? You can’t do Jesus’ work in a non-Jesus way and get by with it—although you can be very “successful.”
One thing that I think is characteristic of me is I stay local. I’m rooted in a pastoral life, which is an ordinary life. So while all this glitter and image of spirituality is going around, I feel quite indifferent to it, to tell you the truth. And I’m somewhat suspicious of it because it seems to be uprooted, not grounded in local conditions, which are the only conditions in which you can live a Christian life.
The author of over 30 books, including the contemporary translation of the Bible called The Message, Eugene Peterson was the pastor of Christ our King Church in Bel Air, Maryland, for 35 years.
Jean-Francois Baudoz: With Christ: The Gospel Under the Guidance of Saint Benedict
Macrina Wiederkehr: Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day
Phyllis Tickle: The Night Offices: Prayers for the Hours from Sunset to Sunrise
Eugene H. Peterson: Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer
Parker J. Palmer: A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life
Sister Joan Chittister OSB: The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages
Mark Barrett: Crossing: Reclaiming the Landscape of Our Lives
