By Ken Sehested
It was a time of great turmoil in the land. The Spirit of God bypassed all the famous leaders and came to me with a dream.
And I saw the Ruler of All Creation sitting on a throne, high and lofty, with majesty filling the sky as far as the eye could see.
Angels filled the air, shouting, “Holy, holy, holy! Just and Righteous and Merciful is God’s name!” Continue reading
A brief-but-brilliant reminder from John Main (1926-1982), Benedictine monk and master of mantra meditation. This is from his 1981 talk “The Present Christ” where he exhorted those gathered at the Montreal abbey that forgiveness of sin was not the response of a judge but instead the embrace of a Lover.
…prayer is not talking-to but being-with.
From Walter Wink in Just Jesus: My Struggle to Become Human (2014):
In the integral worldview, however, prayer is given the place of honor in the life of the spirit. Since we are all already related to each other, we are immediate to each other. So prayer becomes the most natural thing in the world. We don’t have to pump ourselves up in order to release a charge of healing energy. The other persons don’t even have to know we are praying for them. Because we are already related, and we are one body in God, God’s healing power is already there and here (but there is no distance). Our prayer is simply a matter of opening the situation to God.
By Kat Friesen
Gathering
Come, you whose lamps are blazing,
and come, you whose lamps are dim.
Come, salty ones, and come,
you whose lives are feeling bland.
Come worship the One who was, and is, and is to come,
our God who restores our lamps with oil,
our God who renews our saltiness,
so that together we may be a city alight with praise,
a city that makes known the Glory of the Lord!
Confessing/reconciling
God who sees the needs of the oppressed,
We confess that our piety, our prayers and our habits are empty without justice.
God who hears the cries of the workers, of the homeless, of the hungry,
We confess our fear of risk, our fear of being made vulnerable
in the face of so much need.
Assure us again of Your healing in our weakness,
of Your abundance in our sharing and in our receiving.
By Ken & Nancy Hastings Sehested
We thank you, God, for water.
By it you give life to plants,
Animals, and all humankind.
We thank you that in the beginning
your Spirit of creation moved over
the face of the waters. Continue reading
New Hampshire Public Radio
By Rev. Anna Blaedel
(re-shared from Facebook circulation)
blessed are you who are raging.
blessed are you who are mourning.
blessed are you who feel numb.
blessed are you who feel sick. and tired. and sick and tired.
blessed are you who refuse to turn away.
blessed are you who need to turn away.
blessed are you who keep breathing deep.
blessed are you who are tending to your own needs.
blessed are you who are tending to the needs of another.
blessed are you who have been calling.
blessed are you who have been organizing.
blessed are you who have been testifying.
blessed are you who have been hearing.
blessed are you who have been resisting.
blessed are you who feel broken open beyond repair.
blessed are you who are raw beyond words.
blessed are you who are working hotlines and crisis care centers and bearing witness to the forces of violence and trauma unleashed and unloosed.
blessed are you who are marching.
blessed are you who are weeping.
blessed are you who preach and know that divinity resides in despised, abused, violated flesh.
blessed are you who know deep in your bones that you are good. and beautiful. and beloved. and sacred. and worthy. and believed. and held. and capable of healing beyond your
wildest imagination.
blessed are you who remind others they are good. and beautiful. and beloved. and sacred. and worthy. and believed. and held. and capable of healing beyond their wildest imagination.
blessed are we when we dare to dream of a world without sexual violence, without white supremacy, without misogyny, without police brutality, without anti-trans and
anti-queer violence.
blessed are we when we stay tender.
blessed are we when we stay fierce.
blessed are we when we dare to imagine repair, and transformation.
blessed are we when we labor together to make it so.
Photo by Tim Nafziger
our deflated dreams after years of trying so hard, our uphill battles
against despair. You see and know us, inside and out.
Our cravings for control when chaos surrounds, our burnt-out
quests for justice, our disillusionment with less-than-perfect community.
God, we need a breakthrough of Your Spirit.
We need some juice for the long-haul! Zest us with hope,
and renew us with Your Living Word today. Amen.
