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Archive for 2004
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This
is Christmas…
The wonder of the Incarnation is that in Jesus we are told that
God and humanity
are meant for each other. ... In
Jesus, God knows intimately what it is to be a toddler ...
--from “ What
Shows Me that God Cares”
by
Mary Earle
Unfaltering
Faith
Our Faith in God has its beginning, if it is to be more than
some faulty human philosophical speculation, in an awareness
and appreciation
of God’s Faith
in us ...
--from
the essay “What Can I Know for Certain?”
by The
Rev. Dr. Robert R. Hansel
God
Among Us
Underneath all of the busyness, the rushing, the effervescence of the holidays,
there is the mystery of infinite love, waiting to take flesh yet again ...
--from "Finding
God in the Eyes of a Child"
by
Mary C. Earle
It'
s Dejà vu All Over Again
He may not be as poetic as the writer of Ecclesiastes, but Yogi
Berra knows a truth when he sees one.
--from Signposts
Daily Meditation
by Susan Hanson
The
Deepest Thanksgiving
Whenever it becomes clear that heaven has heard
and answered our prayers, we find our hearts
grateful and we are
moved to offer thanks.
--from
Signposts Daily Meditations
by
Renée
Miller
Praying
the Way Jesus Prayed
It was amazing to me…amazing that I had heard a hundred times over
the Psalmist’s saying, “Seven times a day do I praise Thee,” and
never bothered to ask what he was talking about ...
--from “What
Drew Me In and Kept Me Practicing Fixed-Hour Prayer”
by Phyllis
Tickle
Stripping Away the Grime
What do you suppose would happen if we boldly let
go of all that others have
done and all that life has done to us–and all that we have done to
others and ourselves?
--from “Imagine
It. We might see God”
by Renée
Miller
Our
Next Step…Together
The power of love builds communities that can exert great force in a society.
It takes great strength to build community.
--from ”Living
Spiritually in an Arguing World… The Power of Community”
by
The Very Rev. Ward B. Ewing
Facing
the Aftermath
Sometime between Frances and Ivan, a friend asked this question: Is God mad at
us Floridians
or what?
--from "Life
After Frances: Post-Hurricane Reflections from a Weary Floridian"
by Marcia
Ford
If
you love to listen you will gain knowledge, and if you pay attention
you will become wise.
--Sirach 6:33
We
all know the type: the person who carries on a conversation while looking
past you the entire time. Is he searching for someone more interesting,
someone more important than you?
--from Today’s
Signpost Daily Meditation.
by Susan
Hanson
Steps
Toward Peace Within
Walk in such a way that peace becomes a reality in every cell of your body, in
every cell of your consciousness, because our consciousness is also made of cells.
--from “Walking
with Peace and Presence”
by Thich
Nhat Hanh
Looking
at the Other Side
To express our opinions, to stand up for what we believe, to act upon what we
feel is a fundamental right and in a large sense a necessary part of being fully
human.
--from “A
Different Point of View”
by Sally
Thomason
What
Is the Heart of Christianity?
To me, the absolute center of Christianity is embodied love. In my reading of
the Bible and in my experience, that's it...hook, line, and sinker.
--from
the question “What Is the Heart of Christianity?”
by
Anne Robertson
What
Difference Does a Prayer Make?
I think efficacious prayer isn’t about getting. What you may
want is an answer to a problem, or guidance about a job, or even
the right
numbers for winning
the lottery.
--from Beyond
Words: 15 Ways of Doing Prayer
by Kristen
Johnson Ingram
Are
You Listening?
Listening as the prophets listen, is not being able to hear clearly, the way
you can hear [someone talking to you]. It means listening with what St. Benedict
calls 'the ear of the heart.'
--from “Listening
with the Ear of Your Heart”
by Mimsy
Jones
Knowing
What’s Real
We can take seriously a different kind of knowing. It's a very ancient kind of
knowing--the ancients called it intuition.
--from
the question “How can I know the truth about Christianity if I question
the Bible’s status as the literal Word of God?”
by
Marcus Borg
I
commune with my heart in the night; I meditate and search my
spirit. --Psalm 77:6
"Who
am I?” is a question we never outgrow. Whether in our teens
or in our later years, we want to know what influence our past
has had
on our present, what motivates us, what our goals are.
--from
Signposts Daily Meditation
by Susan Hanson
A
Very Good Read
In our fast-paced environment, the slow savoring of ideas and concepts has gotten
lost in the push for quickness and efficiency.
--from “Spiritual
Reading”
by Renée Miller
What
Really Matters
To be Christian, I would say, is to live within the Christian tradition as a
metaphor of the sacred, and also as a sacrament of the sacred.
--from the question “ … Is believing certain creeds really what
Christianity is all about?”
by
Dr. Marcus Borg
The
Time for Talk
Ecclesiastes says there is a time for every purpose under heaven. There’s
a time to talk--and
I believe that this is it.
--from "Talking
When Times Are Tough"
by Bob Hansel
You
have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun
knows its time for setting. --Psalm
104:19
Living
as we do in climate-controlled homes, and working in windowless rooms,
we can easily forget
what time of day it is.
--from
Signposts Daily Devotions
by Susan Hanson
The
Tangible Effect of Prayer
God's gifts are given actually and immediately, but they are resources which
we, as God's stewards,
must put to work in our own lives if they are to bear
fruit.
--from "For
the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory ... "
by Bob Hansel
Defining
the Kingdom of God
The Kingdom of God is like standing on your head and seeing the world upside
down. It is seeing things differently.
--from "Your
Kingdom Come"
by Mimsy Jones
Praying
the Hours
People have prayed at fixed hours during the day for centuries. Quietly easing
away from the
obligations of home or work, they take a few moments to spend time
with God.
--from "The Complete Guide to the Ancient Practice of Fixed Hour Prayer"
Choosing
Your Path
When God created humankind in the divine image, the highest expression of that
image is the
power to be a decision maker.
--from the
question "How can I know what God wants me to do with my life?"
by The Rev. Dr. Brooks Ramsey
Praying
When There's No Time to Pray
My interest in Celtic prayer came at a critical junction in my own spiritual
journey. I had just
begun to discover the great contemplative writers of the
Christian tradition.
--from "Celtic Prayer: Recognizing God's Presence in our Every Experience"
by Sylvia Maddox
Meditate
with Music
In order to use music for meditation, it is important to note that meditation,
in all its forms,
provides an environment in which we can set aside the thoughts
that move so constantly
through our minds.
--from "Using Music to Hear the Holy"
by Renée Miller
Is
It All Right to be Spiritual Without Being Religious?
It's not altogether all right to be spiritual without being religious.It's only
partly right for some,
some of the time, but it can't be most right in the end, over time.
--from the question "Is It All Right to be Spiritual Without Being Religious?"
by Katherine Lehman
Praying
with Your Heart
St. Francis very often prayed by heart, which means that the words of prayers
like those that follow
reverberated inside of him.
--from The St. Francis Prayer Book
by Jon M. Sweeney
Doing
Prayer
The truth filters down to earth through many screens and sieves, and I can't
know while I'm on
earth how valid the truth is about prayer. And
that's a good thing.
--from "Beyond Words: 15 Ways of Doing Prayer"
by Kristen Johnson Ingram
Heeding
the Call
As in all myths and fairy tales, the world created by Tolkien is much more black
and white
than our own.
--from "The Lord of the Rings: A Commentary"
by John Tintera
Rooted
in Faith
It is difficult today to imagine how I could not be a Christian after all the
preaching I've heard.
Thunderous, rhythmic word-pounding the spirit of God.
--from "Medicine Men" the third installment of
"Born Again and Again: Stories of the Spirit; Lessons for the Soul"
by Jon Sweeney
Who
Do We Forgive?
In religious terms, forgiveness is not always simple. Jesus seems to say that
forgiveness is,
to some degree, dependent on an accompanying change in behavior.
--from "How Do We Give and Accept Forgiveness?” an excerpt from Finding Faith at the Movies
by Barbara Mraz
Creating
the Kingdom of God
God’s Kingdom is less a place or an idea than it is a
total commitment to love one another--
for it is through our
love of one another that we become the agents of God, willing
to work
to bring about God’s Kingdom on the earth in the present
time.
--from "Where Is the Kingdom of God?"
by the Rev. Bill Stroop
The
Freedom of Letting Go
Each and every one of us has been a victim of the inequity of life.
We have all suffered pain and betrayal.
--from "Imagine It. We might see God"
by Renée Miller
Walking
in Faith
I think there's only one reason to go on that journey. It's because God calls
us [to go].
And the key thing to remember is . . . we don't know the destination!
--from "In Abraham's Footsteps"
an interview with Bruce Feiler
Forgiving,
Again and Again
Some years ago I came across an idea that helped clarify and deepen my understanding
of forgiveness. Forgiveness means relinquishment. It's that simple.
--from "The Parable of the Slighted Son"
by Mark Muesse
The
End… and the Beginning
There was one more thing that was finished that day, and that was the separation
between
Jesus and God.
--from "It
Is Finished."
by The Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor
Leaving
Egypt" : Leaving Security for a Life of Faith
Sometimes old patterns--though unhealthy and undesirable--are very seductive,
because they
seduce with their promise of familiarity and safety.
--from "To Fly or Not to Fly"
by the Rev. Canon William A. Kolb
The
Things of God; the Things of Man
What I want to leave you with today is a serious question. I want you to recognize
that Jesus is
not now
and never has been the legitimate source of any support for separating
the so-called
real world from God's world.
--from "Caesar's or God's?"
by the Rev. Dr. Robert Hansel
The
Stories of Our Selves
Somewhere in the Zohar, the classic text of Jewish mysticism,
it says, "The
stories in the
Torah couldn't be about what they say they're about because
we could write better stories."
--from "Born Again and Again: Stories of the Spirit,
Lessons for the Soul"
by Jon Sweeney
Why
Follow a Practice, A Rule of Life?
I think my rule sets me free. It gives me time for my spontaneous self. It gets
the chores
out of the way. It assures me that I will do the things I have decided
I want to do, so that later
I don't feel like a jerk because I didn't do any
of them.
--from "A
Rule of Life"
by Barbara Crafton
Ask,
and It Will Be Given You
It
is one of the most frequently quoted of all passages from the Bible,
and the
one that we most
hope is true, at least the first seven words: "Ask,
and it will be given you."
--from "Signposts:
Daily Devotions"
by Renée Miller
We
Are Dust
Lent is about mortality and transformation. We begin the season
of Lent on Ash Wednesday
with the sign of the cross smeared on
our foreheads with ashes as the
words are spoken over us,
"Dust thou art, and to dust thou wilt return."
--from "Taking Jesus Seriously"
by Dr. Marcus Borg
Seeing
through to the Soul
We are much more than our egos, thanks be to God. We are also souls. If we identify
with our souls,
then we begin to see things as God sees them.
--from an essay on “The Spiritual Teachings of Ram Dass”
What
Can Christians Learn from Other Religions
We can learn more about God. After college I lived in Japan for two years. Among
the many
things I did there was to study and practice Zen.
--from the question, "What Can Christians Learn from Other Religions?"
by Mark Beckwith
A
Reason for Our Angst
At some point, we, as human beings, become aware of this gap between our beliefs
and our
experience and begin to wrestle with our questions about how to live
authentically.
-- from "Being Real: Spiritual Tools for Authentic Living"
by Linda Douty
The
Gift of Others
We exist to be miracle workers for one another, and it is in community that we
are called to grow.
-- from "Being Real: Spiritual Tools for Authentic Living"
by Joan Chittister
The
Long Journey Backward
There
comes a time for many of us when our heart murmurs softly to us that we
need to
return to our roots.
--from "Signposts: Daily Devotions"
by Renée Miller
Walking
a Sacred Path
To walk a sacred path is to discover our inner sacred space: that core of feeling
that is
waiting to have life breathed back into it through symbols, archetypal
forms like the labyrinth,
rituals, stories and myths.
--from "Walking a Sacred Path" by Dr. Lauren Artress featured in
"A
Mirror of the Soul: Exploring the Labyrinth as a Tool for
Spiritual Navigation"
Finding
the Center of the Soul
Most of us arrive at a sense of self only after a long journey through alien
lands.
But this journey bears no resemblance to the trouble-free travel packages
sold
by the tourism industry.
--from Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
featured in "Being Real: Spiritual Tools for Authentic Living"
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