Fires rage
and the air is thick with smoke.
Your creatures, great and small,
long to breathe
the breath of new life, Lord.
Crowds gather,
missiles fly,
and the rhetoric is angry. Read More
RCL: Baptism Renewed
It is time for baptism of Jesus, a well-worn text from the Revised Common Lectionary. This year its Matthew 3:143-17. Many leaders take this opportunity to hold a renewal of baptism. The timing is fitting in the secular calendar, New Year, New Start, Baptism Renewal. After the re-realization of who Christ is and that Jesus… Read More
Friday Prayer
Life-giving Mother, Strengthen me to say… To the spiritual forces that oppose you, Get behind me, Satan! To the political forces that subvert your desire for healing and wholeness, Get behind me, Adversary! To the force within me, struggling for control of others and all situations, Get behind me, Sin! I renounce the forces… Read More
RCL: You are My I Love You
When I read John 15:9-17 I find myself reading it in many different tones. So far, my favorite is to read it in is exasperation. You the super-exasperated “I love you” that is sometimes the best you have to give one another. Its a favorite of my husband and I’s, we will be completely be… Read More
Revised Common Lectionary: John the Baptist and glancing at other texts
Hello Friends, I hope your re-entry post-Christmas hasn’t been too bumpy. Perhaps it is because of the frenzied time of Christmas that the RCL returns every year to John the Baptist text. Hopefully Mark 1:4-11 can be familiar but not tired as you look forward. Although not a Christian concept, the idea of revolutionary baptism… Read More
Sunday Prayer
Oh Beautiful Holy One, We know. We know that the sorrow, the terror, the awfulness of horror and hate are not because of You. It’s because Sin. It’s because of Hurt. It’s because of Narrowness, Pulled-in Fear, It’s because of Unaware Brokeness. We pray for Forgiveness, because without it, we are Lost. because… Read More
Friday Festival: Potluck
Our Festival topics this week range from the practical to the deeply spiritual, from bodily health to mental health, and from marriage to single life. If you click through to read, be sure to leave a comment. Someone in our Facebook group mentioned bullet journals, so I was glad to see Wendy Lamb’s post showing… Read More
Saturday Prayer: Well Pleased
I breathe in. I breathe out. You breathe in. You breathe out. We breathe in. We breathe out. We take a step And then another. Not toward each other But in the same direction Toward the healing rollicking water We pause and then We step in Swirling. Pulsating. Cool and yet warming Together we hear… Read More
Friday Prayer: Water Life
Holy Parent- There were surely people who believed the water in which John stood was somehow magic. Likely, they sought to carry it away in small bottles or wineskins, especially those who perceived something about Jesus as well. The muddy Jordan- barrier and invitation- was hardly the holy water of imagination. Yet the water cycle… Read More
Revised Common Lectionary: Wade in the Water
My daughter’s teacher has been doing a fantastic job teaching her students about some important figures in Black American history this month. One day my child came home from school and told me all about how Harriet Tubman had helped slaves escape to freedom in the northern United States. I was pretty impressed by what she knew.… Read More
