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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Saturday, August 31, 2013

Angels can fly

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity.
G. K. Chesterton

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Dear Lord
It is another day
Here I am, in the place that I was born
Meeting people who have known me all of my life
Who have know my family
Who knew my parents

There is an odd weight to being here
Did I live up to community expectations?
Has my life honored my parents
My family
Am I the kind of man people expected me to be?
Am I the kind of man my parents would be proud of?
Am I the kind of man I want to be?
Am I the kind of man God wants me to be

No wonder I sometimes have “feet of clay” (Nebuchadnezzar and I, we are like “this”)
Oh, I have done OK
I am educated
I think I have done some good in this world

But oh those mistakes
Oh those moments of failure
Oh those hidden flaws
That I am all too aware of

But God, I am who I am
And all I can do
Each day
Is abide in you
And just be, in the moment
Be the best person I can be in that moment

I need lord the lightness of the angels
I need to travel light
Realizing that no one, even You
Takes me as seriously
As
I
take
myself

Lord this day, deliver me
From the weight of my own
expectations

Friday, August 30, 2013

Hear My Prayer

Everybody prays whether [you think] of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else's pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world.     Frederick Buechner

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Lord
Hear my prayer

as I sit here watching the sun crawl across the valley where I was born
hear my prayer

as I think about friends I have had my whole life
hear my prayer

as I struggle with things done and undone
and sink into my anxiety
hear my prayer

as I look at the latest picture of my granddaughter
hear my prayer

as I sip my first cup of coffee
hear my prayer

Lord
Help me to remember
That all of life becomes a prayer

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Love and Fear

Just finished the book by Rohr.  May have to read it again.  So full of things to think about.  To Ponder.  In this time of anger and hate.  Of war and rumors of war, one thing that Rohr said jumped out at me yesterday.

“I believe fear is almost always behind hate…. For fear to survive, it must look like reason, prudence, common-sense, intelligence, the need for social order, morality, religion, obedience, justice, or even spirituality.  It always works.  What better way to veil vengeance than to call it justice?  What better way to cover greed than to call is responsible stewardship?”

I am going to have to think about this one.  The cloaking of fear, and hate, in the garments of faith.  I think I see this being done.  On both ends of the spiritual spectrum.  And it makes me wonder, how many things do we do out of fear?  How many of our supposedly righteous actions for God, are really about us? And our stuff?

I have no doubt that as people of faith, we seek to do good.
But how many times are our responses really about us, and our fears?
Our greed
Our anger
Our needs?

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Oh Lord
I want to be a person run by faith
Who walks through each day, allowing your presence and love to flow through me to the world
But Lord, there is that lurking thing called fear

In fear I become entrenched
In fear I do good things in order to feel more secure in your love
In fear I seek the love and affection of others
In fear I criticize
In fear I hold fast to my possession

But you tell us Lord
That perfect love casts out fear
You are perfect love
And you tell us that you are in us

I know that I will never, perfectly
Be free from fear

Help me to be so full of you
That there is less room for fear