To be a blogger at all is a huge surprise in my life; it had never occurred to me! To be a blogger at Patheos is a thing of Beauty that is full of Grace and Truth. I am deeply grateful to have had this opportunity. Blessings for the vision that the entire team has: for creating a space on-line where people of faith or no faith can speak and listen to one another . Blessings for the courage of... Read more
An old song by Peter Allen and Carol Bayer Sager: Don’t throw the past away/ You might need it some day./ Dreams can come true again/ When everything old is new again! There is an Easter theme here for me. Paul tells the Christians in Corinth that in the Risen Christ, our point of view is changed; we don’t see anyone from a strictly human point of view any longer. The transforming work of the Spirit of the Risen Christ... Read more
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson, cresseted east…” These words from Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” have been hovering in and around my spirit in this past week. Holy Week is always about what seems to be the painfully slow journey of Jesus throughout Jerusalem to the cross. It is a process, a horrific unfolding of the sorrow and pain of pathway to... Read more
During Lent I have been returning to practices where I had already experienced the Grace of Christ, each week adding a different one, in exercises of remembrance and of stretching. This last week, the one we call Holy, I returning to and adding one practice where I have recognized God’s Grace over and over, the practice of giving thanks, being grateful for all the ways that God come to me, daily, and for all time. I am choosing in this... Read more
My early beginnings taught me to distrust the world. I spent some years of my childhood in a country across the ocean behind tall walls called a missionary compound, an enclosure I was never to leave alone for fear–of danger, of attack, of getting lost. Yet I read and I see that God loved the world. It has been a challenge to me to reconcile God’s love of the world, so freely spoken and acted on, and some favorite sayings... Read more
The house next door is vacant. I confess that I am glad. The neighbor who last leased the house was troubled, and her troubles spilled over into my back yard. However, I am not sure that my heart was very open to her in welcome caring. I know that one of the places where I met met the Grace of God in my life–both as gift and as propelling energy –is when I have followed Jesus’ mandate to expand my... Read more
I am so blessed to have been raised in a family, a faith tradition and an era in which singing praise to the Holy One was as natural and ordinary as brushing my teeth or doing my homework. Every day had our singing in it. My mother put us to bed singing, There is a happy land far, far away…where saints in glory stand, bright, bright as day. At Sunday dinner we shared offering grace by singing a capella in... Read more
What a gift to discover this book in the middle of Lent! Ronald Rolheiser, Roman Catholic writer in spirituality and theology, has written a book that covers new and evocative ground for those who have been on the journey of Spirit a long time in this book, Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity. He divides that journey into three parts: Essential Discipleship; Mature Discipleship, the one he addresses most thoroughly in this book: the struggle... Read more
I am revisiting places where I have experienced Grace as a Lenten practice this year, reminding myself of ways in which I have been met by the Holy One in the past. I began in reclaiming periods of silence last week, and am finding that both the struggle to become and then to stay silent is a very powerful practice in my ability to pay attention. This week I am adding another practice which has taken me into deep reflections... Read more
I have felt overwhelmed with the number and variety of Lenten resources that have come my way this year through many channels, each one seemingly more inviting than the next. I needed to take a moment to stop, to breathe, the listen to what the Spirit was inviting me to let go of or add on as a way of walking toward Easter in a more focused way. As I mused over the possibilities, I kept coming back to older... Read more
A Musing Amma
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