Prayer doesn’t have to be all that wordy. Early Christians used to pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” to express their deep longing for Jesus to return and be among them in physical reality. This practice, the Prayer of the Heart, is designed to help us create those prayers that are as close to us as our very breath. The beauty of this prayer is the way it stays with you all day, all week, throughout Advent, or even a lifetime if... Read more
As we focus this Advent on the coming of Jesus, why not pray one of the most famous prayers in the history of Christianity — the Jesus Prayer? You will find a version of this prayer in the Gospel of Luke’s story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The tax collector is praised by Jesus for humbling himself in prayer, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Christians later expanded the prayer to “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of... Read more
The Psalms are among the most human expressions found in the Bible. A Psalm can give us confidence that no matter what emotion we are feeling, we can share it with God. In this exercise, you will be invited to write your own Psalm. It doesn’t matter whether you think of yourself as a writer or not — this is heartfelt communication, not an exercise in pretty writing. Start by reading over Psalm 16 which is part of today’s lectionary... Read more
We need not approach biblical texts passively. We can communicate with the stories as we read them — we can talk back to them! Today’s Advent meditation is a dialogue with Matthew’s version of the feeding of the four thousand (Matthew 15:32-37). Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them... Read more
For many Christians, praying daily with scripture is an important devotional practice. There are a number of ways to do this. One of the easiest and most portable is to use the Irish Jesuit’s Sacred Space 2019 prayer book or find it free on their website (www.sacredspace.ie). They include a short snippet of scripture from the daily lectionary — scriptures chosen to be read in churches and homes worldwide — with suggestions for points of reflection. You can read it... Read more
If you find it hard to relax into prayer during Advent, try this contemplative prayer exercise. It’s adapted from Anthony Bloom’s classic book Beginning to Pray. Bloom, a Russian Orthodox Archbishop who died in 2003, wrote this short book in 1970 and it continues to be an inspiration to people of prayer today. In his chapter, “Managing Time,” Bloom describes this prayer exercise in narrative form.i I’ve broken it down into steps. It’s simple and short enough that it can... Read more
Advent is the perfect time for reflection on the past, the present and hope for the future. The season honors the days prior to the birth of Jesus — a time of waiting in anticipation for Mary and her family. It’s also a time to enjoy the new thing God is about to do in your life. This Advent season, SD101 will offer one prayer practice a day for you to use, pass along or save for later. Most of... Read more
We need to work on slowing down. Everything moves faster than it used to, and that affects how we find balance and connection in our spiritual life. Last week, I attempted simple maintenance on one of our older computers and was horrified at how slow it ran compared to my newer, more powerful desktop. It challenged my patience to have to wait minutes rather than seconds for it to pull up a program or a file. My husband — a... Read more
In the last few days the pre-midterm-election rhetoric and divisiveness have ramped up. I found it pretty depressing until I took some time to check in with what I truly believe. I hope this blog post will inspire you to do the same. Here are five reasons I believe hate will not win on November 6. There are more kind people than hateful ones in our nation. The hatemongers seem to get a lot of airtime, but overall, most Americans... Read more
We’re taught to “put our heads together,” to combine our collective wisdom, to solve problems in life. But sometimes it takes an experience of group discernment to really “get it.” I’d like to share one of mine. One day while attending San Francisco Theological Seminary, five of us were given a seminary van to take across the bay to the Lutheran seminary in Berkeley for a pastoral counseling class. On the drive home late that evening, the van developed a... Read more
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