Posts
A Blessing for Christmas Ornaments
Holy OneOver these ornaments we invoke blessing The blessing of love and of memoryOf laughter and of lonelinessThe blessing of joyThe blessing of small hands with eager fingersWho crafted paper wondersand of skilled handsthat stitched and shaped reminders of their care. We invoke blessing,through these fragile, lovely thingsreminders of our fragile, lovely livesand of You…
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This too is a mystery: a creation prayer
In this prayer, if it is used in a group, children and or adults use shakers* as a response each time we say this is a mystery, shaking them in a mysterious way, (hopefully). You can ask someone beforehand to lead the way in the shaking. Perhaps it will be a loud and vigorous mystery. Holy…
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A Child Can Lead Us
Over and over this summer I’ve experienced the ways children bring us into an awareness of the presence of what is holy. Whether you spell Spirit with an ‘S’ capital or lowercase, children slip into ours hands small and treasured and take us wading. They splash us with the serious and the surprising. With their imagination, their wonder,…
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Blessing the Backpacks (with bubbles)
(The worship leader could say the words of the following prayer alone or it could become an echo prayer with the children and any who bring backpacks repeating the line after the leader.) Loving God,You are with us in every placeAt homeAt schoolOn vacationIn places that feel wonderful and places that feel scaryYou are…
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Stars and The Breathing Land
Last week I gathered with a group who had come together from many places to imagine landscapes old and new. We did that by recalling our ancestors, those who had inspired us, but also those who had knotted the rope of our past, those who had wounded us or gone astray. We opened to the…
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Wildfire Rain
Rain is falling,thrumming, steady on the deck boards as I wake in the dark. Rain has arrived, like a nurse,in rooms of exhaustionplumping up the hard pillows of dry earth,tenderly touching the burnt boards of dreamsAnointing their fallen doorwaysreleasing the love they surrounded,to soakdeeplyinto the aching hearts of those who are bereft. It is like…
Read MoreRural Roots Going Through the Holy 2023 Going Deeper
Author note: written by Dr. Marvin Lee Anderson Rural Routes Through the Holy: Thrive Where You Are Rev. Dr. Catherine Smith, in her article Somewhere, United Church Rural Ministry Network, Fall#11, quotes the geographer Tim Cresswell: “Place, at a basic level, is space invested with meaning in the context of power.” Catherine asks: “Who defines power?…
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Holy Week and Easter: Prayers on the Breath
May you risk the road and be graced by what you haven’t planned ~ I am travelling away from home during these marked days. I will be travelling to enter the delightful, loving chaos that days with children and grandchildren offer. I’ve chosen this travelling gratefully, but it opens questions in me.
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Peace Holds Us
Holy One, yesterday in the woods, the late afternoon light was so tender and strong, the shadows made art on the snow and the sky prepared to relax into the night.
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Epiphany and Lent speak to one another
Tomorrow is the last day of the Epiphany season; those days of wild stars and journey, of new sight, sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful, sometimes a poignant mingling of the two. If you’ve read my two earlier posts, Bending Into Advent and Portals to Joy, you’ll know that sight has been much on my mind during…
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Love and Long Nights
There are some mornings I wake with dread; things press in and I lie gathering my courage to drop under it all to where that terrible tension will be distilled in Love. This is the Advent week of Love.
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