Leaders of Faith Community
For Beginning
Holy One, may we come to this hour as though we lay on our backs with the night sky above us with the orange moon tying us to the originating moment and all who are between. may we come to this hour as though astonished by the delight of the morning sun when we thought…
Read More
The Eyes Have It: John 3:1-15
In the desert,long before John’s gospel was written,there was the story of a people always walking backwards,their eyes turned toward what had been,people always ready to be distracted from life’s unfolding,by the sightless golden calves. These people, so the story goes,were bitten by snakes.Strangely it was the first time in all those years in the…
Read MoreBlessings in the world
Always in life we are relinquishing something or someone, gracefully or with great struggle. We relinquish childhood for adolescence, adolescence for adulthood and its various stages one for another. We relinquish one state of health for another, one beloved home for the smaller one that meets our needs. To be able to live well in…
Read More
Inclusion
Do you ever read ahead in the novel? Take a quick peek at the end or the half-way point? Does the book ever just happen to fall open at a place that captivates you; Five minutes later you discover you have stood there your elbows on the counter, wondrously out of sequence. In a sense…
Read MoreTo Know We Are All the Beloved John 20:19-31
Holy One You come into the locked rooms of our lives and you speak into our fear and our doubt and our indifference You tell us who we are and send us out into a world where so many have lost their name and answer to hate or fear or power What would it mean?…
Read MoreA Resurrection Riff
Resurrection: A riff on the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria played by cello and piano Resurrection – say it softly, as one must after the softening notes go wherever notes go when they no longer sound. Resurrection As I write this it is snowing The snow falls like the notes of the music And though at times the…
Read MoreHinge Time
Luke 9: 51-62 I read this text just before the Summer Solstice when the daylight hours reached their greatest fullness and began to turn toward the longest night. I read this text just as Jesus’ time in Galilee came to an end and he began to turn toward Jerusalem – he set his face. We…
Read MoreWhen Pigs Fly
Block the text one great preacher says. See the action. Who is where in relation to the other? Who moves where in the text? What do you see? As I blocked the action in this our third story of healing in as many weeks it was as in the story of the widow’s son two…
Read MorePrayer for Beginning a Meeting
Holy One, We come, each carrying our own story our own vision our own hopes and our own purpose all to be threaded into the great story that is Your life with ours
Read MoreThe Memory of Ashes
I woke early this morning wondering about doubt; turning doubt itself this way and that way in my heart. And I felt again the importance of practices. On Wednesday night in worship I said these words: Dust you are and to dust you will return. Love’s you are and to love you will return.
Read MoreTaken, Blessed, Broken, Given
Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given Matthew 26:17-18; 26-28 This morning we come, once again to the table, the table of our lives as Christians, the table of remembrance, of celebration, of love and of service. This morning we come to this table, where, as the words we will say later remind us “we can most fully be ourselves…
Read More