Skip to content
  • Home
  • Resources
  • Rural Ministries
  • Governance as Spiritual Practice
  • Blog
    • Reflections
    • Prayers
  • Events
  • About
  • Contact

A Tender New Year

Catherine Smith2021-01-03T08:42:17-04:00Categories: Reflections|Tags: 2021, Greetings, Hope, New Year, Tenderness|

As we pass over the threshold between yearsI hope for you, tenderness;that you become tenderness. Tender with your longings,tender with the things that are still impossible.Tender. [...]

Read More
 12

Giving

Catherine Smith2020-05-05T19:14:58-03:00Categories: Reflections, Rural Ministries, Uncategorized|Tags: church, community, Congregation, Faith Community, Giving, Offering, Online worship, Pandemic, Physical Distancing|

I love this tiny hand touching the heart of things. I can almost imagine the pavement softening touched by these fingers. It made me think of [...]

Read More
 0

If, but . . . and in between

Catherine Smith2020-09-29T13:50:21-03:00Categories: Lent, Reflections, Sermons|Tags: Future, longing, Martha, Mary, Pandemic, Raising of Lazarus, Worry|

Last Sunday we just touched this text and thinking of it during the week, I recalled this sermon I wrote several years ago. It asks a [...]

Read More
 1

Stillness

Catherine Smith2020-01-28T11:59:18-04:00Categories: Reflections|Tags: burnout, busyness, Discernment, stillness|

WIth increasing frequency, I read about the damage of busyness, the longing for stillness, the joy of quiet . We may even sense, in the habitual extension [...]

Read More
 0

Song of our Bodies; Site of our Blessing

Catherine Smith2020-01-28T12:01:08-04:00Categories: Reflections, Uncategorized|Tags: blessing, Creation, Embodiment, Eros, Lectionary September 2nd, Song of Songs|

The one who rises gracefully before us, in this moment, is the Shulammite women. We might listen avidly or uneasily or both for we have heard [...]

Read More
 2

“The Frames of Your Belonging”

Catherine Smith2020-01-28T12:01:09-04:00Categories: Reflections|Tags: call, Discernment, John O'Donohue, risk|

  I love this phrase set within John O’Donohue’s larger blessing.  “May you listen to your longing to be free/May the [...]

Read More
 0

Drawn through the Prophet’s Heart

Catherine Smith2020-01-28T12:01:09-04:00Categories: Reflections, Sermons|Tags: Advent, Isaiah 64, Journey, longing|

The journey to God, Sufi Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee says, begins with “the homesickness of the heart, (you can find  Vaughn-Lee  speaking of Sufisim here https://goldensufi.org/a_interview_st.html Perhaps [...]

Read More
 0

“One Small Step in the Direction of Love”

Catherine Smith2020-01-28T12:01:09-04:00Categories: Reflections|Tags: Discernment, identity, love, Spiral Time|

  As I come to the conclusion of a year in which I chose to let go of those things by which I might most [...]

Read More
 0
Copyright 2017 Catherine Smith | All Rights Reserved