Ordinary Time for Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times
Prayer is not just spending time with God. It is partly that – but if it ends there, it is fruitless. No, prayer is dynamic. Authentic prayer changes us – unmasks us, strips us, indicates where growth is needed. Authentic prayer never leads us to complacency but needles us, makes us uneasy at times. It leads us to true self-knowledge, to true humility.” St Teresa of Avila
Love in the Hardest Times
“We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”
Dorothy Day, “Love Is the Measure,” Catholic Worker, June 2, 1946.
Going Fishing
Open us this day to feeling and knowing your presence deep in our hearts so that we might show forth love with the same confidence, offering your reign of right relationship on earth as it is in heaven. We praise you for your close attention, holding our lives together in care. Amen.
Hope and Healing
“When I stand before thee at the day’s end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.” – Rabindranath Tagore
The Divine Feminine
Focus: “She is so bright and glorious that you cannot look at her face or her garments for the splendor with which she shines. But she is with everyone and in everyone, and so beautiful is her secret that no person can know the sweetness with which she sustains people, and spares them in inscrutable mercy.” ― Hildegard von Bingen
The Mystery of MIRACLES
The Community Gathers: Experience God’s presence in the assembly. Please greet one another with joy and welcome new friends into our community of love.
The Baptism of Jesus
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
– Galatians 3:27-28
Wonders of His Love: Compassionate Joy
Holy Living One, You who are our Joy, Give us the strength we need to face the sorrows of the world and meet them with as much compassion as we can. We give you thanks for the and prepare ourselves for the work we will commit to in this next year, offering love and hope in all we do.
Christmas Eve 2021
Tonight we offer the Lights of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love to illumine the Door of Welcome.
And we add the brightest light of all… the Light of the Newborn Jesus. It shines bright like the star that rose over Bethlehem.
May this light also shine in our hearts, in our lives, and in our church. May this light awaken us to possibilities and lead us to greater hospitality.
There IS room in this Inn, a House for the Holy.
Fourth Sunday of Advent 2021
Welcome: This has been an Advent season of prophets: Jeremiah, Baruch, Isaiah, Micah. And now the prophet is Mary–the woman who was the original home for the holy. With all her heart, she proclaims that the lowly are lifted, the hungry are fed, mercy reigns. Like Mary, we must envision, must see, must prophesy and act on that vision for the world that God continues to call us to co-create. What is the view from the room that God has prepared?