Focus:; “At the end of our lives, love will be our judge.” Saint John of the Cross

Focus:  Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy…As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.                                      Isaiah 66

Focus:  “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ― Lao Tzu

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.  

Focus:”Easter means hope prevails over despair. Jesus reigns as Lord of Lords and King of Kings…Easter says to us that despite everything to the contrary, his will for us will prevail, love will prevail over hate, justice over injustice and oppression, peace over exploitation and bitterness.”                                 Desmond Tutu                      

Welcome:  We stand at the precipice of Lent and Holy Week. This day moves from shouting and praising to a time of crying and lament.

Hope does not just spring from the fact that there is light at the end of life’s tunnels, but from the fact that we do not have to crawl through. Ant Clemons

Each week of this Lent Season, we are focusing on ways that we can practice a counter-cultural theology that emphasizes the beauty and grace of the reality of life-right-now rather than waiting with increasing judgment to reach some vision of a perfected existence.  Our ladder -climbing efforts sometimes end up taking us down a rung or two as things don’t turn out just right.  And so let us continue to nurture our souls and embrace our holy “good enough” lives.

As we continue our look at what it means to release oppressive expectations about perfection in our lives and in our faith, this week we turn to a harmful idea that the prescription for our fear of failure is to simply work harder. This Lent, we are taking some time to slow down, to tend our souls gently and lovingly, tilling the soil and fertilizer, and embracing our holy, “good enough,” lives.

Focus:  “Beloved remember that you are dust and to dust you will return. You will die; this is true.  And this is true too: God breathed life into you, imagined goodness for you, and remains with you amid every joy and every sorrow. Beauty is written into your being, grace in every breath, gift in every heartbeat.”                (Unknown)

“Of all the things he could’ve chosen to be done “in remembrance” of him, Jesus chose a meal.

Focus:  “God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God’s world.”

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

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

“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.

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.

“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

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 Community Gathers:  Experience God’s presence in the assembly. Please greet one another with joy and welcome new friends into our community of love.

  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

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.

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.

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?