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Category Archives: prayer
Race and guns: a call to the occasion “For Such a Time As This” with the Rev. Sharon Risher
I was honoured to offer this opening prayer and call at lunch with God Before Guns and the Rev. Sharon Risher at Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, Cleveland Heights, today. What do guns have to do with any of this? That … Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, prayer, story
Tagged God Before Guns, Mother Emmanuel Church, Rev Sharon Risher
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On the need to pray, and not to lose heart
I pray so as not to lose that heart of God that keeps insisting that justice is possible, that mercy is reasonable, that resurrection is coming. I pray, not so that I can change anyone else’s mind, let alone God’s, but so that God, by her insistence and irritating persistence can change my own heart and mind, bringing them more in alignment with the will and word of God. I pray so as not to lose heart, to hear over and over and over again that widow’s word that God’s justice is eternal, preexisting, loaded with mercy, and final. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon
Tagged Black Lives Matter, Charles Fager, Jeremiah 31:30, John Fischer, judge, Luke 18:1-8, Matthew 7:1, prayer, salvation, widow
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I should get out more
In my collar, I notice people respond to me passing them by, for better or for worse. I smile, pass the time of day. Then someone stopped me short: ”Don’t you remember me?” Continue reading
How to read the Bible
There is a section in one of my church Bibles called, “How to read the Bible.” My curiosity says I ought to check it out; my concern wonders if it isn’t a bit late for that by this point in … Continue reading
prayer incarnate
How did you pray, body and breath, those wilderness days beneath stars that made promises, sand through your hands counting moments since creation, each grain an erosion of the whole; how did you pray, body and spirit sticky with honey … Continue reading
Posted in meditation, poetry, prayer
Tagged desert, Incarnation, Jesus, prayer, wildnerness
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Dust
Between fire and the sky- cold stars trading embers, we are smoke: dust, ash, and air rising and falling
Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer
Tagged Ash Wednesday, ashes to ashes, creation, dust to dust, fire
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A prayer for the absence of miracles
Swimming as an act of faith: Faith in the friendliness of the great lake, doorway to the deep- seated sediment of creation; Faith in the body to carry its cargo through the waves, inspired by the brooding, hovering breath of … Continue reading
Chaos and prayer
Without words, prayer falls formless and void; we must speak light to scare chaotic thought into patterns, comforting, familiar as poppies in the hedgerow – the spirit sighs deeply. Without prayer, words usurp God, creating worlds of their own imagination … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
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When you pray
This was the prayer that first made me fall for Jesus, when I was a child. Of course, I learnt the expanded form that we use in worship; the one that we prayed, hands together, eyes closed, every morning at school assembly time (never at home). But even in its stripped down, barest form, as Luke presents Jesus teaching it, the world which this prayer conjures into being is enough to set my spirit on fire. Continue reading
The cathedral
Entering a slanted cathedral, pilgrim feet sheathed in tourist shoes, watching for the Spirit’s tell between the illustrated tombs; some unquiet air consecrated to the sighs of an unquiet world. If our hearts remain stone, and cold, at least, let … Continue reading
over the water 