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Category Archives: prayer
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
Stronghold
On a mountain of modest height, rendered in verse for its appetite for irony and steadfastness, they found the man, the poets say, guarding his skeleton where it lay. The way to the summit is strewn with the rubble of … Continue reading
Fridays are for mortality
The choice of incarnation, an island carved out of immortality, implies that God is not immune to hard weeks. Continue reading
Posted in prayer, sermon preparation
Tagged birdsong, death, grief, immortality, Trinity Sunday
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Pentecost 2019: Come, Holy Spirit
The Spirit has been present since before the birth of creation, brooding over the waters of the uncreated deep. She breathed life into the nostrils of the first human animals, according to the old stories. She has never been far from us. The trick is to catch sight of the movement of her wings, to hear the vibrations that she creates, the rush of air, the breath of heaven. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon
Tagged Holy Spirit, Pentecost
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