Darkness

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Joan Chittister Uncommon Gratitude

Giving life through forgiveness

 

"To give life to people is to reveal to them

that they are loved just as they are by God,

with the mixture of good and evil,

light and darkness that is in them:

that the stone in front of their tomb

in which all the dirt of their lives has been hidden,

can be rolled away.

They are forgiven;

they can live in freedom."

Jean Vanier

Religion

Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.

~Karen Armstrong~

Serve

If you really want to be powerful, if you really want to be influential, then just serve. - Rev. Willie Barrow

Reconciliation

"Reconciliation is to understand both sides;

to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side,

and then go to the other side
and describe the suffering being endured by the first side."

-Thich Nhat Hanh

What prayer is not....

Prayer is not asking for what you think you want,
but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine.

~Kathleen Norris (1947- )

Prayer for Restoration from Fatigue

Prayer for Restoration from Fatigue“Gracious God, at times my life seems to be too much. Too full. Too demanding. Too consuming. Everything feels necessary, even important, but weariness creeps across my body and soul like storm clouds gathering in an open sky. As my body is depleted of energy, my mind loses interest in what normally enthuses me. My tired soul sags as if it were a balloon losing its air. Sometimes I feel so spent that even restorative sleep seems to elude me. Help me sort the truly important from what only seems important. Give me courage to say no to what drains rather than feeds me. Help me find brief moments to sit in perfect stillness while you massage my soul. And, when I go to my nightly sleeping place, wrap your darkness around me like the softest cloak, so that I may sleep peacefully in your embrace. I ask this for the sake of your love. Amen.”

from Explore Faith - Nightime Prayer

When despair for the world - Wendell Berry

"When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water..." -Wendell Berry