I hope you enjoy today’s beautiful contemplative service from St Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seattle.
A contemplative service with music in the spirit of Taize. Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756 with additional notes below:
“This is my Fathers World” Alternate arrangement by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY)
Public domain lyrics by Maltbie Davenport Babcock, 1901
“Down in the River to Pray” Traditional American spiritual, public domain
Arrangement by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY)
“Kristus Din Ande (Jesus, Your Spirit in Us)” Copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé
“Kyrie” Text and music by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY)
“O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” Public domain hymn, arrangement by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY)
Thank you for praying with us! www.saintandrewsseattle.org
by Tom Sine, originally published on NewChangemakers.com
As we race into a very troubled and divisive 2022, wouldn’t be great if someone created “Innovations to Unite Us”?
I have to confess I am not a fan of all the new tech where many of our young are on screen 6 to 12 hours a day and many adults are seduced by new forms of Instagram envy. I am particularly concerned at the number of good people who have been seduced to buy into a range of different conspiracy theories they have come across on new tech sites. Many of these good people have become agents of division not only in their communities, but also in their churches and even their families.
Shira Ovide wrote, “We need creative ways to make connections with others.” Which I think is a great way to launch this new year don’t you? “It is worth rooting for ideas that bring us more of that feeling of togetherness” – Shira Ovide, The tech I want in 2022
While there are indeed a disturbing number of sites that propagate fear-mongering that are not only dividing communities, families, and even churchgoers, some of these angry tech clubs are creating dangerous divisiveness. Thank God there are also groups still working to bring our very polarized country together.
Here is my invitation to invite people you are connected to make a commitment to make 2022 an “Innovations That Unite Us” year to provide a positive alternative to the angry dividers:
I will post some of the best examples that are designed to use technology to come together in 2022 to work for the common good. Send us either models that are already using technology to bring people together in 2022 or send us your new innovative ideas.
EMAIL twsine@gmail.com Let’s Show People What is Possible when we create That Unite Us in 2022!
Photo by Valiant Made on Unsplash
“You can infuse your life with joy, even right in the middle of winter when you need it most…”
Join Christine Aroney-Sine for a series of five inspiring conversations, based on her book, The Gift of Wonder: Creative Practices for Delighting in God.*
Wednesday nights from 7:00 – 8:00 p.m on Zoom
- January 19 – The Awe of Wonder (Introduction)
- January 26 – Wonder & Trauma
- February 2 – Play!
- February 9 – Reminiscing
- February 16 – The Joy of Gratitude
* We will mail you the book with your $10 registration. If you already have the book, the series is free.
by Carol Dixon, photo © GT Photos Alnwick
Recently I watched a tv programme which was made at the end of December 2016 – only 5 years ago yet it looked like a different world. No masks, no social distancing, strangers hugging each other to wish each other a happy New Year. Above all there was no worry behind people’s eyes.
My hope and prayer for the coming year is that the freedom and joy we experienced before the Covid pandemic will return, and the lessons of sacrifice and service we have learned will stay with us so that the world becomes a more compassionate place.
As we step into this new year many of us may be feeling nervous and uncertain. I know I am as I learn to live a different kind of life while I recover from my colostomy and I wonder how I can continue to serve God in the way I used to as a lay preacher serving the churches in our area. Perhaps I have to discover new ways of ministry and service and need a new vision of bringing God’s grace to those I am called to serve.
One of my earliest posts for Godspace Light featured my hymn ‘Give us the Vision‘. I wrote it many years ago when I was feeling daunted about the coming year. I awoke one morning from a dream where I was standing on the threshold of a door of frosted glass. I could only see strange unclear shapes and I was afraid to turn the handle and walk through. In my prayer time God gave me the words and the music to sing:
1. Give us the vision
for the coming year,
as we look to the future –
to overcome our fear,
and boldly take a stand
as we seek to make each land,
a kingdom fit for you.
- Give us the vision
for the church, your bride,
to be pure, strong and holy –
to overcome our pride,
and humbly understand
we receive with open hand,
the pow-er from you.
- Give us the vision
for our exploited earth
as we watch our planet suffering,
and see the peoples’ hurt;
spur us on at your command
until each and every land
gives glory to you.
©Carol Dixon 1988 (altd 1998) A modern arrangement of the music is in ‘Songs for the new millennium’ available also from Methodist Publishing House
May God give each of us the vision in 2022 to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and share his love, hope, and joy with all we meet.
A New Year Prayer:
May your path be smooth
May the weather be fair
May your journey be light
And may Jesus be your Companion on the way.
(based on an old Celtic prayer)
New Year blessings to you all.
The photo above is dawn over the river Aln in Alnwick, Northumberland, the town where I was born and brought up, taken by my friend George Taylor © GT Photos Alnwick.
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Today, January 7th is Orthodox Christmas Day, and it’s the day after the Feast of Epiphany and the celebration of the Magi following the Star and finding the Light that is for ALL the world. If you’re Orthodox, Merry Christmas! And Happy Epiphany to us all! I love the season of Epiphany! It gives us all a chance to look again at the arrival of Jesus. So often, at least in pre-covid days, I could get so busy with the activities and work of the holidays, that too often the REAL meaning and message of Christmas got a bit lost. I found that celebrating the season of Epiphany gave me and my students a chance to breathe in the wonder of the season! And Epiphany reconnects us to Emmanuel, God with us, as the New Year begins.
Maybe you need some time to keep the wonder of Christmas going into 2022!
One of my Epiphany practices is to look back at the last year and review it with Jesus.
1. I go through my calendar and look back at the things that have happened…events, trips, meetings etc. What do I notice? What do I want to continue into the New Year or the next season? What do I need to delete or leave behind?
2. I go through my photos (I take LOTS of photos with my phone) and see what I notice…What has God been up to in my life in the last 12 months?
Often I use Post-It Notes to visually make a list of the things I notice each month.
3. I look back through the events in the world in the past year…What do I need to grieve? What do I need to be grateful for? WHERE AND HOW have I seen God at work? This past year has been another year of great turmoil, uncertainty, and loss. But there has also been beauty, new births, and celebrations! Make a list of the things you need to grieve and give to Jesus to hold. Make a list of things you need to remember that were gifts, good things, things to be grateful for. Take time to thank Jesus.
Consider the Sweet and Sour of the past year….Use the photos (in the links below) to pray with … allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you through the pain and the sorrow, the beauty, and the joy.
Jonny Baker taught me years ago, to use sweet and sour tastes as a way to remember that Jesus is with us in both the sweet and the sour things of our lives. So find a sweet food and a sour food. PICK A LINK AND REVIEW THE PHOTOS.
What do you notice? What do you need to grieve? What are you grateful for? Let the Holy Spirit speak to you through the photos. TAKE TIME TO PRAY with them.
YEAR IN PICTURES NEW YORK TIMES
Taste the Sour food…thank Jesus for being with you in the sour things of this past year.
Taste the Sweet food …thank Jesus for being with you in the sweet things of this past year.
Epiphany celebrates the Magi following the star to find the King. They leave their families and friends, to follow the star in darkness, not knowing the way, trusting that the light of the star will guide them. They journey for weeks, maybe months through strange lands with great hope! And they find Him, the King of Kings! At Epiphany, we celebrate that the King is not just for the Jewish family, but for the entire world! And in these crazy times, we all need this LIGHT in our lives!
What is God’s STAR calling you to in 2022?
Even when things don’t look like you expect them to look, are you willing to follow anyway?
In order to follow a Star you usually have to be in the dark. Read the quote below. How does this relate to your life right now? How does this give you hope? Or if it doesn’t give you hope, why not?
“Learning to trust darkness and dreams has given more depth and meaning to my faith journey. Darkness harbors new birth. Endings allow for renewal without overcrowding. Loss is the other side of love. For the upcoming week of reflections, I have chosen passages from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Learning to Walk in the Dark. Rather than the “full solar spirituality” that Taylor describes as the sunny side of faith, certainty of belief, positive answers, and incessant focus on light, I breathe a sigh of relief when the psalmist proclaims “darkness and light are as one to You.” Even death and despair have their place in our journey toward wholeness.
In this season of Epiphany, may we look for the gifts of darkness, of desert loneliness and wilderness times. May we notice what has been hidden in the shadows. May we follow a trembling star to a new place, where the mysteries of life are unfolding in darkness. May we trust the journey ahead. “ –Marjory Zoet Bankson, Editor of InwardOutward.org
THE BLESSING OF LIGHT
May the blessing of light be upon you,
Light without and Light within…
And in all your comings and goings,
May you ever have a kindly greeting
From any you meet along the road.
From old Gaelic p. 1091 Celtic Daily Prayer book 2
©lillylewin and freerangeworship@gmail.com
Join Christine Sine and Lilly Lewin for engaging discussions and timely topics live in the Godspace Light Community Facebook Group. Happening every other Wednesday–join us for the next one on January 19th, 2022 at 9am! Can’t make it live? We post them after on our youtube channel, so you never miss the fun!
What do you think of when you think of “The Three Wise Men”? Are they those guys who get slid into the nativity scene in church just before things get cleared away at the end of the Christmas season? Do you see them as three or more or what? Why did only the gospel of Matthew mention them? Why didn’t Luke, with his boasts that he then makes in The Book of Acts about writing a true historic account in both his gospel and part two?
I seem to be drawn to the Wise men/the three kings as I’ve written other posts about them, even one on this site last year. So I thought I’d check them out a bit more. Now I’d been told at some sermon somewhere that they were possibly Zoroastrians and I found some interesting stuff on this website, which might explain why Matthew, who was allegedly writing to help the Jewish people understand Jesus, includes them:
With the exception of religious conservatives, most religious historians believe the Jewish, Christian and Muslim beliefs concerning God and Satan, the soul, heaven and hell, the virgin birth of the savior, the slaughter of the innocents, resurrection, the final judgment, etc. were all derived from Zoroastrianism.
These men did not just use astrology to show that the birth of the Son of God had been predicted in the heavens, but also were able to connect in the virgin birth and also resurrection, not to mention the way Herod chose to slaughter the innocents.
Matthew’s gospel starts with the genealogy of Jesus, which includes the women in his line, Joseph’s acceptance of who Jesus was, the visit by the Magi, the escape to Egypt, and the slaughter of the innocents. When looked at in the light of the above quote about the Zoroastrians it looks very much as if Matthew is speaking to those who would have known this. I feel that he is saying to show how big this whole birth of Jesus is and how inclusive. It includes women; it includes accepting the miraculous; it includes deep grief too.
How often do we want to include grief in the wonder of Jesus being born? But it is a fact of life. I won’t expand on that because there have been some good posts on Godspace that you can search for. But I think it is one of the amazing things that Matthew makes us aware of, if we look properly, that the miraculous and grief sit hand in hand. This is part of the inclusivity of things. It isn’t just to include men and women, people of various colours, nations, sexualities, and more but it is to include all the range of emotions from joy to grief. If we look properly we can see this as yet another miracle. God doesn’t get rid of certain emotions and life events but knows and understands and walks with us in them.
So as we enter 2022–for many after the last two years with trepidation and uncertainty, with anxiety and fear–let us remember that Jesus was born into this, that God understands this, that we are not walking in alone.
And I’ll end with a prayer one of the characters says towards the end of the Netflix film “Don’t Look Up” which I saw on Jon Kuhrt’s blog the other day, which I think is worth holding on to as we enter this unknown year which will be filled with miracles and grief and all points in between.
Dearest Father and Almighty Creator,
We ask for your grace tonight, despite our pride.
Your forgiveness, despite our doubt.
Most of all Lord, we ask for your love to soothe us through these dark times.
May we face whatever is to come in your divine will,
with courage and open hearts of acceptance.
Amen.
Photo by Pixabay
Breath prayers, scripture readings, walking meditations, creative and contemplative activities, and unstructured time for quiet reflection help us rekindle the wonder of Advent. Enjoy the wonderful opportunity for inner reflection and renewing silence that this free downloadable Advent retreat invites us into as the season of prayerful expectation unfolds.
This retreat is best done with a group—so gather with friends or family, or a church small group.
Seems a lambasting thought
that joy might be possible
deep in the belly of grief.
Think of it as access
to the otherwise inaccessible Spirit
when we most need relief.
There seems little to celebrate about grief, that lamentable position of situation or circumstance that lingers and tarries, always far longer into our exhaustion than it relents.
But it’s not until we’ve been there—cast against the rocks in the howling squall of loss; tossed violently by that horrendous milieu of life and kept there—that we recognise that at the end of us is the beginning of God. We might otherwise fail to find our salvation.
Yet it never quite feels right to say it just like that, does it?
Be that as it may, we have the opportunity to juxtapose that change and indeed growth occurs serenely against the flow of our individual control, whereby our preference for and bias toward comfort so often works against the schema of God to take us into the divine.
Oh, how we hate and thereby avoid pain. And yet out of being pushed and stretched and cajoled by loss, we gain access to the divinity ever beyond the horizon of our characteristic ease.
When suddenly we find ourselves backwashed into a place we can no longer deny or avoid–where we’re so weak we find nothing within us can resist the current underneath the groundswell of life’s rushing torrent–there’s one moment, perhaps, where joy becomes us, despite the horror of suffering that brought it to us.
It’s a moment that the light breaks through—and it only needs to be a moment.
One moment is all the testimony the light needs. Once that light bores through, it leaves itself, embellished, a record on the memory, huh! Such embellishment is of course welcome, for it is the very light of hope, an anchor with which to cling to in our distress.
Jesus’ Spirit overcoming,
not succumbing.
As disciples, we do have trouble in this world, yet, as John 16:33 states and the preceding seventeen verses contend, there is an abounding joy to be had for the hope set before each one of us—due even one encounter with the living Christ, not despite the pain of grief but because of it, founded within it.
We only need to have been there once, and the memory of such an event is a light that can’t be darkened. Once for all time is the victory of Christ at Calvary, and once for all time is the victory we experience in encountering the living Christ, and it’s faith that compels us to relive such a glorious thought.
Joy is not only possible in grief,
it is found there in its purest form.
“Anyone who thinks that gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year; for gardening begins in January with the dream” – Josephine Neuse.
Explore the wonderful ways that God and God’s story are revealed through the rhythms of planting, growing, and harvesting. Spiritual insights, practical advice for organic backyard gardeners, and time for reflection will enrich and deepen faith–sign up for 180 days of access to work at your own pace and get ready for your gardening season.
On my desk I have a poster that sends me a daily reminder to think of others. It reads:
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
In the busyness of our daily lives we tend to focus so much on our immense workload, long list of priorities, personal stresses and general battles that we can easily forget that our neighbours are in the same boat as we are. For this very reason, I believe our world could do with a lot more kindness.
Kindness is not one of the personality traits that will make anyone famous, yet it goes a long way in changing the circumstances of ordinary people. Very seldom will the media pick up on stories of kindness, unless they are wanting to fulfill their own agenda. Politicians, musicians, actresses and authors are rarely congratulated for their spontaneous acts of kindness–perhaps because these stories don’t always sell tabloids. However, there are some incredible stories of kindness that should be told, and we don’t need to search far in order to find them.
If you paused for a moment I am certain you would be able to think of a friend or colleague who is exceptionally kind. Their lives are unselfish and always centered on the other people around them. There is simply no better way to describe them other than kind. These are the real people in our communities and we should celebrate their gifts, because kindness can be life-changing.
I came across this lovely quote by Alexander Maclaren that speaks about kindness: “Kindness makes a person attractive. If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.”
Some people believe that changing the world by force is the only way to succeed, but surely we can bring about meaningful change in our broken world by having a truly kind heart? Kindness melts the crusted exterior that gathers on the hearts of the troubled, rejected and exhausted members of our community.
From a Christian perspective, I am convinced that when we live out of a heart of kindness we show ourselves to be disciples of Jesus. The Apostle Paul alluded to this when he wrote: “By our purity, knowledge, patience, and kindness we have shown ourselves to be God’s servants—by the Holy Spirit, by our true love…” (2 Corinthians 6:6)
Paul spoke about the centricity of kindness in our Christian gatherings. In his famous 1 Corinthians 13 passage, Paul writes: “Love is Patient, Love is Kind.” It is the second character trait in a long list of qualities that should mark the life of a Christian. If we have love that reaches out to the ‘other’, then we can certainly reveal this through acts of kindness. Simply put – kindness is the fruit of God’s Spirit working in our lives (Galatians 5).
I sincerely believe that our kindness should always be an overflow from the abundant love that God has for us. The image of God being kind and gracious is littered over the pages of the scriptures. For example, David reflected on God’s mercy and kindness when he penned these words: “But you, O Lord, are a merciful and loving God, always patient, always kind and faithful” (Psalm 86:15).
Isaiah added further comment on this when he prayed: “I will tell of the kindnesses of the Lord, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the Lord has done for us— yes, the many good things he has done for Israel, according to his compassion and many kindnesses” (Isaiah 63:7).
It is evident that kindness is something we should all be seeking to practice in our lives and we would all be the better for it. In all my years of ministry I am yet to hear anyone complain about another person who has been too kind! We could all do with a little more kindness in our lives!
The remarkable thing about kindness is in its simplicity. Any person can be kind. We don’t have to be qualified in order to be kind.
We don’t need any formal education or a theology degree in order to be kind.
We don’t need to be a certain age, gender, or race to show kindness to others.
We don’t even need to speak any particular language, or have thousands of Instagram followers – we can simply be kind wherever we find ourselves.
And so, as we take our place in the world today, I encourage us all to look out for opportunities to be kind. Don’t over-analyse anything, just simply be kind and see what difference it can make!
“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.” – Lucius Seneca
photo by Adam Nemeroff on Unsplash
Perhaps more now than ever, Awe and Wonder are important practices for a thriving life. Follow along with Christine in her latest book as she explores what childlike characteristics shape us into the people God intends us to be. Be encouraged to develop fresh spiritual practices that engage all our senses and help us to live a new kind of spiritual life that embraces the wonder and joy that God intends for us.
“Can you imagine a God who dances with shouts of joy, laughs when you laugh, loves to play, enjoys life, and invites us to join the fun?”
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