Unfortunately there is no Taize style service from St Andrews this week as there have been technical problems with the service. However I have had a number enquiries about the musicians Kester Limner and Andy Myers. Unfortunately they do not have an album available but here is a link to the St Andrews playlist of their music – there is quite a collection so click through to YouTube to see the whole collection. Enjoy.
Check out the increasing number of resources that we have available for Blue Christmas and Advent. Below you will find Blue Christmas Resources, a Blue Christmas Online Event, and our Advent Retreat Online experience!
Blue Christmas Resources
- Acknowledging Our Pain – Resources List for Blue Christmas: Updated for 2020
- The Text This Week – Blue Christmas
- Litany for a Blue Christmas by Morgan Schmidt
- ‘I follow light’ – Blue Christmas by Kate Kennington Steer
- Blue Christmas 2017 by Kate Kennington Steer
Blue Christmas Online
A Virtual Contemplative Evening on ZOOM, free and open to all
Reflection, Music, Art, Community, Hope
2020 has been a hard, tiring year. We’re weary. The world is weary. An eclectic group of curators across the US with a passion for sacred spaces online and in real life have pulled together an interactive, experiential, contemplative evening for anyone who’s feeling weary this season and wants a space to gather some hope.
Come alone.
Come with your housemates.
Invite your friends, small group, of faith community members to join in from their living room but share in the experience together.
Registration is required to provide the link and details. We’ll be recording it if you can’t attend that night but want to participate later.
Facilitated by: Lilly Lewin and Freerange Worship
Worship, Kathy Escobar and The Refuge, Christine Sine and Godspace Light, Joanna Cummings and A Sacred Home.
Special music with Heatherlyn, Kate Hurley, Archie Davis, and more.
Tuesday, December 8 at 7:30pm Central Time
Click here for your time zone calculator.
REGISTER HERE
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That’s how the light gets in
~ Leonard Cohen
What you will need:
Coming Soon! Lean Towards the Light Advent Retreat Online
Hopefully by next week!
Email us if you are interested in receiving a notification when this retreat becomes available!
We are in the final days of the 2020 election here in the States, and as I type this post, the last presidential debate is happening less than three miles from my house here in Nashville. Regardless of your political party, and even if you live somewhere else in the world, it’s been a long haul in terms of 2020. We all need ways to process the exhaustion of this year. The pandemic, losses of rhythm, the loss of hugs, closeness, the ease of life we once took so much for granted. What do we do with all of this?
Put candles in the window
LIGHT A CANDLE and/or PUT CANDLES IN THE WINDOW and PRAY FOR PEACE
One of the neighbors who lives near Belmont University where the debate is being held, had a great idea. She suggested that everyone in the neighborhood put candles in their windows tonight and pray for peace before the debate started. I got out my collection of battery candles that I usually use for Sacred Space installations and put them in all my windows as a tangible reminder of our need for the Light of Peace to shine brightly in our world. What if we all lit a candle each night in the days ahead to pray for peace and “lean towards the light” as Christine’s Advent Book invites us to do? What if we all encouraged our neighbors to put candles in their windows and pray for peace or “hold space for peace” each evening at a certain time?
WEAR A BAND AID… Pray for Healing for Our Nation and Our World
One of our prayer practices this past Sunday night at thinplaceNASHVILLE was praying with 2 Band-Aid Bandages. We were looking at the calling of Matthew. Where Jesus calls this tax collector to come follow him and then ends up at Matthew’s house for dinner with all his tax collector friends. The religious leaders, the Pharisees, grumbled and asked why Jesus was eating with the riffraff. Jesus said that he came for the sick not the well.
10-11 Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riffraff?”
12-13 Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.” Matthew 9:10-13 (The Message)
We all put on a Band-Aid bandage and touched the bandage while we prayed for healing for our country and our world. We also prayed for people in our lives who were in need of healing. The second Band-Aid bandage, we put somewhere we’d see it on a daily basis, since the original one we put on would probably fall off soon. One friend put the bandage on the back of her phone so she’d see it and feel it each time she used her phone this week and remember to pray for healing for our country and the world.
Light a Candle and Pray for Peace and Hope
FIND WAYS TO WORSHIP:
If you are a regular freerangefriday reader, you know that I’m all about worship! Worshiping with all our senses! Getting outside, being with God in Nature. Worshiping God through art, creating it or looking at it. Worshiping through silence and through song too. Listen to a beautiful song by my friend, Maggie Dawn.
Find a song that brings you hope and gives you peace. Listen to it daily to help you pray for our nation and the world.
Find some resources to help you pray! We have an abundance of Prayer Resources here at GodspaceLight!
And as chief curator at Freerangeworship, we provide resources and coaching to help people engage God with all their senses and learn to worship beyond singing. We just launched a new website freerangeworship.com this week and want to invite you to pray with us in the Digital Sanctuary. Some of these stations you may have seen here in my freerangefriday posts. We wanted to show how we can worship in different ways even though we cannot meet together. We have lots of resources for Advent and Christmas that are prayer station based and a family Advent Box created by Joanna Cummings of A Sacred Home. We are putting together two ways to process the election for churches and small groups and one using Prayer Hearts that is perfect for individuals too. Those Healing and Election Resources will be available to download next week so please check the website then.
PRAYING with Prayer Hearts
Finally, I want to invite you to a workshop that freerangeworship is hosting so you can experience worship beyond singing and learn ways to pray and worship on line using all your senses. It’s a free workshop on November 6th at 2pm central time via zoom. Please feel free to pass this invitation along to friend who might be interested.
FreerangeWorship Workshop: Creating and Experiencing Sacred Space Worship in Unfamiliar Times
Description
We end our thinplaceNASHVILLE gatherings with this prayer. It has helped me a lot during 2020. I have found myself praying it when I don’t know what else to pray.
Lord!
Give us grace today to love as you love. Help us to love with extravagance.
Give us hope today for ourselves and others. Heal our hurts and our hearts today,
So we can serve and help those around us. Help us to know that you are enough.
And help us live today and everyday in thankfulness. For all you’ve done and for all you bless us with.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
May you find peace and healing this weekend.
©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
by June Friesen
2 Corinthians 4:7-12 tells us that if you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!
Opportunity in Brokenness
Not in one’s own body or another’s body
Physically, mentally, emotionally and/or spiritually-
We all desire and aim for perfection and might I add sometimes demand it.
Life does not always and might I say almost never allows for perfection,
We may attempt to produce it in our own life at times
Usually to make us hopefully feel good-
Yet often it just leads to more frustration, emptiness and possibly an attitude of just giving up.
Brokenness – it often produces cracks –
Cracks are those places where what is real can leak/sneak out –
Those things that are not always beautiful, shiny and welcomed by others –
Those things that well up from somewhere within breaking one’s beautiful, peaceful being.
Opportunity can result from brokenness and cracks I have been told –
Those places of hurt, disillusion, disappointment, and confusion –
Where things said and things done just do not seem to match up
And you say there is opportunity for life to grow through the cracks.
Allowing others to reach out and take one’s hand, offer a word of hope,
Encourage one to keep going….even when the cracks seem so foreboding.
Brokenness – cracks – frustration – just plain old tiredness
Are a reality for some if not all of us at times,
And when times bring frustration upon frustration
And pain upon pain,
It all stacks up until it begins to make one unsteady and wobbly –
And all of a sudden it may even topple over and maybe even come crashing down!
Yes, brokenness, pain, frustration – they are a reality for sure,
God you are above and over me as well as everyone and all things –
Please give me wisdom to see the possibility of the life that you want to grow through my cracks –
And even when the cracks are rather huge, deep and even downright ugly –
May it be that I allow Your Spirit to grow right through them
Offering life and healing to everyone who is around me.
To You O God be the glory and honor and praise now and forever Amen and amen.
photo by June Friesen
Is love a rule?
It is said that it is the one rule
containing all the others.
That it’s something we’re to put on,
rather than follow
in a straight line.
For the discerning
love is not a choice,
if life is to be the outcome.
More often love looks like a hard path,
with twists and turns.
It is seldom clear.
And love put on
is sometimes a hair shirt –
an irritant,
and an imposition.
And how do we know
who it is we are following.
Perhaps it’s that we’re not thinking
so much of ourselves,
or balancing on a rigid line.
Love is so encompassing
as to grow in circles.
Within which we,
by loving,
find ourselves.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
August 2020
For more poems for Ana Lisa de Jong, check out the free downloads available in our store:
by Alex Tang
Discernment is the process of hearing God and trying to align our life decisions to align with God’s will. Often associated with decision making, discernment is used to determine the right choice of spouse, career, or lifestyle changes. However, discernment is much more than decision making. Discernment is drawing close to God with the help of the Holy Spirit to discover what God is saying to our lives. I suggest a discernment framework.
Please watch the video below:
Note: Research has shown that more than 80% of people who use the Internet watches video rather than read blog pages. I am trying to write and shoot short video posts more than blog posts. Thank you, Lisa and Christine, for allowing me to post this YouTube video here. You can see more of my video posts in my YouTube channel.
About the writer
Alex Tang is a spiritual director, a practical theologian and a writer. He is also a consultant paediatrician, and an associate professor of paediatrics in Monash University Malaysia. He can be contacted via his website Kairos Spiritual Formation.
by Christine Sine
At our last community meeting, we started talking about Christmas. Yep, Christmas! It still seems so far off but it needs a little more attention this year as our celebrations will probably look a little different than in previous years. Most of us won’t be traveling to spend time with family and Tom and I won’t have our usual Open House. The focus will be on small, socially distanced rather than large gatherings.
How do we approach the season so that we don’t lose the joy and the fun of celebration?
Following our discussion on Monday night, we established a Google document so that everyone can share their favorite foods and favourite traditions with the hope of combining these into some fun meals and activities over the season. It was suggested that we could celebrate the 12 days of Christmas together – maybe not eating together everyday, but enjoying life together in ways that we normally wouldn’t. It brings a smile to my face just thinking of the possibilities.
What plans could you make now that will help make this a rich and joy-filled Christmas?
What new traditions can we start that bring joy not just to us but to others during the Christmas season?
There are some traditions that I will continue from past years. We will buy and decorate a tree on the first Sunday of Advent. I will probably make an Advent jar, and Tom and I will watch Handel’s Messiah on You Tube rather than going to a live performance. And of course there will be lots of zoom calls to friends and family. But there are some traditions that are not possible this year.
I love our annual Open House not just because I love seeing our friends, but also because I love to bake but don’t want to have to eat all my shortbread and fruit cake myself. So, I am thinking about making Christmas treats for my neighbours, hopefully with other community members, and will also be sending out more and probably larger Christmas packages of homemade products than I usually do. I am thinking of making this Rosemary Orange salt scrub as we have so much rosemary we could easily supply the whole of Seattle. So, I get the joy of cooking and creating new things as well as the delight of sharing.
What new traditions could you start this year that will not only bring life and hope into Christmas this year, but also in the future?
How do we shine the Light?
I notice that people are craving light this season. There are an unprecedented number of Christmas lights already twinkling in the neighbourhood. Our new resource Lean Towards The Light This Advent and Christmas, which will also provide our theme for the Advent season, seeks to provide just such a focus. All of us long to see the light of Christ burst into our world at this season in our personal lives, our communities and our world. Through daily reflections, poetry and practical suggestions, we hope that this resource helps you lean towards that light this year.
I still love the Advent video I created several years ago when we first used the theme Lean Towards the Light and know that this will be one that I come back to over the Advent season.
It contains amazing photos by Craig Goodwin and Tom Balke (Title photo) and beautiful music by Jeff Johnson.
The music is “Antiphon” from the CD, ANTIPHON by the Coram Deo Ensemble. Music by Janet Chvatal, Jeff Johnson & Brian Dunning. ℗© 2011 Sola Scriptura Songs / ArkMusic.com Used with permission. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
How will you lean toward the light this Christmas?
Shine the Light of Justice?
Bread for the Resistance
This isn’t the only light I want to shine during Advent this year and it won’t be the only devotional I read. I also want to shine the lights of justice and challenge myself with new ways to respond. The highlighting of injustice in our society is not a theme that we should ignore this Christmas. Donna Barber’s Bread for the Resistance: Forty Devotionals for Justice People is also on my reading list.
How will you shine the light of justice during this Christmas season?
Shine the Light of Lament
On Godspace, we are noticing that Blue Christmas resources are high on many church leaders priority list and we realize that it is necessary this year for us not just to provide opportunities for joy and light-shining but also for lament and grieving. I hope that the resources we provide on Godspace will be of great value to you. I think the empty chair analogy is particularly poignant this year. If you have other suggestions, please let us know. Also, SAVE THE DATE for December 8th when Lilly Lewin, Kathy Escobar and I will facilitate an interactive Blue Christmas service. (More details to come next week).
How will you incorporate lament into your Christmas observances this year?
Lean Towards the Light
At the moment, I am more focused on getting ready for Thanksgiving than Christmas and I love to call this my thanksgiving season. I have just moved my gratitude garden to pride of place on the dining room table, and next week we will be painting leaves at our Community meeting. All of this helps me focus on the season that is coming.
What helps you focus on the season that is coming and ways to prepare? What other things are you thinking of doing this year that will help you find light and hope as we move towards the celebration of the Christ child? How will you bring joy and laughter into this festive season?
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