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Godspacelight
by dbarta

Remembering Eugene Peterson (1932 – 2018)

by Christine Sine
written by Christine Sine

by Christine Sine

As many of you know Eugene Peterson, died yesterday.  He created The Message and authored over 30 books. His work has inspired millions of Christians around the world and his impact will continue for a long time to come as many of us continue to use his valuable resources. Evidently his life goal was:

to “change the pastoral imagination of pastors today,” to urge them “to slow down and to be present to their lives” so that they could help their congregations do the same, he said.

It is his writings on rhythm of life and reflections on psalms and also the Sabbath that have most inspired me as I have sort to develop my own “slowed down” rhythm and focus. The Contemplative Pastor  and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction are the two of his books I have found most helpful. He writes not only as a theologian but also as a pastor and had so much to say not just for those who are in church leadership but for all of us who struggle to follow Jesus every day.

I was also impressed by the ways that he lived out his faith. It seemed to me that he was never looking for fame and fortune but often seemed unassuming and reticent to step forward – following God and the vocation God had given him because it was just that – God’s call on his life. He always seemed to be a man of humility and grace.

Eugene Peterson will be sadly missed by all of us. I am so glad that his legacy will live on through his writings. I pray that he will continue to influence all followers of Christ to seek the often challenging path of slowed down spirituality and balance that he so often talked about.

May he rest in the arms of God today who is I am sure welcoming Eugene with the words: “Well done good and faithful servant.”

 

October 23, 2018 2 comments
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Uncategorized

Rhythm of Life Retreat in Seattle

by Hilary Horn
written by Hilary Horn
It’s time to sign up! The retreat day is only a couple of weeks away and there are only a few spaces left.
Do you feel there is never enough time to accomplish everything you want to? Do you lack rest and relaxation because your to do list is never done? As Christmas approaches do you lack the sacred rhythms that call you to slow down and notice the gentle whisper of God’s voice? 
Sustainable living is not about cutting back on consumption and work, though that can be an outcome. Sustainability is primarily about living into the rhythms of life God intends for us.  
What would it look like to find that sustainable rhythm for that reintroduces you to the joy of the Advent and Christmas season?
In The Rhythm of Life, through reflection, contemplation, and creative explorations, Christine Sine, will assist you to rediscover God’s sustainable rhythms that provide balance between work and rest, effort and waiting, doing and not doing. Using the seasons of the year and the liturgical pattern of life they gave birth to we will explore how to reconnect our lives to God’s patterns and the practices that should undergird them.
This seminar is specially designed to help us prepare for the Advent and Christmas seasons by encouraging us to cultivate our own sacred and sustainable rhythms. 
Where: Mustard Seed House, Seattle
When: November 10, 9am -12noon
Purchase your ticket in our shop for $25 and once you purchase, your ticket will be downloadable with the address of the retreat.
October 23, 2018 0 comments
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Meditation Monday

Meditation Monday – My Cup Overflows

by Christine Sine
written by Christine Sine

by Christine Sine

This week has been a lot of fun for me. Last week I mentioned that I planned to create a gratitude garden to help me focus on God’s abundant blessings during the next couple of months until the beginning of Advent. And that is exactly what I have done.

I usually make the week of Thanksgiving my gratitude week, but I so enjoyed Canadian Thanksgiving and I am so looking forward to American Thanksgiving that I thought: Why not make October and November into a season of gratitude? Perhaps you would like to join me.

Here are some suggestions for how do to that.

Start with prayer. 

Like all good new spiritual practices we want to establish, we need to begin with prayer – not looking for something to complicate our lives or make us busier, but really trying to discern what God wants us to be doing during this season.

As I sat with my eyes closed, savoring the presence of God and the many blessings in my life, Psalm 23: 5-6 came to my mind: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” 

My cup does indeed overflow I thought – what a great theme for this season of gratitude.

What is God prompting you to do during this season? 

Create a focus

Next I realized that I need a focus to remind me of my blessings. (Yep if you are like me it is easy to forget to count my blessings and thank God each day). Establishing any new habit is much easier when we have something visual to prod our memories. 

As you know I am a garden person and so it is not surprising that my focus is a garden – a small indoor garden that I am calling my gratitude garden. 

I made a trip to Goodwill and purchased a frame that I thought would be perfect for this exercise. Its a fruit tree with a banana hook. Then I rummaged through my unused plant pots until found one that fitted perfectly inside it. Next I chose a tea cup to hang from the hook. I planted the pot with succulents and filled the teacup with trailing plants that overflowed onto the main garden. 

Last but not least I painted rocks with the words “gratitude” and “my cup overflows”.  Painting rocks has become a regular spiritual discipline for me, a contemplative activity in itself but also one that provides an important visual focus for my devotional times. The result was the garden at the top of this post. 

What do you enjoy doing that could help you create a special focus for your meditations during this season? 

Establish a practice. 

My garden now sits on my desk where I conduct my devotions each morning, a wonderful reminder to reflect on all the blessings in my life. Initially I intended to just make a list of what came to mind when I asked myself “What am I grateful today” Then I felt God say choose one and go deeper.

In part I have Bjørn Olav Hansen to thank for this suggestion. When I posted my completed gratitude garden on Facebook last week he reposted it and one of his friends responded: Today I thanked God for creating colors. And for creating my eyes so I could see the colors. And for creating my brain so that I could appreciate them. I love the changing colors of autumn, but it had never occurred to me to thank God for my eyes and my brain that enable me to apppreciate these colors. Going deeper enhances my joy and gratitude.

So now I have developed a lectio divina type of practice for the season:

  1. Write a list of what I am grateful for.
  2. Read through my list  until one resonates in my soul.
  3. Read it over, savour it, sit with it in the presence of God.
  4. Go deeper and allow God to unveil new insights about my gratitude. Why does this gratitude resonate in my soul? What is it about this person, place, experience that makes me grateful?
  5. Respond – is there a prayer or poem that wells up in response? Is there an image that needs to be created or a photograph that needs to be taken? Do I need to write a thank you letter, give someone a hug or even prepare a special meal.

What is one thing that you are grateful today that God is prompting you to spend more time savoring and appreciating?   

This has been an enriching and strengthening exercise for me. It was fun, it made me slow down and think about what is really important at this season and each step of the process brought to mind another rich array of blessings I need to be grateful for.

As we approach the Thanksgiving, Advent and Christmas seasons it is good for all of us to establish practices that encourage us to slow down, to reflect, to attune ourselves to God and to take notice of the abundant blessings in our lives. 

What activities could encourage you to slow down and notice the blessings of God in your life at this season? What could provide a focus for you and what is a simple daily practice you could  establish to guide you? 

October 22, 2018 2 comments
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Advent 2018freerangefridayPreparing for Advent & Christmas

Freerange Friday: Preparing for the Gift of a Baby

by Lilly Lewin
written by Lilly Lewin

by Lilly Lewin

This past weekend was our first taste of Fall here in Tennessee. The 90 degree weather finally broke with a weekend of rain and a fresh breath of cold wind so that we now wake to temps in the mid-forties and highs in the low 60’s. Much better for my soul than the extended heat and humidity of this year. I’m just getting used to the idea of harvest and pumpkins on my porch. I even have a large pumpkin growing in my side yard. It’s a gift pumpkin from the seeds of last year’s jack o lantern that planted itself. I’m looking for more gifts in my world at the moment. Unexpected gifts like side yard pumpkins, cardinals on the mailbox, a post card from an old friend. It’s been a long year of world problems and political battling. Just turning on the news can turn up my stress level. I need the gift of peace and the gift of pausing. I need the reminder that God is still in control and God’s Light still shines brightly even when it feels dark. And I need the Hope of new life that can be found in the arrival of a baby.

We are all waiting for the gift of Light to arrive.

We all need to new eyes to see the gifts and light around us.

We all can prepare our hearts for the gift of Baby Jesus and the celebration of his arrival.

That’s what the season of Advent can provide for us. It can give us time and space to get our hearts ready! Advent is the season of preparing for the Gift of Jesus and it starts this year on December 2nd. Celtic Advent starts earlier, on November 15th. The Celtic Christians use 40 days of preparation before Christmas just like the 40 days of Lent before Easter. Maybe you need a little extra time this year to get your heart ready.

How can you get ready for the gift of Jesus this year?

When a baby is coming there is a lot to do and lots to plan for. And special gear to acquire in order to be ready for the baby’s arrival.

What things need to happen in order for you to prepare Him room?

Do you need to clear your calendar?

Do you need to make a plan?

Do you need to prepare mentally or change your attitude?

What does this look like?
Talk to God about this.

Can you get ready for the gift of Jesus as a baby, a baby who needs our time and attention?

Are you and I willing to accept this a receive Jesus as an infant?

How are you willing to change your life in order to give baby Jesus the attention and care he needs?

Consider this today.
Talk to God about how you can receive and prepare for Baby Jesus!
PUT ON SOME BABY LOTION let the smell remind you to prepare for the gift of the Baby Jesus.

You can help your church community, small group or youth group prepare for Advent and Christmas this year with a Sacred Space Prayer Experience. This is a series of prayer stations that can be set up as a stand alone event or use individual stations like one The Baby Lotion Station as a response to a sermon or teaching. It is found in the Christmas Incarnation Sacred Space Prayer Experience.

I also have an Advent Waiting Prayer Experience.  You can purchase and download both of these Sacred Spaces at Freerange Worship. The Kits come with leader’s guide, supply lists, and photos of how to set up the prayer stations. Along with all the instruction signs in PDF to print out for each station.

You might want to try some coloring pages or posters from my friend Adam Walker Cleaveland at Illustrated Children’s Ministry.

Or Check out the great PDF Calendar for Celtic Advent and Beyond from Contemplative Cottage. This is last year’s calendar but it has great ideas for an action to take each day of Advent.

You might want to buy some baby supplies like a baby bottle, or diapers, or a bottle of baby lotion to have on hand as symbolic reminders that the Light of the World is being born and it’s time to prepare for his arrival. And Take time to receive the Gift of Baby Jesus!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 18, 2018 0 comments
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Celtic spiritualityChristian artPrayerPrayer and inspiration

Celtic Prayer Cards Now Available!

by Hilary Horn
written by Hilary Horn

Celtic Prayer Cards with prayers by Christine Sine and crafted by Hilary Horn with Celtic design and contemplative Celtic imagery. Pre-order yours in the next week and we will mail you a beautiful copy of the prayer cards by the end of October.  1 set  of prayer cards is 9.99,  3 sets are $25.99, or you can instantly download the pdf of the prayer cards for $4.99.

 

October 18, 2018 0 comments
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The Privilege of Sin

by Hilary Horn
written by Hilary Horn

By Sara Easterly —

For the last couple of years, and especially this year since reading Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race, I’ve been trying to ponder and deeply explore privilege. I don’t mean this as a brag in any way, but I’m overflowing with the stuff – in so many areas of my life. I am embarrassed to admit that I’m probably not even close to consciousness around a fraction of it.

Being a visual person, I don’t always understand what can feel like an esoteric concept, privilege. That is, until the concept is supported by an image. For example, while I’ve long thought that I empathized with and understood issues raised by people of color, it wasn’t until recently, when I was given an image of white privilege during an anti-oppression training with Dr. Leticia Nieto, author of Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment, that I began to understand it more deeply.

“Close your eyes,” she had said, “and imagine yourself walking around on a floor made of other people’s heads.” For me, what came to mind were bones – skulls – of thousands of indigenous people and African Americans. With that picture in mind, what was before a generalized feeling of sympathy became so much more visceral and real. “Oh my God,” I thought. “That is not at all okay with me. I don’t want to be standing on anyone’s skulls!” I wanted to jump out of what I pictured to be a mass gravesite under my feet as she had us role-play how our gait would change if we knew we were walking on such a floor. Only as Dr. Nieto reminded us, it’s not that simple. I cannot just escape. (Thinking I can is simply more privilege.) That mass gravesite I’d envisioned is America. It is where I am, like it or not – no matter where I may crawl or where I wish to run, because, like it or not, it has become a part of who I am.

The point isn’t to escape, but to remember – and respond accordingly. I remember by keeping that dreadful image close to my heart – not so I can punish myself into a corner of guilt and inaction, but because it helps inform how I think and act and to matters of racism and injustice. It helps keep my privilege in check, seeing where I am standing and how I got here. The image can’t change the past. But it can certainly change the future, helping ensure that I am considerate of the suffering of others and working, where I have influence, to stop it.

With privilege such a pressing topic right now – something this era demands each of us inspect up-close – I recently came to a stunning revelation about how privilege applies to Christians – specifically, to sin: Sinning, I realized, like skin color, is a matter of privilege.

I will confess that the word “sin” isn’t a word that I naturally rally around. I have a complicated relationship with the term, just as I have a complicated relationship with sin. As with privilege, I’m full of it. Similarly, I’d love not to be. As discussed with several wise women in my Bible study, the word “sin” can quickly lead to internalized feelings of guilt and shame. The Church has a long history of messaging around this. Street preachers love pacing concert venues with their signs and wearables: “Repent your sins … or go to hell!”

But that sin-shaming misses the important message of hope offered by Christianity: Jesus knows we’re all sinners. He loves us anyway. He loves us so much, in fact, that he was willingly killed on a cross for crimes he didn’t commit in order to save us from the mess that is us.

I’ve come a long way from either shaming myself or fleeing from God because of my sins – a good thing. But the danger is that I can also take my sins for granted. Does it matter if I judge others? Gossip? Tell the occasional white lie? God sees my heart and loves me no matter what. While never quite that conscious, this line of thinking, I’ve realized, comes from a place of privilege – a privilege of sin that I wouldn’t have were it not for Jesus.

Trying to be more mindful of this privilege will require for me another image – an image that I feel so viscerally I cannot possibly ignore it, as with conjuring myself standing on the heads of indigenous and black people. What I have come to is this: what if Jesus were in the room with me, hanging on a cross only a few feet away? What if with my every sinful word or thought, his executioners were right there jabbing him with another spear, adding nails into his hands, laughing at and taunting him even more? I could hear him gasping for air, see his tortured face wincing in pain, smell the blood in the room as it pours from his body.

It’s a terrible image. I can barely write it. I don’t want to think about it, just like I don’t want to think about standing on a mass gravesite of people of color. It is hugely uncomfortable. So I mostly don’t think about it. But again, it’s privilege that I don’t have to think about it.

The fact is that I cringe at the crucifixion story. Every Easter, it’s sort of like reading Charlotte’s Web, how I know Charlotte is going to die, but I re-read it with hope, anyway. Every. Single. Time. Maybe Charlotte won’t really die this time, I hear my heart whisper. Maybe this reading will be different! I do the same with the crucifixion story. Maybe this time Jesus gets away. Maybe this time his disciples will step up to save him. Certainly God, the ultimate author, can change the ending this time! Can’t it end on a note of hope? It does, of course. The hope is in eternal life after death. Three days later Jesus shows us how that works. But still … I don’t want Jesus to have to suffer for any of us to get that.

Precisely because it makes me recoil, though, the image works. It helps me remember that sins – my sins, and my agency to make them at any convenient whim – are not to be taken lightly. That I am responsible for Jesus’ suffering, for his death. I am watching nails getting hammered into his body every time I sin.

No matter how much I yearn for it, I cannot re-write the past – whether the ending to Charlotte’s Web, hundreds of years of systemic racism, or Jesus’ crucifixion. I also know that I can’t wrap myself up in guilt and shame, which would rend me ineffective. But if I can keep my privilege top of mind and close to my heart by holding on to that image of Jesus, right in the room with me, I can come a little closer to really understanding my privilege of sin – and more importantly, letting it inform how I think, act, and respond in a way that is considerate of the suffering of another and working, where I have influence, to stop it.

 


Sara Easterly lives in the Pacific Northwest. She has published various articles and essays, as well as a children’s book, and is currently working on a mother-daughter memoir. Visit her at www.saraeasterly.com

October 17, 2018 0 comments
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Poemspoetry

Fitting In; A Poem

by Hilary Horn
written by Hilary Horn

By Ana Lisa de Jong —

FITTING IN


Square peg, round hole.
I attempt to mould myself to shape
only to revert,

and have to try again to fit.

So, I wonder about giving up.
Unlearning all that I have learned to conform,
and maybe stand out instead.

Yes, today
I dropped the mask,
as I once again tripped.

But no grief.  

I think I learned instead
that growth might be mispresented.
That true gain may be in the releasing of pretence.

The safe definitions,
and distracting finery
to disguise our differences,

what need do we have of these?

Yes, I wonder about
shedding the trappings of success,
stored for false assurance.

And instead, undressing,
stepping out and owning
the full sum of my truth.

Square peg, round hole.

Humility, that hard honest lesson,
has a welcome voice,
‘Accept yourself’, it says.

‘Allow shame to fall.’

October 16, 2018 0 comments
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Christine Sine is the founder and facilitator for Godspace, which grew out of her passion for creative spirituality, gardening and sustainability. Together with her husband, Tom, she is also co-Founder of Mustard Seed Associates but recently retired to make time available for writing and speaking.
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