Here is the week’s round up of facebook prayers. Enjoy
Life is a gift from God,
Let us cherish it
Love is the language of God’s kingdom,
Let us practice it,
Jesus is the way to God’s heart,
Let us follow him.
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God of love and compassion,
God of hope and promise,
God of faithfulness and truth,
May we in all things see your face today,
That we might trust and obey.
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God of wonder and might,
God of glory and majesty,
God of joy and faithfulness,
Help us to see, to know, to trust,
That you are the One in whom all life holds secure.
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Jesus you say
Peace, rest in me,
Peace, hold firm to me,
Peace, trust in me.
You are the way the truth and the life,
May we trust in you and never be afraid.
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God your words are truth,
Your ways are life,
Your purposes are eternal,
May we look to you and never be afraid.
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Lead us Lord Jesus Christ into your ways of righteousness.
Let your truth go before us,
Let your justice stand behind us,
Let your love surround us.
Keep us Lord in the places where your presence shines.
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The glory of God’s presence surrounds me
The wonder of Christ’s love holds me close
The comfort of the Spirit makes me strong
God you who are the three in one, the one in three
Be with me forever.
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Teach us to pray O Lord,
Draw us closer to you, to your world , to each other.
Teach us to pray, O Lord,
With compassion and love and forgiveness.
Teach us to pray, O Lord,
Until all that we are and all that we do,
Becomes a gift of prayer to you.
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I have just read this prayer poignant prayer written by Lane Arnold and forwarded to me by one of my facebook friends. My heart aches for her and the many others who have lost homes and possessions in these devastating fires that have swept through parts of Colorado forcing at least 32,000 to evacuate their homes.
The Colorado Springs fires may have burned our house but nothing can burn our home. For You, Lord Jesus, Your Presence, Your heart, Your kingdom are our forever home.
A couple of days ago Lane posted this on her blog and its words have resonated with me this morning.
My mind runs as fast as a wildfire. What’ll I pack if we have to evacuate? What’s important to have with me as the fire potentially threatens to hop ridges, careen across canyons, and whirl on the winds?
I look across the room into those sparkling blue eyes of my husband and my son’s thoughtful brown ones. Here are my two greatest tangible values in this home. I can walk away with these two and I will have lost nothing of great value. It’s that simple. My beloveds, here and afar, are my greatest tangible value beyond God Himself…..
What leap out are memories. My heart that’s been pounding full force grows calm, full of prayerful gratitude as I go. Smiles, laughter, even tears come. A snapshot on my desk of my three little ones, singing to me in their yellow slickers one long-ago rainy Georgia afternoon. Photographs my daughter gave me one Christmas from the travels we did together in Australia. The wooden cross in the kitchen from a women I’d mentored. A silly line drawing on the bookshelf, created thirty years ago, which one son found and recently framed for Mother’s Day. A woodcut and poem another son wrapped up for my birthday. The place my husband and I gather and pray each morning for our children and grandchildren. . A tiny angel ornament from a friend who’d been in Haiti. A watercolor from a prayer partner. The collage of childhood photos from my children’s life that greets me each morning upon my dresser. A bookcase full of journals, notes from almost sixty years worth of living. The photo of my husband and I at our high school prom and another one of our wedding in 2008. Love notes from our courtship. A few of these join the stash of things I’ll take with me.
Friends, families, community, memories. These are the important things that all of us miss the most when they are gone. It is a shame that often it takes a crisis like this for us to realize it. Nothing else apart from God really matters.
So as you pray for those who have lost homes and possessions this morning ask yourself What would you grab if the fires come your way? and may our hearts well up with gratitude for the friends and family and community within which God has placed us.
Ever wondered where I find all those interesting articles I post? Here are a couple of places I monitor regularly.
One of Tom’s and my favourtie magazines is YES Magazine and I wanted to share it with you.
The YES website has posted some great articles in the last few weeks on community. Here are my favourites
Ten Ways to Love Where You Live by Ross Chapin
How to build community here and now—because neighborhoods are more than houses in proximity. Read the article here
Cheaper Together. How neighbours Invest in Community by by Miriam Axel-Lute, John Emmeus Davis, Harold Simon.
Cooperative financing and community land trusts keep rents affordable and homeownership within reach. Read here
Inhabitat: Design will save the world is another great site with very innovative housing and environmental designs like this one: PHOTOS: Get a Sneak Peek of HWKN’s Giant Blue Smog-Eating Wendy Sculpture Before It Opens Next Week | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building
And Grist Magazine is always worth a visit. For example I loved this article Have Sledgehammer will farm
I also love to check out the latest at ECHO, ; Plant with Purpose and A Rocha
Obviously this is only a very short list of possible sites to visit for environmental issues. I would love to put together a more comprehensive list. So what are your favourite sites to visit?
So what are your favourite websites on environmental issues, green living and community?
Tom and I are back home after several wonderful days at the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina. It was hot, humid and dusty but in spite of that we had a wonderful time. Tom was in fine form talking about intentional community and moving beyond the Western dream and I had fun speaking on reimagining how we pray.
More than anything we enjoyed meeting old friends and making new ones. Had lots of good discussions, shared lots about the Mustard Seed Village and Cascadia and just thoroughly enjoyed a relaxed but provokative festival.
I also loved the grievance wall and the opportunity for people to share their frustrations with life & faith
What I didn’t enjoy – having to check for ticks every day and came home covered in itchy bites.
You can check out my complete festival album on facebook. enjoy
Still to come for the summer – Creative World Festival in Mission B.C. and Wild Goose West
This week’s round up of prayers is written from North Carolina where I am attending the Wild Goose Festival.
Teach us to pray O Lord,
Draw us closer to you, to your world , to each other.
Teach us to pray, O Lord,
With compassion and love and forgiveness.
Teach us to pray, O Lord,
Until all that we are and all that we do,
Becomes a gift of prayer to you.Teach us to pray O Lord,
Draw us closer to you, to your world , to each other.
Teach us to pray, O Lord,
With compassion and love and forgiveness.
Teach us to pray, O Lord,
Until all that we are and all that we do,
Becomes a gift of prayer to you.
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The glory of God’s presence surrounds me
The wonder of Christ’s love holds me close
The comfort of the Spirit makes me strong
God you who are the three in one, the one in three
Be with me forever.
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Lord God almighty,
You are a shield of love,
You are a rock of protection,
You are a God of unfailing love.
I trust in you with all my heart,
My future is in your hands.
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Here is a beautiful prayer written my my friend Gerard Kelly for his twitter feed @twitturgies.
Rumours of your kingdom God rise around me. The soil itself stirs. The winds bring whispers of you. My heart too cries welcome
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God protect and bless us,
From enemies seen and unseen.
Be like a pillar of fire before us,
Be like a cloud of glory around us,
Be like a rock of safety beneath us,
Keep us Lord in the shadow of you wings.
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let us rejoice and sing,
For the wonder of God’s love.
For the joy of Christ’s salvation.
For the glory of the Spirit’s presence.
Let us give thanks and praise,
For we are surrounded by a shield of love.
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Yesterday our summer intern Chris Holcomb made bread – not the fast bread machine type, not the intensive “knead for 10 minutes” type but the slow natural “lets take 24 hours to do this” type. Amazingly it is not labour intensive – a few minutes at a time is all it takes. It was the best home made bread I have tasted for a long time so I thought that I would share the recipe plus links to other articles on no knead bread that I thought may interest some of you.
What it made me realize however is that here is another aspect of life in which we so often miss the best because we want it in a hurry. Our bread machines make 1 hour bread for a quick loaf or else we dash to the store for a basic mass produced loaf because we think we don’t have time. Makes me think of the way we treat our faith. We want a quick fix. We want it now and we are not particularly concerned if it lacks flavour and quality.
Jesus the bread of life is I think like this slow process bread – something to take our time over. Something to savour and enjoy. Something that has us wanting to come back for more all the time.
All that said here is the recipe:
1 ib unbleached white flour
1 tsp dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups water
Baking stone or cookie sheet, Pizza peel or heavy sheet of cardboard
Starting the night before baking day, in a large mixing bowl use your hands to mix the flour, yeast, salt and enough water to form a soft and sticky dough. Cover and let the dough rise overnight at room temperature. This long cool rise (don’t use warm water) lets the the yeast and various enzymes develop maximum flavour in the dough and also makes for a chewy texture. When you get up in the morning, wet your hands, lift the dough onto a flat, wet surface, then gently stretch it and fold it in half 2 – 4 times. Return dough to the same bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size. While the bread is in its second round of rising line a bowl with a cotton or linen cloth heavily dusted with flour. When the dough has doubled turn it out onto a work surface and with wet hands stretch and fold, and turn 2 – 4 times until dough begins to stiffen and assume the shape of a ball.
Place the ball into the bowl on the well-floured cloth. Cover and let rise until the dough has almost doubled again. (1 – 4 hours depending on room temp). Turn onto pizza peel or well floured piece of heavy cardboard. Slide onto a baking stone or cookie sheet. Bake at 500F until the crust is golden brown on top and the bottom crust is hard and thumps like a drum when you tap it (about 30 – 40 minutes). Allow to cool before slicing.
The recipe comes from Mother earth News December 2010/January 2011. I could not find the same recipe on line but came across these other articles and recipes at Mother Earth that are definitely worth reading and experimenting with:
Healthy No Knead Bread Recipes
Five Minutes a Day For Fresh Baked Bread
And these great looking recipes from Grit: Rural American Know How
You might also enjoy this video clip.
Yesterday our Celtic Visioning Team met on Camano Island to discern together the way forward for the Cascadia program and the Mustard Seed Village development. This is the first time that we have gathered as a team that includes not only our long term commitment community: Tom and myself, David Vandervort, Doug Woods, Cindy Todd and Forrest Inslee, but also our new members Jessica and Ryan Weemhoff who will be aour programme directors for the Cascadia/CCSP programme. We started with a check in time that allowed all of us to express our joys and our struggles especially as they relate to the development of this project. Some of this I expressed in my previous post MSA Imaginings.
Then we drove out to the land. We drove through the narrow tunnel of trees to the existing clearing. Its beauty was breathtaking. It welcomed us with a sense of belonging, a feeling that this is home for us. Being on the land was so important for us and being together with this core community which longs to bring God’s vision into being was very special.
Taking time to listen to God in the place where we are planting, and with the people we are planting with is essential whatever our vision might be.
Some of what we felt God saying was unexpected. The dirt bike riders have been back driving round the clearing and through the trails. Others have dumped rubbish in the clearing again. One of our team commented – We have always seen this negatively but maybe we need to welcome them. Their presence has helped keep the trails open, and maybe in the process they can somehow meet with God. Some of what we heard was a reassurance of God’s presence with us. The sense of hospitality we felt as we arrived. The welcome of this beautiful part of God’s creation where all of us feel alive and renewed. Some is still just glimmers of vision on the horizon. How to finance not just the building but the development of the programmes as well is an ever present challenge.
Interestingly the scripture for the day was Mark 4:30-32, which includes the parable of the mustard seed
He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”
It was a wonderful reminder that God is the one who does the growing for us. The trouble is that we are tired of planting seeds and we want to see that growth take place. We appreciate your prayers and supportiveness as we move forward… and if you have any words of wisdom for us we want to hear from you.
Our next gathering on Camano will be for the Celtic prayer retreat August 17 – 19th. We hope that some of you can join us.
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