Verse of the day
Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.
– Isaiah 54:2
Voice of the day
Do we as people who believe in justice and fairness want to leave anyone behind?
– Karma Chavez, Queer Migration Politics
Prayer of the day
A gospel that does not strive for the well-being and inclusion of all is not good news; may we reject the invasive narratives that prioritize inclusion of some at the expense of others.
All the events of life, even such dark events as war, famine and flood, violence and murder, are not irreversible fatalities. Each moment is like a seed that carries within itself the possibility of becoming the moment of change. . . . We no longer need to run from present time in search of the place where we think life is really happening. We begin to have a truer vision of the world and of our lives in relationship to time and eternity. We begin to glimpse something of eternity in time. At this point boredom falls away and the joyful and painful moments of our lives take on new and profound meaning. It is then that we know that for us time is becoming transparent.
The contemplative life, therefore, is not a life that offers a few good moments between the many bad ones, but a life that transforms all our time into a window through which the invisible world becomes visible.
To start seeing that the many events of our day, week, or year are not in the way of our search for a full life but are rather the way to it is a real experience of conversion. We discover that cleaning and cooking, writing letters and doing professional work, visiting people and caring for others, are not a series of random events that prevent us from realizing our deepest self. These natural, daily activities contain within them some transforming power that changes how we live. We make hidden passage from time lived as chronos to time lived as kairos. Kairos is a Greek word meaning “the opportunity.” It is the right time, the real moment, the chance of our lives. When our time becomes kairos, it frees us and opens us to endless new possibilities. Living kairos offers us an opportunity for a profound change of heart.
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”—Paulo Freire
Verse of the day
Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.
– Psalm 65:8
Voice of the day
Rather than a distraction, awe is a call toward right relationship, showing spectacle to be a tool of empire. Awe is never self-serving. Its purpose is to recalibrate who we are before God and galvanize our work of justice.
– Zachary Lee, “Fatal Distraction: 3 Films Warn Us of the Seduction of Spectacle”
Prayer of the day
Lord, teach us to reject the lull of distraction and spectacle. In our lives, may we cultivate space to experience the recalibrating nature of awe.
“Let us love, since our heart is made for nothing else.”—St. Therese of Lisieux
All nature conceals its great secrets and cannot reveal its hidden wisdom and profound beauty if we do not listen carefully and patiently. John Henry Newman sees nature as a veil through which an invisible world is intimated. He writes:
“The visible world is . . . the veil of the world invisible . . . so that all that exists or happens visibly, conceals and yet suggests, and above all subserves, a system of persons, facts, and events beyond itself.”
How differently we would live if we were constantly aware of this veil and sensed in our whole being how nature is ever ready for us to hear and see the great story of the Creator’s love, to which it points. The plants and animals with whom we live teach us about birth, growth, maturation, and death, about the need for gentle care, and especially about the importance of patience and hope. . . .
It is sad that in our days we are less connected with nature and we no longer allow nature to minister to us. We so easily limit ministry to work for people by people. But we could do an immense service to our world if we would let nature heal, counsel, and teach again. I often wonder if the sheer artificiality and ugliness with which many people are surrounded are not as bad as or worse than their interpersonal problems.
“Police departments across the nation must develop nonviolent ‘rules of engagement,’ so that they don’t reflexively respond to suspected crimes with violence. This will require more in-depth training in the behavioral psychology of conflict resolution so police have tried-and-true techniques of preventing and de-escalating violence.”—Bernice King
Verse of the day
So then, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God, for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their labors as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs.
– Hebrews 4:9-11
Voice of the day
O good shepherd, would you teach me how to rest / I’m rushing on, will you make me to lie down
– The Porter’s Gate, “Slow Me Down”
Prayer of the day
Lord, we remember those who work and for whom rest seems unattainable. Teach us how to lie down and be restored.
In recent decades we have become particularly aware of the crucial importance of our relationship with nature. As long as we relate to the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the fields, and the oceans as properties to be manipulated by us according to our real or fabricated needs, nature remains opaque and does not reveal to us its true being. When we relate to a tree as nothing more than a potential chair, it cannot speak much to us about growth. When a river is only a dumping place for our industrial wastes, it no longer informs us about movement. And when we relate to a flower as nothing more than a model for a plastic decoration, the flower loses its power to reveal to us the simple beauty of life. When we relate to nature primarily as property to be used, it becomes opaque, and this opaqueness is manifested in our society as pollution. The dirty rivers, the smog-filled skies, the strip-mined hills, and the ravaged woods are sad signs of our false relationship with nature.
Our difficult and very urgent task is to accept the truth that nature is not primarily a property to be possessed, but a gift to be received with admiration and gratitude. Only when we make a deep bow to the rivers, oceans, hills, and mountains that offer us a home, only then can they become transparent and reveal to us their real meaning.
Pastor Michael Moore's Blog 