“Blessing means to make holy, but in this context, I think what we are really doing is honoring the holiness already present. We are naming God at work already within and around us.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
What would it be like to pause before each activity and encounter and bless the time and experience?
A self-study online companion retreat to this book is available>>
Verse of the day
Do not rejoice over me, my enemies; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.
– Micah 7:8
Voice of the day
The first step toward community is recognizing our common humanity. Instead of seeing strangers in the dark, we recognize fellow climbers in the light.
– Steven Charleston, Ladder to the Light: An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage (2021)
Prayer of the day
Creator, open our hearts to peace and healing between all people.
Creator, open our hearts to provide and protect for all children of the earth.
– Alycia Longriver Davis
A much needed reminder in today’s polarized and divisive atmosphere.
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them — Thomas Merton (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 121)
Verse of the day
And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.”
– Matthew 25:40
Voice of the day
It cannot be said enough – there is no human being that is not worthy, worthy of being treated with divine dignity even as they are worthy of acting with divine dignity.
– Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas
Prayer of the day
We are worthy. Caring God, you have created us with divine dignity. Open our eyes to see the divine dignity in others, in the poor and the rich, the weak and the strong, our friends and our enemies.
“It’s time we told ourselves a new story of revolutionary simplicity: if we matter, so does everything else.”—Melanie Challenger, How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human
“How do we deal with a bully without becoming a thug? We’re using the kind of skills that I’ve outlined: inner power—the development of inner power— through self knowledge, using anger as a fuel, cooperating with others, banding together with others, courage, and most importantly, commitment to active nonviolence.”—Scilla Elworthy
Verse of the day
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.
– Colossians 4:6
Voice of the day
Talk should be meaningful or kept to a minimum.
– Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Thick: And Other Essays” (2019)
Prayer of the day
Lord, teach us to speak, not with empty words and false promises, but gracefully and with meaning.
Verse of the day
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
– Psalm 118:24
Voice of the day
My strength … returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the psalms.
– Dorothy Day
Prayer of the day
Lord, help us rejoice in the days you have given us. Give us strength to journey on.
“I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.”—Oscar Romero
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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