“[We must] place at the center of all political, social, and economic activity the human person, who enjoys the highest dignity, and respect for the common good. May this determination help us flee from the temptation for revenge and the satisfaction of short-term partisan interests.”—Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti
“Humility invites us to let go of our hold on productivity as the measure of our worth and discover the deeper value of who we are.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Creative Flourishing with St Hildegard of Bingen: A Self-Study Online Retreat
Who might you become if you stopped defining yourself in terms of what you do and how productive you are?
Verse of the day
If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?
– James 2:15-16
Voice of the day
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.
– Nelson Mandela
Prayer of the day
Provider God, you call us to do more than pray. Show us how to build up our faith in action.
Verse of the day
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words.
– Romans 8:26
Voice of the day
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
– Emily Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”
Prayer of the day
Holy Spirit, thank you for interceding for us when words fail. Thank you for giving us the hope that comes from a wellspring beyond what words can describe.
“Lament opens us up to a new vision of how God is present to our suffering. We call on the God who weeps with us, whose groans are our own, and we express our hope in God’s tender care.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, The Online Self-Study Retreat ~ A Midwinter God: Making a Conscious Underworld Journey
In what way is your felt sense experience of God in times of joy different from your experience in times of darkness and need?
Too often the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. — Howard Thurman in Jesus and the Disinherited
Words that the church and all people who claim to follow Jesus should reflect on daily. I know that I need to be reminded.
“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.
