“Imagine as you move through the year that with each moment of turning you are stepping across a new threshold asking what this season reveals to you now.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE, Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life
Can you simply yield to the invitation of each moment, each hour, each season, without striving or grasping at something other than what is being offered?
To register for the self-study companion retreat to the book with extra resources and guidance click here>>
“We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.”—Ursula K Le Guin
“GK Chesterton said, ‘It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.’ I believe this statement can be applied to the lack of reconciliation within the church today. The problem is that there is a gaping hole in our gospel. We have preached a gospel that leaves us believing that we can be reconciled to God but not reconciled to our Christian brothers and sisters who don’t look like us—brothers and sisters with whom we are, in fact, one blood.”—John M Perkins
From Christine’s newest book being released in May 💚☘️
How to Pray (Excerpt)
Remind your body how it says yes
to blossom, fruit, release, and rest,
each its own kind of prayer.
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE, Love Holds You: Poems and Devotions for Times of Uncertainty (to be released May 9th by Paraclete Press)
What aliveness calls you to prayer?
Verse of the day
Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
– Hebrews 13:16
Voice of the day
Lent … [is] not about one person making a short-term sacrifice but about collective choices to generate momentum and heal our relationship with the land and each other. This Lent, those choices feel both embodied and communal with shared stakes for us all.
– Mallory McDuff, “My Family’s Lenten Practices Prepared Us for Green Burial”
Prayer of the day
It is tempting to co-opt Lent as a siloed time of self-improvement; this is not your vision, Lord. May we throw off the temptation to be centripetal during these next weeks.
“Practice can feel tedious at times because we want immediate results. The desert elders remind us to take the long view. Discomfort is a sign we are being stretched into new territory.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE, The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
Where do you feel tedium or discomfort in your practice today?
A self-study online companion retreat to this book is available>>
“Poverty and need have a very close relationship with a degraded environment. . . . When you talk about the problems, you tend to disempower people. You tend to make people feel that there is nothing they can do, that they are doomed, that there is no hope. I realized that to break the cycle, one has to start with a positive step, and I thought that planting a tree is very simple, very easy—something positive that anybody can do.”—Wangari Maathai
“Love God, serve God; everything is in that.”—St. Clare
Verse of the day
Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, Lord, preserve both people and animals.
– Psalm 36:6
Voice of the day
Criticisms I’ve received personally in the church [imply] animal welfare is a peripheral issue. The fact is these are God’s creatures who are suffering, and we’re responsible, as part of our Christian vocation, to be stewards of our earth and of all the animals.
– D. Rebecca Dinovo, “Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and the Christian Call to Animal Welfare”
Prayer of the day
Lord expand our vision to know how to better care for the other animals and creatures in our midst; though we are special in that we are made in your image, may we not use that as a way to dominate cruelly over what you have asked us to steward well.
“Let the love you have in your hearts be shown outwardly in your deeds.”
—The Testament of St. Clare
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