“I often ask for a word as I take my daily walks. I listen for what the trees and pigeons might have to offer me.”
—Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year
What word of guidance or inspiration do you hear when you explore nature?
Verse of the day
Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it commits sin.
– James 4:17
Voice of the day
Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?
– Claire Keegan, “Small Things Like These” (2021)
Prayer of the day
Awaken our hearts to our neighbors’ needs that we have yet to find courage to help tackle.
Verse of the day
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.
– Isaiah 49:16
Voice of the day
The hand of God creates; it does not conceal.
– Umberto Eco, “The Name of the Rose” (1980)
Prayer of the day
God who sees all and never forgets what is brought forth, continue to bring your people toward the fullness of your creation.
Receptivity and confrontation are the two inseparable sides of Christian witness. They have to remain in careful balance. Receptivity without confrontation leads to a bland neutrality that serves nobody. Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression, which hurts everybody. This balance between receptivity and confrontation is found at different points, depending upon our individual position in life. But in every life situation, we not only have to receive, but also to confront. — Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
As a reaction to a very aggressive, manipulative, and often degrading type of evangelization, we sometimes have become hesitant to make our own religious convictions known, thereby losing our sense of witness. Although at times it seems better to deepen our own commitments than to evangelize others, it belongs to the core of Christian spirituality to reach out to the other with good news, and to speak without embarrassment about what we “have heard and … seen with our own eyes…. Watched and touched with our hands”(1 John 1:1). — Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
Verse of the day
Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
– Colossians 3:14
Voice of the day
The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love – whether we call it friendship or family or romance – is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.
– James Baldwin
Prayer of the day
Loving God, when we are unable to see our worth in this world, allow us to borrow the belief in each other’s goodness until we can.
“The [prophet’s] concern was not some future savior, but more immediate. They saw the disconnect between what the Covenant called for (fidelity to God and justice for all, especially the poor) and what the people were doing. . . One might more rightly see the prophets as social activists in their day.”
—John Valters Paintner, Watershed Moments in the Hebrew & Christian Scriptures: An Online, Self-Study Retreat
What current social situations trouble you, and what strength can the prophets offer you?
In our world in which so many religious convictions, ideologies and lifestyles come into increasing contact with each other, it is more important than ever to realize that it belongs to the essence of a Christian spirituality to receive our fellow human beings into our world without imposing our religious viewpoint, ideology or way of doing things on them as a condition for love, friendship, and care. — Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
“It is only when we come into full spiritual maturity that we can hold the truth of life’s devastation and suffering alongside the tremendous beauty and wonder of life as well.”
—Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness
What is your felt experience to this invitation? What are ways you can invite grace into this experience?
To register for the self-study companion retreat to the book with additional resources and guidance, click here.
Verse of the day
Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.
– Hosea 10:12
Voice of the day
True abundance is never realized by the competition of insatiable desires for scarce goods. It is realized by emptying the small self into the larger reality of God’s superabundant life.
– William T. Cavanaugh, reprinted in Light for the Way, a new anthology from Sojourners.
Prayer of the day
Providing God, show us how to be mindful stewards by limiting our consumption and leaning into your abundance instead.
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