An Easter Blessing for you
Tag: Blessing
An Easter Blessing
The Lord who conquered darkness with light,
give peace to you.
The Lord who conquered death with life,
give peace to you.
The Lord who conquered loneliness with love,
give peace to you.
Blessing: David Adam, The Open Gate, p. 110
Image: An Easter moment in the John Muir Wilderness, ©Daniel Rondeau 2007
Wind Chimes: 12 Jan 2013
Sometimes the sounds from the chimes are rhythmic, like the regular movement of a person from one place to another. We’re all on a journey. What do you hear?
The Journey Prayer
God, bless to me this day,
God bless to me this night;
Bless, O bless, Thou God of grace,
Each day and hour of my life;
Bless, O bless, Thou God of grace,
Each day and hour of my life.God, bless the pathway on which I go;
God, bless the earth that is beneath my sole;
Bless, O God, and give to me Thy love,
O God of gods, bless my rest and my repose;
Bless, O God, and give to me Thy love,
And bless, O God of gods, my repose.
Prayer of St. Brendan the Voyager, Irish Monk, (484-577)
Prayer: Quoted by Daniel Clendenin on Journey with Jesus: Poems and Prayers
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Wind Chimes: 14 Oct 2012
Is it a song of praise on the First Day of the Week? Is it a song of hope? Is it the lament of Job? Where is Grace to be found? Where is God to be found? The Spirit is constantly moving the chimes. What do you hear?
God is nowhere to be found
“If I go forward, he is not there;or backward, I cannot perceive him;on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.” Job 23:8-9
God is found (as Grace) in such nowhere moments
Grace happens to me when I feel a surge of honest joy that makes me glad to be alive in spite of valid reasons for feeling terrible. Grace happens when I accept my wife’s offer to begin again with me in love after I have hurt her. It happens when I feel powerfully free to follow my own conscience in spite of those who think I am either crazy or wicked. Grace is the gift of feeling sure that our future, even our dying, is going to turn out more splendidly than we dare imagine. Grace is the feeling of hope. — Lewis B. Smedes in How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong?
We think of grace arriving like an ambulance, just-in-time delivery, an invisible divine cavalry cresting a hill of troubles, a bolt of jazz from the glittering horn of the Creator, but maybe it lives in us and is activated by illness of the spirit. Maybe we’re loaded with grace. Maybe we’re stuffed with the stuff. Maybe it’s stitched into our DNA, a fifth ingredient in the deoxyribonucleic acidic soup. — Brian Doyle quoted in The Best Spiritual Writing 2001 edited by Philip Zaleski
Both authors Quoted on Spirituality & Practice
A blessing for the week
“God give you
an ability
to see good things
in unexpected places,
talents in unexpected people,
and the grace to tell them so.”
Ray simpson in celtic blessings and quoted by spirituality & practice in an email dated 30 January 2012
Wind Chimes: 4 Oct 2012
October 4th is the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi in both the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Liturgical Calendars. Here are three different Spirit-breaths through the Wind Chimes.
What do you hear?
Collect for commemorating St. Francis
Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, grant your people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world; that, following the way of blessed Francis, we may for love of you delight in your whole creation with perfectness of joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
From Francis of Assisi, Friar, 1226 on Holy Women, Holy Men
Franciscan Mysticism
On September 30th Richard Rohr began a series of daily meditations on Franciscan Mysticism. Here are links to his daily meditations so far. I encourage you to subscribe to his Daily Meditation (the music in those Wind Chimes is one of my delights).
A Franciscan Blessing
I do not know the original source of the “Franciscan Blessing.” I have seen this blessing in several different (almost-the-same) forms. Most recently I saw that Brian McLaren has been using it in his Everything Must Change gatherings (go to the post). Here is the form he uses:
May God bless us with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that we may live from deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of God’s creations
So that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless us with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless us with just enough foolishness
To believe that we can make a difference in the world,
So that we can do what others claim cannot be done:
To bring justice and kindness to all our children
and all our neighbors who are poor. Amen.
Come into an unforgettable Epiphany sermon
Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources is “a gift to the wider Church from the South Yarra Community Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia.” It is one of my favorite places on the net. As the sun rises on this Feast of the Epiphany I invite you to come into the sermon shared by Pastor Nathan Nettleton on 6 January 2005—just 11 days after the worst tsunami in history ended more than 230,000 lives and displaced almost 2 million people in 15 countries. The South Asia Tsunami of December 26, 2004 | Images from the tsunami.
Invitation to the sermon: An Epiphany Tsunami. Here’s how it begins:
Epiphany
An appearance
A revelation
Deep truth suddenly becomes visible
The lights go onTsunami
A massive wave
A wave of destruction
An all-powerful surge of chaos and death
But perhaps too, an event where truth suddenly becomes visible
Perhaps too, this can bring light to bearEpiphany
An appearance
A revelation
A star rises in the West
Who’d even notice
A million stars come out every night
throwing their light in all directions
But they notice these things, those magi
those mystics from the East
from Iraq
To them it’s a sign
A revelation
The lights go on
Deep truth beckons them from the western sky
The plan of mystery hidden for ages in God is emerging
The chosen one is born
The one for whom all the world has been longing
The one before whom the rulers of the earth will bow
The light beckons from the western sky
A journey beginsTsunami
A wave of power and death
Totally unexpected
Spreading out
East and West, North and South
Awesome, unstoppable, all-conquering
One before whom all bow
or flee
or fall
And after whom all are changed
all are weeping
all are grieving
Finish reading this sermon. YES, it is well worth reading on this Feast of the Epiphany.
Though these words of blessing were composed by Nathan I pray them for you, asking God to bless you, dear reader:
Go now, seek out the Christ wherever he may be found,
and share the good news with all who bear him no ill will.
Bring light to those in thick darkness,
a voice to those no one speaks for,
and hope to those no one cares for.
And may God make you a sharer in the promised light.
May Christ Jesus fill you with his sense of what is right.
And may the Holy Spirit be to you like rain
that gives life to the fertile earth.
A blessing for the Feast of the Epiphany on Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources
Hear what the Spirit is saying 