Yesterday (5/19/13) we shared this video in the Sunday Morning Forum. For those of you unable to join us, please enjoy this 2 minute look at Pentecost offered by the folks at Busted Halo.
Have other questions? Please use our Comment section to continue the conversation.
Today we share a post: ST JOSEPH’S ABBEY, SPENCER MA: Ascension Day.
It is a quick read to make you think on this mysterious and marvelous day.
An insight into why we post art and music and why art and music are an important part of our Sunday Morning Forum:
The purpose of art is the gradual, lifelong construction
of a state of wonder and serenity.
Glenn Gould, pianist
From the Word for the Day (5/7/13) posted by Gratefulness.org
On our “Wednesday Morning Spiritual Day Hike” we walked with Sarah Josepha Buell Hale yesterday (5/1/13). Sarah Hale is commemorated in the Episcopal Church’s (trial) Calendar, Holy Women, Holy Men on April 30th.
Sarah, a woman ahead of her time in some ways, was a woman of her time in others. Shining through it all: her love of God and neighbor. She continues to inspire folks she never met living some 200 years later in a part of her country she never visited. The Communion of Saints is an amazing thing.
Watch, Sarah Hale: The Mother of Thanksgiving, an Audio Slide Show posted by BackStory with the American History Guys
The Collect of Day as we commemorate Sarah Hale:
Gracious God, we bless your Name for the vision and witness of Sarah Hale, whose advocacy for the ministry of women helped to support the deaconess movement. Make us grateful for your many blessings, that we may come closer to Christ in our own families; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen..
“I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you,
you also should love one another.”
John 13:34
Today (4/28/13) we listened to these words of Jesus from the Gospel of John. Getting home I found this post by Brian McLaren:
I compiled this list of “one-anothers” in the New Testament, a primer on a basic social practices. Not a bad curriculum!
Brian has quite a list of ‘one-anothers.’ See for yourself. Then comes the challenge: to live (act) like we understand, believe, and cherish these words.
It sounds like the chimes have heard the Good News and are singing, “Love one another,” over and over (until we have the melody), “Love one another.”
What do you hear?
“The spirit of Christ must be the soul of all real social reconstruction.”
Toyohiko Kagawa (1888 – 1960)
Since 2009 the Episcopal Church has been exploring a revised Liturgical Calendar titled Holy Women, Holy Men. Stories of women and men living exemplary lives are finding a wider audience. The stories call forth the best in us and pose questions for us who continue our journey on the Way. Today, April 23rd, the church remembers Toyohiko Kagawa a “Prophetic Witness in Japan.”
Toyohiko Kagawa was a
“Japanese Christian social reformer. He came of a wealthy family and received his early education in a Buddhist monastery. After conversion to Christianity and disinheritance by his family, he studied at the *Presbyterian seminary at Kobe from 1905 to 1908. Here he became acutely conscious of Christian responsibility in the face of existing social evils and spent several years among the poor in the bad slums of Shinkawa. In 1914 he went to Princeton, USA, to study modern social techniques, and after returning to Japan in 1917 devoted himself entirely to the improvement of social conditions.”
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
Within the political rhetoric of our country today, we who follow Christ, who follow the Way (of Love) can best love our neighbor if we can hold fast to that ancient truth discovered and lived by Toyohiko Kagawa: “The spirit of Christ must be the soul of all real social reconstruction.”
There’s a peaceful rhythm to sounds in the chimes today. The melody is simple:
have the Spirit of Christ … have the Spirit of Christ …have the Spirit of Christ
What do you hear?
Here is a different ‘listen’ to a favorite Psalm. Dedicated to his mother, Bobby McFerrin takes poetic license in this setting of Psalm 23. Click the link to discover more: The Lord is my shepherd.
Diana Butler Bass is a favorite author, writer, speaker, and teacher. In early March she posted this to her Facebook Page:
Was asked by an evangelical friend who has found his way to an Episcopal Church WHY the congregation likes scholars like Dom Crossan. Here’s part of my answer:
“Since I wasn’t at Dom’s presentations at the church you mention, I can’t speak directly to them. But I can speak to the ethos of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church understands itself as a big room, a community bound together by prayer and enacting justice, not a particular way of understanding scripture or theology. It is a comprehensive church, one that prides itself on holding a wide variety of views, and always open to new ways of engaging the ancient stories. Thus, as a denomination, everyone is really, truly welcome—and that includes Dom Crossan to Rowan Williams and Marcus Borg to NT Wright! But, of course, not everyone is comfortable with such an ethos. But it does mean that we listen to a wide swath of Christian thinkers — it is NOT unusual at all for a single Episcopal congregation to read books ranging from Crossan to CS Lewis. Or to hear Mary Daly and Phil Yancey quoted in a sermon.”
Every Sunday (at 9 am) we gather at St. Margaret’s in our Sunday Morning Forum. We definitely represent “a wide swath” of Christian thinking and believing. Either before (8 am) or after (10 am) the Forum we worship together and take communion together. Come join us for a wide-ranging discussion, prayers, and communion.
It is a beautiful spectrum of sounds and rhythms from the chimes today.
What do you hear?
Sister Joan Chittister is one of my favorite authors. Here is her “Easter Prayer.” You can find an index to all of her “Ideas in Passing” here. I encourage you to subscribe to her weekly email.
To say “I believe in Jesus Christ . . . who rose from the dead,” is to say I believe that the Resurrection goes on and on and on forever. Every time Jesus rises in our own hearts in new ways, the Resurrection happens again. Every time we see Jesus where we did not recognize him before—in the faces of the poor, in the love of the unloved, in the revelatory moments of life, Jesus rises anew. The real proof of the Resurrection lies not in the transformation of Jesus alone but in the transformation awaiting us who accept it.
To say, “I believe in Jesus Christ . . . who rose from the dead,” is to say something about myself at the same time. It says that I myself am ready to be transformed. Once the Christ-life rises in me, I rise to new life as well. “Christ is risen, we are risen,” we sing at Easter. But it has a great deal more to do with life than with death. If I know that Jesus has been transformed, then I am transformed myself, and as a result, everything around me.
Until we find ourselves with new hearts, more penetrating insights, fewer compulsions, less need for the transient, greater awareness of the spiritual pulse of life, resurrection has not really happened for us. Jesus has risen but we have not. Resurrection is change at the root of the soul. It marks a whole new way of being in life.
Jesus, help me to understand that in every life, something good fails, something great ends, something righteous is taken unjustly away, something looms like an abandonment by God. Give me the wisdom to know that You rose from the dead as a sign to us that every one of these “little deaths” is life become new all over again. Be with me in living Your Resurrection over and over again.
Joan Chittister in: Vision and Viewpoint e-newsletter dated 1 April 2013
The chimes are fairly shouting praises as they sound today. What do you hear?
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath,
so we may await with him the coming of the third day,
and rise with him to newness of life;
who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The chimes are still today. But the silence is filled with meaning and even hope. What do you hear? Please leave a comment.
Hear what the Spirit is saying 