I believe that we can grow to our fullest potential in marriage. It may take several “marriages within a marriage” to achieve this goal – before children, with children and after children, for starters.
Serenity is not removal from the storm but peace within the storm. Centering prayer must never become “self-centering prayer.” Rather it is an attempt to pay attention to the inescapable presence of God, which grounds our very existence. The mercy of God comes as an unbidden gift, not because God ever leaves us, but because we choose to turn away.
I believe I have earned my right to be skeptical about the design of most of those bureaucratic contraptions called “our ordination process,” whose successive models seem to need constant tinkering, only to replaced altogether as yet another ecclesiastical lemon. In many cases they have proved to be grim deterrents to young people exploring a call to the priesthood.
Here on my patio
This July morning
After drenching, cleansing
Storms in the night,
I rest amid birdsong,
Surrounded in green
I was talking to the organist after the service when a woman walked in asking the time of the service. We made her feel welcome … and invited her to have refreshments with the rest of us. As it happens, she is a Roman Catholic living in Penn Hills and looking for a more welcoming place to worship than she experienced in her own church.
The pews have gone, and the seats are arranged in an oval. There is no organ – both it and the pews were casualties of a fire some years ago – a godly fire in my view. I consider organ music too loud, too powerful – it alienates, cows. Instead, the liturgy is accompanied by a piano.
Happy Independence Day, everyone. Expect light posting today. But if you are looking for some good reading, visit America’s Sacred Ground, the Huffington Post’s July 4 collection.
We are being asked to sign on to an agreement which was basically created because some of the other former British colonies don’t like what we are doing, even though we have followed our own discernment process to the letter. Now the SCCC has declared that it is “of the view that adoption of the current draft Anglican Covenant has the potential to change the constitutional and canonical framework of TEC.
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Richard Beck starts by reflecting on an interaction with a Utility worker sent to shut off his electricity, continues by asking himself about why it