Adventing . . .

 . . . Candle Lighting in a Pandemic

First Sunday of Advent

Each year we light candles in advent as a way of marking the weeks before Christmas.
In the northern hemisphere, as we progress through advent
the nights get longer, and the days get shorter.
Each week our advent candles shed more light.
This pandemic year, instead of having candles only at the front of the church,
we will light candles in our homes together:
the many flames uniting us as a worshipping community,
waiting together for Jesus.

Today we mark the first Sunday of Advent,
and today we light the candle of hope.
Advent is the season of hope.
We hope for a Saviour who can save us,
a Healer who can heal us,
and a Counsellor who hears all our sorrows.
In darkness that deepens,
we wait for the coming of the light of the world.      

We wait in hope as we light this candle of hope. [light the candle]

Used with Permission 

https://carolpenner.typepad.com/leadinginworship/

Living Gratitude . . .

 

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Melody Beattie

https://melodybeattie.com/

Image: Doris Klein, CSA

Hope is never cancelled . . .

 

Silent steps

By

Rabindranath tagore

 

Have you not heard God’s silent steps?

God comes, comes, ever comes.

Every moment and every age,

Every day and every night

God comes, comes, ever comes.

 

Many a song I sung in many a mood of mind,

but all their notes have always proclaimed,

‘God comes, comes, ever comes.’

 

 In the fragrant days of sunny April through the forest path God comes, comes, ever comes.

In the rainy gloom of July nights on the

thundering chariot of clouds

God comes, comes, ever comes.

 

In sorrow after sorrow

it is God’s steps that press upon my heart,

and it is the golden touch of God’s feet

that makes my joy to shine.

Sr. Terry Rickard, OP Preaches for the First Sunday in Advent (11/29/2020)

Awareness Prayer . . .

God to enfold me.

God to surround me.

God in my speaking.

God in my thinking.

God in my sleeping.

God in my waking.

God in my watching.

God in my hoping.

Traditional Celtic Prayer

Ellie Hidalgo Preaches for Christ the King Sunday (11/22/2020)

Thanksgiving Prayer of Hope, Gratitude, and Deep Faith . . .

 

Stumbling Towards Thanksgiving: Congregational Pandemic Prayer

God, in this hard year, we’re stumbling towards Thanksgiving.
There has been lots to trip us up;
a pandemic, economic meltdowns, social isolation,
injustice on so many fronts: #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo,
and the ongoing call for justice for indigenous peoples.
Not to mention hurricanes, forest fires and climate change…
and this is not even including the everyday sorrows
that haven’t let up for one minute!

We wouldn’t wish this year on anyone!
And so on this Thanksgiving, we stumble on the words,
and we need to take some deep breaths now to pause
and consider what we are thankful for…  [ pause ]
We do have things to be thankful for.
Thank you for life, for bringing us here this far.
Thank you for those who have sacrificed to help others;
health care and essential workers, teachers,
and everyone who has toiled overtime to make a difference.
Thank you for your provision;
the good earth has yielded up its bounty,
and there is food in grocery stores,
even if we sometimes do have to line up for it.

Thank you that this fall season still delights:
the taste of the crisp delicious apple,
the gold of grain pouring out of the combine,
the fragrance of the damp leaves,
the sound of geese honking their way south,
the feel of cool wind and the sun still warm on our skin.
God of hope, we need your help to get through the coming year.

Help us find a vaccine:
we need it soon,
we need it for everyone,
and we need it to work.
In the meantime, help our communities pull together;
forgive us when we are irritated and judgmental
of the choices other people are making.

Give us all patience as we wash our hands for the millionth time,
as we mask up, as we make hard choices not to mingle and socialize in person.
On this Thanksgiving day, we set our eyes on Christmas,
The world is waiting desperately for an angelic message
of good tidings of great joy for all people.

We are waiting for you to be born again,
born again in this pandemic year, born again in our hearts, in our world.
We know you are coming, and so on Thanksgiving
we pray with thanksgiving, in Jesus’s name, Amen

Used with permission: Copyright Carol Penner www.leadinginworship.com

Rose Lue Preaches for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (11/15/2020).

Earth . . . Teach Us to Remember . . .

 

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice. ~ Meister Eckhart

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. ~ John F. Kennedy

For each new morning with its light, 
For rest and shelter of the night, 
For health and food, 
For love and friends, 
For everything Thy goodness sends.  ~  Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Creator hear us, for we are your children.
Father we thank you for all that you have given us.
We thank you for the lessons that you have taught us and
for the life that you have allowed us to lead.
We thank you Mother Earth for your beauty and sustenance.
We thank the masters of this universe
for their guidance, protection and direction.
Father we thank you for the white light that surrounds us, and for
that same white light which transmutes all negativity
into love and healing.
We thank you father, for the healing of our souls,
the healing of the Earth and for the healing of all mankind.
We call upon the power of the universe, to
allow us happiness, prosperity, healing and love.
We call upon the power of the universe for
good relationship to all things.
We call upon the power of the universe, for sacred direction,
sacred protection, sacred correction and sacred connection.
We call upon the power of the universe for magic and miracles.
We honor you Creator, as we honor all things seen and unseen.
We honor you Creator, as we honor our ancestors, 
as we honor ourselves.
~ Grant Redhawk - Two Feathers - Native American

(A November Memory)

"God comes to us disguised as our lives!"

 

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.  (Melodie Beattie)

1. Sometime ago, I was sharing with someone who at one time had been homeless.  He told me of how often he would long for a sandwich.  So he would hang out at fast food restaurants to collect the discarded ketchup packets.  Then (if he was lucky that day) he would find a slice of bread and squeeze out the remaining ketchup from the assorted packets to make a ketchup sandwich.  He went on to tell me of the day that a gentleman noticed him and offered to take him to a near-by restaurant and buy him a hamburger.  He told me that it was one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make.  He said this is how it went down with his ordering: Did I want a white or whole wheat bun? Did I want a single burger or the deluxe double burger?  Did I want cheese on my burger?  Did I want my burger somewhat rare, medium, or well done?  Did I want onions on the burger?  Raw or fried?  Did I want lettuce, tomato, and mayo on the burger? Finally, did I want to have fries? Oops – what size order of fries?  Small, medium or large? Then it was the decision of what to drink.  As a result of all this burger decisioning, it took him at least 15 minutes to place his order.

2. Another experience I had was with that of a person who had survived the genocide of Rwanda. The Rwandan genocide was the 1994 mass slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people in the East African state of Rwanda. In my inquiry as to how she and her family escaped and survived she said: “We only had each other and that gave us courage.  We prayed at first to find a cup for drinking.  But eventually we turned our prayer into a request for a cooking pot.  Then all of us could eat, drink, and share.”

A Jewish folk tale:
A story tells of a man who went to the office every day in his expensive car, and made important decisions and signed big contracts.  Often, the important man would enjoy business lunches with his clients, and would try to distract the attention of his influential guests away from the unsavory spectacle of the beggars on the streets of his city.
One evening, after a hard day making money, he packed his briefcase to go home, where supper would be waiting for him.  As he was locking his desk for the night, he caught sight of a stale sandwich lying abandoned at the back of the drawer.  Without much thought he crammed it in his coat pocket.  No need for it to go moldy and mess up his desk.  And on the way out to the car park he saw a street beggar on the steps, huddled in an old blanket.  ‘Here, my friend’ he said to the beggar. ‘Here is something for your supper.’ And he gave him the stale sandwich.
That night, the man dreamed that he was away on a business trip.  After the day’s meeting, he was taken with his fellow directors to the town’s most luxurious restaurant.  Everyone gave their orders, and settled down with their drinks before the meal to look forward to a convivial evening.
The orders arrived. Pâté de foie gras.  Medallions of venison.  Lamb cutlets with rosemary and garlic.  The dishes being brought to the table brought gasps of delight from all the company. Then his own order appeared.  A waitress set in front of him one small plate, on which was served a stale sandwich.
‘What kind of service is this?’ the man demanded, enraged.  ‘This isn’t what I ordered! I thought this was the best restaurant in town!’
‘Oh sir,’ the waitress told him, ‘you’ve been misinformed.  This isn’t a restaurant at all.  This is heaven.  We are only able to serve you what you have sent on ahead while you were alive.  I’m very sorry, sir, but when we looked under your name, the best we could find to serve to you was this little sandwich.’ (Retelling of a Jewish folk story)

Ponderings:
How would you describe gratitude? For what are you most grateful?
How do the stories make you feel?
What is disturbing for you in the stories?
What is true for you in the stories?
How have you been a person of generosity in your life?
Have you ever been a recipient of someone’s generosity?
Where in your life have you encountered trauma or tragedy and came through it with a few scars but with great wisdom?

(A November Memory)

Pondering, Wondering, Breathing, Journeying . . .

 

Each of us stands at the gate of tomorrow, facing the future. At times we have walked in wonder and awe, at other times, we have moved along in the flood of fear.  Looking back, we may recognize that amid the joys and the struggles of this journey, we have been companioned by a grace-full Presence that has held us together and led us on. This is not simply a journey through a string of days and years. Rather, this is a sacred journey, one that is held in and surrounded by Mystery. Although we long for someone to translate the risks of this journey into logical explanation, we often find ourselves in the foreign land of faith. We stand on the edge of our hopes and dreams and ask in trust to be led and supported by a Love and Energy much larger than we can imagine. We ask to walk here in courage and integrity, as we attempt to discern the voice of God amid the cacophony of our doubt and fear   . . .

To risk the journey and face the future is simply to walk in faith, for there are no linear words that capture the massive Mystery      of God. We stand . . . clothed in grace and showered with               blessing . . . both in our knowing and in our unknowing, we are escorted into tomorrow by Love, who gives us everything we need.

Used with permission

Author: Doris Klein, CSA

Source: Journey of the Soul

Adapted for this posting

A Blessing . . .

 

 

Blessing This Day

I only want to see the day ahead,
My attention will not go     
 backward into my history,
And my attention will not go forward
 into my future.

 

I am committed to staying only in
 the present time,
To remaining grounded in my world,
To feeling a bond with each person
 I meet,
To respecting my own integrity
 and my own honor,
To living within the energy of love
 and compassion this day,
And returning to that energy when
 I don’t feel it,
To making wise and blessed choices
 with my will, 
To maintaining perceptions of                  
wisdom and non-judgment,
To release the need to know why things happen the way they do,
And to not project expectations over how
I want this day to be ___
And how I want others to be.

And finally, my last prayer to trust the Divine.
With that I bless my day with gratitude and love.

 

    Caroline Myss

https://www.myss.com/

 

 

Patricia Smith, RSM Preaches for the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time