What happens to our bodies when we spend time near to God?
I love this scripture about Moses leaving Mount Sinai after forty days and nights with the Holy One and his face is shining like the sun. And he doesn’t even know it. That is the best part for me.
I have known lots of sparkly people. I have even at times tried to be a sparkly person, or better stated, to perform what I thought other people thought was ‘a sparkly person.’
Live Coals
There are some days which separate our lives into ‘before’ and ‘after.’ Some moments, be they of beauty, or death, or an unexpected encounter with God, cleave our world in two.
Haiti
Over the past two Sundays we collected over $900 for Partners in Health, an organization that provides community-based health care in Haiti and other developing countries around the world. They have over twenty years of experience working on the ground in Haiti’s poorest communities and are well equipped both to respond to the crisis and help rebuild the health infrastructure …
Be Not Afraid
But Yahweh doesn’t stop there. He also speaks to the objection in Jeremiah’s heart, the one too tender to name. Yahweh, firmly and lovingly tells him “Do not be afraid, I am with you.”
What is the relationship between fear and responding to God’s call? I think the two may be more intertwined than we realize.
Church as body not building
Paul outlines in his letter to the Corinthians a vision of a church which is not a building, but a body of people, caring for one another, sharing the work of God in the world. As a church without a building, I wonder how this description sounds to our community. The past few months I have been reflecting a lot on our worship space and feel grateful for it. I love that we are nestled there in between a view of pond and ducks on one side and the sounds of basketball games on the other. We worship between creation and community, with no where to hide except perhaps in the shadow of God’s wings.
Partners in Health in Haiti
Partners in Health is an organization which inspires me greatly. They build relationships with the global poor to improve health. I have a good friend in Boston who is their grant-writer/manager and several other friends who support their work, including Sandy who forwarded me an email today asking if our, and I quote “superfly church is interested in making a special …
Gifts on the Green
Spiritual gifts are not merit badges of holiness or signs of approval from a paternalistic Godhead. Rather they are God’s response to the needs of our communities. And as people on the Jesus Way, our job is to do our own inner work, to get out of our own way, to allow God’s gifts to manifest through us.
Wisdom on the Dance Floor
The Eve of the New Year is upon us and so I thought it a good moment to lift up one of this week’s lectionary readings from the Wisdom tradition. Sirach (sometimes called the Wisdom of Ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus) is a collection of sayings, similar to Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, full of advice for sound living. And what does Wisdom have to …
Joy and All Good Things
Merry Christmas to you all! I hope for you a long string of days of rest and beauty. And I invite anyone in town to join us Sunday, especially if you are one, like me, who can feel a little low on the 26th wondering what to do with all the longing and desire you got in touch with over Advent. We have been waiting in the darkness just before dawn for the past four weeks and now on Christmas Eve we slip into another liturgical moment as we are invited to ‘taste and see the goodness of God.’
Thankfully we have twelve holy days and twelve starry nights to grasp this mystery of the incarnation– God dwelling among us. It is a powerful moment which reminds us that it is good to be human, good to live on this earth, and good to have a body
Alternative gifts
Art Conspiracy was fantastic. Congratulations to Sarah Jane and all her co-conspirators. There was a strong CitC presence at the event, which felt good. Thanks for the opportunity to contribute, SJ. A couple of weeks ago, Courtney shared Advent Conspiracy as an alternative to rampant consumerism. This week, I have a couple of ideas in that vein. First, Changing the …