these made me laugh!

Light for the Journey

I recently received my copy of Christine Sine’s new book, Light for the Journey: Morning and Evening Prayers for Living Into God’s World. If you follow my blog or the Prayers & Creeds blog, you know that Sine’s Godspace blog is a favorite of mine and I often share her beautiful prayers and liturgies. Our Word Made Flesh Argentina community often utilizes Sine’s liturgies during our weekly community formation and worship gatherings. We translated one of her Advent liturgies in Spanish to share with our Argentine friends. One of Sine’s liturgies focusing on hospitality has become a regular part of our community rhythm whenever we have visitors in Buenos Aires.

I am excited to now have this latest collection of morning and evening prayers in a book format. I look forward to sharing them with our community in the months ahead, as we seek to live more fully into God’s resurrection created world. I trust these morning and evening prayers, along with the suggested exercises, questions and prayer topics, will enrich our community formation and rhythm of life. Thank you, Christine, for sharing this gift with us all!

Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

“In Light for the Journey: Morning and Evening Prayers for Living Into God’s World, you are invited to journey together with sisters and brothers from around the world into a rhythm of morning and evening prayer. This rhythm is intended to help us connect our daily prayers to the values of God’s resurrection world in a way that strengthens our foundational beliefs and equips us to become part of God’s mustard seed conspiracy, making a kingdom difference in God’s world.”

To check out the book and order it, click here.

¡bienvenido primavera!

Welcome spring! Today is the first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere. I took the pictures above this morning across the street from my apartment. On Saturday night our church will welcome spring with its annual spring costume party...fun times!!

At the change of the seasons I often reflect on a great chapter from Parker Palmer in his book, Let Your Life Speak. Here are just a few quotes on spring that sticks with me this morning….

“In my own life, as my winters segue into spring, I not only find it hard to cope with mud but hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility: for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger’s act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.”

“From autumn’s profligate seedings to the great spring giveaway, nature teaches a steady lesson: if we want to save our lives, we cannot cling to them but must spend them with abandon. When we are obsessed with bottom lines and productivity, with efficiency of time and motion, with the rational relation of means and ends, with projecting reasonable goals and making a beeline toward them, it seems unlikely that our work will ever bear full fruit, unlikely that we will ever know the fullness of spring in our lives.”

More reflections on spring, coming soon….