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Invocation, January 20, 2009, by The Rev. Barbara Crafton:

Creator and sustainer of the universe, known in so many different ways by so many different people, we rejoice today in the privilege of living in a society in which peaceful political change is possible. We rejoice in our power to do a new thing, to act on our beliefs and to amend our ways. We rejoice that today marks a milestone in our life together that many of us thought we would live and die without seeing. We rejoice in the witness of all who gave their lives so that we all might inherit freedom, and we pledge ourselves to be worthy of their sacrifice, to strive always to be the people they died believing us to be.

We ask your blessing upon Barack Obama as he takes up the heavy burden of his office. We ask your blessing and protection upon his family as they share him with us, and upon the challenging life into which they now move. And we ask your blessing upon all of us, that we might find, each of us in his or her own way, the means to support his leadership and develop our own, for the benefit of all people everywhere.

All of this we pray in unity of heart and purpose. And let all the people say, AMEN.

"Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love
illumines it."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929 - 1968)
Read more HERE.

NEW YEAR MESSAGE
from The Archbishop of Canterbury
click HERE

The Presiding Bishop's 2008
Christmas Message here

Archbishop of Canterbury's 2008 Christmas Message
to the Anglican Communion
here

Michigan Lutheran and Episcopal
Bishops Issue Statement
Read it HERE.

Peace is not the product
of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence
of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result
of violent repression.

Peace is the generous,
tranquil contribution of all
to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.

- Archbishop Oscar Romero

A United Nation
Bless our beautiful land, O Lord,
with its wonderful variety of people,
of races, cultures and languages.
May we be a nation of laughter and joy,
of justice and reconciliation,
of peace and unity,
of compassion, caring and sharing.
We pray this prayer for a true patriotism,
in the powerful name of Jesus our Lord.

"An act of gratitude is a living whole. To superimpose on its organic flow a mental grid like a series of "steps" will always be somewhat arbitrary. And yet, for the sake of practice, such a delineation can be helpful.

In any process, we can distinguish a beginning, a middle, and an end. We may use this basic three-step grid for the practice of gratitude: What happens at the start, in the middle, and at the end, when we experience gratitude? What fails to happen when we are not grateful?

Before going to bed, I glance back over the day and ask myself: Did I stop and allow myself to be surprised? Or, did I trudge on in a daze?

To be awake, aware, and alert are the beginning, middle, and end of gratitude. This gives us the clue to what the three basic steps of practicing gratitude must be." Read more HERE.

From "Three Steps In the Process of Living a Life of Gratefulness" by Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

"When I have really learned to suffer with the other—the poor, the voiceless, the marginalized, the people without power—I’ll begin to see a whole new world. I’ll begin to see the violence around me and in me. I’ll begin to see the need to refuse to cooperate with it.

There is no doubt: it takes courage to face down a violent generation without becoming like them. It takes courage to stop violence by refusing to continue it. It takes courage to absorb the amount of punishment required to rob the brutal of the joy of their brutality and to turn the tide of this senselessness.

The little people who faced the dogs in Selma to gain their humanity, the tiny women who climbed the fences of nuclear installations to pray for their dismantling, the little groups who sign petition after petition to stop planetary pollution, the little boats that obstruct the wanton killing of dolphins and whales, the myriad little people who refuse to be willing victims of an age more given to death than to life—these are the seeds of a new human consciousness, a new global soul."

From Joan Chittister: In My Own Words

The point of Jesus' preaching to the people of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, to Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine, the United States, the United Kingdom—the meaning for all of us is: If you want to know that you are more than violent animals, you will have to behave as if prayer is more than talking to yourself—to pray is to love. Jesus' lesson for the first century, for our century, and for future centuries is that diverse peoples must learn to desire to pass beyond their individual understandings of reality and reorient themselves in the ways of God, who allows the sun to rise on the evil and the good; who sends the rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Jesus is teaching us a hard lesson: If we can love the other, those of other cultures, other nations, even other worldviews, we will open ourselves to the higher reality that we are all children of God.

Why reconciliation? The answer is simple: Because it makes us God's children—related to God. We are related to God when we learn to live in higher realities than violence and death. When Jesus said, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), it means that our humanity lies in the perfection of children who are discovering their identities through relationships. Read more HERE. Excerpt from "Practicing Reconciliation in a Violent World," by Michael Battle (Morehouse Publishing).

"Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy... In other words, the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the world that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is 'answered,' it is not so much by a world that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God."

Thomas Merton. Contemplative Prayer. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1969: 90

"No writing on the solitary meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees."

Thomas Merton. Honorable Reader. Robert E. Daggy, editor. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991: 91

"The first evangelists did not simply ask people what they believed about Jesus; they called upon their listeners to forsake all and to follow him. To embrace his kingdom meant a radical change not only in outlook but in posture, not only in mind but in heart, not only in worldview but in behavior, not only in thoughts but in actions. If the key to conversion in the biblical stories is a turning from and a turning to, it is always appropriate to ask what is being turned from and what is being turned to in the account of any conversion."

From Jim Wallis, in The Call to Conversion

Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) announced August 11, 2008 that it has achieved a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator for sound fiscal management. Read more at Episcopal Life Online here.

"Each one of us work out his own destiny in inseparable union with all those others with whom God has willed us to live. We share with one another the creative work of living in the world. And it is through our struggle with material reality, with nature, that we help one another create at the same time our own destiny and a new world for our descendants. This work of man, which is his peculiar and inescapable vocation, is a prolongation of the creative work of God Himself. Failure to measure up to this challenge and to meet this creative responsibility is to fail in that response to life which is required of us by the will of our Father and Creator."

Thomas Merton. Love and Living. Naomi Burton Stone and Brother Patrick Hart, editors. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979: 159.

WHY I WAKE EARLY
by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety —

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light —
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

"The anguished questioning of the world is stilled in my garden; it is invited there for healing. Who knows what resonances a pocket of beauty, peace and silence may have for the future of our race? There is little I can do but live carefully and offer hospitality to pain, and in that hospitality is, perhaps, a seed of hope.

There are other gardens here, far lovelier than mine, set in the context of the wild garden that is the Alaska wilderness. Its stillness, its hospitality for pain, must also be preserved, for in wilderness pain is taken from us and transfigured;^[1] in wilderness is the preservation of the world.^[2] We must keep some of it, at least, from exploitation, lest we lose our souls."

[1] Erazim Kohák in The Embers and the Stars.
[2] Eliot Porter in his book by the same title.

From "Voice in the Wilderness" by Maggie Ross.
Read more here.

Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) is providing emergency assistance to communities devastated by ongoing flooding in Iowa. So far the flood waters are responsible for the deaths of five people, the displacement of 38,000 others and have inflicted up to $1 billion in damage to Iowa's agricultural sector. If you want to help Iowa go to ERD and click Disaster Response - Midwest Floods. (Read the entire post by Ann Fontaine at Episcopal Cafe.)

"The message of God's mercy to man must be preached. The word of truth must be proclaimed. No one can deny this. But there are not a few who are beginning to feel the futility of adding more words to the constant flood of language that pours meaninglessly over everybody, everywhere, from morning to night. For language to have meaning there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence."

Thomas Merton. Disputed Questions (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1965): 195.

"Spirituality is thus for the hatching of the heart. Whatever helps to open our hearts to the reality of the sacred is what we should be engaged in. This awareness leads to an image of the Christian life very different from the one with which I grew up. The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spirituality is about this process: the opening of the heart to God who is already here."
— The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith by Marcus Borg

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and "one body," will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from the failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another's achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my own integration in Christ.

Thomas Merton. No Man Is An Island (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955): 16

Trinity News on Empathy:
Do You Know What It's
Like to Be Me?

"... understand that your life lies in the not knowing as well as the knowing; that your life lies in understanding your limits; that your life lies in a letting-go which allows love, reconciliation and promise and which, if you believe it aligns you with precisely that energy of creative gift which sustains the entire universe." From "What Difference Does it Make: The Gospel in Contemporary Culture" by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.
Read it all here.

…laughter enables us to live in a highly structured world without falling prey to the manacles of the mind that blind our eyes and cement our hearts. Laughter gives us the freedom of the Jesus who foolishly questioned the authority of the state and smilingly stretched the imagination of the church. “The poor shall inherit the Kingdom,” he laughed. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman,” he smiled. “God is a daddy,” he chuckled. He danced from town to town, healing, making people smile with new hope, bringing invitations to people in trees and light-footedness to lepers. He invited guests to eat with him when he had no food. He taught babies and poked fun at Pharisees and told winsome little stories, spiritual jokes, about women who would not let pretentious judges alone. Day after day he smiled his way from one theological absolute to another and left the world with enough to smile about till the end of time.

—by Joan Chittister from There Is A Season (Orbis)

Why Words Matter:
Poetry & Faith with Dana Gioia
from Washington National Cathedral

Sing Hallelujah

He is Risen

An Easter Meditation
from Washington National Cathedral

And he departed from our sight that we might
return to our heart, and there find Him.
For He departed, and behold, He is here.
~St Augustine

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou - Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
~Emily Bronte

"Seeking God is not just an operation of the intellect, or even a contemplative illumination of the mind. We seek God by striving to surrender ourselves to Him whom we do not see, but Who is in all things and through all things and above all things." From Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950): 223-224.

*lent@st.john's

• Which Star Are
You Following?

• Lent at Trinity Wall Street

• more resources for lent

"I am convinced that the Voice that whispered us into being still whispers within us and all creation. I am dead certain of it sometimes, terrified of it at other times, longing for it at all times. The silence that so often seems to overcome me is more likely a matter of my not trusting my own ears than it is a matter of the Voice having gone suddenly, inexplicably silent."

From Between The Dreaming and the Coming True: The Road Home to God by Robert Benson

"I will sing for the salt and pepper in their little towers
on the clean table.
I will sing for the rabbit that has crossed our yard
in the moonlight,
stopping twice to stamp the cold ground
with his narrow foot . . .
I will sing for what is behind the veil
light, light, and more light."

By Mary Oliver, from The Leaf and the Cloud

"And when Jesus comes along saying that the greatest command of all is to love God and to love our neighbor, he too is asking us to pay attention. If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside us. If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces, but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in."
— Frederick Buechner in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in The ABC's of Faith
Read more about Frederick Buechner here.

In his New Year message filmed in Canterbury Cathedral and at a nearby recycling center, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams encourages a more eco-conscious society and warns against a "disposable" attitude to living. Read more here.

Special Advent Features

"Advent is about preparing for the light, the light of Christ. We come to church to reorient ourselves toward what really matters, to reorient ourselves toward the God of mercy and love.

This time of year in particular we come to enter into the mystery of God, we come to be in community and walk with each other because we need each other more than we even know and can even admit. We come to light this one candle on our Advent wreath because we have faith that in the end, the light of Christ will prevail. We have faith that the light of Christ will prevail."
The Rev. Dorian McGlannan, Rector

"When a society is organized around that which is fitting in each realm,
then peace, the fruit of justice, can flourish."
Leonardo Boff in The Prayer of Saint Francis:
A Message of Peace for the World Today

Watch/hear a playlist of "Gratitude Songs" from Spirituality & Health: go to http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/
then scroll down and click on "Gratitude Songs."

Faith Formation & Education from Trinity Church: Hildegard of Bingen

"To have an attitude of faith is to hear the Lord speaking everywhere and all the time, in the
concrete and ordinary circumstances of our lives." From Richard Rohr, in
"Radical Grace, Daily Meditations."