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Start your day with a Gentle Practice and Christian Meditation
Bring: A Yoga or exercise mat, towel or blanket to sit on.
Suggested Donation: $10 per session
Ministry Center Conference Room
A good reflection as we plan for our parish pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and for everyone who walks the Way.A pilgrimage typically has a destination (or several) in mind, but it is generally recognized that the journey itself is the major component of a pilgrimage, not just the ending point. It is in the walking, the slow travel, the movement of body connected with soul, that the main part of the journey takes place.
The place we walk soaks into us as we go, and we tune into the landscape, God, ourselves, and the community joining us. We may be walking the Camino de Santiago, the Via Dolorosa, or another road to another place, another piece of the sacred story. There may or may not be markers along the way, pointing toward the events and people that have been part of the sacred story of this particular piece of earth. But there is always the path, our feet, the next step.
And we don’t walk it alone. Even though we all start from different points, there is a communal walking along the way, too—even if you walk in solitude, the travelers who have gone before you are part of that community, and you are never really alone.
A pilgrimage is a leaving of our regular rhythms, and an entering-in to the sacredness of a space that may be new to us—or may feel like home in our very bones.
In what ways might you be invited to “pilgrimage” in this season of your life? It may be across an ocean, or it may something simpler and closer to home. Or it may be simply an awareness of the way you yourself *are* a pilgrim in this world. What is your destination? What is the journey like along the way? Who walks with you? Whether you are being invited to a literal pilgrimage or a metaphorical one, lean into your sense of what it is to be a pilgrim this week, today, this morning.
Listen to the Voice of Gentle Love
Listen to your heart. It’s there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus who dwells in the very depths of your heart. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t thrust himself upon you. His voice is an unassuming voice, very nearly a whisper, the voice of a gentle love. Whatever you do with your life, go on listening to the voice of Jesus in your heart.
-Fr. Henri Nouwen
Amen !
This will be a lovely thing to share in graduation cards !
Today our staff will gather to pray, plan and calendar for the coming year.
We gather in hope and gratitude to be able to work together person to person and plan for the glad work of the Body of Christ. We are excited, not so much to be on our way ‘back to normal’ but to be on our way to sharing anew the good news of Gods love, serving together with joy and purpose as we pursue the fresh winds of the Spirit. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in us all the fire of your love.
Please keep us in your prayers, and be assured of ours, for you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you, says the Lord;
whoever remains in me will bear much fruit. John 15:4
#dailyingodsword
SHPS has some awesome Talent!!! Thank you to Ms. Otilia for organizing this year’s talent show! Thank you to all our participants! It’s takes great courage to stand in front of a big audience and perform! You all did an amazing job!! 👏
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where uncivil words prevail, show me how to model love.
Help me remember the God-given dignity of all and invite others to do the same.
Show me how to build bridges and not walls
and see first what unites us rather than how we diverge.
Let me seek to understand before asking to be understood.
Give me a listening heart filled with empathy and compassion.
May I be clear in sharing my own position
and respectful and civil in describing those of others.
Let me never tolerate hateful ideas.
May I invite all to charity and love.
Lord, help me to imitate your compassion and mercy. Make me an instrument of your peace.
Amen.
Prayer is not introspection. It is not a scrupulous, inward-looking analysis of our own thoughts and feelings but it is a careful attentiveness to the Presence of Love personified inviting us to an encounter. Prayer is the presentation of our thoughts— reflective thoughts, as well as daydreams, and night dreams—to the One who receives them, sees them in the light of unconditional love, and responds to them with divine compassion. This context of thinking in the Presence, of conversation and dialogue with Love, is the joyful affirmation of our gentle Companion on the journey with God who knows our minds and hearts, our goodness and our beauty, our darkness and our light. The Psalmist prays the prayer for us (Psalms 139:1–3; 23–24):
O Lord, you search me and you know me, you know my resting and my rising,
you discern my purpose from afar.
You mark when I walk or lie down,
all my ways lie open to you. . . .
O search me, God, and know my heart. O test me and know my thoughts.
See that I follow not the wrong path and lead me in the path of life eternal.
