tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42024582374836355052024-03-05T21:09:36.359-05:00Acts of HopeJane R's blog since 2007: words and images on matters spiritual, socio-economic, theological, cultural, feline, and more.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1591125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-57325609196248199062022-11-27T21:37:00.001-05:002022-11-27T21:37:30.762-05:00Awake in Advent: Living God's Patience and God's Impatience. A sermon for the first Sunday of Advent.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The season of Advent began today, Sunday November 27, in the Western Christian liturgical calendar. Here's a meditation for those of you who observe this season, which marks the beginning of the Christian year. </span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKowiGUeocum1LezUw_j-7XWQXHLTbvuhl7ZBbFm2sZ0_L9viSeOvMevsNE8EyJGYmZTkN-Oiez7IcMFKYRVFaniQOGhNHbpj_kqxYL49YJbkIeJl3Tyxvk5Qw_RaonPsawNz2gy4Zgt8pJ98HqkhBTRz_Ca2jRzRyjIrewvDP5-55NL7nD4e_hqs/w300-h400/2015-12-02%2020.17.51.jpg" width="300" /></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /><i>I preached this sermon at the Parish of St. Paul in Newton Highlands, a small congregation in one of Boston's nearby suburbs. I'm grateful to the Priest-in-Charge, the Rev. Cara Rockhill, and the lay leaders and members of the parish, for their invitation and hospitality. I'm a great believer in offering apologies when they are needed and appropriate, and you will see at the beginning of the sermon an apology for the length of my sermon of a few weeks ago. This is my third or fourth time preaching in this parish, which I serve as a consultant on behalf of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. <br /><br />The sermon is new, written and spoken for a particular time and place, </i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>but some of you will recognize both the title of the sermon and some of its
content from retreats and meditations I have offered in the past</i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>. <br /><br /></i></span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the name of the
One</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Who made us </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Who saves us </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">and Who walks with us
always, </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Amen.</span></span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
It’s good to be back here with you.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thank you for your hospitality.<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I owe you an apology.
</span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That sermon I
preached a few Sundays ago was </span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Much. Too. Long. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I promise you today’s
will not go on and on. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lend me your ear,
though, </span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">for a different mood
from Sundays past. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">We are entering
Advent.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Do you have an Advent wreath at home? </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Do you light Advent candles?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When did you light the first candle?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">On the vigil of the first Sunday, last night?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or do you plan to light it tonight?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or perhaps, as has happened to me more than once in the past, </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Will you begin your daily lighting of the Advent calendar </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">midweek, </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">because you haven’t made or bought your Advent wreath before then </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">and the dining room table is a mess?</span></span></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> We have an Advent wreath here. <br /><br />Take a moment (or two) to gaze at the flame of that first candle, <br />the one we have lit in our communal space <br />in this sanctuary.<br /> Simply gaze. <br /> Take a long slow breath or two <br /><br />and look at that one light.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> <i><span> </span><span> </span>(Silence.) <br /></i><br />* * * <br /><br />Advent and Christmas are in some ways <br />the ultimate celebration of space, <br />the celebration of God entering human space <br />in the most intimate way possible: <br />by becoming human. <br /><br /> The celebration of word become flesh, <br /> of word <i>becoming</i> flesh <br />the discovery that God-the-other <br />is also God-with-us<a href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>: <br />That is the good news of Advent.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> We celebrate in Advent <br />God's invitation <br />for us to view our space <br />—our society, <br />our environment, <br />our neighbor, <br />our own flesh— <br /><span> </span>as sacred, <br /><span> </span>pregnant with justice and hope, <br /><span> </span>filled with hidden treasure. <br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> But Advent is also a celebration <br />of time <br />and a celebration <i>in</i> time.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> God enters <br />not just <i>our space</i> <br />but <i>our time</i>: <br />our history, <br />our present moment, <br />our human future. <br /><br />Advent <br />challenges <br />our very relationship to time.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Advent challenges our impatience <br />and invites us to enter God's patience. <br /><br />It is the season <br />of taking the long view, <br />the view beyond <br />our own small range of vision.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> If we are to hear the good news <br />that God is <br />Emmanuel, God-with-us, <br />we may have to slow down. <br /></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span> </span>To slow down externally, bodily, <br /></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span> </span>But also to slow down inside <br /></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span> </span>—which can be even harder than slowing down with our body <br /></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> or slowing down our behavior.<br /> Often God speaks very softly, <br />in ordinary ways and places, <br />in the daily events of our lives.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> If the good news <br />is to take root in us, <br />we need to enter God's time, <br />God's timetable.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> Advent <br />is not a flashy season. <br />It takes time for good news to sink in, <br />for love to grow, <br />for wisdom to ripen, <br />for lives to be transformed, <br />for truth to dawn in us, <br />for hope to take shape. <br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> So in Advent, season of waiting for Christ, <br />we take in the good news slowly, <br />steadily, <br />lighting candles one at a time, <br />adding a new insight, <br />a layer of understanding, <br />every day <br />and every week.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> (and) Yet<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> Advent is also a time to enter <br />God's impatience, <br />a time of righteous anger, <br />a time when prophets <br />challenge our apathy and paralysis <br />and urge us forward.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> It is a season of visions and yearnings, <br />in which the stories and songs in the scriptures <br />speak of a God <br />who longs to transform <br />our hearts, <br />our society, <br />and creation itself – <br />soon, now, urgently. <br /><br />*** <br /><br />One of these visions <br />is in the text from the prophetic book of Isaiah <br />for this first Sunday of Advent.<a href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> <br /><br /> Did you notice <br />how much this reading, <br />in addition to its images taken from nature, <br />addresses our life in human community, <br />including the community of nations? <br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> God's righteousness and wisdom <br />and our human responses to them <br />are, in the text, directly related <br />to whether and how humans make peace or war, <br />whether we make the land into a battleground <br />or cultivate it.<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> The "swords into plowshares" passage<a href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> <br />is so well known <br />that we can gloss over it, <br />or in some way romanticize it. <br /> Or perhaps more likely, <br />think it is nothing but a vision or a dream. <br /><br /> That metaphor has, however, been used in recent history <br />to describe something concrete: <br />what in the late 1970s we began calling "economic conversion"— <br />—the shifting of industrial, manufacturing, and scientific priorities <br />from military to civilian. <br />The movement continued for a couple of decades <br />and found its way into policy conversations: <br />there was even a bill <br />introduced in 1977 by bipartisan sponsors in the Senate <br />and then in the House of Representatives. <br />It was called the National Economic Conversion Act <br />and was repeatedly reintroduced through the years <br />but never became law. <br /><br /> Nowadays we speak more often <br />Of another kind of economic and environmental conversion: <br />Away from over-use of fossil fuels <br />and over-production of carbon emissions <br />that threaten us and God’s earth on which we live <br />with a greater danger than swords <br />and toward forms of energy <br />that can keep us and our children <br />and our companion plants and animals <br />and soil and water and sky <br />healthy and full of life. <br /><br /> Swords into plowshares. <br /><br />It is up to us to take up the vision <br />and turn it into reality, <br />wherever we can. <br /><br /> Swords into plowshares. <br /><br />* * *<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />So here we are: <br />smack in the middle <br />of cosmic, <br />personal, political, <br />ecclesial, <br />social, and economic <br />issues and upheavals, <br />all at once. <br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />We are also <br />in the realm of visions of the messianic age, <br />which both Jews and Christians cultivate, <br />though in different ways. <br /><br /> The characteristics of that age, <br />of that kin-dom, <br />are the same, though: <br />peace among humans, <br />harmony in nature, <br />and the transformation <br />—some of it subtle, some of it dramatic— <br /> that makes these possible. <br /><br />* * * <br /><br />Meanwhile, Jesus, <br />as the Gospel of Matthew presents him, <br />is far from meek and mild. <br />He warns us, puts us on alert, <br />shakes us up. <br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> "Keep awake!"<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> Advent may be the slow and gentle season, <br />but it is—equally— <br />also the shake-up season. <br /><br />God enters time, <br />but <br />the end of time is looming. <br /><br /> Jesus <br />grabs his companions by the collar.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> No gentleness in this Gospel.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But no hypervigilance either. <br />By which I mean no jitters, <br />no super-speedy-overwrought reflexes. <br /><br /> Rather, we can read the Gospel as an invitation <br />to be awake and alert in a centered way. <br />It may be useful to read this Gospel in tandem <br />with a good dose of Buddhist mindfulness practice: <br /><br />Can we be alert <br />but not reactive, <br />ready for the storm <br />but not overwhelmed <br />by its presence?<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> Can we spend Advent mindfully, <br />letting go of some of the reactivity <br />that has characterized so many of our conversations and responses <br />this election season <br />and the two preceding election cycles?<br /></span></span> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> Can we spend Advent mindfully, <br />letting go of the reactivity that rises from us <br />not just in political conversations <br />but in many of our circumstances <br />today?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Can we spend Advent <br />mindfully, gently, <br />in the present <br />despite all the uncertainty and anxiety we are carrying <br />–in our work lives, <br />our relationships, <br />our family lives— <br />and yes, our church lives? <br /><br />* * * <br /><br />One of the challenges of this season <br />is to readjust our sense of time: <br />to discern when it is appropriate <br />to enter into God's patience <br />and when it is time to enter into God's impatience. <br /> <br /> Perhaps it is also, then, <br />a time to learn mindfulness in a new way.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> It is helpful to do this in community. <br />That's why we have the seasons of the church year. <br />That's why we have each other. <br /><br />* * * <br /><br />Today, on this first Sunday of Advent, <br />this first day of the new year<a href="#_ftn4">[4]</a> <br />and in the next few days, <br />before you do anything else, <br />take time. <br /><br />Rest <br />in the patience of God. <br />All else will unfold, <br />in God's time. <br /><br /> <span> </span><span> </span>Amen. <br /> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6RUI756k2D4Ed1HK3f_WI_Wv4uA_qOvHn3JQv78d4WwT3Iyi8ViUcCznJNu6jLt-ZT0uyNafBWFPK5b6s1WHR4njF64dzZBu2SU12XIvVPWlJp2jwcnmlcJwE_R-sTdwzVJ6KPZhbJ45zlaKqa3mQk-_dI4laySlBviMAshcE6AELWm28k1jcao/s963/Advent%202016%20-%20Awake%20in%20Advent.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="826" data-original-width="963" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6RUI756k2D4Ed1HK3f_WI_Wv4uA_qOvHn3JQv78d4WwT3Iyi8ViUcCznJNu6jLt-ZT0uyNafBWFPK5b6s1WHR4njF64dzZBu2SU12XIvVPWlJp2jwcnmlcJwE_R-sTdwzVJ6KPZhbJ45zlaKqa3mQk-_dI4laySlBviMAshcE6AELWm28k1jcao/s320/Advent%202016%20-%20Awake%20in%20Advent.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Emmanuel = “God with us” in Hebrew. <br /> <a href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> The Revised Common Lectionary texts are <a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Advent/AAdv1_RCL.html">here</a>. <br /> <a href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> A similar use of this image exists in chapter 4 of Micah, another prophetic book of the Bible. <br /> <a href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> The new liturgical year. <br /><br /><br /></span></span></span><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-10232113849645199962022-03-10T11:58:00.002-05:002022-03-10T12:25:11.211-05:00Half the population of Kyiv now refugees <p><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql lr9zc1uh a8c37x1j fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v b1v8xokw oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Refugees
in large numbers are not new --hello Syria, hello, Afghanistan, hello,
South Sudan, hello, DRC-- but the speed at which the number of Ukrainian
refugees has risen is devastating. Two million people as of last
night's NPR news, half of them children. And this morning in the
newspapers and their websites, the news that half the population of Kyiv
is now displaced. That's half of the capital city, a city of close to
three million inhabitants. Think of the most populous city of your state
(or country if you are not a continent-wide country like the US or
Canada or Australia) and half the population fleeing on short notice, in
less than two weeks. The other half in a makeshift fortress city
watching for enemy armies. The mind boggles. The heart races, or nearly
stops.<br /><br />From <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us" target="_blank"><i>The Guardian</i></a> today:</span></span><br /></span></p><h4 class="content__headline js-score" itemprop="headline" style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href=" https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/mar/10/ukraine-news-russia-war-kyiv-vladimir-putin-volodymyr-zelenskiy-russian-invasion-hospital-bombing-latest-live-updates?utm_term=6229fd6569804308d251cbabf738b267&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email" target="_blank">Russia-Ukraine war latest news: half of Kyiv population has fled, mayor says; Turkey talks end without progress on ceasefire</a></span></span></i></h4><p><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql lr9zc1uh a8c37x1j fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v b1v8xokw oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"></span></span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I will shortly post in the comments to this post the names and website info of reliable aid organizations. </span></span></i></p><p class="caption" id="caption-159977"></p><p><img alt="A child, held by his mother, waves from a train window to his father outside, directly below the window." class="lazyloaded" data-src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/6T111qcbhShRCmgvYy2KqxJBaVU=/900x600/media/img/photo/2022/03/ukraine-refugees/a01_AP22063013279541/original.jpg" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/6T111qcbhShRCmgvYy2KqxJBaVU=/900x600/media/img/photo/2022/03/ukraine-refugees/a01_AP22063013279541/original.jpg" width="100%" /></p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Stanislav, 40, says goodbye to his son David, 2,
and his wife Anna, 35, on a train to Lviv at Kyiv's railway station in
Ukraine on March 3, 2022. Stanislav is staying to fight while his family
is leaving to seek refuge in a neighboring country.
<a class="permalink" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2022/03/photos-ukrainian-refugees-say-goodbye-home-and-family-members/626964/#img01">#</a></i>
</span></span><p></p><div class="mobile-caption-wrapper"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span></span><div class="credit"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
Emilio Morenatti / AP
</span></span></div>
</div><p></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-12485881945965061822021-02-23T12:12:00.000-05:002021-02-23T12:12:08.797-05:00Lenten online retreats for you!<p> <i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Dear friends,<br /><br />Here is an announcement from my "website" (in quotes because it's really a blog that functions as a website janeredmont.blogspot.com) about some <b>online retreats </b>I am offering this Lent. <span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;">As you will see below, there are links to further information and registration. </span><br /><br />Do join us for one of the retreats! There is a fee for the retreat, but on a sliding scale, and we can accommodate you, whether you can afford the "benefactor" level or you are in a situation of financial hardship.</span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></i></p><div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="361" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5PUOCmKXrPxEGxv95eLAXxIUuLks5FHwjKycmGSNNlzTWuygeH0Z1eVU23lnmtZS2cTZU3mwtKVztLaISfs7oCbIg5vL9TmQh93dm5ReQuxq40WqpmVcT6HW43VLHe2Cwxl-F5crEKg/s400/celtic+cross0016.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="211" /></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>art by Thomas Merton</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div><p></p><p>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: #d9ead3;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="background-color: white;">What, you say? A second pandemic Lent? </span></span><br /><br /></b><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">Can Lent be life-giving, faith-deepening, full of meaning when, for many, the entire past year has felt like Lent? <br /></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: #d9ead3;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: #d9ead3;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">How will we live Lent in 2021? </span></span></span></span></span><br /> </span></span></i><b><br /></b><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">Ash Wednesday</span></span></span></span>,
the first day of Lent in Christian churches of the Western traditions,
was last week. Today is the first Sunday of Lent. Here we are.</span><br />
</p><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: #ffd966;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Lent</span>,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> the 40-day season preceding Easter,</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span>is the Christian church's annual long retreat. <br />
<br />
We go on this retreat, not necessarily to a different geographical
place, especially this year, but to a zone of mindfulness and practice
that reorients our hearts and helps us to reconnect, deeply,
with God, with Jesus Christ, with the Spirit at the heart of God's life
and the life of the world.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><i>We clear some space and time</i> <span style="color: black;">--even a little bit of each--</span> <i>to to make room for the God of comfort and
surprises and to remember what is deepest and truest in our lives.</i><i> </i><b>Lent is for the sake of Easter.</b></span>
It is a time of renewal. It is a sober time, but not a gloomy time. It
is a time of self-examination, but not a time of cruelty. It is a time
of attentiveness and a time of turning --of conversion. Transformation
is not always easy, but it is possible. Grace is present. Always.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b><span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Will you join us on one of </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">three online retreats</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span> this Lent?</span></span></span></b></i></span><br /></div><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
two longer retreats, which run for all six weeks of Lent, begin <u>this week</u>. The shorter one, which is three weeks long, begins i<u>n the middle of next week</u>. <br /><br /><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>THOMAS MERTON, COMPANION ON THE WAY</b></span></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">This six-week online retreat <span>examines contemplation and struggle in the life,
writings, and prayer of Thomas Merton, with guidance and opportunity
for prayer and practice.</span> <span><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto">Merton, a 20th century Trappist monk,
was also a writer, poet, spiritual teacher, artist, social critic, and pioneer in
interreligious and intermonastic dialogue. I have offered versions of
this retreat before. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>For more detailed information and to register, click <a href="https://janeredmont.blogspot.com/2021/02/thomas-merton-companion-on-way-online.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></span></span><br /></span><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>LENT
FOR LIFE: RENEWING BODY AND SPIRIT</b></span></span><br />A six-week retreat of prayer, practice, and reflection on the
life-giving dimensions of this second Lent of the coronavirus pandemic.
It will include a lot of focus on the body and bodies: our own bodies, Earth's body, our
neighbors' bodies, the body of Christ</span><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto" style="font-size: small;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto">. For more detailed information and to register, click <a href="https://janeredmont.blogspot.com/2021/02/lent-for-life-renewing-body-and-spirit.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br /></span></span><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto" style="font-size: small;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><br /></span></span></span><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>LENT
FOR LAGGARDS: (Re)DISCOVERING THE MERCY OF GOD</b></span></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
one's for you who
are struggling, or feeling overwhelmed, and who never quite got started
on Lent on either Ash Wednesday or the First Sunday in Lent. Begins in
the middle of next week, the second week of Lent. No guilt-trips, just
reminders of grace abundant and of the Holy One's love for us as we
amble or stumble along. For more detailed information and to register,
click <a href="https://janeredmont.blogspot.com/2021/02/lent-for-laggards-rediscovering-mercy.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All
of the retreats have a structure and a schedule, but they are flexible
enough to integrate into your daily life: you are the one who decides
when and where to read and pray with the materials offered on the retreat and how to apply the invitations to
practice.</span></span></span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><br /></span></span></i></span><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto"><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>All three online retreats will be operate on a hybrid model</b>, by which I mean:<br /><br /></span></span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9; font-size: small;">1) As in the past, all the retreats will include online resources you can tap into at any time of the day or night,</span><span style="font-size: small;">
on a private blog to which you will have access once you are registered
for the retreat. Among the resources will be readings, meditations,
images, a little music, and spiritual exercises to practice in your own
time and in the context of your life. <br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9; font-size: small;">2)
Since many of us now have experience with video conversations, each
retreat will also include some live online conversation in one or two
specific time slots each week -- </span><span style="font-size: small;">enough
for you to touch base in person (with me and with your companions on
the retreat) for some inspiration and support, but not so much that you
will get "Zoom fatigue." </span></span><br /></div></div></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All of these online retreats call us to simplicity, mindfulness, and
holiness. Like the season of Lent itself, they invite us to
repentance and conversion, but also to joy.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b><span>Peace be with you.</span></b> </span></span></span>Please join us on the journey of Lent.</span></span></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-80101836443600030072020-12-02T12:30:00.007-05:002021-02-21T21:58:07.518-05:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><strike><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfNYd1-A9sCdbm-zCEUPa88xIzXbnbJ73cbJs1AocdhqHnXWiGZZwFxwxrKVe9XrKC45X3P8VqjYUH3xPD0L6x3vePWAZQWC1ovBCDjVkgAWX5k5UDCZ8xiZytM0KDuo5XA5srQSnrtoc/s960/David+Ames+12+02+2020.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfNYd1-A9sCdbm-zCEUPa88xIzXbnbJ73cbJs1AocdhqHnXWiGZZwFxwxrKVe9XrKC45X3P8VqjYUH3xPD0L6x3vePWAZQWC1ovBCDjVkgAWX5k5UDCZ8xiZytM0KDuo5XA5srQSnrtoc/w640-h480/David+Ames+12+02+2020.jpg" width="640" /></a></strike></div><br />Dec. 2020 Photo by David Ames<br /> <br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-76345204485048424672020-12-01T23:50:00.001-05:002020-12-01T23:56:42.282-05:00For the Darkness of Waiting: Advent 2 resource for Emmanuel Church and friends <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Here is the full litany whose first two verses were quoted in <i>This Week at Emmanuel Church</i>'s "Advent at Home." </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Read it slowly. Read it aloud. If you are observing Advent at home with one or more companions, read it responsively.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"></span><br /><br /><b>FOR THE DARKNESS OF WAITING<br /></b><br />For the darkness of waiting</div><div style="text-align: left;">of not knowing what is to come</div><div style="text-align: left;">of staying ready and quiet and attentive,</div><div style="text-align: left;">we praise you O God:</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>for the darkness and the light</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>are both alike to you.</b><br /><br />For the darkness of staying silent</div><div style="text-align: left;">for the terror of having nothing to say</div><div style="text-align: left;">and for the greater terror</div><div style="text-align: left;">of needing to say nothing,</div><div style="text-align: left;">we praise you O God:<br /><br /><b>for the darkness and the light</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>are both alike to you.</b><br /><br />For the darkness of loving</div><div style="text-align: left;">in which it is safe to surrender</div><div style="text-align: left;">to let go of our self-protection</div><div style="text-align: left;">and to stop holding back our desire,</div><div style="text-align: left;">we praise you O God:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>for the darkness and the light</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>are both alike to you.</b><br /><br />For the darkness of choosing</div><div style="text-align: left;">when you give us the moment</div><div style="text-align: left;">to speak, and act, and change,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and we cannot know what we have set in motion,<br />but we still have to take the risk,</div><div style="text-align: left;">we praise you O God:<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>for the darkness and the light </b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>are both alike to you.</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For the darkness of hoping</div><div style="text-align: left;"> in a world which longs for you,</div><div style="text-align: left;">for the wrestling and the labouring of all creation</div><div style="text-align: left;">for wholeness and justice and freedom</div><div style="text-align: left;">we praise you O God:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><b>for the darkness and the light</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>are both alike to you.</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Janet Morley</span></span></div><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><i>All Desires Known,</i> expanded edition</span></div><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>(Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1992)</span></div><div style="margin-left: 120px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>pp. 58-59</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span> </span><span> </span> </span><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-62720782829842466282020-11-29T11:54:00.005-05:002020-11-29T18:33:09.176-05:00First Sunday of Advent (Year B): meditations on the scriptures / sermon excerpts<p> <i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Collect and Revised Common Lectionary readings for this First Sunday of Advent, Year B, are <a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv1_RCL.html" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></i><br />
</p><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These
are two excerpts (beginning and end) from a sermon I preached on the first Sunday of Advent exactly six years ago (i.e. in the same cycle of readings, Year B) at Trinity
Episcopal Church in Canton, Massachusetts, a racially mixed (African American and
White, with a few West African members) parish, in the wake of the
events in Ferguson, Missouri: the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed, young Black man
by a police officer and the announcement this week that the Grand Jury
did not indict the officer, followed by outcries and demonstrations of
protest in Ferguson and around the U.S.</span></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">O that you would tear open the heavens and come
down</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">so that the mountains would quake at your presence</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">--as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire
causes water to boil—</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">to make your name known to your adversaries, </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">so that the nations might tremble at your presence! </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[Isaiah 64:1-<i>2</i>]</span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Chaos and anguish.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Lament and longing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Social unrest.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Scary weather.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">This is what we hear in
our readings </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">for the first Sunday of
Advent. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Today is the beginning of
the season of preparing </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">for Christmas, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">the Nativity of Jesus,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">who came to us as a child
born in poverty,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">and who at a very young
age</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">became a migrant child,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">carried by his parents to
Egypt</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">so that he might be safe
from the long reach</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">of violent tyranny.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">And speaking of migration:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">the part of the book of <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Isaiah</span> we heard </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">is a book of exiles </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">returning home</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">bewildered, traumatized.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In the middle of finding
their bearings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In a harsh, disoriented time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In the image given to
us by the <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Psalm</span>, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">we drink bowls of our own
tears --</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i>bowls</i> of tears! ...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">... Jan Richardson, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">an artist, Methodist
minister, and poet </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">says of today’s Gospel passage
that it</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“doesn’t so much beckon us
across the threshold” of Advent</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“as it throws open a door,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">tosses a cup of cold water
in our face to wake us,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">and shoves us through.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Not very cheery.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">... There’s no getting
around it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">This is a difficult
and painful season for many of us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
Difficult for those of us who suffer from depression</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">or who are living with addiction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Painful for those whose
relationship with their families</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">is challenging</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">or conflicted</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">or non existent.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Difficult, even disastrous,
for refugees from our own</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Long Island Shelter in
Boston,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">hundreds of people</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">who now are doubly
homeless</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">because of lack of timely repairs
on the bridge to the island.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It is wrenchingly painful for
the parents of Black and brown children,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">especially Black and brown
boys and young men,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">who are full of fear every
time their child leaves the house.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Is is discouraging and
angering in the face of the lack of indictment in Ferguson</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">for an officer shooting
and killing an unarmed young man.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It is discouraging for
those law enforcement professionals</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">who do their jobs with
care and honor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">and a sense of
responsibility.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It is frightening in a
season of rising oceans and climate change.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It is enough to make us
raise our voices in anguish and say to God,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">GOD?<br /><br />WHERE ARE YOU?<br />
<br />
GET OVER HERE!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">or</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">COME ON, JESUS!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
SHOW UP!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">So it was </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">for the people </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">from whom</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">and for whom</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">the <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Gospel of Mark</span> was written...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI7l2NCtj8piuAn-zN9zO99h0Cktq_vJSNc0o3a0cvw7uhaP8yV6NqYokkVNdgK86MkD8d97c_p2OLH5ghYN16XuL3BtLA5tdGGR93LlFN0zuQtAk_aQA1GornN8xpj1n4sWGm985r6Q/s1600/Fig+on+tree+leaves+Evan+Sung+NY+Times.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI7l2NCtj8piuAn-zN9zO99h0Cktq_vJSNc0o3a0cvw7uhaP8yV6NqYokkVNdgK86MkD8d97c_p2OLH5ghYN16XuL3BtLA5tdGGR93LlFN0zuQtAk_aQA1GornN8xpj1n4sWGm985r6Q/s1600/Fig+on+tree+leaves+Evan+Sung+NY+Times.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="color: #38761d;">[There followed several paragraphs about staying awake, reading the signs of the times, </span></span></span><br />
</i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: small;">mindfulness, vigilance, and faithfulness.]</span></span></i><br /> </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">... We cry, with the Psalmist, <br /><br /> <i>Restore us, O God of hosts; <br />show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.</i></span></span><br />
<br />
[Ps. 80:3,7]<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This is not</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> the ordinary light, <br />not that of electricity, <br />not even that of the moon and stars, <br />not that of the sun. <br /><br />It is <br />a different light: <br />the radiant darkness of God <br />the Word that comes to us when the ordinary perceptions have gone. <br /><br /> This may well be why <br />we have this earth- and heavens-shaking <br />entry into Advent: <br />to return us to a different light. </span></span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Our opening collect calls us to “cast away the works of darkness.” <br />I want to offer us an alternative, which is to cease equating darkness with what is evil <br />and rather, to embrace the dark. To see the dark as the place where God is with us. <br /><br />A radiant darkness. <br /> <br />So let us pray, in words given to us by Janet Morley, <br /><br /> <i>God our deliverer, <br />whose approaching birth <br />still shakes the foundations of our world: <br />ay we so wait for your coming <br />with eagerness and hope <br />that we embrace without terror <br />the labour pangs of the new age, <br />through Jesus Christ, Amen</i>.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1492481368650737972#_ftn1">[1]</a> </span><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1492481368650737972#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Janet Morley, Collect for Advent Sunday, in
<i>All Desires Known: Inclusive Prayers for Worship and Meditation</i>, expanded
edition (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1992), 4.<br /></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-54629288334491085592020-11-24T19:39:00.008-05:002020-11-25T00:21:37.203-05:00Creator of the stars of night: Advent 1 resource for Emmanuel Church and friends<div class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>A little more about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnGD6aBiM1U&feature=endscreen" target="_blank">the chant linked in "This Week at Emmanuel Church."</a></b> <i>(Note: underlined words or phrases are hyperlinks: click and the linked web page will open in a separate window.)</i></span></span></span></div><div class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="text-align: left;"><b><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>F</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>irst, an invitation to spiritual practice:</i></span></span></span></b></div><div class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span></span></span></div><div class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span></span>Listen to the chant this evening or even every evening this week. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Repetition is good and can steady
you after a less than steady </span>day.</span></span></div><div class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some history:</span></i></b></div><div class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></i><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Many of you may already be familiar with this chant. <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some churches sing it as a hymn in English as "<b><span style="color: #073763;">Creator of the Stars of Night</span></b>," with words by 19th century lyricist John Mason Neale. It is also known by its original Latin titles, "<b><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i>Conditor Alme Siderum</i></span></b>" and "<b><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i>Creator Alme Siderum</i></span></b>."</span></span><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">An anonymous text traditionally used at Vespers (evening prayer) during Advent, "<i>Conditor Alme Siderum</i>" was revised in the 17th century under Pope Urban and became "<i>Creator Alme Siderum</i>"
with a different set of lyrics. In recent years churches and choirs
--those who use the Latin, anyway-- have returned to the original "<i>Conditor</i>" version. Many English translations exist.</span></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKbSZ4fDZqs" target="_blank"><span> </span></a></b></span></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKbSZ4fDZqs" target="_blank">Here</a></b></span> is a Gregorian chant version in Latin sung by alternating men's and women's voices. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">(For some reason, the "<i>Creator</i>" version is used.)</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Meanings:</span></span></i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">This Advent hymn of chanted praise spans all of salvation history, from creation to the end of time. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Conditor alme siderum,<br /> aeterna lux credentium,<br /> Christe, redemptor omnium,<br /> exaudi preces supplicum.</span></i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></i></span><blockquote><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Nourishing author* of the stars, </span></i></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">eternal light of those who believe,</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">Christ, redeemer of all <br />answer the prayers of those who beseech you. </span></span></i></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"></span></span></i></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span>The latin word <i>conditor</i>
has many meanings: it means author, composer, creater, builder,
founder, and preserver. So all those connotations are there when we
sing "conditor alme siderum." <i>Alme</i> is the same word as <i>alma</i> in "alma mater."</span></span></span></span></span><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><span>The above translation from the Latin is mine and is obviously not in verse. It is a more <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>literal translation than the formal poetic translations like John Mason Neale's (from the Episcopal Hymnal 1982): </span></span></span></p>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i></i></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Creator of the stars of night,</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Thy people’s everlasting light; </i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>And hear thy servants when they call.</i></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i></i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Here's a picture for you to contemplate. More words and translation follow below. </span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmZ82r6H69_eWE1gMx6EmLdpPgaHc22bq-9twa6QmVCsfaziEaCrtBIWIYM_2GVk1u6_uV0rgYl4py73MHXWcuhUeqaZiDTAXje-FiAYbz4ex_c2C1s6Dm0DcIMJ0kYYEe6q2KLe4Bhw/s1600/Sagittarius+dwarf+galaxy+NASA+Hubble.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmZ82r6H69_eWE1gMx6EmLdpPgaHc22bq-9twa6QmVCsfaziEaCrtBIWIYM_2GVk1u6_uV0rgYl4py73MHXWcuhUeqaZiDTAXje-FiAYbz4ex_c2C1s6Dm0DcIMJ0kYYEe6q2KLe4Bhw/s640/Sagittarius+dwarf+galaxy+NASA+Hubble.jpg" width="548" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, NASA photo via HubbleSite.org</i></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">Later, the hymn expresses fear, even dread, but also the hope and assurance of protection.</span><br />
</p><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Te, Sancte, fide quaesumus,</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> venture iudex saeculi,</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> conserva nos in tempore</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> hostis a telo perfidi. </i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i></i></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Holy One, in faith we beg You,</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>You the judge of the world about to come,</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>guard us in this present era</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>from the weapon of the treacherous enemy.</i></span></blockquote></span></blockquote><p><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span></span><span></span><span></span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>(My translation again, with a little help from an existing one.)</span></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">More spiritual practice:</span></span></b></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> <br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">But you can just listen to the Latin. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">Hum along, or let the music carry you.</span><p><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"> </span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-14640799098196521942015-03-02T00:41:00.000-05:002017-03-03T15:42:10.486-05:00Forty Days of Tenderness<span style="color: #444444;"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The short essay below was published online yesterday (Sunday, March 1) as part of the <b>Intent</b> series of daily Lenten meditations. (Copyright © 2015 LEM).</span></span></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><b>Intent</b> is a joint project of the <a href="https://le-ministry.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Lutheran Episcopal Ministry (LEM)</a> at MIT, <a href="http://www.episcopalbu.com/" target="_blank">Episcopal BU</a> (the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Boston University), the <a href="http://www.lecm.neu.edu/" target="_blank">Lutheran Episcopal Campus Ministry at Northeastern University</a> and the <a href="http://www.bc.edu/offices/ministry/interfaith/StudentFaithOrganizations/episcopaleagles.html" target="_blank">Episcopal Chaplaincy at Boston College</a>, <a href="http://www.thecrossingboston.org/" target="_blank">The Crossing</a>, <a href="http://www.stbartsepiscopal.org/" target="_blank">St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church</a> in Cambridge, and <a href="http://www.emmanuelboston.org/" target="_blank">Emmanuel Episcopal Church</a> in Boston.</i></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Note: these congregations exploring together the possibility of becoming a <a href="http://www.diomass.org/mission-hubs" target="_blank">mission hub</a> or mission cluster with a focus on creating affordable housing opportunities in the form of intentional communities --</i></span></span></span><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>hence the reference in the essay below.</i></span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> You can sign up for <b>Intent</b> (it's free) <a href="http://mit.us10.list-manage2.com/subscribe?u=14875e689f556e8f7f3cc8195&id=d357584976" target="_blank">here</a>. Note that the daily meditations, which you can receive via e-mail, include not only written ones but visual and musical ones as well.</i></span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUjiDRB1xX1vYUcFewX6kKsgJOtM43_aUilnTA-tpkktLozBXfs4qBXs_LteagAzoqCl59Ov0jmYIty7sKy7tvrEm_xd6vdAstEgkPCmGTJ6_A-NmNbz3TdYxfoU2vrkuOIUZfWDdk-Gw/s1600/2015-03-01+06.34.12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" kasperskylab_antibanner="on" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUjiDRB1xX1vYUcFewX6kKsgJOtM43_aUilnTA-tpkktLozBXfs4qBXs_LteagAzoqCl59Ov0jmYIty7sKy7tvrEm_xd6vdAstEgkPCmGTJ6_A-NmNbz3TdYxfoU2vrkuOIUZfWDdk-Gw/s1600/2015-03-01+06.34.12.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Dawn, Second Sunday in Lent<br />
(c) Jane Redmont 2015</i></span></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Forty Days of Tenderness</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
Two or three decades ago, my beloved mentor, <a href="http://www.episcopalcafe.com/in_memoriam_krister_stendahl/">Krister Stendahl</a>, preached an Ash Wednesday sermon I will never forget. The cry of Ash Wednesday and Lent, he reminded us, is “Return to the Lord your God!” Return, he added, to God who is tender and merciful. Lent, he continued, is a time to remember the tenderness of God and therefore (here’s where he got me) to learn anew to be tender with ourselves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lent is the church’s annual retreat. It is a time of truth-seeking and truth-telling, of re-attuning our lives to live in justice and mercy, of renewal in prayer and practice. For many of us, this may involve additional time in solitude. But the self-examination of Lent is not for reflection on our self alone. It is not simply about “Jesus and me.” We are on this 40-day retreat together.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
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So we return to the unending tenderness of the Holy One of Blessing. We let this tenderness touch us and cradle us. We let it live with and within us. And we learn—again or for the first time—to live together, with our households and congregations, with the stranger on the street, with this new mission cluster, with our sisters and brothers who need housing, with those we love and those who are hard to love.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
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This takes time and care. It may feel slow and require some inner untangling and delicate steps in our community life. Lent is difficult. But it need not be harsh. How will we live these forty days of tenderness?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Jane Redmont</b> is a theologian, spiritual director, and pastoral worker and is the author of two books including <a href="http://www.amazon.com/When-Doubt-Sing-Prayer-Daily/dp/1933495162" target="_blank"><i>When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life</i></a>.</span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-36561034412181047052014-07-17T10:35:00.000-04:002014-07-17T10:35:26.763-04:00The children<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Children,
children, children. Children running away from violence and poverty in
Central America, children sent back to violence and poverty in Central
America, children killed on a beach in Gaza, children hungry and unsafe
on the streets of these United States, children deathly ill with cholera
in South Sudan. Cry out, o stones.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I first posted this lament on Facebook about 12 hours ago, Wednesday July 16, 2014.</i></span></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4QVo2PBUk3VeEExWz3W_3shJKXk5k3ohFMhzZEUrX5MOZ0quke_2TZr_cH8qiqCteeja7cDi6hRHIUF-2xx0qxPpxIhOHEk_tWYOKW3rFNpos_QsDlqG5gmiSPP9fPduts08jYhmvxlk/s1600/man+carrying+dead+boy+Gaza+07+16+14+Reuters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4QVo2PBUk3VeEExWz3W_3shJKXk5k3ohFMhzZEUrX5MOZ0quke_2TZr_cH8qiqCteeja7cDi6hRHIUF-2xx0qxPpxIhOHEk_tWYOKW3rFNpos_QsDlqG5gmiSPP9fPduts08jYhmvxlk/s1600/man+carrying+dead+boy+Gaza+07+16+14+Reuters.jpg" height="370" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Photo: Reuters, Gaza, July 16, 2014</i></span> </span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-83364539584815352342014-06-14T01:02:00.001-04:002014-06-14T21:56:07.329-04:00Paths to Trinitarian Life and Prayer<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This essay was published nine years ago in the "Proclaiming Gospel Justice" section of the late lamented magazine <a href="http://thewitness.org/menu.html" target="_blank">The Witness</a>'s online version. It remained up on the Web long after the magazine and its <a href="http://thewitness.org/menu.html" target="_blank">A Globe of Witnesses </a>online incarnation ceased publication, until fairly recently. I found a cached copy of the essay this week and reproduce it here. Thanks again to The Witness and its then Editor, Ethan Vesely-Flad, for offering me the opportunity to reflect on the challenging topic of the Trinity in the light of the scriptures from Year A of the Lectionary.</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</span></span></i> <i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We are in Year A of the Lectionary again and I am preaching this weekend (in an Episcopal parish south of Boston)</span></span>. <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="headline">I may crib from myself a bit in the sermon... For now, study and prayer!</span></span></i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Andrei Rublev (15th c.), "Trinity"</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="headline"> </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="headline">Paths to Trinitarian Life and Prayer</span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
<i>by Jane Carol Redmont</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> </i><br />
Friday, May 20, 2005</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Witness</span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Lectionary Reflections for Trinity Sunday (A)</span></b></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Readings for Trinity Sunday, Year A, May 22, 2005</b></span><br />
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Psalm 8 (or Psalm 150)</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">2 Corinthians 13:11-13</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Matthew 28:16-20</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Most of the preachers I know think of Trinity Sunday as Preacher's Nightmare Day. How to keep the sermon from degenerating into a doctrinal lecture? How to do justice to such a complex and vital doctrine in twelve minutes -- or even twenty? What is the connection with the scriptures? Why is the doctrine celebrating God's dynamic and relational self so easy to freeze or to ossify? What has the Trinity to do with the sufferings of our world? And where does any of this leave, lead, or involve the people of God, the true celebrants of this feast? (Preachers are only there to help open a few windows.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Dorothee Soelle, the German theologian, poet, activist and mystic who died just two years ago, often wrote of how difficult she found it to speak about God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Equally often, she quoted the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart's saying that God is "that which is most communicable."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This day's feast reminds me of both her statements.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It reminds me also that Soelle once wrote "We can only speak <i>about</i> God when we speak <i>to</i> God."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="pullquote">It matters how we understand the ecology of God. We need the insights of icons and books, of ecofeminist and Orthodox Christians, of scientists in dialogue with theologians and ethicists.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These words are one of our windows for the day: one of the major paths to understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity goes through prayer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I say this not to avoid doctrinal discussion (well, perhaps just a little) since our understandings and formulations of God do matter. They matter to us as a Christian community, and perhaps more importantly, they matter to the broken world in which we live and to its healing. It is interesting (and, I think, no accident) that in recent ecumenical conversations, in fresh theological reflection in both Eastern and Western Christian traditions, and in the work of ecofeminist theologians from the North and the South (Ivone Gebara of Brazil comes first to mind) a renewed understanding of God as Trinity has gone hand in hand with increased attention to God's creation: attention to the environment, to the interdependence of earth, waters, skies and the sentient creatures who dwell there, attention to the impact upon them of human decisions, institutions, and societies. It matters how we understand the ecology of God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We need the insights of icons and books, of ecofeminist and Orthodox Christians, of scientists in dialogue with theologians and ethicists. And nothing can replace the time that this kind of reflection requires nor our commitment to this mindful exploration.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But at some point, sooner rather than later, we need to hear and speak the poetry of God's mystery. And we will need, at some point, to do so in the second person, "you," speaking <i>to</i> God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The feast of the Trinity is the gate through which we pass into the long season of the Spirit-filled year. God is alive. God is present. We have just spent the season of Easter remembering and proclaiming this reality, and at Pentecost last week we prayed it with particular intensity, remembering the multiplicity of human experience. Let not the celebration of Trinity, in its honoring of speech <i>about</i> God, lose its speech <i>to</i> God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So to God we turn, today, even if we see only fragments, or through a glass darkly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When God is "you," we can plead, argue, listen, fall silent. We can praise or lament. And we can gaze -- at creation in nature, at icons, at the faces of those we love and those we do not love enough.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This contemplation is not of and for the few. The Holy One who is also Multiplicity, and who remains One, is "that which is most communicable." We are not, with this God into whose life Jesus has invited us, in the domain of the spiritually privileged. "We are all mystics," Soelle reminds us.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="pullquote">Take the risk of speaking to God, of approaching or letting yourself be approached, in the boldness of the Spirit and the terror of these times. Alone, or, as this Sunday, in a praying community. In song, in silence, in poetry, in gesture.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Take the risk of speaking to God, of approaching or letting yourself be approached, in the boldness of the Spirit and the terror of these times. Alone, or, as this Sunday, in a praying community. In song, in silence, in poetry, in gesture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Amos Wilder, the biblical scholar (brother of Thornton Wilder, the playwright and novelist) wrote nearly thirty years ago:</span><br />
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<i>It is at the level of the imagination that the fateful issues of our new world-experience must first be mastered. It is here that culture and history are broken, and here that the church is polarized. Old words do not reach across the new gulfs, and it is only in vision and oracle that we can chart the unknown and new-name the creatures.</i></span></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Before the message there must be the visions, before the sermon the hymn, before the prose the poem.</span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The scriptures today do not offer us a formula. They offer us vision, imagination, paths into Trinitarian life and prayer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Hallelujah! Praise God with timbrel and dance and strings and pipe." Hear and read and sing the Psalm. Hear it anew. ["Praise God and Dance" from Duke Ellington's Second Sacred Concert, which premiered at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1968, is a setting of Psalm 150.] Engage in that praise, directly, with cymbals and trumpet and and voice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Today's Epistle is doubtless in the lectionary because it is one of the few places in which an explicitly Trinitarian greeting appears. But notice other words from this letter to the church at Corinth. "Do you not realize that Christ is in you?" "Do what is right." "Live in peace." What invitations come with the Trinitarian blessing?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Read and hear the words from Genesis both dramatically and reverently: stars, sky, earth, swarms of living creatures, waters of the sea, fish and human creatures, and -- hear, O busy, overscheduled ones -- God's sabbath rest, and the earth's, and ours. What response will we give to this when we go forth into all the nations?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Pray the feast. Let the feast live in the people of God.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-72904842584498563592014-06-05T22:28:00.000-04:002014-06-05T22:28:07.991-04:00Summer online retreats (or winter, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere)<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Online retreats are back!</b> </span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Time off for the season of Easter<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">(<a href="http://liturgy.co.nz/easter-50-days" target="_blank">50 days</a>) </span></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>and now, a season of the Spirit </span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">with a lot of options for you.</span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://janeredmont.blogspot.com/2014/06/summer-session-2014-online-retreats.html" target="_blank">Have a look.</a></span></span></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7qx5r-Xwr8-4A6QStx_Aqr9Qqo1FE6ghLx6XWh4Ru08hseeYKPLB6lJaiKHAKCZkPcde-aC4OQdgflOnaLuuLxF6O-vsEP636ipELjLYyYbYMXID0F2-eHnZA2WjRUfDI7SgX9WyAch8/s1600/lilacs+purple+closeup+2014-05-21+16.09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7qx5r-Xwr8-4A6QStx_Aqr9Qqo1FE6ghLx6XWh4Ru08hseeYKPLB6lJaiKHAKCZkPcde-aC4OQdgflOnaLuuLxF6O-vsEP636ipELjLYyYbYMXID0F2-eHnZA2WjRUfDI7SgX9WyAch8/s1600/lilacs+purple+closeup+2014-05-21+16.09.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Photo (c) Jane Redmont (2014)</span></span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-5986654780644909942014-05-19T18:30:00.001-04:002014-06-16T18:29:16.742-04:00In the sanctuary and on the streets, alleluias and shared bread<div style="text-align: right;">
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Text posted first on Facebook last night.</span></span></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRr2k9cHYnlF80YmNmjU9RwGL__L4Au7PmkJGAOxIJ10V6dJOmzAhZqBG5jiIRcHw6_1bsoO13s6UMvqgqdkiDGuok-yg640Ctv1iQ9_romIZz3GYTgqIYr4P_hCCTBwXel5d0Khw3PdQ/s1600/BrewerFountain+broad+view.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRr2k9cHYnlF80YmNmjU9RwGL__L4Au7PmkJGAOxIJ10V6dJOmzAhZqBG5jiIRcHw6_1bsoO13s6UMvqgqdkiDGuok-yg640Ctv1iQ9_romIZz3GYTgqIYr4P_hCCTBwXel5d0Khw3PdQ/s1600/BrewerFountain+broad+view.JPG" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brewer Fountain, Boston Common</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Two profoundly beautiful worship experiences today. <br /> <br /> The first in the morning at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Emmanuel-Church-in-the-City-of-Boston/73998089240" target="_blank">Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston</a> with Mendelssohn anthem; let's-tackle-this-one sermon with focused biblical analysis by the Rev. Pam Werntz; three baptisms; thanksgiving for 10 years of marriage equality; bread and wine blessed and shared; t<span class="text_exposed_show">he final Bach cantata of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EmmanuelMusic" target="_blank">Emmanuel Music</a>'s 2013-14 cantata season, glorious in praise and beauty. Candles and the play of light. Alleluias in hearts and voices. <br /> <br />
The second, also with alleluias, a bit later in a very different
setting: on Boston Common with Common Cathedral (often spelled <a href="http://www.ecclesia-ministries.org/common_cathedral.html" target="_blank">common cathedral</a> w/ no caps) in a congregation of mostly homeless men and women
with some housed people as well, a dynamic young woman leading worship, and a youth group serving sandwich lunch before the service. A
message of God's unconditional love for all and of God's very presence
in our midst, a highly participatory service, with a structure but a lot
of spontaneity (same structure as the other Sunday Eucharist but much
simpler, pared down), and heartfelt Prayers of the People. Ragged at the
edges in all the right ways, reverent, raw, with much assurance of
forgiveness and comfort. Bread and grape juice blessed and shared.
Sunlight, clouds, wind, the play of light.<br /> <br /> Communion and contemplation in both places. And welcome. And song. And healing.<br /> <br /> Not either/or. Both/and. The Church is a wide, deep, and diverse reality. Alleluia.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="text_exposed_show"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Photos here are of parts of the worship space, the physical context. I don't take photos during worship; we do have photographers at Emmanuel who document some of our celebrations; photographers and writers about common cathedral respect the anonymity and privacy of participants.</i></span></span></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-69360351349506872202014-04-18T10:02:00.001-04:002014-04-18T10:02:55.007-04:00Body. Christ. Bodies.<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">"You
cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity
Jesus in the slums... It is folly --it is madness-- to suppose that you
can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the throne of glory,
when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children." </span></span></span></span><br />
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Bishop Frank Weston at the 1923 Anglo-Catholic Congress</span></span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-91873520163418160482014-02-14T16:50:00.003-05:002014-02-14T16:50:57.750-05:00Barbara Harris, Bishop: Silver Anniversary and Ecumenical Reflection<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The following essay appeared in the March 10, 1989 issue of the Catholic lay-edited magazine Commonweal under the title "When the Spirit Leads: Barbara Harris, Bishop." The editors cut out the last sentence without consulting me. They made a few less drastic changes which I note below the text of the essay. This text, with some minor copyediting, is my original version.<br /><br />Barbara Harris was consecrated bishop on February 11, 1989 and served as Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts (1989-2003). She served as Assisting Bishop in the Diocese of Washington (2003-2007). Happily, she is back among us in Massachusetts. We will celebrate the 25th anniversary of her consecration this Sunday, February 16, 2014, with a Gospel Vesper Service.</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">[February, 1989] <br /><br />A day or two before the consecration of Barbara Clementine Harris as Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, Cardinal Bernard Law and Greek Orthodox Bishop Methodios issue written statements of welcome. The statements are cordial. They also speak of the danger Harris’s consecration presents for reconciliation among Christian churches, or what has become commonly known as “Christian unity.” <br /><br /> At the consecration, the gospel music of St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church choir alternates with the delicate melodies of the Chinese Congregation and classical European harmonies of Trinity Church choir. The stately cadence of the Book of Common Prayer moves us forward, but in the musical realm there is a preferential option in the air: clearly, the day belongs less to Mozart and more to the music of the Black church. The celebration flows. This is no Tower of Babel: we each hear God speaking in our own tongue.<br /><br /> As Barbara Harris walks down the center aisle, a tiny woman whose voice and presence can fill a cathedral, over 8,000 people burst into applause. (“Not very characteristic of the Episcopal Church,” says one member of the congregation, Mary Shannon.) Throngs of priests, row upon row of beaming women and men, process down the side aisles of Boston’s Hynes Auditorium. Barbara Clementine Harris, a woman and a priest of African descent, is consecrated a bishop by the laying on of hands, according to the tradition of the apostles, by 55 men, most of them white. All through the celebration, the bishops have been purposeful, solemn and excited, with the calm certainty that God, through them, is doing a good thing.<br /><br />In describing the celebration, those who were there speak of unity. Mary Shannon repeatedly uses the term “body” to speak of the church and of her experience of this day –“finally being part of the body...” “... all of us together in one body.” She is wearing a locket with a picture of her 80-year-old mother, a member of St. Andrew’s Parish in Seattle, who “still carries her white gloves with her in church yet has rolled with the changes.” She speaks in the plural: her mother, her daughters, her husband, her women friends, all rush into the conversation. “I cried,” she says. “I just felt so happy for all of us.”<br /><br /> Modene Dawson of Philadelphia speaks of another unity. For her, and for many African-Americans in the assembly, the significance of the event extends beyond the church. “It’s beautiful for the country,” she says. “It shows racial harmony.” The church which conducts this celebration is not apart from the world; it is the body which proclaims to the world that God is alive in history.<br /><br /> Paul Matthews Washington, in his sermon, speaks about God and history. Harris’s friend and mentor, he is Rector Emeritus of the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, which feeds, clothes, and sanctifies the poorest of the city. In this church was held the first ordination of Episcopal women to the priesthood, in the summer of 1974, less than 15 years ago. Harris, a member of the church, led the procession, carrying the cross.<br /><br /> “We cannot,” says Washington, “overlook the fact that this woman being consecrated today is not just an American woman. She is a Black woman... This is a woman... who has had to struggle; she’s been despised, she’s been rejected... God has lifted up one who was at the bottom of society and has exalted her to be one of His chief pastors.” <br /><br /> Washington speaks of Harriet Tubman, who “nineteen times went back into the land of bondage,” thanking God for her freedom by helping to free others. He speaks of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was raised from her lowly estate and sang of God’s power to raise up the humble and put down the mighty from their thrones: “Mary,” he says after quoting the Magnificat, “was an oppressed woman. That’s how Holy Mary Mother of God felt!” He weeps as he recalls the slavery and oppression of Black people in this country. “Only in understanding the past can we fully appreciate God’s action in this event,” he says.<br /><br />The Episcopal Church, a church of power and privilege, has chosen “a have-not,” says Washington, but also one who “burns when others are offended,” a “disturbing prophet.” Harries has for years –in her public relations and policy work in the corporate world, in her parish, in her work with the Episcopal Church Publishing Company, in her pastoral ministry—advocated racial and economic justice, taken up the cause of women, spoken out against homophobia; she has, says Washington, devoted enough time to prison chaplaincy “to serve a two-year sentence herself.”<br /><br />The Right Reverend Barbara Harris, newly robed in bright vestments with Ashanti designs and symbols, presides at her first Eucharist as bishop. Among the concelebrants are Carter Heyward, one of the “Philadelphia Eleven” ordained at the Church of the Advocate, and Florence Tim-Oi Li, the first woman ordained a priest in the Anglican Communion, in Hong Kong, one generation ago. At the distribution, Harris slips over to the far side of the auditorium and gives communion to the people in the hearing-impaired section, who have been singing with their hands for three hours.<br /><br /> A bishop is, among other things, a maker of unity. Barbara Harris has already begun to make unity; but not in the ways in which unity was previously understood or structured. Her brother bishops, Law and Methodios, fear for the health and welfare of Christian unity. But where are the real rifts in our lives today? Are they doctrinal? Where is the real, urgent need for unity? And when we say “unity,” what do we mean? Whose unity, which unity, and at what cost?<br /><br /> The deeper chasm today is not between Protestants and Catholics, or Greek Orthodox and Episcopalians. It is, much more, between haves and have-nots, between Blacks and whites, between men and women, between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These are the wounds in need of healing, in church and in society. As for denominationalism, it is no longer the principal intrachurch split. Far deeper is the gap within each of our faith communities between fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists.<br /><br /> Early in the service, the Presiding Bishop, Edmond L. Browning, asks if anyone knows of any reason why the consecration ought not to proceed. Two men come to the microphone. The first calls the consecration “a sacrilegious imposture,” the second “an impediment to the realization of the visible unity of the Church for which Christ prayed.” There will be a problem, they argue, with the value of any sacrament celebrated by Harris.<br /><br /> Bernardine Hayes, a computer systems analyst, self-described “dormant Catholic,” and veteran civil rights and peace activist (she is currently Vice President of WAND, Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament), had never before today “seen a woman offer the sacraments. She is so clearly affiliated with the poor,” Hayes adds. “She strikes me as a true minister.” Hayes feels something stir within her during the liturgy –“the realization that the piece of my life which is missing is the spiritual piece.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> This was, she says, "like a Pentecost."<br /><br /> Whose unity?<br /><br />The intervention of the dissenters highlights the lack of unanimity in the church about the consecration (although Browning is quick to point out, at the post-consecration press conference, that the overwhelming majority of Episcopalians support it.) But it is, in its way, a step on the road to greater unity. Perhaps the two men will change their minds; perhaps never. What is hopeful and healthy and makes a body strong is that their pain was not swept under the rug. However token, this part of the ceremony honors difference: and the unity of the Episcopal Church around this celebration –the unity behind the liturgy—is not the easy unity of unreflecting liberals. It has been hard won, tempered by prayer and struggle, and forged through the participatory process of decision-making in the Episcopal Church, a community that gave us two-thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.<br /><br />Elizabeth Pearson Rice-Smith, a United Church of Christ minister who witnessed both the ordination of the “Philadelphia Eleven” and Barbara Harris’s consecration, believes that “if our vision of church unity embraces diversity in God’s ministries and the human experience of faith, there is much less need to split off. I think,” she adds, “that women are willing to say things about the messy stuff that don’t condemn or blame or banish. We want to create spirited change that doesn’t mean war, that doesn’t mean people don’t talk to each other, that doesn’t mean annihilation.”<br /><br /> Which unity, and at what cost?<br /><br />Christians do still need to speak with one another about Eucharist and ministry, about theological thought and ecclesial practice. But the context of this discussion has changed, and so have the discussion questions themselves. Unable and unwilling to hide her particularity, unlikely to temper her prophetic stance, Barbara Harris –not in spite of this but because of this—is a maker, not a breaker, of unity.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>(c) Jane Redmont 1989</i> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /><br /> A few other changes – skip this if you don’t care about the minutiae: The editors also lower-cased “Black,” which I had in upper case, and made a spelling change that eliminated my metaphor “singing with their hands.” They changed it to “signing with their hands.” Of course the congregation members in question were signing –but adding “with their hands” would in that case have been unnecessary. The celebration was full of song, and part of the beauty of it was that people sang with both voice and hands. I was seated in the section next to the one using American Sign Language. The editors also deleted the paragraph with Rice-Smith’s quote.<br /><br />I was still a Roman Catholic at the time I wrote this essay. <br /><br /> A decade later, in 1999, a few years after I moved to California, I was invited to be on the panel of speakers at the 10th anniversary celebration of Bishop Harris’s consecration. The invitation came from the Rev. Canon Edward Rodman, with whom I had often been on the television show “In Good Faith” on WCVB-Channel 5 (then the ABC affiliate in Boston). I served as the Roman Catholic voice on the panel and offered some insights from a Catholic feminist perspective.<br /><br /> A few years later –12 years ago last month— I was received into the Episcopal Church. The discernment leading to this reception –and the lengthy process toward ordination to the priesthood, a vocation dating back to the 1970s– are another story for another time and place.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Thanks be to God for Bishop Barbara! </i></span></span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-63446699693435718182014-02-13T16:09:00.001-05:002014-02-13T16:09:00.592-05:00Looking for information about my retreats?<span style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If so, you want my webspace (a blog that acts as my website, for now), which is <a href="http://janeredmont.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Please visit here again, and do visit over there!</span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-37076237924297974992013-12-24T23:22:00.001-05:002013-12-24T23:23:19.202-05:00"Will you do the same this Christmas...?"<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When the world was dark</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and the city was quiet,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">you came.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You crept in beside us. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And no one knew.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Only the few</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">who dared to believe</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">that God might do something different.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Will you do the same this Christmas, Lord?<br />Will you come into the darkness of tonight's world;</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">not the friendly darkness</span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiUkCzeFohFh8ZZHkoCW_IREcApYW7Jpw6RfnZHN1G390rt_js34aAnlsANwbDWBdoqzytCsPuuOIoGXymCz_f3IeEieowPydMEsuxb3TbD1D2viH5sIs05yo2gyARkQx0VuUSI7WmGOw/s1600/Incarnation_MED+Helfer+blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiUkCzeFohFh8ZZHkoCW_IREcApYW7Jpw6RfnZHN1G390rt_js34aAnlsANwbDWBdoqzytCsPuuOIoGXymCz_f3IeEieowPydMEsuxb3TbD1D2viH5sIs05yo2gyARkQx0VuUSI7WmGOw/s400/Incarnation_MED+Helfer+blog.jpg" width="316" /></a><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">as when sleep rescues us from tiredness,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">but the fearful darkness,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">in which people have stopped believing</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">that war will end</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">or that food will come</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">or that a government will change</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">or that the Church cares?<br />Will you come into that darkness</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and do something different</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">to save your people from death and despair? <br />Will you come into the quietness of this town,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">not the friendly quietness</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">as when lovers hold hands,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">but the fearful silence when</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the phone has not rung,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the letter has not come,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the friendly voice no longer speaks,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the doctor's face says it all?<br />Will you come into that darkness</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and do something different,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">not to distract, but to embrace your people?<br />And will you come into the dark corners </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and the quiet places of our lives? </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We ask this not because we are guilt-ridden</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">or want to be,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">but because the fullness our lives long for</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">depends upon us being as open and vulnerable to you</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">as you were to us,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">when you came,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">wearing no more than diapers,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and trusting human hands</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">to hold their maker.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Will you come into our lives,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">if we open them to you</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and do something different?<br />When the world was dark</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and the city was quiet</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">you came.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You crept in beside us.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Do the same this Christmas, Lord.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Do the same this Christmas.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>from </i>Cloth for the Cradle<i>, Iona Community</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>read at the Carol Sing at Emmanuel Church, Boston</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Image (unattributed) from the blog <a href="http://philhelfer.com/2012/12/02/the-incarnation/" target="_blank">What the Helfer</a></i></span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-79633349852552660212013-11-30T23:26:00.001-05:002013-12-02T18:15:02.836-05:00Vigil of 1 Advent: God's patience and God's impatience<h3>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Do you have an Advent wreath? Do you light Advent candles? Did you light the first candle tonight? Will you wait for tomorrow?<br /><br />
This is your virtual lighting of the first candle. Take a moment (or two) to gaze at the flame here, the wooden match lighting the purple candle. Simply gaze. There is no need for words. Some may come to you later. Or not.<br /><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b>Advent</b></span> </span></span>and Christmas are in some ways the ultimate celebration of space, the celebration of God entering human space in the most intimate way possible: by becoming human. The celebration of word become flesh, the discovery that God-the-other is also God-with-us (<i>Emmanuel</i> in Hebrew) -- that is the good news of Advent.<br /><br />
We celebrate in </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b>Advent</b></span> </span></span>God's invitation for us to view our space --our society, our environment, our neighbor, our own flesh-- as sacred, pregnant with justice and hope, filled with hidden treasure. <br /><br />
But </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b>Advent</b></span> </span></span>is also a celebration of time and a celebration in time. <br /><br />
The way in which we live time in </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b>Advent</b></span> </span></span>is profoundly counter-cultural. At a time when many of us are caught in the frenzy of work and in dashing about to buy presents, we Christians are invited to step into a season of muted colors, whose mood is slow, gentle, and deep --though also, as we will see in some of the season's biblical readings, disturbing at times. In </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b>Advent</b></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"></span></span></span>, light increases gradually, week by week, instead of appearing in one great post-Thanksgiving burst of electricity. (For those of you not in the U.S., there is no Thanksgiving holiday in late November, but the great burst of electricity is there.)<br /><br />
There is a reason for this slowing down. If we are to hear the good news that our space and God's space have become one, we have to slow down enough to hear. Sometimes this good news is spoken to us by God very softly, in ordinary ways and places, in the daily events of our lives. Sometimes this good news is simply that there is immense treasure already present in our lives and hearts: all that we need to claim the treasure is to slow down, stop, and notice it. <br /><br />
If the good news is going to take root in us --once we have begun to listen or to notice-- we need to enter God's time, God's timetable. Advent is not a flashy season. It takes time for good news to sink in, for love to grow, for wisdom to ripen, for lives to be transformed, for truth to dawn in us -- much more time than our frenzy will often allow.<br /><br />
So in </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b>Advent</b></span></span></span>, season of waiting for Christ, we take in the good news slowly, steadily, lighting candles one at at time, adding a new insight, a layer of understanding, a little layer of light every week, as around us in the Northern Hemisphere* the days grow darker. (*If people from the Southern Hemisphere read this post, it will be interesting to hear about Advent and Advent lights from people for whom it is the middle of summer right now.)<br /><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b>Advent</b></span> </span></span>challenges our impatience and invites us to enter God's patience.<br /><br />
Yet </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b>Advent</b></span> </span></span> is also a time to enter God's impatience, a time when prophets (more on them in the coming weeks) challenge our apathy and paralysis and urge us forward, a time in which the stories and songs in the scriptures speak of a God who longs to transform our hearts, our society, and creation itself -- soon, now, urgently.<br /><br />
One of the challenges of this season is to figure out the connections between our time and God's time, to readjust and balance our sense of time, to discover or rediscover --to discern-- when it is appropriate to enter into God's patience and when it is time to enter into God's impatience.<br /><br />
In this first night, before anything else, take time. Rest in the patience of God. All else will unfold, in God's time.<br /><br />______________</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><i>This is the first post of a retreat I led last year during Advent. It appeared on the retreat's closed blog </i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>(i.e. a blog accessible only to retreatants, not a public blog like this one)</i></span></span> at the beginning of the retreat. I will be offering the retreat again this year, with a few changes. Information will be available <a href="http://janeredmont.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">here</a> by the end of the day tomorrow, December 1.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></i></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-55549896442165987752013-07-08T22:00:00.000-04:002013-07-26T01:01:37.988-04:00Ramadan begins<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I meant to post this at the beginning of Ramadan (also pronounced Ramazan) as I did on Facebook, but got bogged down in a major work project. I'm posting this later in July but back-dating to early July so that it appears when I intended to post it...</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To those about to enter the holy month of Ramadan, Ramazan Mubarak!</span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To those who are not, have a look at the message below the image from Khalvat Dar Anjuman (Ibrahim Baba) about Ramazan with a few thoughts on how to honor and support the observance of Muslim friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and co-workers. </span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Because the calendar of Islam is a lunar one, Ramazan rotates around the seasons (and thus around the months of the Gregorian calendar). This year in the northern hemisphere, with Ramazan in the summer, the fast from sunrise to sunset, every day for a month, is particularly long and demanding. </span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We who are not Muslim can learn much from those who are spending this month in the ancient traditions of fasting and prayer, of almsgiving and awareness of common humanity and of the needs of the poor, of gathering for breaking the fast with family and friends, of deepening and re-focusing attention on the All-Merciful, the Creator. Can we, during this month, learn about and from our neighbors? How can we do so without burdening our neighbors, but by taking on some discipline or task ourselves? How can we attune our listening and attention? How will we be challenged to deepen our own walk, our practice, our faith, our ethics? How can we be mindful and compassionate neighbors? How can we learn to be friends on this polyphonic planet Earth?</span></span><br />
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<img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEE13FMyJtiRvQf__z6JYoZ8WKMfJOGf0dHKoQxh3PeBndmWhbXsVazVtot3qPuWgWnkj7l6LWep82Gl2C0qY_FX7mXcL18uuqBil5pI8AiGHiDBMC-WAHlyfTstnyNt4zQbZzSyHncnc/s400/Ramadan+Mubarak.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">And here is Ibrahim Baba's message, which I first read on Facebook and which he has given me permission to re-post here. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">(I have left the lower-case and upper-case spellings as written intentionally by the author.)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c;">on Tuesday, 9 july 2013, many of us will enter into the Sacred Month of Ramazan, the Queen of Months. some of us will be fasting from sunrise to sunset, going about the activities of our day. others will be feeding others as their practice during this sacred time while others will build community in other ways. this is the most precious time of the year for some of us. for some of us it is a time of exceeding joy; for others it is a time of struggle. as any kind of relig<span class="text_exposed_show">ious time, it brings issues for some, troubling memories or fears of isolation and exclusion. it is also a time of intensifying our efforts for justice, equity, equality, access, accessibility, radical inclusion, etc. through more prayer, more dhikr, more work in our communities, etc.. because we actually have more time as we are not eating throughout the day, lol!<br />
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if you are not a muslim and know muslims who are fasting, you can offer to prepare an iftar meal for them at the end of the fasting day or cook something for their pre-dawn meal. or you can invite them to eat somewhere with you. or do something to bring smoothness to their day. for people who work all day during Ramazan, it is nice to not have to worry about their end-of-the fasting day meal (iftar). the iftar meal is often part of a community-gathering, but for some people, certain community-gatherings can be very painful and isolating. so, if you are friends with someone who is fasting and you all are part of a community that is not muslim but which unites and sustains you, perhaps that community could offer an iftar meal in recognition of your friends who are fasting. it is REALLY ROUGH to come home and have an iftar all on your own, especially if you are from a culture or place where Ramazan is a month-long party. If you find out that your friends are lonely and alone, weeping over their dates and a bowl of soup, please see with them what you could do to make some Ramazan community for them.<br />
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Greeting: Ramazan mübarek! A blessed Ramazan!<br />
Response: Ramazan karim! A generous Ramazan/a Ramazan of generosity!<br />
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and a teaching from Sri Lankan Sufi shaykh, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, from a talk he gave entitled, "What is Ramadan?" <a href="http://www.bmf.org/ramadan/ramadan.html" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.bmf.org/ramadan/ramadan.html</a></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-1382726169980715682013-06-07T18:42:00.000-04:002013-06-09T19:17:36.657-04:00Soelle in Summer: a course-retreat. We're on!<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Remember the question I asked <a href="http://actsofhope.blogspot.com/2013/05/interested-in-dorothee-soelle-summer.html">here</a>?</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Well, we're on!</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #7f6000;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Soelle in Summer: Challenge and Wonder</b></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b> </b></span></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">an online course-retreat</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b> <span style="color: #7f6000;">June 17-July 31, 2013</span></b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Read and reflect in community on the work, thought, and spirituality of <b>Dorothee</b></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Soelle</span></span> </b>(also spelled</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Sölle</span></span>). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifqTIwCys6w0SZAvoGRjv_0v_t3AZA2dy41Y9yufMFX7t7cWlj_e2t2_Ss2S9ZHyltsi3XjDIRHw4pAz-m-gMuYVN2qe5WtJjP0oouIdDweVLEvorXDUUY0e8vJE0r_mEOaE115uK-28U/s1600/soelle+smiling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifqTIwCys6w0SZAvoGRjv_0v_t3AZA2dy41Y9yufMFX7t7cWlj_e2t2_Ss2S9ZHyltsi3XjDIRHw4pAz-m-gMuYVN2qe5WtJjP0oouIdDweVLEvorXDUUY0e8vJE0r_mEOaE115uK-28U/s1600/soelle+smiling.jpg" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Soelle (1928-2003) was a German theologian, poet, peace activist, and Protestant Christian with Catholic, secular, humanist, and Jewish companions and allies; she was also a friend, teacher, spouse, mother, socialist, and from mid-life on, feminist.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Details of the course-retreat are <a href="http://janeredmont.blogspot.com/2013/06/soelle-in-summer-challenge-and-wonder.html" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a></span></span>.<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="color: #7f6000;"><i><b>Soelle in Summer</b></i></span> is designed, led, and facilitated by Jane Redmont (theologian, author, spiritual director). Seven weeks, $245. Write <a href="mailto:readwithredmont@earthlink.net">readwithredmont@earthlink.net</a>. <i>Registrations welcome till Tuesday, June 18.</i> </span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-4780046987658846022013-05-30T22:32:00.000-04:002013-05-30T22:32:00.366-04:00Interested in Dorothee Soelle? A summer online retreat/course opportunity<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="color: #073763;">I don't as they put it believe in god</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="color: #073763;"></span></i></span><br />
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<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp_vBtGimyGV830B1dL2HV8h2a-u5GNYI4Ll-7RmybNNkTcGpeNlJOUqntmZ1P9s26SEAnJps65yfmRIVu-rUtE0IoXM_lILMmX0jGMZvASf9UibNu-He_3LPyRiWRtLwNAE68laY8SL4/s1600/Soelle+smiling+younger+midage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp_vBtGimyGV830B1dL2HV8h2a-u5GNYI4Ll-7RmybNNkTcGpeNlJOUqntmZ1P9s26SEAnJps65yfmRIVu-rUtE0IoXM_lILMmX0jGMZvASf9UibNu-He_3LPyRiWRtLwNAE68laY8SL4/s320/Soelle+smiling+younger+midage.jpg" width="224" /></a></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="color: #073763;"><br />but to him I cannot say no hard as I try<br />take a look at him in the garden<br />when his friends ran out on him<br />his face wet with fear<br />and with the spit of his enemies<br />him I have to believe</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #000066;">Him I can't bear to abandon</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">to the great disregard for life</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">to the monotonous passing of millions of years</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">to the moronic rhythm of work leisure and work</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">to the boredom we fail to dispel</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">in cars in beds in stores</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">That's how it is they say what do you want</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">uncertain and not uncritically</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">I subscribe to the other hypothesis</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">which is his story</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">that's not how it is he said for god is</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">and he staked his life on this claim</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">Thinking about it I find</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">one can't let him pay alone</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">for his hypothesis</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">so I believe him about</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">god</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">The way one believes another's laughter</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">his tears</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">or marriage or no for an answer</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">that's how you'll learn to believe him about life</span><br />
<span style="color: #000066;">promised to all</span><br /><br /> </i>A poem I had posted <a href="http://actsofhope.blogspot.com/2008/09/poem-by-dorothee-slle.html" target="_blank">here</a> many moons ago. It is from the series of 10 poems "When He Came"
in Dorothee Soelle's book<i> Revolutionary Patience</i> (1977).<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b> </b></i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>"SOELLE IN SUMMER</b></i></span>" - *online* June 17-July 31. A mix of retreat and course, with opportunity for both individual reflection and conversation. Interested? Read more on my web space <b><a href="http://janeredmont.blogspot.com/2013/05/interested-in-dorothee-soelle-summer.html" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-24155013602201199832013-05-06T13:47:00.000-04:002013-05-06T13:53:59.616-04:00The sad, glorious, fragile spring of this year<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Posted the paragraphs below the photo yesterday after<span style="font-size: small;">noon (Sunday<span style="font-size: small;">, May 5) </span></span>on Facebook - and (why was I surprised?) though I felt like a voice in the wilderness when I posted it, it drew many comments, most of which expressed kinship and understanding. So perhaps I was giving voice to something many of us feel right now.</span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The photos are from yesterday and the past few we<span style="font-size: small;">eks<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>in <span style="font-size: small;">Boston.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">This spring feels sad. Glorious flowers everywhere, here one week but gone the next, and the world a mess. Like my friend </span></span>Lindy, who wrote about this a couple of days ago<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">, I find that some days are just for weeping --or at least grieving if the tears don't come, which often they don't. It is worse on the days one can't cry, I think. I find consolation in the fact that Dorothy Day, surely one of the strong holy people of the 20th<span class="text_exposed_show"> century and among the ones who did the most good, tough as she was, sat and wept with great frequency. <br />
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Once in a blue moon she got to weep with a friend. This is a passage about times with her friend Catherine de Hueck Doherty ("the Baroness"), a woman of very different background and temperament from hers, but who was her comrade in Christian work of mercy and justice, and who after Dorothy's death, remembered:</span></span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"When I moved to Harlem, Dorothy Day and I became even closer. There were only about five miles between her house and my Harlem house. So occasionally when we both had enough money, let’s say about a dollar, we would go to Child’s where you could get three coffee refills (for the price of one cup), and we used to enjoy each cup and just talk.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Talk about God. Talk about the apostolate. Talk about all the things that were dear to our hearts.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But we were both very lonely because, believe it or not, there were just the two of us in all of Canada and America, and we did feel lonely and no question about it.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Catherine de Hueck Doherty, <i>Restoration</i><span style="font-size: small;">,</span> February 1981<br />
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<i>This story came via Fr. Bob Wild (who is doing research on Day and Doherty) on the Madonna House website, but I remember reading it in the Dorothy Day anthology edited by Robert Ellsberg.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>All photos (c) Jane C. Redmont. If you reproduce them without permission or attribution, the archangel in charge of copyrights will get fiery mad. Please give credit where credit is due. Thank you.</i></span></span><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-11951739780578657502013-05-04T21:28:00.001-04:002013-05-04T21:28:53.840-04:00Donating from retreat registrations to the Walk for Hunger<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent">As some readers know, I moved back to my beloved Boston just four months ago. Tomorrow, May 5, is the annual <a href="http://www.projectbread.org/site/PageServer?pagename=walk_main" target="_blank">Walk for Hunger</a>. It will be <a href="http://www.projectbread.org/site/PageServer?pagename=specialmessage" target="_blank">the first large outdoor public gathering since the Boston Marathon</a>. It usually draws about 40,000 people. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent">The
Walk was started by a group of people connected with <a href="http://www.paulistboston.com/" target="_blank">my old church</a> over
four decades ago. It funds <a href="http://www.projectbread.org/site/PageServer?pagename=help_fundedagencies_list" target="_blank">hundreds of emergency food programs</a>
(750,000-plus people in this Commonwealth do not have enough to eat) and
its parent agency, <a href="http://www.projectbread.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home_page" target="_blank">Project Bread</a>, also does <a href="http://www.projectbread.org/site/PageServer?pagename=help_main" target="_blank">advocacy and prevention work</a> addressing
the long-term causes of h<span class="text_exposed_show">unger. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">The last
time I lived here, I did the Walk every year and then, when my feet
gave out and I couldn't walk the 20 miles on concrete any more,
volunteered as a Marshal. (Note: I also had Project Bread as a client
for several of the years I was doing development consulting here,
working for agencies addressing the causes and consequences of urban
poverty.) </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">So here's the deal: I'm not walking this year, but <b>if you
register</b> for my<b><span style="color: #783f04;"> <span style="color: red;">"Hurry Up and Slow Down: Spiritual Practice in Daily
Life" </span></span></b><span style="color: #783f04;"><span style="color: red;">online retreat</span></span><span style="color: red;"> </span>which begins on Monday May 6 (see <i><b><a href="http://janeredmont.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-spiritual-life-needs-some-help-new.html" target="_blank">here</a></b></i> for full information)<b> any time
between this very minute and the end of Sunday (tomorrow May 5)</b> in
whatever time zone you are in, <span style="color: red;"><b>I will give $20 out of each registration
fee to the Walk</b></span> instead of keeping the whole fee.* Because I often
scramble to pay the rent each month, but there are people far worse off
than I, and we are all part of one another.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">*I'd be happy to send you proof of the donation if you wish. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.projectbread.org/site/PageServer?pagename=aboutus_ellen" target="_blank">Here</a> is an interesting interview with Project Bread Executive Director Ellen Parker.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">Cross-posted on <a href="http://janeredmont.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">my professional website</a>. </span></span></span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-68272538302326678852013-04-30T14:20:00.000-04:002013-04-30T14:22:25.693-04:00Today is International Jazz Day - and here's the live concert in Istanbul!<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The<span style="background-color: yellow;"><b> <span style="color: red;">International Jazz Day</span> Global Concert</b></span> is streaming live from Istanbul. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">They've just started the speeches (the concert and the day are sponsored by UNESCO) and the music will begin shortly. EVERY country in the world has some kind of celebration of <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/international-jazz-day-2013/" target="_blank">International Jazz Day</a>. Enjoy! Click <a href="http://live.jazzday.com/" target="_blank"><i><b>here</b></i> </a>for the link.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizmYjITTlpet4pGHv92V7WN67jdVIErfmvMNsRLhHhV3Vxpw0jLYXoZTZqBrW9_Gdr-9lxEkBNQL0zNVBDa8HDjayYodSXyxaF35Lw7H7ZWJd8wtyNrDEFeOPcRHysvTRntF1eGYBLum4/s1600/jazz+day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizmYjITTlpet4pGHv92V7WN67jdVIErfmvMNsRLhHhV3Vxpw0jLYXoZTZqBrW9_Gdr-9lxEkBNQL0zNVBDa8HDjayYodSXyxaF35Lw7H7ZWJd8wtyNrDEFeOPcRHysvTRntF1eGYBLum4/s320/jazz+day.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />P.S. Duke Ellington's birthday was yesterday. Did you celebrate it?</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-43120679643542904162013-04-30T00:56:00.000-04:002013-04-30T01:00:21.043-04:00"My spiritual life needs some help..." <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Did you just say that? Or think that?<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hurry Up and Slow Down, an online retreat<span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="font-size: large;">designed to <span style="font-size: large;">fit into the daily lives of busy people,</span></span></span> might be just the right thing at the right time for you. Have a look <b><a href="http://janeredmont.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-spiritual-life-needs-some-help-new.html" target="_blank">here</a></b>. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJiwWL84YBmXi7gOt4mOoU44A7f4rooyE8Ytg8M5Wm0VtrTz_Z96UUITXWE8leG3uszDRbr6wvZMCj8VszUUcX0PDHU-PQ2G_WGHdIO7EaIOaKlQ99KmUHSoDcT5LybP8rFFcLSC_lAu0/s1600/Beautiful+willow+04+21+13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJiwWL84YBmXi7gOt4mOoU44A7f4rooyE8Ytg8M5Wm0VtrTz_Z96UUITXWE8leG3uszDRbr6wvZMCj8VszUUcX0PDHU-PQ2G_WGHdIO7EaIOaKlQ99KmUHSoDcT5LybP8rFFcLSC_lAu0/s400/Beautiful+willow+04+21+13.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(c) Jane Redmont</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202458237483635505.post-71458649511816102832013-04-18T11:14:00.000-04:002013-04-18T11:14:49.454-04:00On the day of the memorial service for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" style="font-size: large;">Today,
behind the mourners in public places, the rescuers, the demonstrators,
the loud speakers, there are --always, still-- those who clean and
scrub, those who cannot get away from work, those caring for the very
young and the very old, those who cannot get easily from one place to
the other, and the artists, the writers, the poets, who need the quiet
solitude and the unsung space and time before the singing, and who, in
their own way, hold up and reweave the world. Remember them.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0qMsdt7gsxNUJNjhH9pV__IWO1VNUbxtqSmVQYsU17hasMh34PptB6Ll8U5QHBbwEsUBZ8vD3Mk-Tyu6JM-LL-ZBS7btFsrk0dbFcL8iARwMyMJNVm0KkltfJYUe83ohEi6g0H96HWqY/s1600/IMG07891-20130409-1623.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0qMsdt7gsxNUJNjhH9pV__IWO1VNUbxtqSmVQYsU17hasMh34PptB6Ll8U5QHBbwEsUBZ8vD3Mk-Tyu6JM-LL-ZBS7btFsrk0dbFcL8iARwMyMJNVm0KkltfJYUe83ohEi6g0H96HWqY/s640/IMG07891-20130409-1623.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption">(c) Jane Redmont</td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0