Tag Archives: gratitude

A Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

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Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 17, 2019
Jeremiah 17:5-10 In the year of the drought it is not anxious and it does not cease to bear fruit.
1 Corinthians 15:12-20 The first fruits of those who have died.
Luke 6:17-26 Blessed…blessed…blessed….blessed….woe….woe…woe…woe.

O God of healing, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

With the beautiful Brahms motet and the brain-scrambling passage in 1 Corinthians about resurrection, I don’t know if you could hear the connections between Jeremiah and Luke, but I want to call them to your attention. This is a lectionary pairing that is striking to me – possibly because we haven’t heard it read in church for a dozen years. (Having a sixth Sunday in Epiphany in our lectionary year C turns out to be rare because of church calendar idiosyncrasies.) The prophet Jeremiah is addressing his nation with judgment and lamentation for its apostasy – its abandonment of its covenant relationship with the Holy One. He says the ways in which the nation has missed the mark (of Love) are engraved on the hearts of the people because their obstinate and cowardly behaviors go so deep, they are marred to the core. Jeremiah employs the metaphor of a dried-up shrub to describe the nation that has turned toward its own strength and away from the Holy One. The nation is so compromised that it will not even see when relief comes – when good comes. It’s an ancient way of saying, “they wouldn’t know a good thing if it knocked them in the head.”

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Prepare for the Peasant of Peasants!

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Third Sunday of Advent (C), December 16, 2018.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Zephaniah 3:14-20. I will change their shame into praise.
Philippians 4:4-7. Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
Luke 3:7-18.   What then should we do?
O God of the Prophets, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

It’s the third Sunday of Advent; we are barreling toward Christmas, and we haven’t really heard any biblical readings about peaceful preparation for the birth of the Christ child. It’s been more about bulldozing and less about receiving blankets. Our ancient narratives describe nations at war, raging seas, devastation and disaster, with plenty of blame to go around. The people are anxious and afraid; they are struggling. And just to be clear, we are talking about 28 centuries of struggle. The people Zephaniah was addressing were struggling in about 625 BCE. The people Paul and Luke were addressing were struggling in the latter half of the first century of the common era. And the people I’m addressing are struggling in the early years of the 21st century.
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Gratitude

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There were many feelings going around after the election results came in, almost all negative: anger, sadness, and fear. Common art took place on Wednesday morning, so it was especially fresh in everyone’s minds. As I mentioned in my last blog post, we had started working on a “gratitude tree” – a tree drawn on poster board that the whole community helped color in, and started writing things for which they feel grateful on cut-out leaves and sticking them on the tree.

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Spiritual Infrastructure

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All Saints’ Day (with alt second reading), November 1, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God
Revelation 7:9-17 Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!
John 11:32-44 Come out!…Unbind him and let him go.

O God of all, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Some days on the church calendar are really big – Christmas Eve, Easter Day, Pentecost and All Saints are generally the four biggest for us. Today is the great Feast of All Saints; it’s a day to celebrate the saints, known and unknown. Tomorrow is All Souls’ Day – the day set aside in the church calendar for commemoration of all those who have departed this life, whether they were saints or sinners or both. So this is a Sunday to remember the present as well as the past – to honor all those who go and have gone before us – all saints and all souls. Continue reading →

Holding Space

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While reflecting on the past three weeks working with common art, Café Emmanuel and the Art and Spirituality group at the Suffolk county corrections facility I noticed that I have been doing a lot of listening. Holding space is something we talk about often in my courses at Lesley. We talk about holding space in a therapeutic context yet I feel it is applicable in everyday life. For me holding space means engaging on a body level, using my posture to communicate attentiveness and support, and bringing myself into a group and participating cognitively through listening and responding when appropriate. I find that when I am holding space I am receiving so much from others who are given an opportunity to be and express themselves in an authentic way. Continue reading →