From Henri Nouwen Society daily meditation

Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating day can be "redeemed" by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others too.

Silence

Mystic Meditation by Anthony de Mello, SJ
Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the Silence of the monastery would be shattered.
This would upset the disciples; not the Master, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the Silence.
To his protesting disciples he said one day, "Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self."

if only

If only I had time to blog
I would write about
earth day
or the funeral tomorrow
or the retreat time I had at the Episcopal House of Prayer
or the poems I am enjoying of Hafiz
or the latest idea to tickle my mental fancy
I could write about my family; my wife, children.,parents, siblings and the stuff of life ...
or the frogs that are singing with the break out of spring
not only in the marshes down the road but in my own inner swamps where spring songs came alive to sing
or I would write about Easter and the risen One who showed them his wounds.....

and of course there is always church stuff....


which is probably (maybe...but not for sure...it could be just an excuse)
why

this is all "if "
and if only...


Rambling on

Church drills

Last week I stopped in to our local hospital to make some pastoral visits. I had barely stepped though the door when strobe lights flashed, alarms went off and I heard an announcement about code red. Doors were being shut and people were gathering in the lobby. I asked the reception about this and she said , "Have a seat, you cant use the elevators or go walking around." It was the third such event that day. The head of the chaplaincy department soon sat down near me in the lobby and said this is the third drill today. They had a child abduction drill, now this fire drill, and apparently, they had a real incident "alarm"of a person falling just outside the entrance.

I know that drills are a routine part of hospital training. But maybe we need to have some drills in the life of the church. I am not talking about fire or tornado drills or even intruder alerts. Drills are about preparedness so that when critical incidents happen people know what to do and are less likely to be panicked, confused or disorganized.
What drills would we need for the church? Do we have ready responses and procedures in place if someone asks for prayers. (Most of us do have "prayer chains.") Do we have procedures in place to offer hospitality to all kinds of people? Do we know the drill if someone asked about beginning a faith journey or inviting Christ into to their lives. When someone asks for help, do we have resources at our finger tips? I am sure some of you more creative readers could come up with examples and scenarios for the church. Do we know the drill?

By Howard Thurman
For more than two years, Jesus had been engaged in a public ministry…. He had learned much. So sensitive had grown his spirit and the living quality of his being that he seemed more and more to stand inside of life, looking out upon it as a man who gazes from a window in a room out into the yard and beyond to the distant hills. He could feel the sparrowness of the sparrow, the leprosy of the leper, the blindness of the blind, the crippleness of the cripple, and the frenzy of the mad. He had become joy, sorrow, hope, anguish, to the joyful, the sorrowful, the hopeful, the anguished. Could he feel his way into the mind and the mood of those who cast the palms and the flowers in his path? I wonder what was at work in the mind of Jesus of Nazareth as he jogged along on the back of the faithful donkey.
Source: The Inward Journey

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.
- St. Augustine