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| Reflections for Your Journey |
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When We Are Afraid, God is There
Martin Luther King, Jr., once recalled a day in
Philadelphia,
Mississippi, at the height of the civil rights
movement, when he
just gave up.
I wouldn't say I was afraid. I yielded
to the
possibility
of death. When Ralph Abernathy started to pray we
closed our
eyes, and I just knew they were going to drop on us.
Ralph said
he prayed with his eyes open.
Let's not let anybody, an angel from heaven, or
anybody, tell us
that even Jesus can take away all the fear all at
once all the
time.
Sometimes, like Martin Luther King, we get strength
and we
stand unafraid in the face of trouble.
But sometimes, like Ralph Abernathy, you are so
scared
that you pray with your eyes wide open.
Maybe with luck or grace we will discover what Paul
wrote
audaciously:
Hard-pressed on every side, we are
never
hemmed in. Bewildered, we are never at our wit's
end. Struck
down, we are not left to die.
by The Rev. Dr. Bill Leonard
--from "Nobody Lives Without Fear"
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| Thank You St. Teresa of Avila |
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I never expected a sixteenth century saint to
enter my
twentieth century spiritual journey.
After all, my United Methodist background contained no
exposure to historical Catholic figures like St.
Teresa of Avila.
Yet it seemed that every time I turned around, there
she was
again, with an unexpected word to expand my idea of
God or
chart the next step of spiritual growth for me. ...
by Linda Douty
--from "Saint Teresa of Avila"
More Saints, Prophets, and Spiritual Guides
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| Have You Ever Heard This Voice? by Marcus Borg |
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[The] phenomenon of the Divine Voice actually has a
name in
the Jewish tradition. ... bat cole....
[which] means "the
daughter of a sound." ...
What kind of metaphor is this? The Voice of God,
the Divine
Voice, is the daughter of a sound.
Have you ever heard this Voice? My wife was leading
a Sunday
morning group a couple of weeks ago in which she
explained to
the group this notion of the bat cole, and after
explaining it, she asked the group, "Have any of you
ever
heard this Voice?" And several in the group had. ...
It would be very interesting to ask you, "How
many of you
have heard such a Voice?" ...
by Marcus Borg
--from Have
You Ever Heard This Voice?"
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Praying the Way Jesus Prayed |
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Several years later, married and with three
children, I
chanced--one wonders, of course, about that choice of
words?I chanced upon an old breviary [a book for
?praying the hours? or "fixed-hour prayer"] in a
second-hand
bookstore, ...
My life quite literally pivots on that
moment, all
things autobiographical dating from before or after
it. ...
by Phyllis Tickle
--from "Praying the Way Jesus Prayed"
The Beginning of the Midday Office
for Feb. 22,
2006
The Call to Prayer
Sing praise to the LORD who dwells in Zion;*
proclaim to the peoples the things he has done.
Psalm 9:11
The Request for Presence
Send out your light and your truth, that they may
lead me,* and bring me to your holy hill and to your
dwelling.
Psalm 43:3
The Greeting
How glorious you are!* more splendid than the
everlasting mountains!
--from The Divine Hours:
Prayers for Spring
by Phyllis Tickle
Copyright ©2001
Fixed-hour prayer gives us the opportunity to
have one
brief moment where the mystery is there--where the
worlds of the body, the mind and the spirit stop
together,
however briefly, and enter a dimensionless place in
which time
is interrupted and space is interrupted.
by Phyllis Tickle
--from "Everyday
Spirituality:
Spirituality Today"
Pray This Hour's
Fixed-Hour Prayer
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