Sunday, December 18, 2011

"How is it they live for eons in such harmony?" (but we don't)

I am not preaching today -- but if you are in the area, please come hear Pastor Nik in the pulpit. Today is sometimes known as "Mary Sunday," as the lessons will make clear: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16Canticle 15Romans 16: 25-27 and Luke 1: 26-38.

Our friend Karen in Tennessee sent this other day. Enjoy your Sunday . . .

+  +  +

“We are fields before each other.”
St. Thomas Aquinas ~

How is it they live for eons in such harmony -
the billions of stars -

when most men can barely go a minute
without declaring war in their mind against someone they know.

There are wars where no one marches with a flag,
though that does not keep casualties
from mounting.

Our hearts irrigate this earth.
We are fields before
each other.

How can we live in harmony?
First we need to
know

we are all madly in love
with the same
God.

+ + +

And one more item today: Steven Charleston, the retired Bishop of Alaska, and who I admire greatly (and who I would love to have come preach at St. Paul's), wrote this on his Facebook this morning, and I pass it along to you:
"The incarnate story begins in humility. That is the first step in our own spiritual narrative. But how to take it? Not once, but over and over, as our life shifts through age and place. It is not feigned innocence or submission. It is what my ancestors believed was the gyroscope of the holy, the sense of inner balance that held a tension between pride and resignation, between limitation and possibility. What gave life to the sacred was a vulnerable power. That same divine energy resides incarnate in each of us, a hope that knows it can change the world, if only it is willing to seek shelter in the poorest home it finds."

Art by Flor Larios

No comments: