The gesture from a sacred heart that can change a life in a heartbeat - Restore a broken faith - And make space for a wounded heart - To wake with fresh hope on the darkest of days.

You who are always there in our moments, awaken our heart and mind to be more alive in our daily living. May we be mindful of our surroundings and appreciate the accomplishments of each task no matter how trivial or expansive they may be.

You will know how to access the “still waters” of Pure Conscious Awareness. You will feel from the inside out when it is time to restore your soul.

As I learned through Christ about a God who is Pure Love, accepting, compassionate, full of grace, I began to question, is it possible that maybe there is more than one path to the Kin-dom? Marcus Borg thought so. 

It is really the body that is subject to duality. Health and illness, youth and old-age, pain and pleasure, birth and death. But the essence of what we are transcends, goes beyond, or is not subject to duality. These opposites in life only pertain to our worldly identity, not our spiritual identity.

God of the open garden, we have found you and long to hold you fast. But you refuse our clinging need, eluding the love that would bind and possess you, sending us out beyond the bounds of our feeble knowing. Rapt in our joy and desire, we cannot interpret you: you have gone from us again, moving into morning, moving into light.

Over the years I have had many conversations with people at various levels of annoyance because God has once again failed to behave as expected. The only thing I ever have to say in such situations is something along the lines of “apparently whatever God is, God isn’t that.” I’ve said it often enough that I’ve come to believe it is just about always true. 

I am you. You represent me in the world. Be that which you cannot be when apart from me. Today, hold me within you… Fall back into me when your ego pushes forward. Let go of yourself and let me through. Give me your eyes, mouth, mind, and heart, moment by moment. I am you. You are me. We are one.

Give us Wisdom to see through the pretensions to power which human structures parade – the glamour and the misspent wealth, leaders who will not serve. Give us clarity of purpose, simplicity and truth, that the healing and joy of infinite love may come through us to earth.

If we want the opposite of soul fatigue, our choices are simple. We sacrifice, daily, the harmful habits on behalf of the healthier ones. We don’t say, “Tomorrow I’ll get to that,” so much as we say, “Here and now, I’ll get to that.”

Awaken love within us. Renew us. Companion God, we thank you for your Holy Spirit, for your comfort and guidance, presence and trust. Awaken faith within us. Renew us. Creator, Redeemer, Companion, we bring our praise and thanks to you. 

Do we ever truly lose anyone? We were born from stars and matter – we were birthed as spirits and souls. So perhaps we never really lose anyone because they were never our belongings to forever keep. We hold so tightly to this body, but this body is designed to fade. Choose instead to cherish a soul, a free spirit to love eternally. For true love never ends.

And the heart of the journey, the heart of our awakening, is to discover for ourselves that the leaves are not the ground, and that sweeping them aside will reveal a path, and finally, that to fully live, we must take the path and keep sweeping it.

Life-giver, well up in us, flow through our relationships, strip away the old, shine up the new. May we return to our wells and drink deeply, ready to meet the challenges of today.

As we journey through Lent, let us use this time to deepen our relationship with the Higher Power, to seek forgiveness and guidance, and to commit ourselves to following the inner path revealed by Jesus Christ. Let us pray for the strength to resist fear and ignorance and to live in accordance with God's will, so that our lives may be renewed and transformed by his love.

The courage to face what frightens us does not dispel fear, but opening ourselves to a Higher/Inner Power enables us to move through our fear and to enter with confidence “places we do not wish to visit.” Buddhists say that when you walk into the fire, you find out it’s raining in there! Nothing is as bad as it seems from the outside, but we have to enter the swamplands of the soul in order to experience this.

We can pass the life baton on to younger generations who are quite capable of taking over the journey started by ancestors long gone. With faith and trust, we let go of the reigns and leave the planning to those who are open to embrace the risks of change.

To know this spot of inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it.

I dreamed that you were a bee, That one day gaily flew along, You came across the hedge to me, And sang a soft, love-burdened song. You brushed my petals with a kiss, I woke to gladness with a start, And yielded up to you in bliss, The treasured fragrance of my heart; And then I knew, That I had waited there for you.

But I tell you, love your enemies. Pray for those who treat you badly. God lets the sun rise for all people, whether they are good or bad. And sends rain to those who do right and to those who do wrong. If you love only those who love you, why should you get a reward for that?

The same currents that run through our human blood also run through the swirling galaxies and the myriad of life-forms that pervade this planet: one and the same evolutionary current moves through all—a single self transcending current of all-pervading energy that brings new life out of seeming catastrophe.

At that point, our hatred is pointed toward the messenger, because he or she has taken away our needed object of hatred. If we need to hate, we will destroy anyone who tells us our hatred is the problem. 

Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself.

We’ll just have to go ahead. If you wait until you’re good enough or you’re skillful enough or until you are sure of yourself and are certain to get it right, it may never happen. At some point there’s no help for it, and you just go ahead.... 

If we take his wise words to heart, every annoying person, every odious task, every frustrating interruption, everything we wish we could wish away, can be considered pieces of a puzzle without which our life would not only be less interesting, but less complete.

Letting go and changing negative thoughts takes practice. It begins with recognizing, as adults, that we are not defined by labels given us when we were children.  Let us accept and release the beauty and love we hold within.  

Because it is scary to let go of our ego and to cooperate with the relocation process Jung speaks about, we instinctively hold tight to our notion of our self even if we know that doing so prevents the possibility of being more calm, joyful, strong, and unruffled.

My resolve to continually reach out beyond my own small walls is renewed. The energy that leaps and twirls in each part of existence commands my attention and draws me into a cosmic embrace. I sense again the limitless love that connects us all.

In a state of grace, the soul is like a well of limpid water, from which flow only streams of clearest crystal. Its works are pleasing both to God and man, rising from the River of Life, beside which it is rooted like a tree.

~ Saint Teresa of Avila 

There are many reminders of the Cosmic dimension to our lives in the Christmas story.  The star of Bethlehem is one such reminder: the heavens themselves, the cosmos, is part of the birth of each of us and part of the incarnation of each of us.