A new year symbolizes another chance for seeing our lives through the lens of gratitude. Thank you, O God, for all you have given us. And thank you most of all for the newness of mind and soul that you offer to us always!
Saturday, January 1, 2011
NEW YEAR Thoughts
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Christmas 12 days
Into our world, where we usually stay busy and frequently feel tired, God comes. God comes to us where we are, somewhere between darkness and light. God comes to us as we are, anxious and worried, hopeful and blessed. God comes to us as wonderful and surprising as angels singing to shepherds on a hill. God comes to us now as a small baby in a manger.
Let us marvel at the Holy Child, worship on bended knee, and sing with the angels. Let us be blessed by the gaze of the Christ child. God looks at us with love and great joy that spreads to all people.
- Larry James Peacock
Openings: A Daybook of Saints, Psalms, and Prayer
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICES
Parkland UMC Dec. 24th 7:30 pm
Cooperative Parish also has the following opportunities:
Family Oriented Christmas Eve Service at The Bridge UMC 5:20 pm
Bethany: 10 Coffee/Dessert Hour
11 pm Candle Light Service w/Communion
Christmas Thoughts
Christmas tries to point to an inner light,
a tree of lights inside the house of our being,
and invites people to come close
and ponder its beauty.
We notice this light because
it is contrasted with an outer darkness.
And it defies the darkness,
refusing to allow the outer world
to dictate the terms of existence.
- - - John Shea, in Starlight
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Advent Thoughts
...it is precisely this experience of simultaneous leave-taking and homecoming that lies at the heart of Advent. As we travel toward Christmas, these weeks draw us into the stories of those who let God lead them beyond the lives they had known... Even as they allowed God to stretch them beyond the landscape they had known, each of these folks moved further into God's longing for their lives. As they welcomed Jesus--this wild and wondrous Word made flesh--they found their own welcome that took them deeper into the heart of God. This leaving-and-homecoming brings a tension that is not always easy to hold. Yet this is the price--and the gift--of incarnation: that as we open ourselves to the Christ who still comes among us, as we offer our own daring yes to him, as we turn our faces starward, as we leave our familiar landscape in this season of waiting and anticipation, we will find ourselves walking toward the One who has been waiting for us all along. -Jan Richardson |
Monday, November 29, 2010
Thoughts for Advent
Bill McKibben From McKibben's article, "The Problem with Christmas"
"Our environmental problem, at root, isn't that the stuff we're buying uses too much energy or too much plastic, or that its paint has lead in it, or that it's been shipped too far. Our environmental problem is that we consume way too much because we've agreed to try and meet basic human needs -- status, respect, affection -- with material ends. And no time more so than at Christmas, when Santa rides in on a Norelco razor. It's a kind of joint conspiracy that few of us dare break out of, even though we all understand at some level that it's not working. What if you don't give your kids a proper Christmas?
"But the second you do break out of it -- the second your family becomes one of those that exchanges used books at Christmas, or decides to follow St. Francis' Yule tradition of wandering the park and throwing seed so that the birds too could celebrate, or makes it an annual custom to serve turkey dinner at the homeless shelter -- then you start sharing in the deep human secret that consumer society is set up to obscure: the things that please us most are almost always counterintuitive. We need to be out in the cold air, we need to think about others, we need to serve." |
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thanksgiving Thoughts
We give You thanks for You sustain us
with real food and real drink.
You nourish us with friends as real as food
with joy as clear as water
with love as good as this meal.
This is enough .
You nourish us with friends as real as food
with joy as clear as water
with love as good as this meal.
This is enough .
We do not ask for more.
This is more than enough reason
to bless Your name forever.
Make us always mindful of those
who do not have enough
food and friendship
water and love and joy.
Give them enough
that they too may be thankful
Amen.
- - Mary Jo Leddy, in Radical Gratitude
This is more than enough reason
to bless Your name forever.
Make us always mindful of those
who do not have enough
food and friendship
water and love and joy.
Give them enough
that they too may be thankful
Amen.
- - Mary Jo Leddy, in Radical Gratitude
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