August Twenty-Fifteen

"There are, after all, far too many pleasures available to be able to sample them all: too many wild and intriguing places to ever visit, people to meet, birds to watch, symphonies to hear, and so on. The riches embarrass our poor ability to enjoy them." –Robert Michael Pyle Wintergreen: Listening to the Land’s Heart

"What will you do in the mundane days of faithfulness?" –Martin Luther

"Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time."

~ Rabbinical saying

 “Holiness abounds, should we choose to look for it. The whisper and drumbeat of God’s Spirit are all around us, should we choose to listen for them. The building blocks of the most common meal—the bread and the wine—are reminders to us: “He’s here! God is here, and he’s good.” Every time we eat, every time we gather, every time the table is filled: He’s here. He’s here, and he is good.” – Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine

"To those of us who believe that all of life is sacred every crumb of bread and sip of wine is a Eucharist, a remembrance, a call to awareness of holiness right where we are. I want all of the holiness of the Eucharist to spill out beyond church walls, out of the hands of priests and into the regular streets and sidewalks, into the hands of regular, grubby people like you and me, onto our tables, in our kitchens and dining rooms and backyards."

– Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you."

-Frederick Buechner

 "No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you.

You have become a sort of grave

containing much that was

and is no more in time, beloved

then, now, and always.

And so you have become a sort of tree

standing over the grave.

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young, to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unaging in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away."

-Wendell Berry The Sabbath Poems

"Under the warmth

of the summer sun

the world awakes and blossoms

into every imaginable color..."

www.faithandworship.com

one of the biggest highlights of the summer pictured above at Snow Lake

"May the whisper

of the Father

be the one that wakens you;

the open hand

of the Son

be the one that raises you;

the prompting

of the Spirit

be the one that sends you,

this morning

and all mornings,

and leads you safely home."

www.faithandworship.com

I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light…. Ephesians 1:18 (New Living Translation)

25-26 Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original. Galatians 5:25-26 The Message 

 So do not worry about tomorrow. Let tomorrow worry about itself. Living faithfully is a large enough task for today. Matthew 6:34 (The Voice translation)