Thursday, April 30, 2020

April Twenty-Twenty


"For the layers of comfort and convenience that surrounded our lives and that we never considered a blessing but always just took for granted, forgive us.
For we who must grieve in isolation and not in community, comfort us.
For we who care for the sick, protect us.
For the ability to turn off the fear-mongering and unhelpful commentary and worst-case scenario click bait, strengthen us.
For the times when we are all out of creative ideas for how to get through this with cooped up kids, inspire us. 
For we who are now cutting our own bangs at home, guide us.
For the grace to allow ourselves and others to just be less productive, shower us.
For the generosity needed from those of us who have more resources, empower us.
From our own selfish inclinations, deliver us.
For just being your children, none of whom have done a global pandemic before, love us.
For the days ahead, accompany us.
God unbound by time, help us to know that you are already present in the future we are fearing.  Amen."  -Nadia Bolz-Weber


"Yes, the old ways of doing things are on hold, perhaps for longer than we realize. But this moment of rupture may be an opening to new paths. New connections. New ways of being. And, if we are diligent and blessed, maybe even liberation." - Rabbi Michael Rothbaum


"When our hearts feel sick with longing, give us hope.
When our eyes can’t see the clearing, give us hope.
When our feet are tired from falling, give us hope.
When our hands are numb from reaching, give us hope.
Until all our very being is fully found in You, give us hope.
In the breaking and the yearning, in our finding and our losing,
And in every step along this pilgrim pat, give us hope.
Tend our fragile hearts, Lord. 

Teach us how to find our hope in You. Amen." 

-Elrena Evans


"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." -John Muir 


"But darling, we weren’t given this wild soul just to merely exist. Our mission is to shake up this world, turn it upside down, and show our fellow humans the difference between breathing and being fully alive.” –Soeline  (photos above of chalk fairies on 16th) 


"It happens to all of us. God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over."  - Nadia Bolz-Weber



"Some of the kids from another parish said at Easter this year, 'I don’t really feel like saying alleluia this year, it doesn’t feel joyful to me.'  Their priest told them, 'Alleluia isn’t necessarily about joy, it’s actually about protest.' It’s about protest against death and darkness and the forces of evil, and so we say alleluia not because we’re happy, but because we believe that there is more!"  
- Rev. Kira Austin-Young of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in East Nashville 


"Practice resurrection." 
-Wendell Berry 


We are family..... (Prom 2020)


"This time we have been unexpectedly given is not just to be endured.  We will be changed not just by getting through it and moving into what is next, but by what is now.  What am I sowing today?  What am I planting?"


 "I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.  "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."  -- J. R. R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring


"God has given to us this unusual time to not just do different things, but to do the ordinary differently. There is nothing insignificant in God's economy, nothing He cannot use, no barren land, only that which has not yet visibly been transformed. We see but the rocky soil choked with weeds or too bitterly hard to consider, but God, God sees immense beauty already in the dirt.  God grows our smallest actions, even a kind and encouraging word, into a perennial garden, into a beautiful forest with refreshing shade and tremendous fruit, an acoustic sanctuary for the chorus of birds, the music of the spheres." 


"Faithfulness plants seeds, one no less valuable than another. 
Faithfulness is not motivated by the end result, because we cannot comprehend the million layers of outcome,  nor understand the deep abiding goodness that crouches underneath, that someday will burst forth out of the ground that everyone has given up on." 


"What we do,
 what we do for others does something to us,
   the strengthening of our hearts, the deepening of vision,
the bearing of fruit, the growing of magnificent trees in ways we may never recognize,
 for the glory of God that will outlive us all." 


some very surprising news this month.... 


incredible neighborhood spirit yesterday celebrating one year since our neighbor Aidan "Ryker" Schellings had a skateboarding accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury

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