Tag: Growth

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Daily Lenten Reflection

It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. Romans 8:10-11, MSG

Lent is primarily about dislocation. It is about the inability to go on with business as usual. “The ashes of Lent,” says Ron Rolheiser, “invite us . . . to leave our regular beds and tables to sleep and sit patiently for a while in the ashes . . . so that some silent, inner, gestation process can teach us what it means that we are dust and that we are invited to turn from sin to the gospel.” –David Brock, Driven Into Lent

Reflection: 

  • When have you experienced transformation through dislocation on your spiritual journey?
  • How is the Spirit prompting you to slow down or cease “business as usual” to be more attentive to what is growing within?
  • Prayerfully dwell in Romans 8:10-11. What is God’s invitation to you in this text?
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Dark and Light: A Solstice Blessing

By Katie Harmon-McLaughlin

“You are the one who knows, behind the rising, falling tide of shadow, the moon is always whole.” -Barbara Kingsolver, Another America

Dark and Light
Are not so separate
As we often imagine.

What of dusk and dawn?
What of starlight radiance
And glow of moon?
What of cloud-cover and rain
Obscuring sun at noon?
What of shadow and shade?
Glimmering, flickering flame of candle–
Circle aglow in surrounding night?
Sunlight streaming through trees,
Sideways beams in late afternoon–
Beauty in the balance
Of the luminous
And hidden?

And so it is in us.
The necessary pull of moon
And rise of sun
Sustaining life.
The inner shadows
Inviting healing,
The spaces of shade
From the too-brightness
Of what seems to sear.
The colors of dawn
Gleaming in the
New-day soul.
The descending dusk of
Letting go into the night
Where the Spirit
Works unseen within.
The edges of light
Greeting darkness–
Spaces of passage
Where what we
Try so hard to keep
Divided
Becomes
Indistinguishably
One.

And the longest night
Of my life is,
Across the globe,
The longest day
For another.
And my longest day
Is another’s longest night.
The light does not ever vanish,
Nor does the darkness.
What I seek and
What I resist
Always present somewhere
Even when they are not
Visible–
Always an invitation
And inevitability.

And so blessed are you
Who live in the intersecting places
Of darkness meeting light,
Who refuse to see as separate
The union needed for fullest life–
The balance needed for growth at all.
Blessed are you who enter
The longest night with a heart open
To the gifts the darkness brings.
And blessed are you who bask
In the longest day to soak in
The fullness of what is revealed.

Blessed are the dark
And the light
And the spaces
They gather
To meet
In every season,
In every heart.

Spiritual Practice: Where do you see the meeting of light and dark in your life? How do darkness and light contribute to the growth of your soul? In this Advent season, how does the encompassing darkness prepare us for the arrival of the great light?

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Midwife Prayer

by Zac Harmon-McLaughlin

Holy Midwife,
Guide me through the birthing pangs
of growth and understanding.
Teach me how to breathe
in a world that is overrun
with pain, hurt, injustice, and suffering.
Help me be better present with what
is being born deep within me.

May I understand this pregnancy
through your eyes
as creator and nurturer–
knowing that this is a direct result
of falling in love with Shalom
and seeking out the hope and reality
of the peaceable kingdom.

Hold me in times of disruptive contractions.
Laugh with me in moments of joyful anticipation
of what is and will be.
Squeeze my hand to gently remind me
to be present in the experience
rather than turning away in fear.
Push me forward in the moments
I resign to complacency.

As I wait to experience
the continual birth of love,
inside and outside of me,
remind me of advent.
I pray with gratitude,
Amen.

Spiritual Practice: Imagine the Spirit as the midwife of your soul. What is being birthed deep within this Advent season?