See The Spread
Good morning... Following yesterday's post, Spread Calm With A Palm, many of you sent me pictures of God's green growth on your front door. One of you said, "Instead of the red blood of an unblemished lamb on that first Passover night, maybe these green branches on our doors symbolize our prayers for the virus to pass over our homes." As we begin this Holy Week, though we are physically separated, we see the [...]
Spread Calm With A Palm
Happy Palm Sunday... I received this announcement earlier in the week. Now I turn around to share it with you. God's green branch of peace surpasses our human understanding. Wherever we wake this Palm Sunday morn, may we unite as the calming body of Christ, physically isolated but spiritually inseparable. The next day, the news that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem swept through the city. A large crowd of Passover visitors [...]
Beer Cans At The Back Door
Good morning... In this season of social distancing, Uber Eats delivers. The local pizza place delivers. I too have made my second delivery. My delivery is a bit unusual. Do you remember my good friend's daughter Audrey, who has battled cancer and now raises funds for cancer research? Audrey's goal is "to make cancer treatment shorter and less painful for all children everywhere." (See One Dynamic Daughter to visit Audrey's story.) Well, one day [...]
Update: Location Change
Good morning... Atlanta residents: Updated information for the food drive this morning: Neighbors, Morris Brandon has moved its food drive location to the Peachtree Hills Recreation Center, 308 Peachtree Hills Avenue. Still 9-12 on Friday. Questions/comments/need help? Email us at info@CastlewoodCivicAssociation.org. ...Sue... P.S. Thank you all for so quickly filling in the slots to serve with me at Action Ministries on Monday the 6th and Friday the 17th.
Hope Is Handmade
Good morning... As I walked our golden retriever mix to and from the horse farm, on my way back I noticed a young girl. Slender build. Brown hair. About ten or twelve years old. Walking in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. She was holding a large basket in the crook on one arm. With her other hand, I saw her reach into her basket, pick up a small [...]
Shelter At Home
Good morning... "Nature is not a place to visit. It is home," says Gary Snyder in The Practice of the Wild. This quiet quote appears today on the cool dog calendar a friend gave me for my birthday. As we in the state of Georgia receive the new detailed directive to "shelter in place," this is the perfect morning to sink into God's truth: "Nature is not a place to visit. It is our [...]
Kids These Days
Good morning... "When songwriting team Burt Bacharach and Hal David released the song 'What the World Needs Now Is Love' (originally sung by Jackie DeShannon) in 1965, the United States was deeply divided over the war in Vietnam," explains the Berklee Now publication from March 23rd. "Bacharach was initially nervous about the song's reception given the fragile cultural environment, but the song became a top ten hit and brought people together under its [...]
Intimate Loving Care
Good morning... I have been with people as they have taken their last breath. Sacred. Surreal. The eternal spirit leaves the still body. Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over. Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends. The body is put back in the same ground it came from. The spirit returns to God, who first breathed it (Ecclesiastes 12:7, MSG). With each additional death recorded during this worldwide pandemic, [...]
Travel Your Avenues
Good morning... How do we bridge the gap between "the haves and have nots" during this extended period of pandemic? Prayerfully with God, we travel the avenues blazed before our feet. We simply travel the avenues of connection opening before us. Our family provides just one example, your family provides another, and each stranger we scooch by in the grocery store provides still another example of outreach opportunity. We are each invited to travel [...]
Flattening Our Curve
Good morning... This Sabbath morn, may we all enter in to the prayer our pastor shared with our church family this week. ****** "In the Life of the Church"- the Pandemic Prayer from Catholic Theological Union May we who are merely inconvenienced Remember those whose lives are at stake. May we who have no risk factors Remember those who are most vulnerable. May we who have the luxury of working from home Remember those [...]
Walk Close Together
Good morning... "God, my shepherd!" says Psalm 23:1-4 in the Message translation. "I don’t need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side." The twenty-third psalm is one of the most familiar and most comforting passages of Scripture. [...]
Come Rest In Peace
Good morning... To end our Zoom gathering, he gently read to us a poem, a poem I had never met. ****** The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on [...]