Prayers, Queries and Advices - Gathering In Light

Maundy Thursday (House) Worship/Prayer Service

A few days ago Emily and I had the idea to invite some friends over to hang out Thursday, tonight, to kick off Emily’s spring break (she rarely stays up past 9pm on a school night). Then I thought that because it was Maundy Thursday it would be great

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Remember You are Dust: Reflections on Lent 2007

The season of Lent began last week on Ash Wednesday, which marks the 40 day period of waiting for Holy Week. Lent is a time of cleaning out our lives, remembering the frailty of life, reflecting on God and preparing space for the pinnacle of the Christian calendar that comes

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The Things We Carry: A Spiritual Reflection on Life With Ghosts

Life with Ghosts Last night Emily and I started to watch “One Punk Under God,” a documentary about Jay Bakker. Jay is the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. I’ve been interested in finding out more on Jay as we had a friend who worked with Jay’s

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FAQs: What is Worship? (Pastoral Quaker Perspective)

In reading Thomas Hamm’s absolutely wonderfulQuakers in America I came across a good quote about how virtually all pastoral Friends today would agree on what the Richmond Declaration says about worship, the statement comes from the Declaration which is actually highly disputed but Hamm believes most would get behind

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Celtic Treasure: Daily Scriptures and Prayer

“Celtic Treasure: Daily Scriptures and Prayer” by J. Philip Newell is a great book for family devotions. Emily and I got it a year ago and often use it when we have prayer times together. It’s really easy to follow and has beautiful prayers and pictures painted by the

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Three Queries on Communal Spiritual Growth

The other day on my way home I was thinking about my faith and stumbled upon three questions I thought worthy of thinking through aloud with you: 1. How do I love you God? 2. How do We love you God? 3. How do they love you God? These are

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FAQs of a Theologian: Can you explain to me what prayer means to a christian?

I’ve had for sometime the idea to write posts based on questions I am asked via email or questions that people ask google and somehow land on my site. In fact I’ve been compiling some questions since early this summer on my Theo.edit (my wiki). Thus I

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Queries from the Gathering

Well in short our meeting last night was wonderful, there was a group of about 13 adults, 4 children (and a few lovely mennonite-volunteers) and I think it would be safe to say we all enjoyed ourselves and learned a lot from each other. For now I thought I would

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A Little Time for Spiritual Inventory With Sequoias

Every so often I realize that I’ve been going full speed ahead for too long and need a break, this past week I had one of those realizations. I finally got to the point where I felt like I had been running with my eyes closed, not paying attention

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Thomas Merton: A Prayer For the Simplicity of Life and Love

This is a prayer from New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton that I find to be moving, challenging and intriguing. Take a moment to be drawn in to the Spirit as you read this prayer. “Justify my soul, O God, but also from Your fountains fill my will with

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Queries on The Lord's Prayer

This Sunday I am leading a discussion on the Lord’s Prayer, basically covering what I’ve been writting about here for the past month or so. In preparing I decided to create a few Queries to help begin the discussion on Prayer and mission. Here are those queries: a.

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NT Wright – Retelling Stories: Alternate Histories and the Lord’s Prayer

Mike Work, writing on his class blog recently, wrote a great short post about Jesus’ way of being a storyteller. He writes, In his [NT Wright] words, Jesus made a regular practice of retelling the story of Israel in such a way as to subvert other tellings, and to invite

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Qaddish and The Lord’s Prayer: Jesus’ Subversive Tactics

In this continuing series on the Lord’s Prayer I am looking at the Jewish prayer known as the Qaddish, and comparing it to the Lord’s Prayer. When we compare these two prayers we see themes arise that are particularly interesting when we consider that Christ’s prayer is

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A Short Prayer Service with The Lord’s Prayer

Getting back on track of doing some work on the Lord’s Prayer I thought I would offer a simple prayer service we used for small group a while back. This could work as a personal time for reflection or for small groups, and can be changed and modified to

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Humility and The Lord’s Prayer: April Ping Homily

This is my ping homily for April, there are still two weeks left for all of you to participate. If you are interested jump over to Shawn’s explanation of the project. Since I am in the process of thinking and writing about the Lord’s Prayer as a paradigm

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Lecture Today and Intro to The Lord’s Prayer

Today is my first chance to lecture in a classroom setting. As I have been preparing over the last couple weeks, I have found that I will never get it the way I want it. I have been writing and rewriting parts of it for the last three days and

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O Gracious Light: When Light and Darkness Find Each Other

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house (Matthew 5:14-15).??? Emily is returning home tomorrow, she

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Tom Fox Found Dead

Tom Fox, a Quaker and a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team was found dead yesterday in Iraq. My only connection to him is in the Spirit of God, but he stands as a hero in my mind and one who lived out the call of the Gospel to be