Tag: Prayer
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Overhearing Women’s Prayer
The pioneering Christian feminist theologian Letty Russell once described a litmus test for theological statements. With my books packed away for an upcoming move, I won’t be able to track it down, but it went something like this: Any interpretation or statement about God that does not affirm the full humanity of women cannot be…
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The UMC & The Which Way Tree
Preacher Dob, the Mexican horse thief, and two young teens were at a standstill. They had lost the trail of the panther they were hunting, the one who had killed the girl’s mother and on whom she had sworn vengeance. Zechariah, their panther dog, had gotten the worse of an encounter with a skunk, and…
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Praying with Fire: A Review of Jamie Quatro’s Fire Sermon
“Dear God: Can you forgive someone for an act they cannot repent of?” (26) So goes Maggie’s prayer journal in the aftermath of an affair in Jamie Quatro’s new novel, Fire Sermon. Maggie has committed to move on. Has cut off communication with the poet she spent one night with in Chicago. In one light,…
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Spelunking: The Journey of Prayer
In here is a cavern vast and brilliant Where old songs echo off ancient walls and fresh water drips down to do its long work of creation. In here the illusion of sterility can confound you as if no life stirs, no light illumines, no generative communion draws souls to one. But in here vistas…
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Shhh! Do You Taste This in Prayer?
I understand the desire to lift up our neighbors in their difficulties in prayer. In fact, it’s what we’re told to do. Paul tells the Philippian church to do just this at the close of his letter: ”Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be…
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Can we see a little less clearly, Lord? – Prayers for a Way Forward
WITH my glasses off the thing I think I know becomes indistinct and fresh. A deer’s tail becomes a great white feather. A distant tree, a man by the roadside hailing me. When I run without my lenses the world slips out of bounds and newness emerges like angels in our midst. Since we…
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Your Giddy Desire — Prayers for a Way Forward
HOW good and pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together in unity! So the psalmist says and we believe it could be so, though our glimpses of such goodness and pleasantness are scant and near mythical. Yet we long to live together – to see as you see and love as you…
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Unity not excepted – Week of Prayer for A Way Forward continues
UNITY is a derivative of what we want. What we want is wholeness, health, salvation. What we want is to be able to unfold in your presence to let shadows fall out into light. What we want is to be seen and known. What we want is the source and end of our wanting. Then…
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For a Fire in Winter – Week of Prayer for A Way Forward Continues
Prayer for April 5 For a fire we would spark together but which only now flickers in our withered imaginations, For a blaze that warms and does not lay waste, For the hearth we would gather around and admire the way a fine light dances in each other’s eyes, For a way forward on a…
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We Dream a Frame — Prayers for A Way Forward Continue
We dream a frame that can contain a picture that is us. Our self-constructed models are too dangerous, spindly, fragile. They break and injure when we try to force the glass. We’ve made them far too large. We need a frame the size of a child, a gift, a cherished one, which You alone can…
Heartlands 