This prayer has carried my cries across this past week, offered by Rebecca Stringer, formerly at PasCov, now Pastor at Wellspring Covenant Church in Hawaii:
God of Shalom, hear our prayer.
You once likened yourself to a mother hen who wanted to gather her baby chicks to herself to protect them from danger. Will you not do that now?
We remember the story of Hagar in scripture-- a woman from a vulnerable people group who was desperate to save her son and herself. Running for her life, she was joyfully surprised when you showed up in the desert, provided her with comfort and care, and revealed yourself to be the God who Sees.
In your eternal kindness, See now and save the vulnerable! Whether in Kabul, or in rural Afghanistan, or in the rubble of Haiti's towns, protect all who need a safe place. Preserve life. May all who need protection, resources, comfort, medical attention, courage --escape- find what they need supplied for them even in unexpected places. True to your good character, may you show up for a million Hagars in a million places, even when it seems impossible.
God of justice, thwart the plans of all who who exploit their power over the vulnerable. Cause them to fall into their own traps. Bring chaos to their plans and subvert their schemes. May those who live by the sword find their weapons of warfare insufficient and ineffective to bring about the change they seek. Help them pursue better ways of being and doing in the world.
God of comfort, bring comfort and your courage to those who are shattered and in shock. Whether in Afghanistan, or Haiti, or in countries around the world hurting for their sisters and brothers, may your Holy Spirit pray and intercede when there are no words left to say. In the name of the One who came so there could be life-- life everlasting, Amen.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Beauty is an invitation to experiencing the Creator’s love and majesty. When was the last time you beheld something beautiful and just relished the moment as a gift of love from God? This spiritual practice is available to us in every moment and merely requires attention and intention to be blessed.
Beauty is God's bait.
She sets it out and waits
for you to notice.
You pause and gaze,
and, God hopes, linger a bit,
rapt, while she stares at you
because she loves seeing
your face like that.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Laundry may seem an odd element in the realm of religious worship, but poet and author, Kathleen Norris has a talent for weaving seemingly disparate fragments of life together to see them as naturally connected. In her The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Llturgy and “Women’s Work”, she points out that "women's work" such as laundry, cooking, and cleaning, done repeatedly, on a daily basis and seemingly never to completion, can be approached in the same manner as liturgy.
If seen as endless and dreary repetition, these domestic rituals become mindless activities to be gotten out of the way. When considered in terms of their enormous life-giving importance, the feeding and clothing of a family and maintaining of a household can be undertaken in the contemplative spirit. They become, like prayer and worship, acts of love that transform us and, in turn, the larger world around us.
“O Father, light up the small duties of this day’s life: may they shine with the beauty of Thy countenance. May we believe that glory can dwell in the commonest task of every day.”
— Saint Augustine
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
The practice of gratitude is begun simply and yields sweet fruit so quickly!
Three Gratitudes
Every night before I go to sleep
I say out loud
Three things that I’m grateful for,
All the significant, insignificant
Extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life.
It’s a small practice and humble,
And yet, I find I sleep better
Holding what lightens and softens my life
Ever so briefly at the end of the day.
Sunlight, and blueberries,
Good dogs and wool socks,
A fine rain,
A good friend,
Fresh basil and wild phlox,
My father’s good health,
My daughter’s new job,
The song that always makes me cry,
Always at the same part,
No matter how many times I hear it.
Decent coffee at the airport,
And your quiet breathing,
The stories you told me,
The frost patterns on the windows,
English horns and banjos,
Wood thrush and June bugs,
The smooth glassy calm of the morning pond,
An old coat,
A new poem,
My library card,
And that my car keeps running
Despite all the miles.
And after three things,
More often than not,
I get on a roll and I just keep on going,
I keep naming and listing,
Until I lie grinning,
Blankets pulled up to my chin,
Awash with wonder
At the sweetness of it all.
Carrie Newcomer
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Ordinary love, anonymous and unnoticed as it is, is the substance of peace on earth, the currency of God’s grace in our daily life.
Tish Harrison Warren Liturgy of the Ordinary
Your presence, and your absence matters to everyone in the church. We are better together; we need each other. Whether you show up online or in person at church, our community leans on each other for access to God’s grace through the love we share with each other. So many of you have spent the last 16 months doing the shopping for others who are more vulnerable or who welcomed assistance with groceries. Some have gotten others to a more tech-savvy place where access to services on Zoom is now possible. Several make regular phone calls, send letters, check in frequently with other PasCov folks so that a thread of connection is not random but a sure thing that can be trusted. Many are faithful and avid people of prayer and hold the many expressed and unexpressed needs shared with our listening, loving Lord. Conversations are going on constantly about how to use our finances well for Kingdom purposes, how to protect and care for everyone who uses our facilities and shares our campus space as we regather and occupy the buildings again. Ministry teams have adapted and pivoted (more times than you’d imagine) to the changing Covid environment. Food has been organized and distributed to an enormous number of households regularly, insuring that hunger does not overwhelm families in need.
This is the church, everywhere there is need, loving, loving, and loving again. Ordinary love changes the world.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
“I slept through the night!” That was my text this morning to my girls and my dear (sleep-challenged) friend who has been praying along with me for better sleep. Since the pandemic, and exacerbated by the time change, I have had disrupted sleep and longed to have a full night without waking up multiple times. So, this morning brought a joyous text and gratitude.
When our days were boundaried by the rising and setting of the sun, the rhythm of rest flowed naturally. But with the advent of electricity, the internet and the smartphone, night is the same as day and productivity rules. The boundaries given to us by God can be resisted and finitude and limits can be dismissed. Even when we do not want to resist rest, our bodies may struggle for release to the sleep it requires for health and good functioning. Our bodily limits are the chief daily reminder that we are but dust. We inhabit a frail, vulnerable humanity., and many things interfere with our enjoying proper rest.
Each night when we yield to sleep, we practice letting go of our reliance on self-effort and abiding in the good grace of our Creator. While we sleep, God is at work forming and transforming his people, and accomplishing his work in the world, his world. HE is the mover and maker of our lives and spiritual health. When we do not sleep, we recognize how essential it is to our well-being. Resting, sleeping, slowing down are all Sabbath, indicators that we recognize that we are finite, weak creatures who are abundantly cared for by our strong and loving Creator.
Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping;
That awake we may watch with Christ,
And asleep we may rest in peace.
Amen.
(From Book of Common Prayer)
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Our Annual Meeting at PasCov is this Sunday. It is one of the annual liturgies we observe that gives us an opportunity to look backwards at the year past and praise God for all that he did in our midst! We welcome new leaders to Trustees and ministry teams, embrace new members, commit to a budget plan for the coming year and say,"Count me in!" for the next leg of the journey as a community of Jesus followers. It is a significant moment when we stop to mark God's faithfulness and recommit ourselves to lives lived with and for God, together.
Christ, as a light
illumine and guide us.
Christ, as a shield
overshadow us.
Christ under us;
Christ over us;
Christ beside us
on our left and our right.
This day be within and without us,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom we speak;
in the mouth of each who speaks unto us.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all powerful.
Christ as a light;
Christ as a shield;
Christ beside me
on our left and our right.
Amen.
(Adapted from Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings from the Northumbria Community)
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
The Eucharist—our gathered meal of thanksgiving for the life, death, and resurrection of Christ—transforms each humble meal into a moment to recall that we receive all of life, from soup to salvation, by grace.
Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary
Eating, and food, are part of our everyday lives. Just as daily food sustains us, the Word and the Sacrament sustains and nourishes our souls. We come to communion this Sunday acknowledging that Jesus is our bread and gives us bread. He is the gift and the giver. Every meal that we eat is partial and inadequate, always pointing to him who is our true food, our eternal nourishment. Come this week with gratitude for this undeserved gift and the gracious Giver who forms us into a thankful and generous people, even as we feed on him.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
What happens in your first waking moments? What is the first thing that comes to mind or consumes your energies? All of us have our own series of liturgies, patterns that guide our day. And they start when we open our eyes in bed.
Tish Harrison Warren, in Liturgy of the Ordinary, shares "My morning smartphone ritual was brief—no more than five or ten minutes. But I was imprinted. My day was imprinted by technology. And like a mountain lion cub attached to her humans, I'd look for all good things to come from glowing screens... Without realizing it, I had slowly built a habit: a steady resistance to and dread of boredom... We are shaped every day, whether we know it or not, by practices... We don't wake up daily and for a way of being-in-the-world from scratch, and we don't think our way through every action of our day. We move in patterns we have set over time, day by day. These habits and practices shape our loves, our desires, and ultimately who we are and what we worship."
What if instead of scrolling a screen, we recited "This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it," from Psalm 118:24. We are marked from our first waking moment by an identity that is given to us by grace: an identity that is deeper and more than any other identity we will don that day...
What do you do with these important, perspective-setting moments?
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Scrolling through FaceBook this week, I found this posted on a sweet friend's wall and it seemed a perfectly good complement to the liturgies we are saying and living into this summer as a community. There are several writers that I enjoy who write blessings and prayers for situations and circumstances that speak deeply to my heart. W. David O. Taylor, director of Brehm Texas for Fuller Seminary, writes prayers for adults and children that capture holy moments or those ordinary experiences for which a prayer becomes handy and helpful. And Kate Bowler, Duke history professor and young mother with cancer, wrote blessings through Lent this year in a similar style.
Read and pray this one as we re-gather, recite new words together and look to find God in every moment holy:
A blessing for a gentle summer
Blessed are we, coming into a summer of in-between.
We are glad to shelter here awhile, where there can be some recovery from all that our eyes have seen and our hearts have borne.
We are wondering...what just happened?
Tragedy on slow-release, the shock of sudden outrage, the variants of unusual size, the sweet sense that normal maybe isn't obsolete.
We are wondering...what could happen?
We are at a threshold, a season that holds liminal space for what was, and what might be.
God, gather us close, and in this small and cradled space may we let the whole weight of our very selves rest secure.
Be the peace that settles our bodies, that we might awaken each day curious as to what new thing You are doing, what beauty might yet be.
Kate Bowler
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation