Sunday 21st November 2010

Welcome everyone!                                                                                                             

A couple of weeks ago on the Church Camp we punctuated our days with prayer (repeatedly setting aside 30 minutes of gathered silence) and committed to be a prayer practicing people going forward.  Here are a few words from a poet and a Rabbi to inspire us on this prayer practicing journey…

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak. – Mary Oliver

The world is aflame with evil and atrocity; the scandal of perpetual desecration of the world cries to high heaven.  And we, coming face-to-face with it, are either involved as callous participants or, at best, remain indifferent onlookers….

We pray because the disproportion of human misery and human compassion is so enormous.  We pray because our grasp of the depth of suffering is comparable to the scope of perception of a butterfly flying over the Grand Canyon. We pray because of the experience of the dreadful incompatibility of how we live and what we sense. 

– Abraham Joshua Heschel