When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.” The house of Israel called it manna…
I am?
In worship yesterday, we practiced discerning our sense of calling by responding the questions below. The key is not to think about them too hard and to make note of the first images/answers/feelings that rise. What follows is from Anthony DeMellow’s exercises as adapted by Brian Mahan in Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose. Exercise 1 (Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose, 57) Recall the kind of feeling you have when someone praises you, when you are approved, accepted, applauded. Think about that for a…
Rooted in Grace
“I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you; something worth living for – maybe even worth dying for; something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can’t tell you what it might be – that’s for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking and support you in the search.” ––Sister Ita Ford, M.M. Excerpt from a letter written to Ita’s…
Discernment and Expectations
Parker Palmer writes, We arrive in this world with birthright gifts-then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward…
Remembering
Robert McAfee Brown writes, I have found it true in my own life that certain moments capture the feeling of other moments; they show in one instant something I would like to be true of other instants as well. Other moments show me up as timid or fearful or indecisive, as I do not like to be but also am. They are important moments too, and must not be obliterated from memory. Sometimes we learn more from our failures than…
Coming Alive
Brian J Mahan, in his convocation address to the students at Wartburg College, shares the following regarding vocation: Howard Thurman, a theologian who was a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr., was asked by one of his students what he should do for the world. Surprisingly, Thurman responded by saying, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” So,…
Toward Sunday
We will continue our worship series, I am?, this Sunday with reflection on our epiphanies of recruitment. Brian J Mahan defines the term in this way: An epiphany of recruitment is a significant experience, often remembered and sometimes repressed. It is not mere sentimental reaction or the product of emotional manipulation. The experience is often interpreted as an invitation to see things differently, to live a different kind of life, to embrace one’s unique vocation.…We cannot expect to respond fully,…
Prayers of the People
We are gathering in prayer during the current worship series to a song called Better than a Hallelujah by Chapin Hartford & Sarah Hart: God loves a lullaby in a mothers tears in the dead of night better than a Hallelujah sometimes. God loves a drunkards cry, the soldiers plea not to let him die better than a Hallelujah sometimes. We pour out our miseries, God just hears a melody beautiful the mess we are the honest cries of breaking…
Falling in Love with God
Fr. Pedro Arrupe writes, “Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in a love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.…
I am…
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that…
Toward Sunday
We begin a new worship series this Sunday at The Table called I am? Vocation, Ambition, & Purpose. We’ll explore questions related to vocation, ambition, and purpose. Our worship will be rooted in Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose: Vocation and the Ethics of Ambition by Brian J. Mahan. Our Scripture reading on Sunday will include the following verses: Psalm 16.1-4, 12-19. What is your devotion to God based upon? What personal or communal needs has God supplied in your life? Have you…
Prayer Poem from UMC Worship Director
Relief, release, for ten years awaited by all whose lives ceased in planes and towers, or battlefields, caves or roadways far from home in these succeeding years: The dead must have their voice. So, too, the living, those whose mourning could not reach full closure until this news: Osama, too, is dead. In these United States some celebrate a victory long sought, an objective long elusive: To find and bring this man to trial,…
Prayers of the People
God of Resurrection, we give thanks for time away to reflect, for people of faith who challenge and inspire us, for the growing sense of community among us, for the neighbors you call us to love. God of New Life, we pray for those from our community who are preparing to travel and for the loved ones they will leave behind. May we pause to reflect and to be still amidst the news of the killing of Osama bin Laden.…