Our inclusive language liturgies generally set the structure and theme of Sunday morning worship. Since announcements are an integral part of our life together, we offer some guidelines for those who make announcements towards the end of worship.
Epiphany 2014 Think Again
REFLECTION
Many people today agree that we need to reduce violence in our
society. If we are truly serious about this, we must deal with the
roots of violence, particularly those that exist within each of us. We
need to embrace “inner disarmament,” reducing our own emotions of suspicion, hatred and hostility toward our brothers and sisters.
Dalai Lama XIV
Quoted in the Washington Post
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Advent 2013 Waiting and Waking
REFLECTION
I wonder if the invitation of Advent is not also that God desires to inhabit us, to make a home within our home. . . . Could Advent be a season in which we clear out space for God to move in and linger around the house? Could Advent be a season in which we take turns with God opening up slowly and yet deliberately as we reacquaint ourselves with one another?
Enuma Okoro, “Making Room for God: Reflections on Advent”
(www.patheos.com, Nov. 30, 2011)
Jubilee 2013 The Image of the Invisible God
REFLECTION
Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in this Being all things, in heaven and on earth, were created, things visible and invisible, whether rulers or dominations or principalities or powers –all things have been created through Christ and for Christ.
Colossians 1:15-16
Recommitment 2013 Seized by the Power
REFLECTION
In the struggle to become Christ’s Body, we have only one weapon and one alone: Love…. Love is what first softened your heart and mine. Love brought us into the struggle. Love alone has the power to break hearts open so that we will all lay down our defenses and join in the cosmic movement toward a new heaven, a new earth, in a Holy City whose foundation is Love.
Gordon Cosby, Seized by the Power of a Great Affection: Meditations on the Divine Encounter, page 41
Summer 2013 How Shall We Live?
REFLECTION
I have come to believe that the true mystics … are not those who contemplate holiness in isolation, reaching godlike illumination in serene silence, but those who manage to find God in a life filled with noise, the demands of other people and relentless daily duties that can consume the self.
The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work” (Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality) by Kathleen Norris, pg 70