Liturgies

GATHERING.                 

ENTRANCE

REFLECTION

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,

breathe out whole buildings

and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children

and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

from the poem, “Wage Peace,” by Judyth Hill

http://www.judythhill.com/home.html

GATHERING

ENTRANCE

REFLECTION

Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,

And the heart consumes itself, as if it would live,

Where little children age before their time,

And life wears down the edges of the mind,

Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,

While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,

And Perfect Love seems long delayed,

CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:

In you, in me, in all mankind.

GATHERING

ENTRANCE

REFLECTION

John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God 

CANDLE LIGHTING

GATHERING

ENTRANCE

REFLECTION

We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

Common English Bible (CEB)

GATHERING

ENTRANCE

REFLECTION

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.