Evening Prayer February 27. Love welcome us home at the end of each day, wherever we are, whether wandering or seeking shelter, whether traveling and returning to a place we call our own, may our hearts find rest and welcome in your presence. Love welcome us home at the end of each day, and hear our regrets and our gladnesses. Be still with us as a warm presence in our troubles and our grief. Rejoice with us when we have cause for celebration. Attend our thanks for what went well, what is good, what amazes, and for how we awoke again to your transforming power through this day. Love welcome us home at the end of each day and be with us through the night ahead, whatever comes. May we be steadfast in our faithful promises, turning away from dissolution and iniquity and despair, and through your creative spirit find and create with one another a more beautiful, just, and merciful story.
Amen. Morning Prayer February 27. Evening Prayer February 26. Morning Prayer February 26. How glorious the moment when grudges let go and forgiveness takes hold! What a release from fearful anger and what creative love may then shine through! Lover of Life the way of forgiveness is not easy, yet it is possible. Keep us steady in the labors of making amends and of appreciating the efforts of repairing relationships and restitution offered us. Help us be open-hearted, taking that risk to care for those who have injured us, and to be trustworthy again to those we have injured. Love does not flourish without trust. Evening Prayer February 25. The Wonderment: Testing. I've never been much a fan of testing, except for the tests which are five-day cricket matches. Perhaps it has to do with how I tend to with often not thinking like the test creators.
No, I've never been a very good standardized test taker. And I struggle when people opine that my illness is just God testing me. When people tell me this, they are very apt to quote 1 Corinthians 10:13b at me, when Paul wrote, "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you will be able to endure it. " But they miss the first part: "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. " Painful illness is not a standardized test. The test of my faith is in every day, and pain or no pain, illness or health, the question is: how merciful, how generous, how kind, how loving, how just, how reverent - that is, how faithful - am I?
The test is what we do with the gift of this life. The Wonderment: Bearing Fruit. A retelling of Luke 13:6-9 The snow was falling outside. The Rabbits were snug in their warren, engaged in one of their favorite activities of the year:planning their garden. The Rabbit family loved their garden, though it must be confessed that sometimes one or two or five of the Rabbitswould sneak out in the night and nibble some sweet and tender lettuce.
Not very much, mind you, but enough so that they werereassured that the lettuce was indeed sweet and growing well. "Well," Nonny Rabbit announced, "It seems we have agreed on what we're planting. We can check the seed we've stored and orderthe seeds we need. " Nonny patted the stack of papers that held the ambitious Rabbit Family planting schedule. "Wait," Bonny Rabbit said, "we haven't talked about the fruit trees! " "Fruit trees! " "Fruit trees take up space," grumbled Danny Rabbit, "I'd rather plant more lettuce! " "But we have apples for the winter, and not much lettuce down here in the warren," Sonny Rabbit argued. "Lettuce now! Morning Prayer February 25.
Lover of Life transform us into appreciators of change and show us how to dance gracefully through and with them. Let us be glad to have know what was good but now has fallen away, grateful for the chance at that gladness. Let us be grateful for the lessons and strengths we take away from the bad times that are over, and be even more grateful that they are behind us. Lover of Life guide us in enduring and in flourishing through changes that are harsh and that we neither sought nor created, and sustain us in our labors creating change in everyday ways through love and mercy and creative effort together. Let us be glad in how we can help and glad in joining together to make a positive difference, and glad for the calling to care that all of us have just by being here right now.
Evening Prayer February 24. Evening Prayer February 23. To the Heart of Life we make promises worth dreaming, worth keeping, worth risking faithfully to fulfill. Spirit of Wonder and Courage help us connect with one another, growing across the divisions between us cultivated by fear and hatred, that we may unite and create goodness together. Spirit of Wonder and Courage, let us not forget those promises worth dreaming, worth making, and worth keeping, and sustain us as we reach out to fulfill them. Sustain us as we answer real problems with creative and sustainable solutions.
Sustain us as we collaborate to discover ways to defeat disease and to foster sharing wisdom and growing knowledge. Sustain us we join together in holding each other, governments, and corporations to ethics and the values of generosity, compassion, and merciful justice. Morning Prayer February 23, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 22, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Community - All Kinds. Morning Prayer February 22, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 21, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers.
Morning Prayer February 21, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Merciful Justice guide us into action today and every day to help the streams of righteousness, equality, freedom, love, and compassion flow freely. Bound up and frozen by fearfulness and the habits of hatred, let us seek a different way, though that way be hard and require forgiveness and making amends, though that way means risk for all of us to give each other another chance. Merciful Justice give us another chance to redress the injustices we accept, such as more people incarcerated per capita than any other country on earth, such as continued disenfranchisement of those who have served their sentences, such as a lack of infrastructure and public services and greater pollution in poor areas.
Merciful Justice guide us in action today and every day, to open our hearts, change our laws, and rebuild our societies, through steadfast love, bold compassion, and faithful risk. Amen. Evening Prayer February 20, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 20, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer 19 February, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 19, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Love let us be convicted for goodness and mercy's sake. Love, let us be convicted for our generosity that shares in good times and even more in bad, when we are not sure if there will is enough.
Love, let us be convicted for our risking faithfully to do what is needful, to create with others good answers to problems in our world, our local community, our hearts. Love, let us be convicted for courageous vulnerability as we try to make the world a kinder and better place, a place where our imperfections are not failures, but places from which creative answers grow and connecting points where we need and appreciate one another. Love, let us be convicted of caring greatly, caring persistently, caring actively night after night and day after day. In our convictions we are tried, and in our trials may our hearts be found true and our deeds sufficient to this day.
Amen. Evening Prayer February 18, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Wisdom, tonight we give thanks for heroes, imperfect, fallible people who mustered their courage and met the needs of their times. We give thanks for Abraham Lincoln, who fought his own battles with depression and despair, who had to seek and strive for his own better angel of his nature as well as that of a nation's. We give thanks for the many hundreds of thousands who are unsung and yet who also fought for freedom, for unity, and who sought equality out of a nation that had forbidden it while claiming equality self-evidently so.
Wisdom, tonight we give thanks for heroes, known and unknown, imperfect and fallible, who mustered their courage and met the needs of their times. We give thanks for George Washington, who fought for freedom and still held others in bondage, and yet in battle welcomed all who would wrest freedom from and unfree time and equality from a time of tremendous inequality. How Congregations Can Respond to Hate Crimes. Evening Prayer February 17, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Gardener of Life, help us grow into a better world. Plant beautiful visions in our hearts. Water us with courage and with hope to create a society where every voice matters and every gift may be used and every person belongs, fully and truly, to offer the goodness they can.
Show us how to care for and build the soil of community, so that all of us, in our different cultures and languages, ways of reverence and ways of understanding, gifts and troubles, may grow as strong as we are able and participate, fully and truly, as a vibrant and life-affirming part of the whole. Gardener of Life, help us grow into a better world. Plant amazing possibilities in our hearts, and let us wake and find one another and bring them to fruition. Let us come out of this fallow time readier than ever, more committed and more steadfast, to bring the beauty of love, the beauty of compassion, the beauty of equality, the beauty of dignity everywhere upon this earth. Morning Prayer February 17, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 16, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 16, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 15, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. May this night be quiet and full of blessings: peace for those who are troubled and courage for those who care, love for those who are lonely and courage for those who love boldly, welcome for those who are without home and without rest and courage for them in accepting welcome and creating home.
May this night be quiet and full of blessings: the bruised of heart being held and reminded well that they do indeed matter, the anxious of heart meeting a quiet companion that they may together meet hope, the angry of heart finding a constructive way forward. May this night be quiet and full of blessings: dreams for those whose dreams need reviving, comfort for those who are grieving, and repentance and forgiveness for those who have transgressed.
May this night and every night be quiet and full of blessings of hope, of love, and of healing. Amen. Morning Prayer February 15, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 14, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. For Valentine's Day In the blessings of love, let us rejoice! Let us rejoice for the love that shares trials and challenges, that shoulders extra burdens when another needs a rest, that endures and carries on come what may. In the blessings of love that is steadfast, let us rejoice! Let us rejoice for the love that cares greatly, that helps those in need and accepts help from others, understanding the need to give as well as receive, the love that embodies compassion and embraces and holds up those who are in pain and lessens the sufferings that can be lessened.
In the blessings of love that is caring, let us rejoice! Let us rejoice for the love that is passionate, that encourages the downcast and brings zesty joy to those struggling, the love that weeps with those who mourn, and that laughs with those who celebrate, the love that knows and brings pleasure, and that quells fear. In the blessings of love that is passionate, let us rejoice! Morning Prayer February 14, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 13, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Lover of Life, Lover of Change, attend our heart's thanksgiving for the daily miracle of adaptation. We endure losses, and yet from these we can learn and grow, loving more boldly, discovering new strengths and skills, building upon what we have learned before.
Blessed are the ways of change where meet the mystery and out of that mystery comes new and beautiful ways of being, commitment to peace, commitment to love, commitment to giving thanks. What is perfection but the ability to love boldly and live generously? Stripped back in loss to what is essential, may we share our courage with one another, to find, create, and bestow blessings out of these daily mysteries. Our hearts are empty of thanks, empty of everything. But with great love, we discover great gratitude again.
Morning Prayer February 13, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 12, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 11, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Beloved, my soul treks out in search for you, wondering how it is that we can live so quietly with injustice, wondering how it is that mercy and kindness with all its rewards is so absent from much public life. In our hours of alienation, grant us the courage and the commitment to change, to find our neighbor in that stranger over there, to be with the imprisoned and know they too belong, to be with the brokenhearted and distressed and day by day and night by night find a different way ahead. May we understand that our laws are the expressions of our collective hearts, and may we make merciful and loving ones.
May we understand through our own fears that others are also afraid, and hold out our hearts and hands to one another through those fears until mercy prevails. May we understand we belong to one another and to this earth, and so remember in each breath and at every challenge and each distraction that we are called to care. The Wonderment: Assessing and Recommitting. One of the tests of religion is how well it helps us endure hard times. Another test is how its adherents live. The first test is about resilience; the second test is about values. The two are deeply intertwined. When I join with others in practicing my faith's values of compassion, mercy, generosity, love, respect, and justice, we have real effects in the world.
We also have to stretch and grow, relying on each other's strengths to compensate for our own weaknesses, which is one more reason why appreciating your neighbor's gifts and strengths is a good spiritual practice. As we practice these values and have our real world effects - such as, bringing a little joy to the downhearted, feeding the hungry, mentoring a child who needs someone to believe in them, offering refuge to those fleeing for safety, working to end unjust sentencing laws, and cleaning up a waterway -- we also feel good. Our lives are more meaningful. Lent is a time for Western Christians to clarify our faith values. Morning Prayer February 11, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 10, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 10, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 9, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 9, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 8, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. A Faith Worth Living.
Morning Prayer February 8, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 7, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 7, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 6, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 6, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 5, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. RevNaomi Tumblr ? GoodReads & Religious Leadership.
Morning Prayer February 5, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 4, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. The Wonderment: Acceptance and Adaptation. Morning Prayer February 4, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 2, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer February 1, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer February 1, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer January 31, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer January 31, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer January 30, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer January 30, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer January 29, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer January 29, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Evening Prayer January 28, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Morning Prayer January 28, 2013 - UniversalistPrayers. Quotes on universalism throughout church history. Universalism and the Bible. Christian Universalism Articles. UniversalistChurch.net - About Christian hope in the final restoration of all souls, and those that believe it.
A Southern "Universalist Church" History. UniversalistChurch.net - About Christian hope in the final restoration of all souls, and those that believe it. Universalism: A Time Line. UCONCI.HTML. New Massachusetts Universalist Convention. Unirondack, Inc. Retreat Center - Murray Grove Retreat and Conference Center. Universalist Heritage Foundation -- Universalism. NYSCU Home. Home. Universalist Convocations. The Christian Universalist Association - Christian Universalism.