Sharing

Sharing – 1st Week of Lent

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My Friends–we continue again this week with the wisdom of Fr. Ed Hays…

Kything Day–The Scottish word kything means to be spiritually present to another person. Today, experiment with the practice of being spiritually in communion with someone. As you connect with a friend, a family member or someone you know who is in need, do so by recalling memories of that person, perhaps an image, a common thought or emotion or a scent. In your kything prayer you might strive to picture that person in his or her environment.  Then add to your kything a blessing prayer for whatever needs that person might have on this day. On any day, whenever the thought of someone enters your mind, practice the prayer of kything.  Blessed are those who do not only go to Communion but live in Communion.

We need each other.  By consciously connecting yourself with those who share the same vision as yours, those with whom you are joined by love and friendship, is to be for them a source of graceful energy.  While invisible to the eye, even the eye of a microscope, love is as real a source of energy as electricity.  Perhaps someday we will have the technology to see love.  For now, we can  only see its powerful effects all around us. Even when we love others at a distance, we see those effects by eyes of faith, for love knows no limits or boundaries.

Blessings on your Lenten Week!

Pastor Kathy

Sharing – 3rd Week of Lent

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More wisdom from Fr. Ed Hays—

The Feast Day of Your Conception–This week on March 25, we will celebrate the Conception of Jesus, whose birth will be celebrated nine months hence on Christmas.  Today is a feast to remember the day you were conceived in your mother’s womb.  As a symbolic gesture, count down nine months from the date of your birth and turn to that day on the calendar. As one of your Star-Date entries, inscribe it as Conception Day. When we come to that day, remember your father and mother prayerfully and with gratitude.  Then reflect on how, along with their love, the Holy Spirit was also involved as the Spirit of Love in the holy act of your conception.

If you believe the life begins at conception, then consider measuring your years from that date instead of your birth date. When asked your age, you can playfully give two numbers.

Or you can count six months from your birth date and inscribe that day on your calendar as your half-birthday. Consider throwing a half-a-party for yourself on that day. On your half-birthday you might reverse the usual birthday custom and give gifts to those you love to celebrate the occasion.

Life is a celebration, and the more personal feast days we enjoy the more life can be lived as a joy instead of a duty.

Sharing – Ash Wednesday

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We are reminded today that “to dust we shall all return” and with that we begin the holy season of Lent. You will recall that our community will have the opportunity on the First Sunday of Lent to receive ashes.

Something new that I would like to do this Lent is to share a weekly reflection from a good man of the Church, Fr. Ed Hays, now gone home to God, but for over 50 years served as a priest in Kansas and for many of those years, as the director of the Shantivanam Prayer Community for the Laity in Easton, Kansas. Fr. Ed was a self-taught artist, a contemplative and one who always “pushed the envelope,” moved “outside the box” to give readers of his prolific writing a fresh, open and spirited idea of faith and religion. I hope these reflections will enrich your Lent.

Lenten Satellite Day

This is a Lenten celebration not to see if you are like a moon orbiting around a planet or some NASA object orbiting the earth, but to see if you are an original satellite. The word, satellite was first used for a person who attended, or was a follower of, some prince or person of great importance.  The satellite was a parasite, who praised the prince and curried favor for personal gain.

Today, pause and ponder whether you are a disciple-follower of Jesus or only a satellite. A true disciple is called not to flatter or fawn over the master with pious songs and prayers, but to follow the master.  As Jesus himself said, “It is not those who say, ‘Lord, Lord,’ who shall enter God’s domain but those who daily do the will of God” (Mt. 7: 21).

In the prayer of Jesus, we say with one breath, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.”  To follow Jesus is to strive constantly to make God’s time-reign-kingdom come wherever you work, live or even visit.  No better definition for a disciple could be found than one who makes God’s time his or her time.  The prophets spoke of God’s reign as coming  at some distant time, and Jesus announced that this long-awaited time had come with him.  So it must be for all who dare call themselves his followers.  If our lives announce only the old time of injustice, inequality, and religious, racial and sexual division, regardless of how many times we have been baptized,  we should find another name for ourselves besides Christian.

A blessed Ash Wednesday! 

Peace and love, Pastor Kathy

A Sharing — Love Day!

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 Dear Friends,

I came upon this reflection from Sr. Joan Chittister this morning and thought it a good one to share for our thoughts and prayer today, and tomorrow. Enjoy! 

Happy Love Day!—Pastor Kathy

Happy Valentine’s Day
Ananda, the beloved disciple of the Buddha, once asked his teacher about the place of friendship in the spiritual journey. “Master, is friendship half of the spiritual life?” he asked. And the teacher responded, “Nay, Ananda, friendship is the whole of the spiritual life.”

Love is something learned only by the long, hard labor of life. It is sometimes over before we’ve ever known we ever had it. We sometimes destroy it before we appreciate it. We often take it for granted. Every love, whatever happens to it in the long run, teaches us more about ourselves, our needs, our limitations, and our self-centeredness than anything else we can ever experience. As Aldous Huxley wrote: “There isn’t any formula or method. You learn by loving.”

But sometimes, if we’re lucky, we live long enough to grow into it in such a way that because of it we come to recognize the value of life. As the years go by, we come to love flowers and cats and small infants and old ladies and the one person in life who knows how hot we like our coffee. We learn enough about love to allow things to slip away and ourselves to melt into the God whose love made all of it possible. Sometimes we even find a love deep enough, gentle enough, tender enough to detach us from the foam and frills of life, all of which hold us captive to things that cannot satisfy. Sometimes we live long enough to see the face of God in another. Then, in that case, we have loved.

—from 40 Stories to Stir the Soul by Joan Chittister