Eternal Patience, staggering and evolutionary grace and Life! We pause in our tracks to witness again the presence and power of community, the connection and compassion through it all – here and now. In this moment, we recognize that to our left and to our right, in front and behind us, there are others who desire the same things: Forgiveness, inclusion, love, hope, happiness and fairness. May this amazing realization stir us to new strength of conviction that we, indeed, create heaven and hell here on earth with and for our fellow travelers – through our gestures, our words, our apathy, our smiles, our service and care.

In these winter depths filled with cold feet, high heat bills, sore tail bones from sledding or slipping, shivers in our depths…we release ourselves now –nurturing ourselves and others to newness, to essential changes beyond the tyrannies of habit, complaining and blaming. We are mindful of transcending and including, letting go and taking on; contemplating again the dance and relationship of beliefs and works, of faith and action.

May our appetites for privilege and convenience be matched by our stomach for commitment and action; may our enjoyment of securities be matched by our restlessness and courage to make something new, something radical, something saving and just. May our dead-wood spending by curtailed so that a new simplicity emerges, opening our eyes to our own new plights and pleasures as well as the changes, losses and joys of others.

We think of the world and our fellow human beings and all creatures and land which groan and ache. We release our prayers and intentions to all in need of peace from constant bombardment; those who need a drink of clean water, a bowl of rice, a vaccination of life-saving medicine, those near and far. Those in the recovering community, those under Hospice care, those being born and those dying. We remember those losing jobs and homes and security; those whose relationships are strained from life’s anxieties.

With all these cares, joys and burdens, might we dare to realize dreams; bring our power and passion to creating life where there is death; to putting flesh of action on bare-boned intentions; to lighting new fires to the midnight of indifference and throwing bridges of care across canyons of loneliness and need. Then, in a season of action, may we live with the compassion, love and grace of the cosmic Christ and declare a bit more clearly, a bit more boldly that, indeed, as the ancient ones wrote long ago…that this earth and everyone in it are very good!

 

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