Search Results
Intercessions by Ian Black - Dedication Sunday
Intercessions by Ian Black - Dedication Sunday
by SPCK - Ian Black
Dedication Sunday - Years A, B and C (Alternative for First Sunday in October or Last Sunday after Trinity) Truly the Lord is in this place This is the gate of heaven. Lord of the heavens and earth, you need no place made by human hands to dwell among us. Rather, we make a shelte…
Prayer: Great God, your love
Prayer: Great God, your love
by Marjorie Dobson
Prayer: Great God, your love Great God, your love is so vast that it stretches beyond the boundaries of our imagination. We look to the skies and cannot see the extremities of space, yet your faithfulness exceeds those limits. We explore the depths of the oceans, but your justice…
Poem: A birth
Poem: A birth
by Marjorie Dobson
Poem: A birth Lonely, frightened and bewildered they wandered, with no place to stay and a crisis coming on them imminently. Doors and windows spilled light and noise, but there was no space to welcome their weariness; no warmth to wrap around their cold discomfort. Turned away a…
Open with God Book - Disaster - natural
Open with God Book - Disaster - natural
by Christine Odell
DISASTER - natural Prayers for Various Occasions Reading Psalm 46.1-7 Creator God, we want to offer you our praise but when we try to picture your creation instead of wondering at its beauty we are appalled at sights of the death and destruction caused by the …. (disaster) in …. …
Poem: Safety
Poem: Safety
by Marjorie Dobson
Poem: Safety Walking on moors, discovering a circular stone wall intended as shelter for sheep against storm and danger, or for weary walkers caught in a mist and losing all sense of direction, makes plain the words of the Psalmist that God surrounds his people in protection ... …
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Staircase
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Staircase
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Most days we use the stairs of our homes without a thought about their possible meaning beyond enabling us to climb. And often we don’t even think about that obvious use. Yet stairs and ladders have always been powerful spiritual images. Humans have forever wanted to transcend th…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Door
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Door
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We enter our dwellings through a door. When the door closes we are within the protection of our home. Yet we do not always want to be enclosed and protected. We also want to let the world in, to crack the door, to set it ajar, to invite that which is new into the trusted and fami…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Floor
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Floor
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
We don’t seem to pay attention to the floor unless it is missing, unless it has a spill or an obstruction on it. Mostly we are confident that the floor is present and we merrily step upon it. Many things become floor-like to us—certain steady relationships, certain habits, certai…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Roof
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Roof
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
To have a roof over our heads is to have a home. Days of storm, days of intense sun, gray days, pleasant days—the roof is there and we are sheltered. How easily we take that fact for granted, yet all around us there is homelessness—a roof-less population. In appreciating that we …
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Window
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Window
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
If we have been out in the dark, how comforting to see a lighted window; if we have been shut in, how refreshing when the light finds us. Without windows a house is a tomb. We need light and air. We need the new day to enter our homes, to bring us out of the night’s slumber and o…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Wall
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Wall
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Many people who meditate sit facing a wall—facing a limit in order to find the limitless inside. Many pilgrims have traveled to stand beside the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem or to be witnesses by the walls where the names of the dead are inscribed. We need walls to help us with memo…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Hearth
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - The Hearth
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
Not many homes have an actual hearth, a place for fire to burn freely. Most of us live in apartments or houses without fireplaces. Nevertheless, every dwelling has a subjective center for fire. It is the place where we gather, the place we are warmed. It is no accident that the w…
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Dwelling
Simple Ways - Towards The Sacred - Dwelling
by SPCK - Gunilla Norris
To dwell is to live in a place, to remain in it. Any space we truly occupy becomes, through dwelling, a home— becomes, through time, a sanctuary. There is, in the word dwell, a sense of repose. When we really inhabit our homes we gain a sense of time, and are then more able to kn…
Poem: The Castle on the Rock
Poem: The Castle on the Rock
by Marjorie Dobson
Poem: The Castle on the Rock (Scarborough Castle in North Yorkshire had stood for centuries, but was severely damaged by shells from German battleships in 1914 when the town was attacked from the sea and people were killed and property destroyed in an unprovoked incident.) I can …
Look around: so many places