“Flee, be silent, pray always” the desert spirituality (Henry Nouwen)
The Whole Of Life Is Sacramental
We need to guard against under-valuing the material expressions of spiritual things. It is easy to make a form of our very rejection of forms. And in particular, we need to ask ourselves whether we are endeavoring to make all the daily happenings and doings of life, which we call secular minister to the spiritual. It is a bold and colossal claim that we put forward—that the whole of life is sacramental, that there are innumerable ‘means of grace’ by which God is revealed and communicated—through nature and through human fellowship and through a thousand things that may become the ‘outward and visible sign’ of ‘an inward and spiritual grace’. A Barratt Brown, 1932
The first call is to God, to faithfulness.
Out of faithfulness rises the call to live in peace.
In these times, we hear God calling us to live peaceably, ourselves, in all our relationships.
We hear the challenge to pay attention, inwardly, in our households and families, at work, in our meetings and communities, and in the wider world. We are awakening to the challenges of mediated relationships, relationships we do not experience directly, with people who are most affected by our politics and government actions--close to home or across oceans--, with those who make clothing we wear, who harvest food we eat.
We see responses to this call in actions grounded in worship. Gathered in session as a yearly meeting, we are settled. Our reports are becoming messages. We are learning to let go in faithfulness, to pay attention in trust. We see responses in our lives and work at home. We believe that we can learn and live our unity, upholding one another in love and truth, with a tender hand, waiting and acting in faithfulness. NYYM Worship and Action for Peace, 30 July 2004
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