We’re really like the onions
With skins beneath our skin.
Each face has ways of masking
The private worlds within.
CLEAR is what I want to feel and be when it comes to something that means as much to me as FAITH. I want to be at peace with what I believe and choose to say and do, with regard to my way of living in faith. I want to own it whole-heartedly. I don’t want to apologize or make excuses for beliefs that don’t make sense, saying things like, “You just have to take that in faith. Someday it will make sense to me, even if it doesn’t now. God’s ways are not our ways.” With Clear Faith, I am at peace.
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Impending marriage often leads couples to learn more about their traditions of origin. And that study can lead to confrontation with the question of religious pluralism. Is my partner going to hell unless she accepts Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior – really? Is my partner’s Hinduism possibly as good a path to Ultimate Reality as my Islamic faith is for me?
read moreWe all have stories we can share
Of times of failure and success,
Of highs and lows, of gold and dross,
Of frugal lives and love’s excess.
Dream, dream and never give up,
Hope, hope of a world to be,
Work, work for justice and dreams,
Put others first and set people free.
How can the time of peace come to Earth?
When will all bombs be banned?
How can true justice blossom in mirth?
When will the violence end?
All those who choose the Way
Of noble living
Must seek to grow each day
In joyful giving,
There are times when truth is this and partly that,
When love can bind extremes to be as one,
But at other times our heart says “you must choose the way
Of life or death, for you and Earth today.”
Thank you God for this beautiful Earth.
Thank you God for the wonder of life.
Thank you God for the blessing of love.
All things are connected
And everything is one,
The cells within our flesh,
The Moon, the stars, the Sun.
Great Life-Force, God of all nurture;
Honor and praise to you.
Your peace and justice fill the Earth;
Honor and praise to you.
Which code can assist us
Uncover the fullness
Of living and loving
Which our spirits need?
The energy of God,
Like yeast within the dough,
Can take a sterile life
And give it strength to grow.
Jesus Christ is alive and lives in me
As I touch the Christ within,
As I open my life
To the power of God’s love
I obey the Risen Christ.
A message in a bottle
In an ocean swirled with trash
Would there be someone to read it
If the ecosystem crashed?
King David was a man of fire
Who sang and danced for God.
The raptures of his heart’s desire
Were sacred gifts from God.
Abraham had stirring dreams
That called for emigration.
Steadfast faith sustained his search
Despite its worst privation.
In Matthew’s midrash of Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus tours all over Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, curing all kinds of diseases, and proclaiming that God’s kingdom has come. The verses in Chapter 4 selected by the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary for the third Sunday after the Epiphany are the preface to Matthew 5:1 through 7:29, the great Sermon on the Mount. Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee, and invites his disciples to leave their nets and become “fishers for people,” traditionally interpreted to mean saving souls from hell. But John Dominic Crossan, points out that Jesus could have brought his message anywhere in Roman occupied Judea. Why Galilee? Why Capernaum?
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