Jackson Community Church

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Weekly Meditations

Lenten Reflection Day 2 (Feb 23): RETURN (from Joel 2:12-17).

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SONG: Return to Innocence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk_sAHh9s08

Return to Innocence

POEM: The Return (excerpt) by Ezra Pound. … See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back; These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,” inviolable.

QUOTE: JRR Tolkien: I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and people who will see a world that I shall never know. But all the while I sit and think of times there were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

Ash Wednesday with JCC: Reflections and schedule

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JOEL 2:12-13
Yet even now, says the Lord,  return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;  rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love…

WED, Feb 22

  • ASHES to GO
    • 8-10am: JTown Deli
    • 10:15-11:30am: Autumn Nomad
    • Noon-1:30pm: Glen Ledge Deli / McSheffreys North
    • 2-3:45pm: JCC Sanctuary
    • 4-4:30pm: Red Parka
  • ASH WEDNESDAY SERVICE
    • 7pm • Nativity Lutheran, North Conway
      JCC attends Lutheran service to enjoy local clergy John Heropoulos , MDiv lead the liturgy

MUSINGS on ASH

If you have become ash,
Then wait, you become a rose again.
And do not remember how often you have become ash,
But how often you were reborn in ashes to a new rose. ~ Rumi 

I can hear the sizzle of newborn stars, and know anything of meaning, of the fierce magic emerging here. I am witness to flexible eternity, the evolving past, and I know we will live forever, as dust or breath in the face of stars, in the shifting pattern of winds. — Joy Harjo

SONGS about DUST & ASHES: 

WILL YOU MEET US? — Jan Richardson
Will you meet us in the ashes,
will you meet us in the ache
and show your face within our sorrow
and offer us your word of grace:
That you are life within the dying,
that you abide within the dust,
that you are what survives the burning,
that you arise to make us new.
And in our aching, you are breathing;
and in our weeping, you are here
within the hands that bear your blessing,
enfolding us within your love.

REND Your HEART
—Jan Richardson
To receive this blessing, all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart / so that you can see
its secret chambers, the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated / to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering,
for trusting the breaking,
for tracing the rupture
that will return you
to the One who waits,
who watches,
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.

MARKED by ASHES (excerpt) — Walter Brueggeman  
Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .

This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given,  
or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us
with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us
with the tasks of the day,
for we are already halfway home
halfway back to committees and memos,
halfway back to calls and appointments, 
halfway on to next Sunday,
halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned toward you, half rather not.
This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
we ourselves are ashes to ashes,
dust to dust; we can taste our mortality
as we roll the ash around on our tongues.
We are able to ponder our ashness with some confidence,
only because our every Wednesday of ashes anticipates
your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.
On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you — 
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday
with mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we wait for the
Risen One who comes soon.

PRAYER — Mary Oliver

May I never not be frisky,
May I never not be risque.

May my ashes, when you have them, friend,
and give them to the ocean,

leap in the froth of the waves,
still loving movement,

still ready, beyond all else,
to dance for the world.

MEDITATIONS on MUD & SOIL
― Thích Nhất Hạnh

It is possible of course to get stuck in the “mud” of life. It’s easy enough to notice mud all over you at times. The hardest thing to practice is not allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by despair. When you’re overwhelmed by despair, all you can see is suffering everywhere you look. You feel as if the worst thing is happening to you. But we must remember that suffering is a kind of mud that we need in order to generate joy and happiness. Without suffering, there’s no happiness. So we shouldn’t discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness.

— and —

The soil of our mind contains many seeds, positive and negative. We are the gardeners who identify, water, and cultivate the best seeds.

Living Psalm 51—Ash Wednesday
CONFESSION for CREATION JUSTICE
Written by Maren Tirabassi

To any leader. A Psalm of David, when he took what he wanted, uncaring of the death and damage it caused, which was great.

Have mercy on us, O God, 
with the love that shaped all creation,
for we confess that we have been the ones
who blotted out — made endangered and extinct —
creatures of air and land
by destroying their habitats.

If there is any clean water left, wash us,
but only after the creatures 
of the oceans and lakes and rivers
return and are healed.

For we know our transgression —
we have torn off the tops of mountains
and our sin has fracked deep
into the very fissures of the earth.

Against you, melting your glaciers, we sin,
and we have done what is evil,
so that wildfires rage across
Australia, California, 
and the Amazon rainforest
and the fox and koala and ocelot
judge us by their death.

Indeed, we are guilty against the newly born
who will be eleven years-old,
when our greed changes their earth
beyond hope of repair.

You desire truth, 
but we clutch lies about the climate.
Help us repent so we can hear wisdom,
and make us wise enough to repent.

Let us not be clean,
but dirty in a community garden,
and wet with sweat 
because we have walked and biked,
taken buses instead of cars,
cleaned ourselves with quick showers.

Let us taste the joy of locavores,
celebrate grizzly, wolf, gray whale, 
sea lion, panda,
who have come back to thriving.

Most of all — let our hearts be stirred
not by what makes us wealthy in money
but what makes us wealthy in future.

Create in us a pure heart, O God,
and renew in us
the Spirit that hovers over your creation.

Then we will let our children teach us,
honor sacred lands of indigenous peoples,
open our lips for national parks
and our mouths for wildlife refuges.

Deliver us from being destroyers, O God,
and give us tongues that call for change.

For you have no delight 
when we pile abundance on abundance.
The gift that pleases you 
is one pollinator saved —
butterfly and bee, O God, is our acceptable prayer.


 

Lenten Reflection Day 14 (Mar 7): KEEP YOU  (from Psalm 121).

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Calendar, Home, Lent & Easter, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , ,

SONG: Keep You Mine by NOTD, Shy Martin: https://youtu.be/fuI0bEdoF30

POEM: Joy Harjo: For Keeps (excerpt): … We know ourselves to be part of mystery. It is unspeakable. It is everlasting. It is for keeps.

QUOTE: Coco Ginger: Wanting nothing in return, except that you allow me to keep you here in my heart, that I may always know your strength, your eyes, and your spirit that gave me freedom and let me fly.

Lenten Reflection Day 13 (Mar 6): HELP  (from Psalm 121).

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Lenten Reflection Day 13 (Mar 6): HELP  (from Psalm 121).

SONG: Help! by The Beatles: https://youtu.be/2Q_ZzBGPdqE

POEM: Ashanti Files: Martyr (excerpt): I don’t want to be a martyr, But I see you calling for my help.

QUOTE: Carl Sagan: In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer

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I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and … almost involuntary in my life … And when I talk about prayer, I mean really … what Rumi says in that wonderful line, “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground”. — Mary Oliver

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men” — John F. Kennedy

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. — John Bunyan

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God. — Billy Graham

SONGS about prayer:

Renditions of The Lord’s Prayer:

RESOURCES about the LORD’s PRAYER;

WHAT WE NEED IS HERE— Wendell Berry
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Thoughts on Prayer

For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God. — Saint Teresa of Avila

Exercise, prayer, and meditation are examples of calming rituals. They have been shown to induce a happier mood and provide a positive pathway through life’s daily frustrations. — Chuck Norris

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. — Soren Kierkegaard

I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help. Thanks. Wow. … You may in fact be wondering what I even mean when I use the word “prayer.” … Prayer is private, even when we pray with others. It is communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding. Let’s say it is communication from one’s heart to God. Or … to the Good, the force that is beyond our comprehension but that in our pain or supplication or relief we don’t need to define or have proof of or any established contact with. Let’s say it is what the Greeks called the Really Real, what lies within us, beyond the scrim of our values, positions, convictions, and wounds. Or let’s say it is a cry from deep within to Life or Love, with capital L’s … … Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence. — Anne Lamott

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty; and wish to see you with a hundred eyes . . . I am in the house of mercy, and my heart is a place of prayer. — Rumi

A PRAYER FOR YOUR WILD SOUL — John O’Donohue 
Give yourself time to make a prayer
that will become the prayer of your soul.
Listen to the voices of longing in your soul.
Listen to your hungers.
Give attention to the unexpected
that lives around the rim of your life.
Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future,
to the voices of those near you and those you have lost.
Out of all of that attention to your soul,
make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul,
yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability;
that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine
forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigour
to challenge your blindness and complacency;
enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty.
Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.

ORD’s PRAYER Commentary

The Lord’s Prayer has a central place in Christian worship. The plural “our” is used throughout, so that those giving voice to the prayer acknowledge both the presence of God and their connection to a wider praying community. The first three petitions focus the worshipers’ attention on God. The remaining petitions turn to “our” needs, asking God to help all of “us.” — Craig Koester

The Lord’s Prayer (the Our Father) appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. We pray the expanded version from Matthew 6:9-13. It is part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus summarizes his proclamation of the gospel, or Good News. In the same way, the Lord’s Prayer is at the heart of this sermon because it can be said to summarize the whole gospel.
       With this prayer, we enter into communion with the Father and with Jesus, who has revealed him to us. Praying this prayer helps us to develop the will to become as humble and trusting as Jesus.
       In the Lord’s Prayer, we praise and glorify God and petition for what we need. There are seven petitions. The first three are addressed to God and draw us to him for his own sake: thy name, thy kingdom, thy will! The last four concern us and our needs that the Father fulfills: give us, forgive us, lead us not, deliver us. — Loyola Press

Initial words on the topic from the Catechism of the Catholic Church teach that it “is truly the summary of the whole gospel”. The prayer is used by most Christian denominations in their worship and with few exceptions, the liturgical form is the version from the gospel of Matthew. Protestants usually conclude the prayer with a doxology (in some versions, “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen”), a later addition appearing in some manuscripts of Matthew. Although theological differences and various modes of worship divide Christians, … there is a sense of solidarity in knowing that Christians around the globe are praying together … and these words always unite us. — wikipedia.com

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