Annie Dillard – Jackson Community Church

Themes of listening for a holy call filled with passion and purpose from Book of 1 Samuel.

By jacksonnhccPosted on May 31, 2018Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged 1 Samuel, Active Listening, Annie Dillard, Beyonce, call, calling, Colin Powell, Dorothy Sayers, Ellen Davis, Émile Zola, Ernest Hemingway, Fran Lebowitz, God, Jacqueline Novogratz, Jane Goodall, Jordan Raynor, Krista Tippett, Leo Buscaglia, Lord, Madeleine L'Engle, Marie Howe, mindtools.com, Mothere Teresa, Oprah Winfrey, Oswald Chambers, passion, prophet, Purpose, Relevant Magazine, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sally Sheffield, Sarah Dessen, Simon Sinek, Simone Weil, skillsyouneed.com, Stephen Covey, Stephen King, Swiftly Tilting Planet, Vincent van Gogh, Zeno of Citium

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind. ― Madeleine L’Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet

The Meadow (excerpt) — Marie Howe

Bedeviled,
human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life.

3 Questions for Discerning Your Calling
(excerpt)— Jordan Raynor, Relevant Magazine

… entrepreneurs and creatives … tended to ask three excellent questions when discerning God’s calling on their lives:

What am I passionate about?
What gifts has God given me?
Where do I have the greatest opportunity to love others?

It’s these three questions which will help you discern where God has called you to expend your energies …

Continue reading “Themes of listening for a holy call filled with passion and purpose from Book of 1 Samuel.”

Reflections from Jonah and Mark 1: Being Called

By jacksonnhccPosted on January 16, 2018Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged Annie Dillard, calling fisherfolk, Daily Examen, discernment, Dr Seuss, Emilie Zola, Fady Joudah, Ignatian practice, Jeannette Walls, Jonah, Kathleen Norris, Mahmoud Darwish, Margaret Walker, Mark, My Utmost for His Highest, Oprah Winfrey, Oswald Chambers, Plum Village, ralph waldo emerson, rumi, Sister Chân Hài Nghiêm, Stephern King, The Quotidian Mysteries, Vincent van Gogh

For My People (excerpt) — Margaret Walker

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way

from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,

trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,

all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a

bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second

generation full of courage issue forth; let a people

loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of

healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing

in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs

be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now

rise and take control.

Oh the Places You’ll Go (excerpt) — Dr. Seuss

You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!

Do you wonder what you are called to do? Whom you are called to be? Are you reflecting on a decision? The Ignatian discernment process may be helpful. Here is a link to an article that outlines this spiritual process briefly, or you can go to the original website for a more in-depth approach.

Or are you looking for a simple way to pray each day, and reflect and be mindful each day? Try the Daily Examen, another Ignatian practice.

Continue reading “Reflections from Jonah and Mark 1: Being Called”

Reflections on water & respite in hard times and places

By jacksonnhccPosted on September 27, 2017Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged advocacy, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Annie Dillard, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Barry López, desert, doubt, Exodus, fear, Francis of Assisi, Frederick Buechner, Josephine Miles, Juan Felipe Herrera, Mary Hunter Austin, Moses, Pema Chodron, Sharon Chmielarz, spring, thirst, water, well, wilderness, William Langewiesche

As one commentator says, “there are many kinds of thirst.” Where do we find respite and rescue in the midst of dry, hard, troubled times? What are the wastelands of our lives? Where do signs of life surprise us in our personal and communal “desert places”?

You should not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There are many forms of thirst. — William Langewiesche

Water Water Water Wind Water — Juan Felipe Herrera

water water water wind water

across the land shape of a torn heart

… again and again a new land edge emerges
a new people emerges where race and class and death
and life and water and tears and loss
and life and death destruction and life and tears
compassion and loss and a fire …
rumbles toward you all directions wherever
you are alive still

If you don’t die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young. — Anne Lamott

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well. —Antoine de Saint-Exupery

This is the sense of the desert hills, and there is room enough and time enough. — Mary Hunter Austin

Water is life’s mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness–especially in the wilderness–you shall love [God]. — Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces

Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure. — Francis of Assisi

I alternate between thinking of the planet as home–dear and familiar stone hearth and garden–and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. — Annie Dillard

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected … On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there … Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together. ― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are

… there are no crows in the desert. What appear to be crows are ravens. You must examine the crow, however, before you can understand the raven. To forget the crow completely, as some have tried to do, would be like trying to understand the one who stayed without talking to the one who left. It is important to make note of who has left the desert. — Barry López, Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven

New Water

— Sharon Chmielarz

All those years—almost a hundred—

the farm had hard water.

Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange.

Sink and tub and toilet, too,

once they got running water.

And now, in less than a lifetime,

just by changing the well’s location,

in the same yard, mind you,

the water’s soft, clear, delicious to drink.

All those years to shake your head over.

Look how sweet life has become;

you can see it in the couple who live here,

their calmness as they sit at their table,

the beauty as they offer you new water to drink.

Desert — Josephine Miles

When with the skin you do acknowledge drought,
The dry in the voice, the lightness of feet, the fine
Flake of the heat at every level line;

When with the hand you learn to touch without
Surprise the spine for the leaf, the prickled petal,
The stone scorched in the shine, and the wood brittle;

Then where the pipe drips and the fronds sprout
And the foot-square forest of clover blooms in sand,
You will lean and watch, but never touch with your hand.