Jackson Community Church

Summit, Spirit, Sky: connect to community and creation!

daily devotional

Lenten Reflection Day 46 (April 8): COME TO PASS (Isaiah 42:1-9).

SONG: The Chant: Come To Pass: https://youtu.be/kc6dEx9cgR0

POEM: Rachel Hadas: Pass It On III (excerpt): … Death makes life shine …

QUOTE:  Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.

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

Lenten Reflection Day 45 (April 6): WILL NOT BREAK (Isaiah 42:1-9).

SONG: Kevin Rudolf ft Lil Wayne: I Will Not Break: https://youtu.be/mNcSwvo007s

POEM: Mark Kirschen: Monet (excerpt): Sunlight will not break us—Rather / We move illumined / Return daily…To save what has been hammered / By the sun / Most of it unmapped, still / Uncharted…

QUOTE:  Bob Marley: …he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break.

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

Lenten Reflection Day 39 (April 1): DELIVERANCE (Psalm 40:5-10).

SONG: Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell: Dueling Banjos (Deliverance 1972): https://youtu.be/p8t8uqEf6_A

POEM: Linda Hogan: The History of Red (excerpt): … A wildness / swam inside our mothers, desire through closed eyes, a new child / wearing the red, wet mask of birth, delivered into this land / already wounded, stolen and burned / beyond reckoning.

QUOTE:  JRR Tolkien: Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

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

Lenten Reflection Day 38 (Mar 31): LAW (Psalm 40:5-10).

SONG: This Side of the Law by Johnny Cash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GWe4sOIEeY&feature=youtu.be

POEM: Albert Goldbarth: Laws of the Universe (excerpt): … Well, we could: if the laws of the universe changed. It’s only the Earth that makes us so heavy. It’s only our lives that keep our lives / from floating off into the nothing.

QUOTE:  Herman Hesse: For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers … In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured.

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

Lenten Reflection Day 37 (Mar 30): WRITTEN (Psalm 40:5-10).

SONG: Written in the Stars by Tinie Tempah ft Eric Turner: https://youtu.be/YgFyi74DVjc

POEM:Beatriz Miralles de Imperial, translated by Layla Benitez-James: “I write until my face is erased” –  I write until my face is erased / only who I am no longer / can tell me

SECOND POEM:Nabina Das: Anima Writes a Letter Home (excerpt): Dear mother and father and old and young people of my home. Dear pets and weeds and flowers and footfalls. I write to you in a script speckled with time. I write to the language of a poet and many who chanted after her. I quote those verses which are laments, songs, praises, and warnings

QUOTE: Toni Morrison: If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Lent & Easter, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , ,
Scroll to top