29 December 2011

ChRiSt iS aLL, and is iN aLL...

One more meditation from Fr. Richard Rohr:

We are too tiny, too passing, too recent to imagine any eternal greatness within us, but the Biblical pattern of incarnation always has God disguised and hiding inside of littleness, particularity, ordinariness, and seeming insignificance. God seems to want us to do the desiring and all the discovering. No one finds God who is not looking for God and willing to go to the edges to find God. Unless we leave our comfort zone, we really do not meet God at all, but merely pull God inside of our own small sphere, and it is no longer God that we meet at all. Just religion.

24 December 2011

tHeRe iS gOoD nEwS aT cHriStMaS...


Prayer: 
O Rising Sun, enlighten my darkness.


" Through the heartfelt mercies of God, 
      God's Rising Sun 
will break in upon us,
   Shining on those in the darkness,
      those sitting in the shadow of death,
   Then showing us the way, 
one foot at a time,
      down the path of peace.
"    (Luke 1:78-79)
Pre-industrial people were far more connected to the natural cosmos and seasons than we are today, and were very aware that the 21st of December is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere... not really the death of the sun—but its rebirth! The liturgical year was easily connected to the seasons of nature.