Quiet Space 21st February 2021
Hope / Goodness
Stilling - The Celtic Wheel of the Year by Tess Ward
Collected in quiet I come to you
My twilight spirit enters slowly.
In the stillness,
In the silence,
You look on me and love
And say it is enough.
To be here,
At this moment,
Is enough.
Silence
Bible reading – read twice
Genesis 1 ; 31 The message
God looked over everything he had made ; it was so good, so very good!
Silence
The celtic wheel of the year by Tess Ward
Re-awakener of the earth,
By bright celandine and charm of catkin,
Your promise is there to be seen, this day,
Reminding me that your Spirit is always generating,
Even in the desertscape days when I cannot feel the juice of your presence,
Be the inhale and exhale of my breath,
The rhythm of the present moment.
Be in the sole of my foot and palm of my hand as I touch the world today.
Midst the off-colour drudge and drear,
The virus and infection
Be the care that creates the world and renews in apparent barrenness.
For I know that buds will burst from their hard shell,
And Spring will follow winter
And so may I know your unseen hand, in the fact of this day as I set forth.
Silence
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a time of pandemic and beyond by Matthew Fox
“God has revealed his goodness with such abundance and plenitude” observes Julian. We live in a world abundant and overflowing with goodness – and “the first good thing is the goodness of nature.” Here she tells us to get out of our own stuckness with the human condition and open our eyes and hearts to the abundant goodness found in nature. The sky, the stars, the moon, the waters, the earth, the trees, the flowers, the animals, the birds, the whales, the elephants, the dog or cat who is our companion, the rivers and the forests – are they not goodness incarnate?
Julian is urging us to wake up to the goodness all around us, within us, and embedded in our work. To wake up to goodness is to wake up to God’s presence. Goodness lies deep in the foundation of things; being itself is good, existence itself is good – indeed very good as Genesis one puts it.
Creation is good and it speaks to us of both its goodness and our own – provided we open our hearts and minds to hear that wisdom. If we are dwelling in self-pity or guilt or focusing too much on suffering, we miss these deeper lessons of living.
Silence
Reflections by John O'Donohue from Divine Beauty - The Invisible Embrace
"There are secret sources of courage inside every human heart; yet courage needs to be awakened in us. The encounter with the Beautiful can bring such awakening. Courage is a spark that can become the flame of hope, lighting new and exciting pathways in what seemed to be dead, dark landscapes."
"When beauty touches our lives, the moment becomes luminous. These grace moments are gifts that surprise us. When we look beyond the moment to our life journey, perhaps we can choose a new rhythm of journeying which would be more conscious of beauty and more open to inviting her to disclose herself to us in all the situations we travel through."
"The beauty of God is the warmth of the divine affection...To participate in beauty is to come into the presence of the Holy."
Silence
Blessing of Hope by Jan Richardson
So may we know
the hope
that is not just
for someday
but for this day -
here, now,
in this moment
that opens to us:
hope not made
of wishes
but of substance,
hope made of sinew
and muscle
and bone,
hope that has breath
and a beating heart,
hope that will not
keep quiet
and be polite,
hope that knows
how to holler
when it is called for,
hope that knows
how to sing
when there seems
little cause,
hope that raises us
from the dead -
not someday
but this day,
every day,
again and
again and
again.
Unmute and bless each other with the Grace
