Watercolor by Melody Fuller
Words for the Journey
In the gentle embrace of stillness, our souls find a sacred guide, a whisper of divine wisdom that transcends the noise of the world. In the hushed chambers of contemplation, the chaotic echoes of daily life yield to a quietude where the profound becomes palpable. Like a timeless river, stillness carries us beyond the temporal, unveiling the eternal truths that lie beneath the surface of existence. It is in this deep quietude that our inner compass aligns with the divine, and we become attuned to the subtle promptings of the sacred within.
Guided by stillness, we navigate the currents of life with serene assurance, knowing that amidst the tumult, a tranquil reservoir of peace resides within. Here, in the sanctuary of silence, we discover that the truest guidance often emerges not through clamor, but in the profound hush where the heart listens and the soul discerns.
From a Contemplative Outreach newsletter
In the midst of the chaotic echoes of these days, may you find a deeper river, a quietude that aligns your inner compass to the Divine. In this Season of Prayer, may we find God’s assurance and God’s peace waiting for us in that reservoir.
A Prayer for after Hurricane Helene
O God of infinite grace and generous love, our hearts tremble to see the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene. We lift our prayers to you. Hold close all those whose homes & communities, businesses & places of worship have been overcome by water and wind, who awakened to upended lives and tossed landscapes. Grant your blessing to all those who will rush to help & heal in the immediate aftermath, to all those who will follow over time to recover & repair what has been lost. Stir resilience among all those who will walk the long road to full recovery. Receive their tears. Absorb their shock. Console their grieving hearts. Resurrect what’s been broken & destroyed. Illuminate paths to the future when exhaustion & desolation overwhelm. Move all of us to respond with hearts of compassion, acts of service, & generous giving. O God, hear our petitions. And let our prayers endure and our response be sustained until fresh hope arises from the ruins. Amen.
Offered by Rev. Shari Prestemon, Acting Associate General Minister and Co-Executive of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ
Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart is Not Breaking
On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons equals the collective weight of every animal on earth. Including the insects. Times three. Six billion tons sounds impossible until I consider how it is to swallow grief— just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed a neutron star. How dense it is, how it carries inside it the memory of collapse. How difficult it is to move then. How impossible to believe that anything could lift that weight. There are many reasons to treat each other with great tenderness. One is the sheer miracle that we are here together on a planet surrounded by dying stars. One is that we cannot see what anyone else has swallowed.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Music provides a powerful antidote to the uncertainties of our time, a time when Yeats’s despairing phrase “. . . the centre cannot hold” seems so distressingly relevant. The following works are offered with the hope that you may find in them comfort, serenity, perhaps even hope.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantata 80, “Ein feste Burg” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”). fifth movement. Bach’s setting of the third verse of Luther’s Reformation chorale conveys that no matter the challenges His people face, God can intervene.
https://tinyurl.com/y6539e5z
Morten Lauridsen, “O Nata Lux.” Lauridsen’s setting of this 10th-century text is the central movement of his Lux Aeterna. The text is a petition to Jesus to hear our prayers, praises, and to accept the lost.
https://tinyurl.com/yt98ak9h
Margaret Bonds, arranger: “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” This well-known spiritual remains an uplifting affirmation of God’s presence in the world.
https://tinyurl.com/3ujnzk4j
Moses Hogan, arranger: “We Shall Walk through the Valley in Peace.” If Jesus leads us we will walk through the valley in peace; there will be neither sorrow nor dying. We Shall Walk through the Valley in Peace.
https://tinyurl.com/2c5d8b2c
Offered by Dan Raessler
Deep in the Quiet Wood
James Weldon Johnson
Are you bowed down in heart?
Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life? Then come away, come to the peaceful wood. Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now, From out the palpitating solitude
Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains? They are above, around, within you, everywhere. Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come. They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones. Now let your soul run the whole gamut of the wondrous scale Until, responsive to the tonic chord, It touches the diapason of God’s grand cathedral organ, Filling earth for you with heavenly peace And holy harmonies.
Offered by Deborah Raessler
Prayer of Uncertainty
God, I pray to you now filled with confusion and uncertainty. I look around me considering all the violence and troubles in the world today. And begin to doubt your efficacy and power. I know that there are a large number of ways to understand who you are, Or if you even exist!
However, I know that most people in this world seek to find a better way to live. They seek some sort of guidance, and many find their guidance from you. I know that often we all project our own understanding of power on to you, assuming that you think and operate much like the best of ourselves. Such grand presumption of ourselves - to think that we know what you are, what you want, and what you do!
I pray today that my desire to make myself a better person pleases you.
I pray also that I always remember to reach out in love to help all others because I feel this is what you want of me and is the most fruitful way that I can live. Isn’t this fruitification the purpose of all creation?
I pray that this desire to live my life to the fullest, guided by my understanding of you brings to me peace amidst my confusion and uncertainty. Amen.
Prayer Written by Kevin Pettit
Art by Catherine Woods, 2024
Forget About the Speed of Light
What about the speed of honey?
If we moved at a glacially slow pace, would our days be sweeter? Would we lay on the floor, turn our faces towards the sun, listen for the wind, and pray with our breath? Would we stretch after we run, and wake up slow?
Would we prepare meals with orange slices and cloves, or rosemary and coarse sea salt? Would we remember to thank the bees, along with the sun and the rain? Would we let the goodness of life stick to our fingers, drip down our chins, coat our throats along with our words?
Sarah A. Speed – Writing the Good
O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and night wraps itself around me,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Not enough now to take off the coat, the gloves.
Let me take off my skin, my words, my thoughts
so that you can see the sky here—so that
I might be as transparent as air and you will find nothing
here but love. There, I said it, love. Not the images of love,
not two birds or two rivers or one bread or one blood,
not anything I could ever say but love itself, infinite, a blue dome
expanding at the same rate as the universe, on and on, past the stars, there goes the Scales, the Bull, the Scorpion, the Ram, beyond whatever we could name, it grows on and on and on and on and on
~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Prayer Walks with Jane Ireland
Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:20).
Prayer walking is a spiritual tool to bless the land upon which we walk to provide for and benefit its inhabitants and to honor God. Join Jane Ireland and others as you are interested and able for one or more prayer walking loops encompassing town and city centers and across our landscape. Scripture passages, selected by Jane, will accompany you on your journey.
Prayer Walk Loops: Encompass
• Quantity - 8 prayer walks: new beginning (includes one family walk)
• Frequency - Every 5th day: grace, Tuesday, Oct 1 thru Tuesday, Nov 5
• Time - 3:00 pm: a number signifying divine completion
• Distance - 2 walks around the venue
Encircle the venue once, then encircle once the immediate city blocks.
Prayer walking is a spiritual tool to bless the land upon which we walk to provide for and benefit its inhabitants and to honor God. We are praying peace and righteousness over our cities, towns, county, state, and federal government.
For more information visit - https://tinyurl.com/3y6s8rau
Prayer Walk 4 - City of Lafayette
Wednesday, October 16 at 3 pm
Location: Meet in front of Lafayette City Hall at 1290 S Public Rd, Lafayette
Prayer Walk 5 - City of Louisville
Monday, October 21 at 3 pm
Location: Meet in front of Louisville City Hall at 749 Main St, Louisville
Prayer Walk 6 - Town of Superior
Saturday, October 26 at 3 pm
Location: Meet in parking lot of Superior Town Hall, 124 E Coal Creek Dr, Superior
Prayer Walk 7 - Chautauqua
Thursday, October 31 at 3 pm
Location: Meet in the Chautauqua parking lot below Chautauqua Auditorium, 12th St, Boulder
Prayer for the state of Colorado
Prayer Walk 8 - Flagstaff Summit
Tuesday, November 5 at 3 pm
Location: Meet at Flagstaff Summit, Flagstaff Dr, Boulder
Prayer for Washington DC: United States Supreme Court Building, Capitol, and White House
But the Silence in the Mind
By R. S. Thomas
But the silence in the mind is when we live best, within listening distance of the silence we call God. This is the deep calling to deep of the psalmwriter, the bottomless ocean. We launch the armada of our thoughts on, never arriving.
It is a presence, then, whose margins are our margins; that calls us out over our own fathoms. What to do but draw a little nearer to such ubiquity by remaining still?
Offered by Charley Rastle