Sunday July 29, 2018
This Sunday -
Dear St Luke Community,
This Sunday concludes the four week series on practices, although this won’t be the last time you’ll hear me talk about them. There are countless faith practices available to us but perhaps none greater than prayer, depending on how you understand prayer. It’s easy for us to think about prayer as something daunting. How shall I pray? Should I kneel or fold my hands? Should I use words of petition or intercession and what do
those words mean anyway? Barbara Brown Taylor address these questions in her chapter on The Practice of Being Present to God. In it, she quotes Brother David, an Austrian Benedictine monk who distinguishes between prayers and prayer. Prayers are good… but prayer is waking up to the presence of God no matter where you are or what
you are doing.
This week I had a taste of what that can mean when I tasted a friend’s freshly made blackberry jam. The color, smell, and taste became a prayer of the simplest kind. The bushes in her backyard, her hands that picked them, the mason jar that popped as she opened it, the smell of summer as I inhaled it, and the sheer joy I felt when I tasted it, all became a prayer. A prayer of gratitude I suppose, for life’s simplest but greatest gifts.
Frederick Buechner says this;
Whatever else it may be or may not be, prayer is at least talking to yourself, and that’s in itself not always a bad idea. Talk to yourself about your own life, about what you’ve done and what you’ve failed to do...talk to yourself about what matters most to you, because if you don’t you may forget what matters most to you.
See you Sunday,
Nicole
PS-We will welcome Jillian Robinson and her Fair Trade Booth after worship to show our support for Pedal for Protein; the Presbytery’s annual event that raised over $40k last year to combat hunger in Marin and Sonoma counties. Please come ready to do some early Christmas shopping for jewelry, scarves, fair trade chocolates and coffee.