Author: Jocelyn
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rhythms for when your former rhythms (i.e. attending church?) fall through… for whatever reason
When former rhythms stop working (for whatever reason), I’ve learned that I need to replace them. Otherwise I fairly consistently just abandon whatever I’d been formerly doing. Rhythms are great because then when we miss a day (or three), we can just pick up where we left off. No guilt, no shame. We’ve tried a…
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“God bless”es
Sometimes when it is time to pray around our dinner table, we take turns “blessing” the people who were involved in the meal we’re eating. In some instances, “God bless” may be cliché, but it doesn’t have to be. For me and my co-travelers at the mealtime table, “God bless” is a dual way of…
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What kind of power do you have?
One way I’ve been thinking about injustice lately is through the lens of power. Injustice is many things, and just one way small way to think about it as the inequality of power. In a perfectly Just and Good society, power would be shared and borrowed and given. It might not be exactly equal, but…
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a poem for a glorious night
The moon’s face says it all:”Oh gosh,”as it looks down on us.It tries to look away but can’t.”Everything’s fine,” counters Sun.”In fact, everything is grand.And whatever isn’t will beon another turning.Just look at it – all glorying around!”I stare into Sun with closed lids.To my mind rush all of the dear onesfor whom tonight cannot…
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daily prayers
Life sure is full of the daily, isn’t it? It must have always been this way, but somehow a global quarantine has a way of drawing extra attention to it. My days feel different from what they were. But at the same time they feel more similar to one another than they have, perhaps ever.…
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Beauty and Love chasing after me
It’s Psalm 23:6 in the Jewish prayer book, in Eugene Peterson’s Message version. Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I seem to be far more naturally aware of other things chasing me. Aren’t we all? Work deadlines, home responsibilities, or things I ought-to be doing. Unfinished projects, a messy…
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waiting: if only I knew how long
I’ve learned to love to wait. Waiting is one of those things I know I’m not naturally very good at, and really didn’t want to learn, either. Cynically, perhaps, I have learned that often the dreamy anticipation of a thing brings more pleasure than the actual realization of the thing. More optimistically, I know that…
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Salvation. Spiritual Formation series, part 12.
I have a note on the bulletin board above my writing desk that says, simply: salvation: deliverence welfare prosperity preservation safety flourishing Wherever these things are present in your life today, there Salvation can be credited, already doing its good work. And wherever they are lacking, count it also as Good. Because in a life happy-to-the-brim,…
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Embodied spirits. Spiritual Formation series, part 11.
We are embodied spirits, after all. In the western world, we keep these two awfully separate – body and spirit. We tend to view the spirit as eternal, and the body as temporary. But it’s just not that simple. If you tend to believe what Jesus’ friends wrote about what happened to him after he…
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to look on him and pardon me
I was singing the old hymn “Before the Throne” to my boys at bedtime tonight and one line is “for God the Just is satisfied / to look on him and pardon me.” Some of my Christ-following friends wouldn’t give this line a second thought, not seeing a problem at all. Some of my Christ-following…