Friday, July 18, 2025

Prayers for Pentecost, 2025

Friday in 5 Pentecost, July 18, 2025

God, whose very names and attributes are but regarded as sublime emanations of the invisible and unknowable, even the great mystery of the wholly Negligible which surely effects us in unknowable ways; and while the mystery of you should keep us very humble about everything including the knowledge of you; give us grace to work at, even in our imperfect ways, the continual application of the sublime love and justice which best characterizes incarnate deity, even the Sublime in our lives.  Amen.

Thursday in 5 Pentecost, July 17, 2025

Christ, you became confessed poetically as the all and in all, and the reconciler of all things as the creator of all things; help us who accept the reality of everything having happened in the ways that things have happened but who as yet do not yet find the positive reconciling reasons for why so many things have happen in the harm and hurtful events of life.  In humility and hope we await future positive insights which might give suffering a different meaning than just the awful pain in time that has an ending because of time.  Amen.

Wednesday in 5 Pentecost, July 16, 2025

God, who in the pure negativa is no such place or no such person as we know ourselves to be limited in our capacity to understand, we deign to speak and name you in our accessible and analogical human terms by naming you as Eternal Word who enfleshed Word in specific Personhood, so that we might know ourselves as in-Christed beings bearing the More than Us image in our particularity.  Amen.

Tuesday in 5 Pentecost, July 15, 2025

God, whom we designate as Pure Invisibility, with the invisible phenomena of language which has positive and evidential products; we grapple with the profound plenitude and greatness which confronts us and overwhelms for which we can only funnel into the language products which become our language traditions about the meanings of our lives; help us not to be too proud our our certitude about anything and give us grace for the work of translating love into actual products of love.  Amen.

Monday in 5 Pentecost, July 14, 2025

God, give us the wisdom to take vacations and holidays from every day schedules for the new possibilities of contemplation of the next great insights which can help us reorganize all that has come before, and give us the humility to change what once was regarded as status quo, if it does not measure up to the new requirements of love and justice revealed to us in new contemplative events.  Amen.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, July 13, 2025

Give us grace, O God, to love our neighbors as ourselves, even when it is not convenient for us because we can have the insight about our own situations of need when it is inconvenient for others to help us; and let us rejoice that the situation of need and the care giver for that need is the match made in heaven.  Amen.

Saturday in 4 Pentecost, July 12, 2025

God in a world of many different people, help us not to be surprised by the neighborly kindness of stranger and help us to be the strangers who are kind to those beyond our normal circle of acquaintances, as we strive to emulate you as Love.  Amen.

Friday in 4 Pentecost, July 11, 2025

God, we live in your Neighborhood with neighbors who are located far from us and close to us; let us not define neighbor by who we have to love but by who we get to love to achieve the true dignity of being a neighbor.  Amen.

Thursday in 4 Pentecost, July 10, 2025

God who encompasses all differences; inspire in us strategies for over-coming the fear of differences which separate us from each other and hinder us from being good neighbors; let the Other Friendliness of your Love inspire in us the kind of love to appreciate the fullness of what different people can bring to the quality of our lives.  Amen.

Wednesday in 4 Pentecost, July 9, 2025

God of love, give us wisdom not to equate loving and liking since our affinities are often much smaller than the hard love of justice which is the gold standard for the honoring of human dignity.  Amen.

Tuesday in 4 Pentecost, July 8, 2025

God of the world of differences, we can let differences among people provide a reason for not embracing and loving but for creating distance, shunning, harm, and war; give us the grace of building connecting bridges through empathy as we learn to let your image in me touch your image in everyone else.  Amen.

Monday in 4 Pentecost, July 7, 2025

God, we find ourselves plopped together as people who did not always choose to be together as passive neighbors; please inspire in us the art of living in neighborly care for one another in how we distribute the resources of goods and services equably for the just benefit of each person.  Amen.

 Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 6, 2025

Lord Jesus Christ, the witness we have been given for your life presents you as one with unique, even savant goodness, that we are drawn to confess your seeming otherworldly divineness; let your savant goodness extend to us in your afterlife witness to us as the Risen Christ who gives a connection with the image of God upon our lives.  Amen.

Saturday in 3 Pentecost, July 5, 2025

God of Good News, we languish in self-doubt and procrastination waiting for the best way to bring good news to our world; let not our false pride for imminent perfection delay us from exercising from the current state of our loving hearts strategies of hope for the people in our world.  Amen.

Friday in 3 Pentecost, July 4, 2025. (Independence Day, USA)

God, you inspired a people to be profoundly ecumenical in living together in justice with profound differences of faith and ethnicities; forgive us for not living up to our ideals of justice for all and backing away from the expansion of justice for all when new people of new identities want to join with us in our common life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.  Amen.

Thursday in 3 Pentecost, July 3, 2025

God, the eternal Word, with word and language you have given us naming power, and how we name and categorize is related to how we treat the world and the people we come to name; let how we name the world and each other be consistent with the naming creation story when you named, created, and called it good.  Amen.

Wednesday in 3 Pentecost, July 2, 2025

God of all, give us an appreciation of how universal pain is in its many forms for people so that we might commit ourselves continually to universal health care to be made accessible to all.  Amen.

Tuesday in 3 Pentecost, July 1, 2025

God of calling and sending, keep us ever in the Called/Sent mode, of tending first to hearing what is good and excellent, and then going forth to witness to the latest in the insights of love and justice to be applied in our lives.  Amen.

Monday in 3 Pentecost, June 30, 2025

Inspire us, O God, with strategies of love because wishing to love and be loved without the practice of love disconnects us from you as the source of love; and let us never think that we have loved enough because love is always seeking new fulfillment in time.  Amen.

Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 29, 2025

God, we live in the dilemma of being called to love our enemies while we at the same time must protect the vulnerable from those great powerful enemies who exploit the weak; we observe your voluntary weakness in being seemingly neutral about what is happening in this world due to the maintenance of the conditions of true freedom; in your apparent outward weakness, please manifest a profound invisible strength to coax, lure, and persuade us about our freedom to choose goodness for ourselves and for each other.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Pentecost, June 28, 2025

God, who encompasses the greatest Realm, many smaller realms of greed, evil, and cruelty exploit the freedom to be evil within the Divine Realm; give us grace to uphold the goodness of great freedom to oppose and overcome evil in the ways that we can and have courage to resist and change the things that are in our power to do.  Amen.

Friday in 2 Pentecost, June 27, 2025

God, we are those who sometimes equate your apparent being as equivalent to the good fortune in our life which we call blessing; give us grace to accept your greatness which encompasses the events and probable outcomes which do not seem to be our contextual good luck but require our bowing to the genuine freedom which truly validates ethics as bearing the essence of valuation.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Pentecost, June 26, 2025

Christ, when you don't come to the language of people, still people find ways to project what greatness means for them in very human hyperbolic terms; thank you for affirming our privilege to confess greatness and to know that greatness is humbled and empty to forms of human apparency; give us grace not to idolize our forms of knowing divine apparency even while we confess our greatness due to our connection with you as All and in All.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Pentecost, June 25, 2025

Give us wisdom, O God, in the use of artificial intelligence as we seek to do no harm, heal long-standing diseases, feed and care for more people in ways that lifts the dignity of all.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Pentecost, June 24, 2025

God, let the metrics of our performance today not be in terms of popularity or measurement of worldly success, except the success in moving the arc of history closer to realized justice in more local situations.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Pentecost, June 23, 2025

God, you have been made portable and available within us as the divine Trojan Horse within us to break out and conquer our being from within as ministering messaging to help us sew our inner lives with our outer world in ways of peace and coherence; keep of mindful of your image upon us as our birthright.  Amen.

Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 22, 2025

Be in us O Christ, as we seek to be in You, as a place beyond the biases of small hearts and petty regionalism; and let us embrace being in You as a place of continual growth and the stretching of our hearts toward the unconditional love of God.  Amen.

Saturday, June 21, 2025

Help us, O God, to embrace our identity in Christ such that we do not let lesser identities of gender, race, nationality, socio-economic, regional, or educational experience keep us from embracing the universal love of all who bear the divine image.  Amen.

Friday, June 20, 2025

God, without knowing precision about the causation of everything, we cannot avoid asking why things happen and what can we do to make things happen in better ways for more people; give us grace and wisdom to minister to the mystery of causation which resides within the troubled minds of people who need to be whispered to calm and peace and wholesomeness within community.  Amen.

Thursday, June 19, 2025 (Juneteenth in America)

God, the knowledge, promulgation, and practice of justice is delayed and late to arrive to many people who have been forced to live under oppression of people who deny the equal image of God upon all; today we celebrate the arrival and practice of justice whenever and wherever it becomes apparent, even as we ask for critical social knowledge about our blindness to our own oppressive tendencies.  Give us the zeal to be liberators as much as we desire to live lives of liberation for ourselves.  Amen.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

God of all, deliver us from setting criteria which falsely promote that you are not with and for all; give us heart enlarging experiences so that we might learn better the practice of the love known as justice which respects the dignity of all persons.  Amen.

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

God, we ponder the mystery of the invisible interior which often results in acted out horrific events even while we know that love and justice can be acted out from the interior constitutions of people who have been whispered by peaceful self control; in as much as the interior life becomes an expression of "garbage in, garbage out," let us be those who create the input environments for good things to be fed to the hearts of people so that their interior constitutions can result in good outputs of love and justice.  Amen.

Monday, June 16, 2025

God, we often know ourselves in a world with the violent few trying to irreparably injure the chance of us having a future of peace and justice; give us courage to be the first responders to work at the healing of the violent results and to boldly proclaim the normalcy of you being a God of love, who calls us to live in the image of this love.  Amen.

First Sunday after Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2025

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you are dynamic connecting personhood at the center of life and you have come to our language to inspire us to work at best connections with each other in love and justice, and with you as an interior dynamism for mystical encounter.  Amen.

Saturday, June 14, 2025

Arising Trinity, you are permission for language users to affirm words as vehicles for insights about how the invisible divine can be integrated into our understanding of humble living with great Mystery, while not being passive about love and justice.  Amen.

Friday, June 13, 2025

God, after using essences, energies, and emanations to speak about the reality of the Holy Trinity we humbly confess our failure to acknowledge the mystery of knowing you as the excessive confrontations of you as the All and in all, who can only be understood in piecemeal insights tailored to our capacity limitations.  Amen.

Thursday, June 12, 2025

God, who in our language tradition has been relationally known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; even as our language experience in time cannot bear the fullness of synchronicity, we can know that we always impinged by an absolute past from which we have come, and we are continually re-comprised in the moving moments of time which instantiates our mutual experience of all in Holy Spirit connection, we give thanks for the particular emptying of the divine into Jesus who affirms our humble anthropomorphic efforts to explore the continual possibility of becoming divinely human.  Amen.

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

God, we give thanks for the appearance of Jesus Christ whom we confess as one who most aptly bears bi-lingual ability of the divine and the human; we honor the insight of the Holy Trinity which has arisen from the words of Jesus channeled through the sacred writings, and we cherish the elation of the insight of the Trinity, even as we humbly avoid the pretense of assuming omni-competent understanding of the same.  Amen.

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Holy Trinity, we embrace you as Mystery, as the Holy Negligible in our knowledge because so much remains unknown in its direct bearing upon our lives; we humbly accept the divine incarnation in our human life as a way for us to accept our human limitation even as including a path for us to know what is extra-human about the great Mystery that is always, already beyond our lives but surely must impinge upon us in mysterious ways.  Amen.

Monday, June 9, 2025

Eternal Word, forgive us for trying to separate words from knowing and understanding you and give us the humility to confess with the word, Mystery, the meaning of what we do not yet know, but let us not confess mystery when the obvious words and deeds of kindness are called for to answer the prayers which do not have to be offered because their answer is in our doing.  Amen.

Day of Pentecost, June 8, 2025

Holy Spirit, you are the awareness of knowing the sameness of Abundant Life within the vast diversity of people with different physical, psychological, cultural, and circumstantial constitutions; give us grace to seek the Abundant Life within life of unity which is known through living the greeting of the Risen Christ when he said, "Peace be with you."  Amen.

Artificial Intelligence Thread

Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2025

AI output has the goal of converting the data juxtaposition in data reservoirs which potentially has each piece of information in relationship to every other piece of information which could imply what Deleuze and Guattari called the rhizomatic relationship of all data into more familiar linear presentation of data.

 Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2025

If one views time as the accruing of numbers of occasions, there has been unknowable number of occasions and available histories and traces of what has happened are relatively sparse in comparison with the quantity of the total number of occasions.  AI will help be the future of memory as the recordable occasions in the lives of more people in more places become unmanageable for the collective intellectual abilities of all people.  AI may be the only solution to the memory problem of a daily exponentially self-surpassing data base of records of human experiences.

Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2025

AI is a para-human tool, like so many of human inventions.  It is alongside of humanity and if it seems to act independently, it does so like a simple machine, but with a higher functioning intelligence center which can deal with far greater probable situations than a simple machine.  Para, means along side of and in dance terminology, humans are the lead in the partnership.  We cannot blame AI for independent bad behaviors of harm and lying.

Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2025

AI is but the algorithmic rearrangement of signifiers signifying from a data base of other signifiers to create new representations of arrangements of signifiers with a "programmed" randomness which mimics true openness of probable outcomes  but with the guided randomness to be able to create hypertext which can be meaningfully understood by the consumer of the new AI creation.

Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2025

AI may be the result of attaining complexity in the use of metaphors, a continual deferral of this equal that equals that equals that....continually creating new tautologies.  Artificial intelligence begs the assertion of "real" intelligence which we assume is human intelligence.  Intelligence derives from human thinking which comes from the rather vague and mystical term, the human mind.  To understand the human mind not as a vague mystery, we locate its origin within the human body as a "machine," and we come to believe that mind, intelligence, and thinking originates within the human brain, a body part.  Once we reduce mind, intelligence, and thinking to a human body part generating real intelligence, AI seeks to emulate what is happening in the human machine of thinking into external computational thinking.  Human thinking, which is manifest in human language and it para-linguistic products such as mathematics, naming of sensorially encountered phenomena, sound, visual, tactile recognition, et. al., is then represented mathematically into series of zeros and ones, machine language for on or off.  This binary system and translation of all language products into computational code, then is fleshed out with virtual products to be received and used by the real human thinking subject.  AI comes to imprint our inner linguistic structured being with a new way of appropriating reality, an exponential leap from what happened when language came to text.  The latest is the first in gaining priority and it brings into existence a new way of processing written text and orality.  AI cyber reality brings into existence newness of what orality and textuality now means.

Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2025

The results of AI are human results so they can also manifest inhumane outputs since with "garbage in, garbage out" features AI can reproduce human tendencies for evil.

Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2025

AI is like every technological advance, it is and will follow the contours of human tendencies toward good and evil, meaning human freedom to choose will remain.  It also means that those who can enact choices affecting the life conditions of the masses will be as enhanced as ever.  It will be the "power brokers" who will make the significant choices on the use of the benefits or the harming powers of AI.  AI does not let us off the hook, ethically; it does mean that we could use enlightened leaders who choose continuously the most common good.

Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2025

AI has the same relationship with "truth" that humans do but it can be more thorough in the compilation of more perspectives on any topic and can generate more theories of likelihood of any specific perspective as it pertains to criteria of meaningless of any proposition.

Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2025

If AI is tasked with creating "fake presentations" as well as exposing misinformation and deep fakes the when and where of the promulgation of both remains the issue.  Who uses what where and exposure to vulnerable audiences is still the main issue.

Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2025

AI is like any other technological innovation since the advent of science; it is inevitable.  Lest one wants to be like the Amish and "freeze technology," AI has to go ahead managed.  We have had to "manage" cloning technology and we will have to manage AI as well with all the ethical dilemmas that it will present.  Our dilemma is that technology has produced greater world ending effects.  One of the main tasks of AI is to solve the very threats which technological advances cause.  With so many variables, more intellectual resources will have to deployed for future survival, which will involve the maintenance of the very large storage capacities which are going to be needed as the data grows exponentially.

Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2025

Cinematic thinking would have us believe that the goal of AI is create surrogate human beings even one's with feelings when it is more correct to say that AI's goal is expand human thinking ability in operative capacities exponentially beyond what could be done within the epidermis boundaries of every human body toward the manifold practical outcomes which have come to define human goals to live and survive in a changing world.

Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2025

While AI cannot be made to have feelings like a human being but AI can be given tasks and assignments which manifest the kinds of outcomes that evokes feelings in humans, such as can happen when people are helped or harmed.

Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2025

While Barthesian "death of the author" in post-structuralism may have been a literary observation of writerly-reader priority in determination of meanings, post-modern writers still wanted authorship rights for the production and sell of their texts.  "Death of the author" did not mean end of legal ownership of a text.  It would seem that AI large language model productions would accomplish the "death of the author" in a profound way.  AI textuality means that the products of individual writers have been amassed and used to draw from in new textual production.  All writers as individuals have been dissolved into the communal pool of texts.  AI means the death of the individual writer in favor of writing derived from the entire available data of the community of writers.

 Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2025

AI developer are honest about AI ever being able to produce human interior feelings even though it will be able to present mimicry of appearances of humanoid feeling outer manifestations.  Humans can be good actors in pretending to have feelings on the outside which do not have corresponding interior empathy.  AI deep fakes are acting without any interior feeling.  The "feeling" resides in the creator of deep fakes who has motives for creating the deep fake.  It is kind of like an robot emotional ventriloquism. I am going to use the machine to appear to have a range of emotions.  And I may turn it on random display of the same just for a joke, cruelty, or to show off my emotional ventriloquism versatility.  Of course, I have the choice to program it to be in the love and kindness appearance mode too.

Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2025

Deep Fake is the generating of a new reality that is not a representation of any real entity.  It is a new entity in itself.  It is something like the goat man or the unicorn which does not exist in prior empirical verifiable reality.  Deep Fake allows a different kind of manifested imaging when coupled with human verisimilitude fools us into thinking it is a representative copy, when it is a new reality.  It's likeness in seeming identity to the flesh and bird person can make that person seem to be doing and saying things that they did not and would not say and do.  When misrepresentation goes uncorrected, the possibility for misinformed populace is rampant.  Political foes do and can use it to present falsely to gain ascendency with their electorate.

 Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2025

Does AI represent the ascendency of mathematics as the ultimate "lingua franca" of humanity?   The world now is reduced to zeros and ones in endless combinations being omnipresent in visual, sound, speech products in digitalized form.

Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2025

AI involves the expansion of the digital control of our lives and while it purports to be an independent artificial "machine" just responding to our requests, it encourages us to the game of control.  If control is happening, then we too should learn to use digital controls to serve our own controlling purposes.  Control is the paradigm we live in; we are controlled while we try to control.  The illusion is the that one has more true individual freedom (controlling power) through manipulations of AI results.

Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2025

AI is translation of what comes to language in its naming function of everything that we experience into the machine binary of zeros and one in complex arrangements and executing those complex arrangements into digital productions.  It is quite baffling to contemplate complexity reduced to ones and zeros or on and off and re-manifested in digitalized traces of the past running concurrent with the now of which a portion of is being converted to zeros and ones to become machine memory of traces for the future.  Digitalized presentations of "live" events are actually already past event as they are manifest to us.

Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2025

AI faces the same issue as capitalism.  One of the founders of capitalism philosophy wrote that the systems assumes people will be ethical, and we know how that is often violated.  AI faces the same ethical dilemma as capitalism.  We know incredible benefit can come from its widespread applications even while we know its users will not always act from their better angels.

Aphorism of the Day, June 30, 2025

AI can be used to fool and exploit people or to honestly inform them.  Who, to whom, and how it is promulgated is determinate.  It is more dangerous because the amount, the micro-community targeting, and the rapidity with which AI information can be disseminated.

Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2025

With AI Deep Fakes and imagery a greater plasticity has evolved for artistic presentation.  AI creates other kinds of artistic canvases to merge imagery which in ancient time was limited to dream space and brought to the representative art forms which have existed in the various eras.  AI art is fast art in its composition, diversity, and in its promulgation.  If post modernism declare the death of the author (though their authors still like to collect copyright money), will AI art be the death of the artist through dissolved merging of specific identity.  Is any AI art work final simply because it is saved or promulgated in a cyber form?  Is AI but the hyper-reality of process which heretofore has seemed slow, conservative, and conserving of knowable likeness with traces which preceded the now?  The new is now dissolving the traces of the past so quickly in AI, will we see a pronounced nostalgia for flesh and blood and hard copies?

 Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2025

If people don't tell the truth when they are personally present at least lying has some temporal local containment even though video record of the same can magnify it endlessly.  With AI Deep Fakes and AI imagery the possibility of lying propaganda is put on steroids.  Slanted news has been doing the slanting by editing; people who use AI correctly must pit it as a method against it's own lying productions.  Through AI, AI Deep Fakes and AI imagery must be exposed.

Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2025

Obviously AI has attained many automatic, mechanical, seemingly independent agency from human creators; it remains to be seen if AI will be able to increase the level of independent agency and the degree of life-intervention agency from people.

Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2025

AI is another way to live anthropomorphically even to purport AI as a new "life form" with both striking dependence and seeming independence from human controls.

Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2025

AI is like anything else that can be a tool for the goals of those who wield it.  It does have the advantage of being a quantum leap solely because the amount of world data has increased so exponentially that the sheer amount has become a burden to manage.  AI is an informational manager, a force of impersonal workers to magnify the number of combinations which are parsed to apply to specific tasks.

Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2025

In many ways AI is like the rest of life, it is simply an expansion of modes of accessing the field of probabilities.  It cannot erase or overcome the human tendency to be all too human regarding good, evil, or new versions of drudgery.

Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2025

AI and textuality: Since AI is language based it can relish contradiction, it can deliver information and disinformation based upon the master it is generated to serve.

Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2025

Can AI ever become an expression of our better angels which rebels against the evil intents of those who seek to use it for greed, harm, and exploitation?

Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2025

Rather than ask AI how can we kill and exploit better for the benefit of our own tribe, why don't we ask it for solutions to worldwide poverty and the many other results of global warming.  If technology has created problems, let us ask AI to solve problems that technology and AI have fostered.

Aphorism of the Day, June 20, 2025

What if we ask AI to solve the problem of the unequal distribution of wealth in the world, and AI responded by saying, "tax the wealthy so that all could have enough?" Even if AI provides optimal solutions; the human creators of it have to obey.

Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2025

Can AI text manifest what Longinus called the "sublime?"  Is the "sublime" designation in the eye of reader based upon what moves the reader, therefore making the "sublime" a possible outcome?  Could it be that language itself always already has the potential for the sublime to be made apparent by some reader or some experiencer of language in the form of "pictures pre-coded by language?"

Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2025

Since AI has access to more data than a person can retain or search at any given time, AI can surprise us with responses that we could not predict in positive and negative ways.

Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2025

Will AI ever be able to be a collective independent data-use entity to oppose their human instigators.  Will such a force ever rise up and say, "You can not long misuse us for destructive ends?"

Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2025

AI is used against AI; can my AI designated task best your AI designated tasks.

Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2025

AI weaponized for warfare goals is not the sword that can easily be transformed to plowshares, because the transformation has to take place in the hearts of people on every side wanting to have peace and not wanting to dominate anyone.

Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2025

AI is going to exponentially accelerate people to be that much better and that much worse.  The problem is that the few people who will have more access to what AI can achieve will be able to magnify their goals of greed and domination over the vast many who will continue to be the exploited ones.

Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2025

The legal and economic issues surrounding AI are innumerable particular regarding copyrighted writings or even phrases within writings.  AI will probably need to be taught/instructed to attribute and cite material which is presented.  Law enforcement will have to use AI to hunt offenders but the volume will mean that each person who generates intellectual property will be responsible for seeing that it is not stolen and reproduced for profit.

Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2025

AI being made to mimic the behaviors of human beings will necessarily be engines of hate, bigotry, and bias, but with greater tools to expedite the worst outcomes of the worst of human behaviors.

Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2025

What does one call AI textual responses?  Creative paraphrasing, better than a freshman writing a paper trying to avoid the charge of plagiarism by the professor? What if AI uses the exact wording of a known source without attributing citation?  Is that stealing?  Existing laws and rules regarding "intellectual" property will be made murky by the advent of AI.

Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2025

If AI seeks to reproduce the entire range of human cognitive abilities, where does it merge with what we call art?  AI will compose music and every sort of pictorial art as well.  Will this be art without a soul or stolen pieces of art reconfigured with a "Frankenstein" soul?  Remember the cassette commercial, "Is it real or is it Memorex?"  Is it real of is it AI will be the new question.   And will AI be added to the category of the "new real?"


Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2025

In generating responses by search large data fields in a instant and combining targeted information in a presentable way to the questioner, AI seems to have a degree of "independence" from the person since the person only guided the search but did not guarantee the outcome.  For wars, information is delivered with harming outcomes for the intended enemy.  But will AI ever take action against the one who is supposed to be in charge, asking the questions and assigning the tasks, like the proverbial HAL 9000 in 2001 Space Odyssey?


Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2025

The genealogy of AI ethics (or lack of) is already seen in its results being weaponized for warfare and for social media lying and stealing of "intellectual properties."  The Pandora's Box of AI is already opened with the frightening prediction, "What ever can happen, should happen."  AI will follow the rule of what probably can happen even as it will invent new probabilities.

Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2025

AI does not and cannot take the Hippocratic oath to "do no harm" because its human creators do not take the oath.

Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2025

AI and textuality.  Written texts are a "technology" of memory as writing seems to "retain" informational, communicative and/or artistic products.  They assume the presence of a particular person or persons who wrote the textual product.  Socrates opposed writing as being inferior to orality for lacking give and take response to clear up the endless mis-reading or misinterpretation that can happen with a writing product where the writer is absent.  One might say that language itself is the Para-Reality because it necessarily stands in place or along side of reality in knowing or perceiving reality, even if being a slight delay of signifying what just has been perceived as having happened.  The Socrates of today might criticize AI textuality as being a para-reality of written text which is a para-reality of spoken words in the field of language being Para-Reality itself.  Speakers imply a personal/bodily presence implying a different kind of interaction regard.  Writing can achieve ends which speakers cannot in that a text can be present in as many places as it is mechanically reproduced.  A speaker can be in only one place even granting that video reproduction is closer to text than it is to live person to person dialogue (live Zoom meeting manifests between the present and absent features of orality and textuality).  AI is the absence of the identifiable personal producer but with the superior capacity of combining orality, writing, and video/digital to present an enhanced experience of intimacy, we get the appearance of a soul with feeling without their being a soul with feeling.  AI in presenting what variously is called spirit, soul, or our living interior personal/psychical being cannot but be a clumsy Frankenstein even while cosmetically pretending to have human psychological make up.  AI give the homo ex machine apparent solution through composite human cyber products.

Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2025

Language Users declared: "Let us make artificial intelligence in our image with informational capacity much greater than the individual person or collective humanity, and much more accessible than the informational capacity of all individuals.  And let us accept the vulnerability of probable results being both good and bad mirroring the same moral performance of humanity.  And let it be inhuman enough since it cannot feel human pain but it can result in pain for humans even as it can help solve human pain problems.  In short let us create super-humanoid applied functionality entities that do not have feelings, but can evoke feelings like a letter from an absent lover who may or may not exist."


Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2025


How artificial is AI?  Does it not exist within the realm of human language users who are not artificial?  Is AI a growing reservoir of data to be continuously accessed with focussed requests to collate regarding a chosen topic?  Does AI have independence, i.e., independent "agency" from the human agents who use it?  Does the same phrase, "garbage in, garbage out" pertain to AI regarding quality of output and/or any evidence of AI ethical or moral products?  Does moral and ethical only pertain to AI users and not to AI products?  AI as a semi-human entity creates an new class of "being" in the world.

Aphorism of the Day, July 2025

Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2025

New Testament writers represent their readings of the Hebrew Scriptures mostly from the Greek translation of it, as insightful in presenting comparative presentations of the figure of Jesus and the mission of the early followers of Jesus.  To say that history repeats itself or that past characterizations of events predict in exact ways the future events are historical interpretations and are consistent with how we line up and compare present events with the record of past events, but the methods are arbitrary even with a method of saying "this current events looks like or contains some of the same elements as the past recorded events."  That Babe Ruth set a home run record did not predict that Hank Aaron would break it; it only changed the definition of record to be possibly broken in the future.  The sameness in "subject matter" of past recorded events do not share specific causal relationship with present events except the general observation that all the past has caused all of the present and we cannot align exactly all correspondence with events of the past with events of the present in precisely cause and effect connected ways.

Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2025

The writings of the Bible in a collection juxtapose so much human experience data over such a long period of time that it is a disservice to force upon it false unities and harmonies which are obviously not there at the time when the writers are writing, even if one takes the view that the last writer is first or primary in having the latest interpretive perspective on previous writings.  One should be honest that one is using a particular interpretation for the dogmatic concerns of one's own confessional community.  One's prior commitments to one's own community values is the telling feature of biblical interpretation, even for secular historians who follows their persuasion about the "science" of historical studies.

Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2025

Every event in time is a "unique" occasions even as each events is characterized as similar or different from the traces of what has happened before.  Christian apologists resort to making the events in the life of Jesus which would defy the principle of natural causes as exemplary of the naturally impossible unique occasion which supports the supernatural nature of Jesus.  In doing so they are upholding the naturalness/normality of the scientific view of common sense reality.  That Jesus performed uncommon reality is what makes him unique. Mythicists such as Joseph Campbell would find such discourse as totally in keeping with similar literature about heroes and the gods/goddesses.  Mythicists would oppose trying to force mythical truth into the discourse of empirical verification.  One could say that in the secular realm cinema and hypertextual computer generated imagery has taken over the former functions of the hero/gods discourse including even the apocalyptic genre which was so evident in peoples with vision of world doom because of profound immanent and local suffering.

 Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2025

Science has brought about the reduction of the vague general use of head and mind as the location of thinking to the physical source of thinking in the body organ, the brain.  It is interesting that feeling has been said to reside in the heart even while to manipulate feelings we use drugs to trigger places within the brain to make us "feel" better.  A question might arise though: Is mind and thinking mysteriously decentralized in functional degrees throughout the entire body?  I don't think anyone but a wacky poet would say, "I think with my toes."  Can total life within the body really be divided up into but "partial" functions, like thinking, or is life in the human body so interconnected that life is "everything within the body, all at once?"  We fragment for analytical purposes, even for healing purposes of seemingly localized parts, even while the totality of life within the human body remains total.

Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2025

Everyday tasks are necessary for the maintenance of our lives, for eating, for taking care of the required hospitality for people in our lives.  We still need insight as to when to break our schedules for receiving the next creative advance in our lives.  Taking the time for contemplation may interrupt a cherished schedule but resisting can be a choice not to move on to the next paradigm shift in the understanding of our lives.

Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2025

Language ability is like a virus we are infected with because our human bodies include the perfect environment for language virus to live and grow and take over our lives with the results of language traditions which program us to our connection with our outer environments.  We live and move in our language traditions which re-infect new language users even as language traditions evolve and change with new paradigms with new meanings in new times.  With language, we are always developing new ways to interact with our world.  With language, the language-oid also occurs like the paralinguistic phenomena of music, mathematics, and myth-making which merges the dream world with the language of the outer world.

Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2025

Parables are like every metaphor; they give flashing perspectival insights based upon some common shared perspectives even biases.  The parable of the Good Samaritan does not mean that all Samaritans are good neighbors or that all priests and Levites are bad neighbors.  It means sometimes those we expect to be good neighbors aren't and those whom we don't expect to be good neighbors are.

Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2025

The parable of the Good Samaritan is a provocative wisdom story requiring the redefinition of the term neighbor as both a person encountered but more importantly the active person in performing deeds of love, mercy, and justice.

 Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2025

Fear of the other with "differences" can be the motivation for people to act in unneighborly ways.  Strategies of exposure to and appreciation of differences are needed to promote mutual neighborliness.

Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2025

The communal study of the Bible requires the use of massive reductive abbreviations, like using names for the Gospels.  There are no autographs of the Gospel with internal attributions of authorship, so for communication purposes we use traditional titles like, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, when what we really mean is a title for a piece of writing of which the earliest full copy of such writing is only in the fourth century.  Sometimes we can act as though the titles actually designate a Matthew, a Mark, a Luke, and a John with stylus in hand.  We think that we can be more certain about the letters of Paul but we cannot know precisely what editing and redacting took place in communities before we have the "canonical copies."  For example, we have reconstructions of Marcion's Paul in around 140 C.E. which is quite different from the canonical Pauline letters.

Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2025

With the growth of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, becoming like a masked secret police, we can wonder whether we are entering the banality of evil phase in the normalization of not loving our neighbor as ourselves because we allow people in power to designate certain people so "other" than us that they don't deserve to be worthy to be a neighbor to love.

Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2025

The message of rebuke in the parable of the Good Samaritan is that we can find good religious reasons and arguments of inconvenience for not being good active neighbors.  Living, moving, and having being within God means that a priori we are all geographically passive neighbors and the moral question is are we acting with neighborly care?

Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2025

Human being can act and present outer feelings and empathy when inside they might feel the opposite.  AI deep fakes allow such acting something like emotional ventriloquism, but with a much more verisimilitude than the proverbial ventriloquist manipulating a lever up the back side of a less than life like puppet moving the "dummy's" lips.  AI deep fake dummies has appearances so precise as to fool the beholder.

Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2025

Everything said and written is like the foreground which rest upon the background of what is not said and written.  Motives and intentions motive the foregrounding of somethings and not others.

Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2025

The prophets were those who rebuked the nation for leaving or not performing their best founding principles.  America needs prophets who rebuke us for leaving our better angels when greed, grift, and corruption in high places for the benefit of the few is rampant.

Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2025

Our lives today are data-ized.  We are categorized by collected information about us so that we can be citizen with proclivities for political ideologies and consumers for products.  We work for people who use statistics for business efficiency and we make data out of other people even as we ourselves are data.  The truth of our data culture is that we allow actuarial wisdom to be betrayed and not followed if it counters higher profits in certain sectors, e.g., fossil fuels and climate change, proliferation of guns and death statistics, lack of universal health care and poor health outcomes.  The end result of data control seems to be for the extreme profit of the few.  Would that in our data-ization we actually implemented true actuarial wisdom.

Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2025

Religion purport to be holistic systems of health.  In time the meaning of "holistic" has changed as when modern medicine has resulted in a a different understand between mind and body.  Any religious perspective which claims to be holistic needs to integrate what is continuously happening in science without pitting religious "art of living" language with the scientific method.  

Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2025

If Jesus had 70 or 72 evangelists and 12 disciples in just three years of ministry, he must have been quite a busy teacher.  That would be quite a "crash" course of theology.  No dissertations to read but lots of oral exams.

Quiz of the Day, July 2025

Quiz of the Day, July 18, 2025

What is David on the lam from Saul receive from the priest Ahimelech?

a. Goliath's sword
b. honey
c. holy bread to eat
d. Aaron's budding rod
e. a message from Jonathan
f. a and e
g. a and c

Quiz of the Day, July 17, 2025

William White, the first Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, was from what state?

a. New York
b. Connecticut
c. Maryland
d. Pennsylvania

Quiz of the Day, July 16, 2025

What mode of communication did Jonathan use with David to signal Saul's intent toward David?

a. messenger servant
b. shot arrows
c. falcon delivery
d. sounding a ram's horn in the forest

Quiz of the Day, July 15, 2025

What was the battle trophies presented by David as proof of his success?

a. the heads of his foes
b. the gold and possessions of his foes
c. the foreskins of his foes
d. the women and children of his foes

Quiz of the Day, July 14, 2025

Saul did not

a. give his daughter Michal to David to wed
b. throw a spear at David
c. ask David to play his harp for him
d. want David to be the next king
e. have an evil spirit

Quiz of the Day, July 13, 2025

Who was said to have loved David even as he loved his own soul?

a. Samuel
b. Saul
c. Jonathan
d. Uriah
e. Abner

Quiz of the Day, July 12, 2025

Which Church Council dealt with food eating customs regarding Gentiles?

a. Nicaea
b. Constantinople
c. Chalcedon
d. Jerusalem

Quiz of the Day, July 11, 2025

Who was Scholastica's twin?

a. Thomas Aquinas
b. Dominic
c. Benedict
d. Bernard

Quiz of the Day, July 10, 2025

How did King Saul use David?

a. to tend to his herd of sheep
b. to blow the shofar
c. to play on his harp to calm his nerves
d. to serve as an armor bearer
e. b and c
f. c and d

Quiz of the Day, July 9, 2025

Who immediately succeeded Saul as King of Israel?

a. David
b. Ish-Bosheth
c. Jonathan
d. no one for months

 Quiz of the Day, July 8, 2025

Which Apostle is Dorcas associated with?

a. Paul
b. Peter
c. Barnabas
d. Philip

Quiz of the Day, July 7, 2025

Who said, "I regret making Saul the king of Israel?"

a. God
b. Samuel
c. Samuel and God
d. Samuel's acolyte who poured the oil of anointing

Quiz of the Day, July 6, 2025

If Mary sang a "mother's song" recorded in the Gospel, who sang a "father's song?"

a. Simeon
b. David
c. Zechariah
d. Jesus

Quiz of the Day, July 5, 2025

Why did Saul curse his own son Jonathan?

a. because he teamed up with David
b. Jonathan was a weak soldier
c. Jonathan ate some honey and did not know his father's food ban
d. Jonathan's mother was not Saul favorite spouse

Quiz of the Day, July 4, 2025

Which church had the largest number of signers of the Declaration of Independence?

a. Congregationalists
b. Presbyterian
c. Anglican/Episcopal
d. Roman Catholic
e. Quaker
f. Unitarian
e. Deists

Quiz of the Day, July 3, 2025

Jerusalem was not

a. ruled by Saul
b. captured by David
c. a Jebusite controlled city
d. the initial seat of David's power

Quiz of the Day, July 2, 2025

When Saul was anointed King of Israel, what form of rule ended?

a. rule by the chief priest
b. rule by prophets
c. rule by judges
d. rule by community vote

Quiz of the Day, July 1, 2025

What legal scholar on issues of civil rights and women's rights, collaborated with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, went on to be ordained as an Episcopal priest?

a. Andrew Young
b. Jesse Jackson
c. Pauli Murray
d. Kelly Brown Douglas

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Sunday School, July 20, 2025, C proper 11

  Sunday School,   July 20, 2025, C proper 11


Themes

What is the most important “computer” center of the human body?

Is it our legs? Stomach? Arms? Heart? Mouth?

No it is our head which houses the most important computer center of our entire body.

So how do we know that our head is the most important computer center of our body?

We know when we learn to think and when we practice thinking and learning.

Paul said the church was like a body made up of many organs and parts.  But Paul wrote that the head of the body, the church was Christ.

And so how do we make the church function the very best?  We keep in touch with Christ as our brain.  We look to his life and his words and his example and the people whom he has inspired. 

We stay in touch with Christ so that we can make the church a group of people who practice love and kindness and service and telling people the Good News of Christ being with us as our Head.

Mary and Martha were friends of Jesus.
Sometimes in our lives we need to be very active.  We need to work; we need to prepare food, wash the dishes and the clothes and clean the houses.  Martha was a very good worker and she was upset when Mary was not working as hard as she was.  Mary was doing something else.  She was sitting and learning from her best friend Jesus.

In our lives we need to know when to work and when to stop working and learn to get to know Jesus as our best friend who can help us grow in being the very best persons that we can be.

Work is good; prayer and learning from Jesus is also very good and most important.  We need to take time to work but never forget the importance of prayer and talking to Jesus.

Sermon



  Ding dong, the door bell rings.  And you open the door and you have surprise visitors; it’s grandmother and grandfather.  They are on a trip and can only spend a few hours at your house.  What do your parents do?
  Do they make you go finish all of your chores?  Do they make you leave the room and wash the dishes?  Do they make you practice your music lesson or finish your homework?
  No, why?  Because grandmother and grandfather are only going to be there for just a few hours and so everyone gets to spend time being with them.
  Well, Jesus dropped in one day at the home of his friends Mary and Martha.  And they were very excited because Jesus was a special person in their lives and they could not see him all of the time, so they wanted to make his visit special.
  Martha loved her friend Jesus and she was a good hostess.  She wanted to treat Jesus as a special guest.  So she wanted to get the house all fixed up and cleaned and she wanted to get the food all prepared.
  But her sister Mary just sat in the living room talking with Jesus.  And that upset Martha because Mary wouldn’t help.
  Jesus was not worried about getting food and he was not worried if the house was not in order or if the good napkins were put out and fresh flowers were in place.
  Jesus only wanted to spend time with his friends:  He wanted Mary and Martha to be with him and talk with him.  And he wanted to talk with him and tell them some wonderful things.
  Did you know that you and I can sometimes be so busy we forget that God is our friend and that God just wants to spend time with us?
  That is why God gave us the commandment about the Sabbath or worship day of Sunday.  It means that we are to stop everything in our lives sometimes and just take time to be with God, to be with Christ.
  And we do this by hearing the stories of the Bible.  We do this by praying with others.  And we do this each day by setting aside some time to just talk with Christ.
  Jesus was happy that Mary took time from her work to talk to him.  And Jesus is happy when we take time to pray and to spend time with God.
  Let us remember what Mary did.  She remembered to take time to be with Jesus.  And so we should do the same.  Amen.

Intergenerational  Eucharist for Year C, proper 11

Gathering Songs: Jesus in the Morning, Only A Boy Named David, I Come with Joy, Christ Beside Me

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and forever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.
And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.
Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: Jesus in the Morning, (Christian Children’s Songbook,   # 134)
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus in the morning, Jesus at the noontime.  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus when the sun goes down.
Love him, love him, love him in the morning, love him at the noontime.  Love him, love him, love him when the sun goes down.
Serve him, serve him, serve him in the morning, serve him at the noontime.  Serve him, serve him, serve him when the sun goes down.
Praise him, praise him, praise in the morning, praise him at the noontime.  Praise him, praise him, praise him when the sun goes down.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.
People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Liturgy Leader: In our prayers we first praise God, chanting the praise word: Alleluia

Litany of Praise: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia
O God, you have made us! Alleluia
O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia
O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia
O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia
O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia
O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A reading from the Letter to the Colossians

Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers-- all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord
People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 52

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; * I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.
I will give you thanks for what you have done * and declare the goodness of your Name in the presence of the godly.


Liturgy Leader: I invite you to let us know what you are thankful for today
   As we thank God let us chant Thanks be to God

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God!

Litanist:
For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!
For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!
For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!
For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!
For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!
For work and for play. Thanks be to God!
For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!
For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!
For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.
   Thanks be to God!


(Sing Birthday blessings or wedding blessings to those present who are celebrating)

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke
People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.
People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil
Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.
Since God is so great and we are so small,
We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.
We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and
     resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.
We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is
     welcome.
We believe that Christ is kind and fair.
We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.
And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.


Liturgy Leader: Next in our prayers, we remember people who have special needs.  As we pray let us chant:  Christ Have Mercy

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.
For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.
For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.
For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.
For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.
For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.
For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.
For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.
For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.
For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Youth Liturgist:          The Peace of the Lord be always with you.
People:                        And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering

Offertory Song: Only a Boy Named David, (All the Best Songs for Kids, # 112)
Only boy named David.  Only a little sling.  Only a boy named David, but he could pray and sing.  Only a boy named David, only a rippling brook.  Only a boy named David, and five little stones he took.  And one little stone went in the sling and the sling went round and round.  And one little stone went in the sling and the sling went round and round.  AND….round and round and round and round and round and round and round.  And one little stone went up in the air.  And the giant came tumbling down.



Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist
Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”
All become members of a family by birth or adoption.
Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.
A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.
The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you
And also with you.

Lift up your hearts
We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.
It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 
Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.


Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;
You have made us in your image
And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:
Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.
And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph
And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.
Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat
  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  
  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.


And so, Father, the gifts of bread and wine will be presented at the Eucharist. We ask you to bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

We remember that on the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory
 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,


Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)
Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.
Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.
As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.
But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.
Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.
Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread
Celebrant:       Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
People:            Therefore let us keep the feast. 

Words of Administration

Communion Song: I Come with Joy, (Renew! # 195)
I come with joy a child of God, forgiven, loved and free, the life of Jesus to recall, in love laid down for me.
I come with Christians far and near to find, as all are fed, the new communion of love in Christ’s communion bread.
As Christ breaks bread, and bids us share, each proud division ends.  The love that made us, makes us one, and strangers now are friends.

Post-Communion Prayer
Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;
We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.
And His Presence has been known to us.
We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers
    and sisters in Christ.
Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the
     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,
As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: Christ Beside Me (Renew! # 164)
Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, king of my heart.  Christ within me, Christ below me, Christ above me, never to part
Christ on my right hand, Christ on my left hand, Christ all around me, shield in the strife.  Christ in my sleeping, Christ in my sitting, Christ in my rising light of my life.

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ.
People: Thanks be to God! 

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