Saturday, December 2, 2023

Prayers for Pentecost, 2023

Last Saturday after Pentecost, December 2, 2023

God of our future, you inspire us with conceptions of the not yet so that we can visualize the prevalence of love and justice and provide us with images to model our current lives after.  Amen.

Last Friday after Pentecost, December 1, 2023

Eternal Word of endless textuality, we can be lost in the oceanic morass of possible identities unless we can corral the linguistic universe into our stories for pragmatic identity within our specific locations; help us to discover the pertinent meanings for our identity within justice and love for us and our neighbors.  Amen.

Last Thursday after Pentecost, November 30, 2023

Gracious God, let endings occur in war, cruelty, hostage taking, tyrants unchecked so that common good outcomes can prevail for those who need safety and subsistence.  Amen.

Last Wednesday after Pentecost, November 29, 2023

God, we hope that our endings and transitions have meanings of connection with everything else, but especially within our immediate milieu of effecting better love and justice.  Let us be instruments in the Christly domino effect of love and justice.  Amen.

Last Tuesday after Pentecost, November 28, 2023

God of continuous Continuity, we story limited people like to cordon off time and imagine a final end, especially to things like death and suffering; but you are always everlasting and always More beyond any artificial time frames of our stories for identity and meaning.  Let us accept your More as the Plenitude which dissolves any of our temporal milestones.  Amen.

Last Monday after Pentecost, November 27, 2023

God of greatness and very condition of freedom, how we often wish for your continuous specific intervention in the details of our lives for our immediate benefits; give us your respect for genuine freedom to know that we are the most logical answer to our own prayers with the most general practice of justice and love.  Amen.

Sunday, The Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King, November 26, 2023

Christ our King, you are known when we use our power, knowledge, and wealth to serve the vulnerable; give us the insight to know what is the true manifestatin of kingly power in our lives.  Amen.

Saturday in 25 Pentecost, November 25, 2023

God, you are to be found everywhere, and in people and place where we don't want to look; incentivize us afresh to look for you in the poor and needy so that the goods and services of the world might be justice distributed to care for all.  Amen.

Friday in 25 Pentecost, November 24, 2023

God, who confronts us with irony, your Son Jesus indicated to us that the presence of the Great King is found in the poor and forgotten; give us grace to counter our logic of privilege for the privileged through the practice of care for the needy.  Amen.

Thursday in 25 Pentecost, November 23, 2023 (Thanksgiving Day, USA)

God of All, give us the mindfulness of having received everything to borrow and use for a season, and let this mindfulness be thanksgiving which inspires in us the generosity to share and be a part of healing our world by influencing the distribution of the goods and services meant for all.  Amen.

Wednesday in 25 Pentecost, November 22, 2023

Christ, you are King in your identity with Word which is basis for anything at all being known to existence; and nothing existent is known without the priority of Word, which is kingly in our experience.  We honor you, King Word, as we try to live the best worded lives in speech, writing, and deeds.  Amen.

Tuesday in 25 Pentecost, November 21, 2023

Jesus, King of hearts, we ask for all the interior lives of all people to be overwhelmed by irresistible love as the true way to end the inhumanities of war and cruelty and let perfect love works its way into the surface acts of our lives.  Amen.

Monday in 25 Pentecost, November 20, 2023

God, who gave us Jesus Christ to redeem the normal meaning of earthly king; give us grace to be kingly, like Jesus, and bring good news to the poor, the sick, and the needy.  Amen.

Sunday, 25 Pentecost, November 19, 2023

God, whose realm this world is; let that realm be tellingly known within each of us so that knowing you within, we can act out your control of us by bring love and justice to our world.  Amen.

Saturday in 24 Pentecost, November 18, 2023

God, you have left us the task of the stewardship of all that we can exert control over, and we have failed badly and succeeded wonderfully; give us more success toward the metrics of care, love, and justice for all.  Amen.

Friday in 24 Pentecost, November 17, 2023

God of Peace, do we dare ask for peace to come to our world, the kind of peace which allows safety and health to the vulnerable who did nothing to cause the wars and strife?  Please send strategic blocks against the very few who want to war and involve the vulnerable many who seek safety and basic goods and services of life.  Amen.

Thursday in 24 Pentecost, November 16, 2023

God of creation and continual energy of transformation; remake the energy of our fears into the energy of faith so that we might let hope coax us toward what is loving and just for the people of the world.  Amen.

Wednesday in 24 Pentecost, November 15, 2023

Gracious and generous God, as we watch the investments of rampant greed in our world teach us to be diligent in our investment and development of the forces of generosity for the work of love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 24 Pentecost, November 14, 2023

God who has given all and who is All, always already present; give us the wisdom of stewardship with the small portions of what comes to us and let us develop abundance to share and inspire the general stewardship by helping others to see and develop their gifts.  Amen.

Monday in 24 Pentecost, November 13, 2023

God who is continuously creating becoming; help us to have milestones of love in justice toward the potential of love and justice as being the ever surpassing goals of our lives.  Amen.

Sunday, 24 Pentecost, November 12, 2023

God, you are our future destination and our current ground of being; even as we want to get somewhere else toward you, we cannot neglect how you are inspiring us to be here now in the fullness of diversity of life experience with the impinging immediate demands resting within the Wholly Negligible of the Mystery of what we do not yet know.  Grant us the wisdom to funnel great Mystery into very specific acts that are temporary balms for the pains in our world.  Amen.

Saturday in 23, Pentecost, November 11, 2023

God of the future, we do not know what will yet happen even as we estimate what might happen from what has already happened; keep us humble by the future that we do not yet know, but keep us hopeful that we might be able to integrate what might happen in the best ways of love and justice.  Amen.

Friday in 23 Pentecost, November 10, 2023

God of abundance who is the ground of provision of enough for all; forgive us who live by greed of taking too much and who go to war to challenge the right of meaningful existence for those who hinder the power of those who are greedy.  Let the folly of war teach us to end war and use our resources to confront the great problems of living within the field of probabilities of what nature might bring to us at anytime.  Amen.

Thursday in 23 Pentecost, November 9, 2023

Gracious God, help us to be awake with enlightenment about your Realm and the values of love and justice which characterize your Realm; let us not fall asleep when it is time for us to make the will of your Realm, the will of our realms in our daily lives.  Amen.

Wednesday in 23 Pentecost, November 8 2023

God who is Word, you have established us as languaged beings with all its diverse nuances and uses, and you have give us freedom to choose the scripts for our body language; give us the wisdom to know that our body language is where word most poignantly meets the world exterior to us, and let us be diligent to make our body language speak love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 23 Pentecost, November 7, 2023

God who comprehends the probabilities of what might happen, give the wisdom of common sense to collate our past experiences and so be prepared for what has not yet happen in the best possible way.  And let our preparation be for the common good of all.  Amen.

Monday in 23 Pentecost, November 6, 2023

God whose Realm is everywhere, your unique Child Jesus arose among us to remind us in whose Realm we live and have our being; grant to us realizations of this Realm so that the highest will of this Realm might be made actual in realizations of love and justice.  Amen.

Sunday, 23 Pentecost, November 5, 2023

God, who calls us to be better, we are often divided because our feelings, words, and deeds do not align with the goodness of the Deep Spirit within us; let the effects of the Spirit rise up through us and convert us more fully so that our feelings, words and deeds might reflect what is loving and kind.  Amen.

Saturday in 22 Pentecost, November 4, 2023

God, whose image we bear, in all our other identities which we have within our communities; let us not forget our primary identity, and let us not forget to see your image upon all people and treat them with the dignity of that identity.  Amen.

Friday after All Saints Day, November 3, 2023

O Word of God, you became partially spoken in the mouths of people and in the written text, and you remain the hidden factor of anything that can be known; let us be diligent to arrange the words of our lives in accordance to the love and justice which honors God as Word the best.  Amen.

Thursday, All Souls Day, November 2, 2023

God, whose memory retains the Souls of all who have left this earth; we offer thanks for the lives of those who have tellingly touched us with the love that brought from us our best, and we pray that we too will leave this world as souls who have tellingly touched others for their future sense of worth and esteem.  Amen.

Wednesday, All Saints Day, November 1, 2023

God, whom we deem to be personal because all language implies relational personhood by language users, we give thanks for inspiring our lives with saints global and local to give us examples of how to live better lives toward preserving this life with sufficient goodness overcoming the darker forces of chaos and entropy that promote endings before their ideal time of transition.  Let your perfection distill through the lives of the saints and through us so that we might make earthly things, heavenly in the enduring value of love.  Amen.

Tuesday in 22 Pentecost, October 31, 2023

God of Forgiveness, we often try to act good when we are not, especially as we are co-opted in our social situation when so great wrongs are done through the groups with which we are identified; give us courage to be obedient to what is just and right even against the grain of our group's misdoing.  Amen.

Monday in 22 Pentecost, October 30, 2023

How disillusioned we are, O God, with the many situations of harm in world; give us courage to reduce the gap between what is ideal in love and justice and what is actual in our world now and let us not grow weary in well-doing.  Amen.

Sunday, 22 Pentecost, October 29, 2023

Almighty God, we have failed miserably at being almighty as we have used power to be oft at war with each other; give us the humility to use our power to work for equitable loving conditions among people so that the machines of war can be transformed into the armies of responding to those who suffer the common harms of nature.  Amen.

Saturday in 21 Pentecost, October 28, 2023

God the Orchestrator of All, among the high degree of freedom which is abroad in our world you have hidden Wisdom to be a discovery of how all beings have a place and an appropriate order; give us discovery moments of this Wisdom so that we might act justly and give the propriety of dignity to all persons.  Amen.

Friday in 21 Pentecost, October 27, 2023

God who gave the law in seeable textual form so that it could become the interior language of our lives to guide us to right action; let us discover the law of the heart which is love and manifest this love in actions of justice in our world.  Amen.

Thursday in 21 Pentecost, October 26, 2023

Gracious Jesus, you gave us the summary of the law to teach us how to discern right speech and behaviors; give us grace to submit to the criteria of loving God and our neighbors in all that we do and say.  Amen.

Wednesday in 21 Pentecost, October 25, 2023

God of the Law, give us grace not to reduce the law to the legalisms of party loyalties but to learn the adjustments of the dynamics of living love and justice in the actual situations of life so that the law might be proven in people's health and well being and not the popularity of our group thinking.  Amen.

Tuesday in 21 Pentecost, October 24, 2023

Give us grace God of truth, to know that when we are not communities of the oppressed like the peoples from which the New Testament was derived, to use the power of social, economic, and educational privilege to work on behalf of the oppressed for whom we share a collateral blame for their oppression.  Amen.

Monday in 21 Pentecost, October 23, 2023

God of Love, your nature of love has established love as the chief human vocation to be aspired to; let us never be finished in the on-going call to love you and our neighbors as ourselves.  Amen.

Sunday, 21 Pentecost, October 22, 2023

Omnipresence Holy One, your invisibility is seen to be your weakness in our world of probabilities where much that is not good has the freedom to occur; draw us into the lure of your persuasive love so that we might prove the freedom which is the basis for moral significance and exalts the validity of goodness.  Amen.

Saturday in 20 Pentecost, October 21, 2023

God, whose Oneness is present in the multitude of differences, such catholicity is always already with us; let us never force our particular pieties upon anyone, but let us always refer people to winsomeness of the divine who is ever present love.  Amen.

Friday in 20 Pentecost, October 20, 2023

God, who has shared the energy of your image upon us, give the perception of this inner image so that we can live God-ward lives toward you and toward each other with the essence of who you, even Love itself.  Amen.

Thursday in 20 Pentecost, October 19, 2023

God of All, we presume you to be the Universal even while we remain very local in our context of what we can actually be exposed to in the vast universe of differences; give us the grace to use the God-trope as a mode of our discourse to confess our connectedness with the More than we can ever really know and let this teach us humility about our context even while we are inspired by the divine extra-contextual to help us surpass ourselves in love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 20 Pentecost, October 18, 2023

God who is Word and the mystery of us having language, forgive us from presuming loneliness even when as parasites we live and move and have conscious existence in and through the virtue of language, the medium of community relationship; let us blend aloneness as but one human experience among the many experiences of language users, and let us embrace aloneness as snowflake uniqueness of individuality which cannot be separated from the great symphony of personalities of life.  Amen.

Tuesday in 20 Pentecost, October 17, 2023

Great plenitudinous God, in our contemplative cosmic devotion to the one who is omni-contextual with the negligible which escapes precise knowing and leaves us in mystery; give us courage to be contextually engaged and unafraid to make choices and actions for love and justice even if we cannot know perfect outcomes.  Amen.

Monday in 20 Pentecost, October 16, 2023

God, your seeming restraint in allowing so much inhumane activity may bespeak to some of your absence, weakness, or non-existence; we are amazed that you seem to leave us to ourselves in the freedom we have to harm each other; give us grace to honor your restraint with acts of goodness, love, and justice, and so validate the true purpose of freedom.  Amen.

Sunday, 20 Pentecost, October 15, 2023

God of freedom, you tolerate the freedom of human inhumanity to each other and allow us to see our own self caused disasters of appalling magnitude; and such great failure have a loudness about them to drown out the many instances of love and sacrifice which actually sustains us.  Give us the ears and hearts to know the gentleness of the care of love which calls to us always.  Amen.

Saturday in 19 Pentecost, October 14, 2023

God, who is living and active Word, forgive us for locking you into biblical texts with unenlightened understanding of what justice and love can dynamically become to more people each day.  Amen.

Friday in 19 Pentecost, October 13, 2023

God of time who is always already the Synchronic but past inclusive Now, keep us present in the now even as we process the past to anticipate a surpassing future in better love and justice coming to the future nows.  Amen.

Thursday in 19 Pentecost, October 12, 2023

Divine Close One, we cannot ever leave your presence even when we pretend to ignore you; give us the humility to accept the obviousness of the presence of All, and adjust our life style to weave grace, love, and justice in the tapestry of our life presentations.  Amen.

Wednesday in 19 Pentecost, October 11, 2023

God of equality, you reform the lines of pyramid hierarchies into circles of equalities; you are our center and give equal access to all to live on the rim of your presence.  Amen.

Tuesday in 19 Pentecost, October 10, 2023

Keep us O God, from making spiritual so unnatural as to be an intermittent outside intervening force, and miss the natural grace of being made in your image and know arising Spirit within us as we live and move and have our being within you.  Amen.

Monday in 19 Pentecost, October 9, 2023

God of restraint, bring to restraint the lords of war who benefit from perpetual warfare and cause the profound suffering of those who want their everyday lives of caring for their families; please enlighten the leaders of this world about the benevolent use of the the resources of this world for benefit of all people.  Amen.

Sunday, 19 Pentecost, October 8, 2023

God the invisible, whose presence we assume because of visible and knowable effects, we seek to be conduits in word and deed of the divine effects of love and justice in our world today.  Amen.

Saturday in 18 Pentecost, October 7, 2023

God who is the ground of all, forgive us for treating you as an absentee landlord from whom we are pretending to withhold the payment of acknowledging your ownership of all, and us; give us the perspective in knowing that our short time within your Everlastingness is to be devoted to paying forward justice for those who come after us.  Amen.

Friday in 18 Pentecost, October 6, 2023

God who is the immanent Lure to peaceful order, you have given us lawfulness as a vision of how best to behave toward each other in ways which does justice to each person; give us the continue wisdom of lawfulness so that we might teach the respect of each person.  Amen.

Thursday in 18 Pentecost, October 5, 2023

God of all, forgive us when we live as though you are not equally available to all and when we presume divine privileges which are not inherent because of the divine image on each person.  Amen.

Wednesday in 18 Pentecost, October 4, 2023

God who calls us to be better, help us to adjust continuously our lives to the high calling of your love and help us to leave unenlightened practices of justice which we have tolerated because of our cultural habits.  Let us continuously surpass ourselves in love and justice in our future states.  Amen.

 Tuesday in 18 Pentecost, October 3, 2023

Everlasting One, you will be around forever to verify your ownership of all things in time; give us grace in the short time that we are here to be good stewards of our portion received for our use and for promoting the cause for everyone to share in the goodness of the gifts of our world.  Amen.

Monday in 18 Pentecost, October 2, 2023

God, the Orchestrator of the Universe, give us scores to play of recommended behaviors so that our harmonies can sound the beauty of justice which affirms a diversity of people peacefully respecting the dignity of each other.  Amen.

Sunday, 18 Pentecost, October 1, 2023

God, who comprises the continuum of the chain of beings, in Jesus you were emptied to the experience of human death as we proclaim you to be human identified so that we might become more and more God-identified in living the best versions of our selves in love and justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 17 Pentecost, September 30, 2023

All-Powerful God, whose power was emptied into Jesus in his humility to identify with those who need to know the advocacy of God being with them; help us to judge power in our world by how it serves those who need justice in food, clothing, shelter, and personal dignity.  Amen.

Friday in 17 Pentecost, September 29, 2023

God who is pure Relationship, you are the continuum which connects everything at all times with each other and propels us continually into the future and so we confess you as the Hope which preserves the traces of who we are and what we will yet become.  Amen.

Thursday in 17 Pentecost, September 28, 2023

God who in Greatness leaves so much in the mystery of the negligible; let this cloud of unknowing keep us humble but let us be brave and certain about the love and justice which needs to be done before our very eyes.  Amen.

Wednesday in 17 Pentecost, September 27, 2023

God who becomes the continuous synchronicity of all in time, we ask for continuing more favorable alignments within the human community for the conditions of love, justice, and peace.  Amen.

Tuesday in 17 Pentecost, September 26, 2023

God of our high ideals, you continually call us to bring together our words of hopeful behaviors of goodness and love with our actions of love and justice; forgive us when confess our failure to do our best, and let us never give up on the direction of perfection to which we are called.  Amen.

Monday in 17 Pentecost, September 25, 2023

Divine Plenitude, you are emptied into and unseparated from everything that is; give us the humility to accept union with your Plenitude and with each other and let us learn the ways of concord for being with each other well.  Amen.

Sunday, 17 Pentecost, September 24, 2023

Gracious God, help us to be those who are diligent for the justice of others and less diligent about our own petty rights knowing that to serve others means that we often have to give up our rights of privilege.  Amen.

Saturday in 16 Pentecost, September 23, 2023

O God who is always, already and yet often undetected because of the blinders of our limitations, let us be satisfied with your effects of realized justice and the beauty of the mixture of all things all together and give us wisdom to arrange life for the promotion of love and peace.  Amen.

Friday in 16 Pentecost, September 22, 2023

O God, the Conductor of the universe, who allows so much freedom among members with significant differences; let harmonies of justice be played as the symphony of life so that all can contribute to a greater beauty, and let the cacophony of our practice efforts be tempered and trained into sweeter sounds of the common good.  Amen.

Thursday in 16 Pentecost, September 21, 2023

God, give us grace in being the latest in time now, but let not the prison of our temporal provincialism keep us short-sighted and trapped in the moment; give us compassion for the people of the future who need to be left the best possible traces to build on.  Amen.

Wednesday in 16 Pentecost, September 20, 2023

God of the past, who is also present, give us who are latest in time the humility to interpret the past for the present success of love and justice and let us leave examples of love and justice as our legacy to people who come after us.  Amen.

Tuesday in 16 Pentecost, September 19, 2023

God of mystery, we find our world in much suffering without knowing the meaning of suffering; we desire health, comfort, and well-being and when deprived we name it as suffering.  Give us grace to be thankful for when we are not deprived of goodness and let the preponderance of goodness hold in check the states of suffering in our efforts to heal evil effects with goodness.  Amen.

Monday in 16 Pentecost, September 18, 2023

God, who created all different beings, help us with the complexity of diversity so that we might apply the art of justice in giving each being the appropriate dignity while honoring the unique context of existence of each person.  Amen.

Sunday, 16 Pentecost, September 17, 2023

God, who contains the traces of all that has been, in your sustaining forgiveness you have brought us to this day with all the traces of the past and with the small but significant ability to choose how we form the legacy of what is past and make it become betterment for this world in love and justice; give us courage to accept our volitional vocation to be better today than yesterday.  Amen.

Saturday in 15 Pentecost, September 16, 2023

God of All, we understand Christ to be the divine effort to reconcile all things to you; help us to model events of forgiveness and so support the goal of the reconciliation of all things.  Amen.

Friday in 15 Pentecost, September 15, 2023

Spare us God from being so co-opted by our group misdeeds that we don't recognize the harm that we are complicit in; give us wisdom and courage to go against the social tide if love and justice is compromised.  Amen.

Thursday in 15 Pentecost, September 14, 2023

God of All, how can we say that you are for everyone, unless we work for living at peace with everyone with everyone deriving just outcomes?  Give us a passion for justice lest we make simplistic statements about your love and care which pertain only for our own well-being.  Amen.

Wednesday in 15 Pentecost, September 13, 2023

Indwelling God, give us the imagination of empathy to inwardly displace ourselves so that a greater Ego might guide our little egos to serve and care for those who need the dignity to know that love is heart of existence.  Amen.

Tuesday in 15 Pentecost, September 12, 2023

God, who forgives by being evidence of the sustain existence of people who often live in unforgiveness and who build chasms of separation with each other; give us the healing art of forgiveness in our world which is in continual need of repair in our human relations.  Amen.

Monday in 15 Pentecost, September 11, 2023

God of forgiveness, of seeming tolerance of all that occurs, give us the grace of forgiveness even for those we don't seem to like because of incompatible affinities; give us wisdom in knowing how to live having major differences with each other.  Amen.

Sunday, 15 Pentecost, September 10, 2023

Risen Christ, give us the right motive for gathering in your name, so that the presence of Christ we come to recognize is the Christ of peace, love, justice and not a projected Christ of the smallness of our own hearts.  Amen.

Saturday in 14 Pentecost, September 9, 2023

Risen Christ, when things are comfortable it is easy to be persuaded about your graceful presence; give us strength to also know your presence when conflict arises within the community and let your presence be known as the wisdom to resolve differences with a harmony which honors all.  Amen.

Friday in 14 Pentecost, September 8, 2023

Risen Christ, the words of Jesus promise your presence when we are gathered but particularly for our order and discipline in our mutual behaviors; keep us mindful of our group behaviors and what we do in the name of Jesus as our group identity so that we can have a credible witness in our lives.  Amen.

Thursday in 14 Pentecost, September 7, 2023

God, who is our perfection in completeness, forgive us for our isolation caused by our disillusionment with self and others based upon false notions of individual perfection; let us be subsumed into the grace of connection with you and everything and everyone and have courage to funnel versions of what love and justice can mean in individual actions.  Amen.

Wednesday in 14 Pentecost, September 6, 2023

Gracious God, who is the Community of All, you provide us with the intimacy of another kind of presence when the united purpose of fellowship occurs in us as we make the love and kindness of Risen Christ active in our words and deeds, and let us not call the body of Christ, that which does not pass the test of love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 14 Pentecost, September 5, 2023

God of Word, and words, you have given us words as abbreviations in time of trying to signifying tiny portions of everything; give us humility in realizing the limitations of our words, but give us boldness in our word life, especially for our body language to speak the message of love, kindness, and justice.  Amen.

Monday in 14 Pentecost, September 4, 2023 (Labor Day)

God, the Orchestrator of all, send the Spirit of diverse gifts to the human community so that the division of labor can fulfill the needs of people living together well; grant each worker joy in their sense of worth and adequate reward for their well-being in their calling, and let the symphony of all work be known as the peace of harmony.  Amen.

Sunday, 14 Pentecost, September 3, 2023

God of All, give us wisdom to understand that a suffering servant Messiah arose in our midst to teach us how to live from the perspective of the poor and powerless; give us grace to use the privilege of power to help bring the poor and powerless to the equal dignity of love and justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 13 Pentecost, September 2, 2023

God of hope, give us strength to live unapologetically hopeful life even when our lives present us with evidence to the contrary of well-being for all.  Give us wisdom to know that the attitude of how we live is an important motivator even within the dire conditions of the constant losses which we are always facing.  Amen.

 Friday in 13 Pentecost, September 1, 2023

God of Time, of past, present, and future; give us grace to read with honesty the past and the present so that we might rightly direct our repenting into the future.  Amen.

Thursday in13 Pentecost, August 31, 2023

Great God who we know to be completely associated with human weakness and even death itself; give us wisdom and honesty not to misrepresent your values of tending to those who need care the most, and let us limit the notion of triumph to success of love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 13 Pentecost, August 30, 2023

God of all future, give directional guidance on how we can surpass ourselves in excellence in our future deriving from our current state of comportment; give us the humility to compare ourselves not with each other but with the better self that each of us is called to be.  Amen.

Tuesday in 13 Pentecost, August 29, 2023

God, we are often baffled by how we might interpret your attachment and detachment to us in your omnipresence; give us wisdom to discern your even loving presence in the midst of things which don't seem to represent an attachment of your favor for us in specific events, and enhance our difficult appreciation for the genuine freedom required for moral significance.  Amen.

Monday in 13 Pentecost, August 28, 2023

God of Time, you have given us a transformational path to deal with the reality of freedom in the field of the probabilities of our lives, including the continual loss and death of what has been before; inspire us today toward resurrection renewal based upon surpassing ourselves in the practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Sunday, 13 Pentecost, August 27, 2023

Great God, the source of sublimity; we thank you for the breaking of the Sublime into our ordinary experience when we are drawn to connect the particular mundane with the presence of everything else, and we are left in awe as the angelic messengers ever traverse on the ladder between the all and the particular.  Amen.

Saturday in 12 Pentecost, August 26, 2023

God of poignant meanings, give to us telling meanings which mark the transformation of our lives toward the worthy goals of care, service, mercy, justice, and love.  Amen.

Friday in 12 Pentecost, August 25, 2023

God of Insight, reveal to us the "taken for granted" truths which have governed our thinking and acting, and give us the wisdom to constantly review our guiding principles and their logical outcomes in the practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Thursday in 12 Pentecost, August 24, 2023

God, in your Human Icon of Jesus, you were known as child of God, child of man and anointed one; may we follow in your iconic example in knowing ourselves as merely human children, knowing ourselves a children of God with an anointed purpose of living in our humanity toward what is divine.  Amen.

Wednesday in 12 Pentecost, August 23, 2023

God who is Word from the Beginning and who inspires the word products of speech, writing, and body language action; that we live and move and have knowable being within language is unavoidable, but the quality question of how we live and move and have being within language is the pressing question.  Give us grace to live in speech, writing, and deeds the message of God's love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 12 Pentecost, August 22, 2023

God of the future, we wait for what is not yet more mature excellence, even as we seek forgiveness to tolerate our not yet excellence in doing fully the further work of love and justice.  As we accept forgiveness for our faults, let such forgiveness not be an excuse for not doing what we know needs to be done today.  Amen.

Monday in 12 Pentecost, August 21, 2023

God, who encompasses all, we find ourselves in the field of life's probabilities where the future is always the continuing outcome; give us grace to influence outcomes toward better love and justice for more people in our lives.  Amen.

Sunday, 12 Pentecost, August 20, 2023

God who is known to be Emmanuel or one with us, give us grace to learn to be one with each other in the experience of empathy so that we might ever be at the work of caring for each other in the best possible ways.  Amen.

Saturday in 11 Pentecost, August 19, 2023

God, who is Word; you have allowed yourself to come to human language within your being of Word itself; we are lost in the mysterious reflexivity of the play of words and tempted to be so fuzzy with this mystery that we excuse ourselves in being committedly deliberate about the situations needing love and justice.  Let us not use the fuzziness of majestic mystery absolve us from acts of mercy and justice today.  Amen.

Friday in 11 Pentecost, August 18, 2023

God, who includes all, give us faith to live beyond small-mindedness as we stretch ourselves toward your largesse for all; give is the gift of harmony making among the many voices of the people in our lives so all will be heard even as each is humbled by a greater choir.  Amen.

 Thursday in 11 Pentecost, August 17, 2023

God of Light, give us wisdom to see and interpret the presenting reality of our situation with insights geared toward the best words and deeds of love and justice; let us prepare ourselves to see rightly today.  Amen.

Wednesday in 11 Pentecost, August 16, 2023

God of forgiveness, we are comprised by so much interior stuff in thoughts, dreams, feelings that we need editorial wisdom in bringing creative words and deeds from the our depth into the surface manifestations of our lives; make us wise editors of all that occurs within us so that we presents the words and deeds of love and justice into our specific settings.  Amen.

Tuesday in 11 Pentecost, August 15, 2023 (St. Mary the Virgin)

Blessed Mary, in your motherhood, you were one with your Son before you bore him into a world that expressed a hostility to his ministry; we bless and thank you for continuing with him faithfully through his death and reappearances and now in your heavenly reunion you have his ear for our prayers as we beseech your aid for all the vulnerable peoples of our world.  Amen.

Monday in 11 Pentecost, August 14, 2023

God of our persuasion about goodness and love; let the goodness and blessing that we wish for ourselves also be the blessing and goodness that we wish for all who desire to be on the path of love and justice for all.  Amen.

Sunday, 11 Pentecost, August 13, 2023

Christ, you are called the All in All because you are also called Word from the beginning; help us to embrace our conscious beginnings and becoming in the words of our lives, and give us interaction with better words in our lives which will result in better body language events of behaving with love and justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 10 Pentecost, August 12, 2023

Eternal Word who is God, we are lost in total reflexivity of having language, of knowing that we are language users because we have language; give us grace to seek enhanced language use in our words and deeds as they pertain to living well toward each other and toward our Highest.  Amen.

Friday in 10 Pentecost, August 11, 2023

Eternal Word, who is God the Ultimate,  we know our lives as possessed with words which accompany all that we name inside and outside us; give us grace to find the worded voice of justice for our internal esteem and for the promotion of the esteem of dignity for all people.  Amen.

Thursday in 10 Pentecost, August 10, 2023

God, who is Love, we honor you best when we seek the harmonies of connectedness known as justice; grant to us the wisdom to practice and extend justice to foster the attaining of potential of each person as a gift in this life.  Amen.

Wednesday in 10 Pentecost, August 9, 2023

God, whose Plenitude is unavoidable even while we must live and act in very limited and local situations; give us the grace to funnel the loving, caring, just values of Plenitude into the probable conditions of freedom which face us today.  Amen.

Tuesday in 10 Pentecost, August 8, 2023

God of agelessness, you were before both the good and bad human events, you have been during the good and bad events, you continue after the good and bad events; give us grace to get used to your divine presence no matter what.  Amen.

Monday in 10 Pentecost, August 7, 2023

God, who comprises all probable conditions; we often find ourselves caught in harms way within the arising conflicting systems; give us grace to hold to the greater comprising Presence whose friendly motive of Love can persuade us to survive and help others to survive while not claiming exemptions from probable living conditions.  As we willingly submit to the free conditions of life's happenings, let us valorize personal freedom with acts of kind justice.  Amen.

Sunday, The Transfiguration, August 6, 2023

Christ, the Eternal Word, you are the Light which gives us the very awareness of our being, and as Jesus among us you gave us the example for living as human lights exemplifying love and justice.  Give us grace to be but filaments burning with the light of Christ.  Amen.

Saturday in 9 Pentecost, August 5, 2023

God, you represent our quest for the superlative in continual cosmic self surpassing creative advance; in our connection with everything and everywhere everlastingly we confess a totality which we do not comprehend as such infinity dwarfs our precision in knowing causal connections; give us today humility in our imperfect efforts done with determination to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with the weight of Plenitude.  Amen.

Friday in 9 Pentecost, August 4, 2023

God, you cannot be an isolated external object when you are the totality of the very Life that pulses through everything; gives us grace to humbly seek to make cosmic justice individual within our situation even as we know that nothing in time cannot be separated from Everlastingness.  Amen.

 Thursday in 9 Pentecost, August 3, 2023

God who is Word, let not our words be vain repetitions untethered from re-engagement with more meanings in new situations; give us grace to let old words live again with words and body language deeds of love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 9 Pentecost, August 2, 2023

Great Divine One, we ever seek language to express the limits of the expanding horizon which will be more tomorrow than today; we accept the Christ nature within us to represent within us that which is always beyond us but beckoning us to surpass ourselves in future states in love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 9 Pentecost, August 1, 2023

Gracious Word of God who has cast a kaleidoscope of word products in our world; give us the grace of wise differentiation in how we perceive the varieties of messages which present themselves to us each day in a vast array of probabilities, and give us wisdom as continuous Word editors in crafting what we do, write, and say in our lives.  Amen.

Monday in 9 Pentecost, July 31, 2023

Eternal Word, you accompany the creation of Light, and you are the Light which is the other side of every word which purports to signify something else; give us the humility not to make false claims about knowing what is ultimately Signified by all words.  Amen.

Sunday, 9 Pentecost, July 30, 2023

God, whose practical relevance to our existence we often miss; teach us humility from knowing that the divine string connects us with everything, always already, and let this clarify our membership in the community of everything so that we can cherish the particulars in our lives by doing justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 8, July 29, 2023

God, in your obviousness, we can become so used to the "super" in Nature, we falsely imagine to top the superlative with human exploits while forgetting that it is super-nature working in our creativity.  Give us humble eyes to acknowledge the divine realm, in, through, and around us.  Amen.

Friday in 8 Pentecost, July 28, 2023

O God, whom we can taste for your goodness; like yeast you are hidden in the dough of life which becomes the bread of our continuing sustenance; grant to us the acquiring of the tastiness of your goodness within our lives today.  Amen.

Thursday in 8 Pentecost, July 27, 2023

God, who is the realm of existence, how easy it is to miss the seeming invisible kindnesses which sustains our lives; give us the wisdom to live in the now of the ordinary mustard seed deed of kindness which can accumulate to be part of the sustaining creative grace alive in our world.  Amen.

Wednesday in 8 Pentecost, July 26, 2023

God of ever enlarging boundaries, we get so locked into what we think we know, we make incomplete judgments and make them our final truths; let the ocean of your greatness dissolve our small constructs so that we might expand with some new constructs with the humility of acknowledging their shelf life in time.  Amen.

Tuesday in 8 Pentecost, July 25, 2023

God of past, present, and future, you have given us the responsibility to sort out what has happened in the past; give us wisdom to identify what has been truly good and to re-present that goodness in new and fresh ways in our time.  Amen.

Monday in 8 Pentecost, July 24, 2023

God, who is Word, give us grace to be wisdom synthesizers as we re-mix the wisdom of the past with present insights geared toward the wise practice of love and justice, and let us have a humble tentativeness in what we yet know as preparation to be discerningly open to what is yet to come in new insights.  Amen.

Sunday, 8 Pentecost, July 23, 2023

O God, the ultimate language user; give us editorial wisdom to bring from the reservoir of words, the best writing, speaking, and body language which befits the beauty of mercy, love, and justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 7 Pentecost, July 22, 2023

Gracious God, you inspire us with the witness of Mary Magdalene as one favored to bear the very best news of the new appearance of Jesus after his death; help us to follow her in being witnesses to the new appearances of the Risen Christ constantly becoming the all and in all.  Amen.

Friday in 7 Pentecost, July 21, 2023

God, you come to be named by us as a singular word abstracted from the infinity of occasions of becoming; we cannot comprehend or speak precisely on behalf of such greatness but we can be inspired by the prevalent sense of goodness to learn how to be better in love and justice and so honor the prevalent goodness of existence. Amen.

Thursday in 7 Pentecost, July 20, 2023

God of time, who implants the hope of a surpassing future as an assurance of the always already integrating capacity of the embracing divine life; give us grace to be co-creators of a future of more love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 7 Pentecost, July 19, 2023

God, the causal mixture of everything happening together means that the cause of most things is not known in any complete way; give us the grace of good motives to cause the good things in the at hand practical ways that we know we can.  Amen.

Tuesday in 7 Pentecost, July 18, 2023

God, who will encompass all occasions of becoming, give us patience to navigate our present occasions of becoming without the despair of wanting to end all because of some current evils, but apply the healing arts of our Spirit infused lives in a world of people who always need to get better.  Amen.

Monday in 7 Pentecost, July 17, 2023

God of the world of diversity, give us grace to live with the great mixture of life; help us to remake the evil of the past with meaningful events of justice and love in the present.  Amen.

Sunday, 7 Pentecost, July 16, 2023

Great God, in our smallness we must confess the apparent randomness of happenings in the field of probabilities; give us the wisdom to know what we can't control and the courage to do the justice which is alway lying at hand.  Amen.

Saturday in 6 Pentecost, July 15, 2023

God of freedom, who honors the freedom of probable becomings and the mystery of what might happen; give us wisdom on what might happen so that we might better prepare our responses to bend the arc of outcomes toward love and justice.  Amen.

Friday in 6 Pentecost, July 14, 2023

Gracious God, the wise Gardener of the world, you planted the hybrid seed of your image in this great garden and left us the task of preparing the soil for its success; give us cultivating wisdom for the success of the image of the divine upon us.  Amen.

Thursday in 6 Pentecost, July 13, 2023

Eternal One, you have given the law of Spirit to supersede the law of death as you implanted within us hope not to taunt us for what we can never be, but to inspire us for what we can become in a future which is always already reconstituting.  Amen.

Wednesday in 6 Pentecost, July 12, 2023

O God, who is the fullness of time, grant us who are always living in the hope of what is not yet better approximations in our words and deeds of what justice means for the lives of all in our world today.  Amen.

Tuesday in 6 Pentecost, July 11, 2023

God, you give us the opportunity to continually scrutinize the sources we use to be persuaded; give us wisdom not to get stuck in good things which are not better things in the practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Monday in 6 Pentecost, July 10, 2023

God of all the negligible things that we do not know regarding what happens; we thank you for the fortune of serendipity of good events which have come to us, and as we cannot control serendipity, give us grace to prepare ourselves with the habits of learning awareness of what good may come to us.  Amen.

Sunday, 6 Pentecost, July 9, 2023

O God of Sabbath rest, give us the kind of rest we need to be sustained in a rather unrestful world of strife with many injustices; let us know an interior rest to balance all that would challenge the reign of peace.  Amen.

Saturday in 5 Pentecost, July 8, 2023

God who is the environment for all, give us the grace to find the lifestyle appropriate to the situations in our lives which will foster the best possible practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Friday in 5 Pentecost, July 7, 2023

In you, O God, we find rest in a world which can so over expose us to the travails of restlessness; but let us not use the strong peaceful interior rest as a mode of escape, but as a tonic to inspire actions of love and justice where there is neither.  Amen.

Thursday in 5 Pentecost, July 6, 2023

God of Rest, you can allow the way of interior rest in the midst of so much external unrest in the perpetual competition of systems of life; give us grace to enter into the rest of interior peace and be those who stabilize and negotiate the ways of love and justice in our life situations.  Amen.

 Wednesday in 5 Pentecost, July 5, 2023

Great Wisdom of the universe, give us grace to mobilize good knowledge in time and process so that we might continually become better in justice and love.  Amen.

Tuesday in 5 Pentecost, July 4, 2023 (Independence Day USA)

God of Liberty and Justice for all, let us be affirmed in the continual quest for all peoples in the world, and give caring wisdom of the powerful, the wealthy, and the educated to share power, wealth, and knowledge so that all might be raised to the level of knowing their integrity in the sight of God, their human peers, and in their own sense of worth.  Amen.

Monday in 5 Pentecost, July 3, 2023

God, in your vastness, we can only seem like vulnerable infants; give us grace to appreciate the age gap between your complete Adulthood and our relative states and stations of infancy, but even in our extreme vulnerability, let us not minimize our agency for doing love and justice.  Amen.

Sunday, 5 Pentecost, July 2, 2023

God, you preside over and within infinite diversity and we hope that you know a harmony of all that we have no capacity to perceive; give us the grace of harmony to enable our diversities to express the oneness of beauty in the many.  Amen.

Saturday in 4 Pentecost, July 1, 2023

God, a Name for what is greatest, we name you because in our smallness we have come to recognize greatness, and name you as personal, because language is relational and personal and we cannot help but be personal and project personality on you and all things.  Give us grace to be adept at the relational and personal especially as it is known in kind justice.  Amen.

Friday in 4 Pentecost, June 30, 2023

God of infinite becoming, we are lost in this greatness, and in our lostness we need both temporal and context specific guidance; let the kindness of justice for all be the guiding principle for us even as our imperfect application of the same leaves room for new occasions of justice attempts tomorrow.  Amen.

Thursday in 4 Pentecost, June 29, 2023

God whose perfection is known in Completeness, keep us from cynicism which cripples us when we face our gaping imperfections; give us fortitude to act incrementally in our human messes toward better results in love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 4 Pentecost, June 28, 2023

God of our past, who you were to us yesterday in how you were known and manifest, has now became a trace on on our resume of having faith; give us originality today in knowing you in the new day with new challenges to the possibilities of love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 4 Pentecost, June 27, 2023

God, as the Free Agent of the universe and known in the complex resulting probable conditions of share freedom, help us to find the Holy Spirit as the power of our own agency to achieve the goodness of love and justice in the actual practices of our lives.  Amen.

Monday in 4 Pentecost, June 26, 2023

God, whose nature we proclaim to be hospitable as the Host of the World we know; give us hosting grace for each other and for our environment so that we might express the very best of what belonging together means.  Amen.

Sunday, 4 Pentecost, June 25, 2023

God of Time and Change, you are perfect and great in the creative process of surpassing yourself in greatness without rival in your future states; give us grace to contribute to your future and ours, excellence in love and justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 3 Pentecost, June 24, 2023

God of Justice, our imperfect practice of justice means that we seek your lure of justice to make us more just; give us discernment of the divine lure of justice and the practical grit to make it actual in our life situations.  Amen.

Friday in 3 Pentecost, June 23, 2023

God of Peace, whose peace tolerates and comprehends all the conflicts of the free conditions of this life; give us the comprehensive peace which can make us instruments of justice and love in our world.  Amen.

Thursday in 3 Pentecost, June 22, 2023

God of dynamic Peace, let us not call peaceful a passive tolerance to the injustice inflicted upon others on our behalf while we enjoy comfort; let our peace include the coming to peace for everyone else too.  Amen.

Wednesday in 3 Pentecost, June 21, 2023

God of Peace, let not our peace be the guilty silence of inactivity when the application of justice is required to roil the status quo of inequity.  Grant us courage to work for a dynamic peace which spreads justice to all.  Amen.

Tuesday in 3 Pentecost, June 20, 2023

God, who is One, we in our subjection to growth in time divide your oneness into the wide varieties of stages in our journeys of faith; give us grace to tolerate the uneven paths of people in their journey toward more perfect becoming.  Amen.

Monday in 3 Pentecost, June 19, 2023

God of Peace, do not let us equate the peace of God for the status quo of injustice when things seem peaceful because the oppressed are kept in check; let us reconcile the peace of God with the dynamic movement of love and justice for all.  Amen.

Sunday, 3 Pentecost, June 18, 2023

Parenting God, give us wisdom about our human tendencies toward selfish evil, and yet keep us from being cynical about the same; give us gentle loving care for one another as we share the common vulnerabilities of being all too human.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Pentecost, June 17, 2023

Gracious Generous God, give us the calling to be executors of God's desirous will for all to know their graceful inheritance as children of God.  Amen.

Friday in 2 Pentecost, June 16, 2023

Eternal Word of God, you blessed our human lives in being worded beings; we beseech you to help us to use the vast field of linguistic performance consistent with the beauty of holiness in make love and justice the best expression of our languaged lives.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Pentecost, June 15, 2023

God, you are the undeniable Plenitude in which we live and move and have our being today, and with the connection glue of care and sustenance, since you have given us the hope of everything be forever even if under different manifestations.  Keep us hopeful today of specific manifestations today of love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Pentecost, June 14, 2023

God of Love, keep us from holding to the good theory of love while refusing to practice love in words and deeds.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Pentecost, June 13, 2023

God of Light, expose to us the values to which we are persuaded in our lives today, so that the objects and the motives of our faith might be made more excellent today.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Pentecost, June 12, 2023

God of Truth, whose truth is best known in the pragmatic results of love and justice, give us insights for strategies of love and justice so that our truth may resist being hypocritical.  Amen.

Sunday, 2 Pentecost, June 11, 2023

Omni-Becoming God, help us in our becoming to surpass ourselves today in excellence and so contribute to influencing the better becoming of everything else by promulgating the collateral effects of grace.  Amen.

Saturday in 1 Pentecost, June 10, 2023

Holy Trinity, you are One in Three, and we ask for oneness in a field of an infinite number of particulars; let not pacts of unity lead to tyranny, and let not rampant individualism lead to chaos, but let the Spirit of wisdom lead us to harmonies of love, peace, and justice among all.  Amen.

Friday in 1 Pentecost, June 9, 2023

Deliver us, O God from our false sense of divine entitlement which happens when we act as though others are not entitled to your grace which comes from being made in the divine image.  Let us accept your entitlements of grace as we acknowledge that grace in all others.  Amen.

Thursday in 1 Pentecost, June 8, 2023

Great Physician, you gained that title because of our obvious lack of health; we live by the hope of future health, and being better in significant ways in our future than we have been in our past; give us love and justice to practice your healing arts in our world today.  Amen.

 Wednesday in 1 Pentecost, June 7, 2023

Gracious Healer of the world, teach us the healing arts which can ride the seeming entropy of time and aging; give us hope that the loss of life and health today will result in the gaining of new health and life in our future.  Amen.

Tuesday in 1 Pentecost, June 6, 2023

God of all knowing; give us grace to act upon our highest insights as they are informed by the criteria of love and justice.  Let us not use the lack of infallible knowledge as an excuse to act in the ways of justice and love.  Amen.

Monday in 1 Pentecost, June 5, 2023

Holy Trinity God, your strength is like water, pliable to form around our current circumstance with compelling limits of love and justice; we give you thanks for your adjustments to our life occasion even while not compromising with our unenlightened tendencies.  Adjustable God, we wish to adjust to your requirements of mercy, humility, and justice.  Amen.

 Trinity Sunday, June 4, 2023

God of Originating and Parental Plenitude, through Christ our human language is affirmed as being God-bearing, and in the Holy Spirit we affirm the always already omnipresence of the fullness of God everywhere.  Give directional guidance within the plenitudinous divine territory wherein we live.  Amen.

Saturday after Pentecost, June 3, 2023

God, whom we reduce to sequential procession in order to grasp you with our language; your three in one being is the fullness of synchronicity which cannot be divided even while time divides the before from the after.  Give us grace to live the unity of synchronicity even as we must parse it sequentially in the time of our life.  Amen.

Friday after Pentecost, June 2, 2023

God, whom we call Father because of the mystery of the origination of all things; you are the Absolute Past from whom all things have come and we ask for humility to admit that we are not self-made even while we ask for boldness to make love and justice actual in our world today.  Amen.

Thursday after Pentecost, June 1, 2023

Holy Spirit, you are the fullness in the seeming emptiness of space and you are the condition for the mutual experience of us with each other; we seek from you the best experience of each other which we call communion.  Amen.

Wednesday, after Pentecost, May 31, 2023

Spirit of Oneness, the vastness of diversity requires the grace of the oneness of harmony to both unify and specialize for the diverse missions of love and justice; let us know that we are in you uni-verse, even as we inhabits the multi-verses of our diverse world.  Amen.

Tuesday, after Pentecost, May 30, 2023

Spirit, who we name as the invisible breath and wind of life; let your effects be made visible in our lives today, especially in living lives of love and justice.  Amen.

Monday, Day after Pentecost, May 29, 2023 and Memorial Day

Gracious Spirit of Love, who inspires the greater love when needed on behalf of the community; we are grateful for those who have given their lives in living the greater love, and we ask that such greater love would prevent the events of future harm.  Amen.

The Day of Pentecost, May 28, 2023

Gracious Holy Spirit, we ask of you the impossible task of creating harmonies in our differences when our hearts are often inclined to obstinate separation; let your melting fire of love work on our hard hearts to soften us to the practice of blending with others into a mosaic of the functional love of justice.  Amen.

Friday, December 1, 2023

Quiz of the Day, November 2023

Quiz of the Day, November 30, 2023

Who was Simon Peter's brother?

a. James
b. Philip
c. Andrew
d. Thaddaeus

Quiz of the Day, November 29, 2023

Apocalyptic can mean

a. things eschatological
b. referring to the Book of Revelations
c. end of the world
d. an unveiling
e. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, November 28, 2023

What has America given to the Episcopal calendar of saints?

a. a president saint
b. a senator saint
c. a governor saint
d. king and queen saints


Quiz of the Day, November 27, 2023

What does the Matthean exception refer to?

a. alternate beatitude to Luke
b. alternate Lord's Prayer to Luke
c. divorce permission
d. circumcision

Quiz of the Day, November 26, 2023

The Feast of Christ the King is

a. the Last Sunday after Pentecost
b. the Last Sunday after the Epiphany
c. the First Sunday of Advent
d. the Sunday closest to January 1st

Quiz of the Day, November 25, 2023

The prophet Ezekiel wrote that a shepherd would be set up to feed a future people of Israel.  Who was this promised shepherd?

a. Moses
b. Joshua
c. the Messiah
d. David

Quiz of the Day, November 24, 2023

What did the Maccabees do with the desecrated Temple altar?

a. had the priests do a purification ritual
b. tear it down and build a new one
c. place a menorah on it
d. removed the altar stones from Jerusalem

Quiz of the Day, November 23, 2023

What biblical record to we have of Jesus receiving money?

a. from over turned tables in the Temple
b. from Zacchaeus
c. from the mouth of a fish
d. from Judas the treasurer

Quiz of the Day, November 22, 2023

Of the following, who wrote science fiction?

a. G.K. Chesterton
b. Charles Williams
c. C.S. Lewis
d. Evelyn Underhill

Quiz of the Day, November 21, 2023

The metaphor of Alpha and Omega is used for one seated upon the throne in which biblical book?

a. Psalms
b. Isaiah
c. Daniel
d. Revelations

Quiz of the Day, November 20, 2023

Which nations are organized by Satan for the great battle in the visionary book of Revelation?

a. Assyria and Persia
b. Elam and Medes
c. Greece and Egypt
d. Gog and Magog

Quiz of the Day, November 19, 2023

Who died with a tent peg driven into his skull?

a. Saul
b. Goliath
c. Sisera
d. Ahab

Quiz of the Day, November 18, 2023

The surname of Judah Maccabee means what?

a. the sword
b. the hammer
c. the light
d. the faithful

Quiz of the Day, November 17, 2023

Which of the following books does not refer to the desolating sacrilege?

a. Maccabees
b. Daniel
c. Jude
d. Matthew
e. Mark

Quiz of the Day, November 16, 2023

The great foe of the Maccabees was

a. Alexander the Great
b. Ptolemy
c. Antiochus Epiphanes
d. Darius

Quiz of the Day, November 15, 2023

How many times does the story of the feeding of the multitude appear in the four canonical Gospels?

a. 3 times
b. 4 times
c. 5 times
d. 6 times

Quiz of the Day, November 14, 2023

Of the following, who is the only female judge of Israel?

a. Ruth
b. Rahab
c  Deborah
d. Judith
e. Miriam

Quiz of the Day, November 13, 2023

In which of the following books does Babylon stand as a symbol rather than an actual city?

a. Daniel
b. Ezekiel
c. Jeremiah
d. Revelations

Quiz of the Day, November 12, 2023

Ezra rebuked the men of Judah

a. for not building the walls
b. for not refurbishing the Temple
c. for marrying foreign women
d. for compromising with Sanballat and Tobiah

Quiz of the Day, November 11, 2023

What patron saint of soldiers day of commemoration is on Veterans' Day?

a. Joan of Arc
b. St. Martin of Tours
c. St. Ignatius Loyola
c. St. George

Quiz of the Day, November 10, 2023

What pope is associated with Attila the Hun?

a. Leo the Great
b. Gregory the Great
c. Boniface I
d. Innocent I

Quiz of the Day, November 9, 2023

The king of Persia gave to whom, power beyond the Great River?

a. Nehemiah
b. Zerubbabel
c. Ezra
d. Sanballat


Quiz of the Day, November 8, 2023

What might be called the gateway to the Land of Promise for Joshua and the people of Israel?

a. Mt. Nebo
b. the Red Sea
c. the Jordan River
d. the Dead Sea

Quiz of the Day, November 7, 2023

Nehemiah dedicated

a. the first Temple
b. the second Temple
c. the third Temple
d. the Shiloh Shrine

Quiz of the Day, November 6, 2023

Sanballat accused Nehemiah of wanting to be what?

a. a king of Judah
b. a spy of the Persian
c. a conspirator with the Arabs
d. a spy with the Egyptians

Quiz of the Day, November 5, 2023

The biblical Eutychus is known for what?

a. sleeping during a sermon
b. falling out of a window during a sermon
c. taken for dead during a sermon
d. revived to life after a sermon
e. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, November 4, 2023

Haman, Tobiah, and Sanballat might be regarded as

a. infamous persons/foes for the Jews
b. helpful people
c. persons who were call God-fearers
d. escapees from Jericho

Quiz of the Day, November 3, 2023

What king sent Nehemiah back to Judah to rebuild the city and Temple?

a. Cyrus
b. Darius
c. Xerxes
d. Artaxerxes 

Quiz of the Day, November 2, 2023

What was the prophet Nehemiah's job in Susa?

a. sommelier secret service for Darius
b. chief counselor to Darius
c. chief rabbi of the Susa synagogue
d. translator for Darius

Quiz of the Day, November 1, 2023

Which writing before the New Testament makes reference to the Son of God placing crowns on the heads of an immortal throng?

a. Psalms
b. Ezekiel
c. Isaiah
d. 2 Esdras


Thursday, November 30, 2023

Aphorism of the Day, November 2023

Aphorism of the Day, November 30, 2023

The apocalyptic genre is writing about conceiving endings for the sake of imagining justice, especially to survive current conditions of injustice.

Aphorism of the Day, November 29, 2023

What is the relation of a handful of water taken out of the river to the entire river?  What is the relation of a story taken out of the entire universe of possible continuous discourse?  It is but arbitrary book ends to try to give the location of identity within the morass of all.  Apocalyptic endings are but tropes used to provide definitions within the realm of infinite differences.  Apocalyptic is a way of confessing that our duration and endings have meaning.

Aphorism of the Day, November 28, 2023

Modern day cinematic apocalyptic imagination is much more prolific than the biblical apocalyptic could achieve in writing.

Aphorism of the Day, November 27, 2023

The apocalyptic is a discursive response by powerless people who are threatened with collateral damage when powerful people fight with each other for control of world resources.  The discourse is an exercise in imagining that impending threats of the tyrants can be stopped by the greater cosmic God.  It is a shame when people with significant social power misappropriate the apocalyptic discourse either for sheer entertainment, e.g. super hero cinema, or worse yet when comfortable Christians wish for the end of the world for their God to show everyone that they were "right" and people who disagreed with them were wrong and deserved punishment.

Aphorism of the Day, November 26, 2023

Having a Shepherd King means that kingly power is used to tend to the vulnerable.  Power in service is the meaning of Christ the King.

Aphorism of the Day, November 25, 2023

Apparently the Son of Man is hidden within poor and needy people of the world to incentivize people to tend to them.  Apparently, Saint Francis, Mother Teresa, and a very small percentage of Christian people got the message.

Aphorism of the Day, November 24, 2023

What most Christians do not practice?  Finding the real presence of Christ in the needy.  It is easier to have faith to find Christ in bread and wine than in the homeless and the poor.

Aphorism of the Day, November 23, 2023

How does life often feel?  Like the Big Ref in life is not dealing out realtime penalties to big time offending cruel tyrants and greed vacuums for most of the goods in life, while penalizing the more moderately bad and selfish people who don't sin boldly enough to get away with it.  The timid sinners survive by having faith in a pan-optic seer who will punish the realtime unpunished at some later time with catastrophic reversal of fortune.  The wise might simply opine that it will have been better to have been assigned more roles of goodness in life than roles of wicked cruelty and greed.

Aphorism of the Day, November 22, 2023

The notion of King and monarchies in liberal democracies is relegated to nostalgic national identity function as in the case the English monarchy or fairy tale status in the various cinematic Disney kingdoms.   The notion of a singular benevolent omni-competent person ruling over the entirety of humanity past, present, and future is inconceivable unless such a figure is Word as the All and in All that can be humanly known.  Word is what is King of kings, in an unavoidable way.

 Aphorism of the Day, November 21, 2023

How can Christ as King have significance as a symbol within the post Enlightenment Era when many nations have come to see democracies as a needed correction to monarchies and totalitarian regimes?  Perhaps the Risen Christ is best understood as the surpassing Self of every person beckoning each to future excellence in love and justice.  So much thinking about Christ as King is an external forceful powerful future authority rather than the possibility of the interior lives of all people being swamped with irresistible love.

Aphorism of the Day, November 20, 2023

Being Christ the Kingly does not mean be a benevolent dictator; it means using one's ability, knowledge, and power to tend those who need care the most.

Aphorism of the Day, November 19, 2023

The most telling realm of God is to be the realm within the epidermal borders of the human body.

Aphorism of the Day, November 18, 2023

Stewardship does not always mean that one is successful in terms of certain public metrics of success; it means that one is always already at the work of developing and using one's gifts.

Aphorism of the Day, November 17, 2023

Would that the world was full of just moderately bad and selfish people, and not the monsters of greed and power who ruin the lives of so many people.  Just because we can't be angels doesn't mean that few should be demonic in their greed and exploitive and destructive power.  Why can't everyone just be moderately selfish people?

Aphorism of the Day, November 16, 2023

Fear is a powerful motivator causing paralysis.  Transformed fear might be called faith or being persuaded about positive outcomes inspired by hope.

Aphorism of the Day, November 15, 2023

The motivation for failure to invest might be fear.  Fear of failure might keep us from developing our gifts, and the result is that we lose because some things can only be done at the available time.

Aphorism of the Day, November 14, 2023

The parable of the talents indicates that the divine has given everyone assets to invest/develop and the stewardship task is to continually develop what we've been given to avoid atrophy of our assets.  Atrophy is the cruel built in punishment of inactivity.

Aphorism of the Day, November 13, 2023

The parable of the talents is about avoiding this epitaph on one's tombstone: "He had lots of potential."

Aphorism of the Day, November 12, 2023

Why do we extol being prepared for the future so much so that we don't regard how we are responding now as being completely adequate?  Time is always moving with another after what was before, and so we make attending to the future the main task of living.  We, of course, differentiate the immediate future of the moments before in the now from the more long term future for which we believe that we have more time for strategic planning.  And strategic planning involves connecting the location and direction of current footsteps with the desired destination many miles of time away., even without the current assurances of ever attaining the destination.

Aphorism of the Day, November 11, 2023

What do we need to be prepared and ready for?  The next.  The next is always a not yet actual field of probabilities.  We synthesize from what has already happened a logic for what might yet happen.  From that logic, if we are wise we prepare for what is next, without certain guarantee of success but it is still wise to act from statistical approximations.

Aphorism of the Day, November 10, 2023

The notion of precedence is used as a method of comparison.  A past incidence is used or cited in the present to impart authority to something in the present.  Difference uses of language for history, jurisprudence, academic writing use precedence differently with different standards of application.  The New Testament writers use "identity precedence" to establish the belief about the surpassing greatness of Jesus.  Heroes from the Hebrew Scriptures and phrases regarding divine designation are used to present Jesus in a surpassing comparative way the significance of Jesus for those who follow him.  This use of precedence is not the kind of precedence used in science with a dependence upon statistical approximation and the replicable requirement for scientific facts.  Spiritual experience accounts and anecdotal experiential precedence is a different order of precedence and the two should not be confused.  Spiritual discourse is aesthetic discourse and its truth/beauty criteria is different from the requirements of science.

 Aphorism of the Day, November 9, 2023

Being asleep and awake are metaphors in the parable of Jesus about the bridesmaids.  The common phrase of "being asleep on the job" evokes something similar.  Obviously, we are not made to be awake 24 hours a day but the metaphor refers to being awake about the presence of the realm of God.  If one can be awake about the realm of God, then one can enjoy the rest of sleep as needed.

Aphorism of the Day, November 8, 2023

Modern readers of the Bible can treat the writers of the Bible as those who did not know the difference between discursive uses of language.  Bible writers, like us knew how to be poetic, ironic, hyperbolic, and common sense reporters as well.  To treat poetic and hyperbolic discourse as naive realism is a misreading of the Bible.

Aphorism of the Day, November 7, 2023

The injunction of the word of Christ about being ready is really about probability theory, actuarial wisdom, scientific thinking, meaning we take into account all past and current experience in being best prepared for what might happen.  There is no wisdom in making the word of Jesus impractical and then calling it "spirituality."

Aphorism of the Day, November 6, 2023

"The kingdom of heaven will be like this."  Perhaps this should be understood as the continuous future tense, since the now is always on the cusp of what will be and time itself is a feature of the kingdom of heaven since the kingdom of heaven is the realization of everlastingness itself.  The words of Jesus can also be the future anterior tense in the sense that the realm of God is an always already awaiting the in-breaking  into one's awareness, in which case the kingdom of heaven will have been realized experientially.

Aphorism of the Day, November 5, 2023

The New Testament word for hypocrite means "actor."  In many ways we become those acting out the scripts of our situation, including our pieties and religious behaviors.  We have roles to play, the persona as a mask which we wear to appear to the public.  Learning agreement between our inside feelings, our speech, facial expressions, body language is very difficult.  We can live mostly divided lives because we may be performing for people in contexts in ways that betray our inward feelings.  And is it a bad thing to act pleasant and be seemingly kind to people even when we don't feel like it?   When are we acting bereft of having feeling for the role?  We might redeem the role of being hypocrites by aspiring to be recovering hypocrites, which means the script says we must be "perfect" as the Father in heaven is perfect, yet we don't feel, act, or speak perfectly as actors.  We don't give up the perfect script as our goal even as we continue to attempt to align with Spirit as inward goodness with acts and words of goodness, and so we labor to be recovering hypocrites.

Aphorism of the Day, November 4, 2023

Finding one's calling in a vocation can lead one to become over-identified with the profession which gives one esteem within society.  The words of Jesus remind us that our child of God identity is primary and this should keep us humble no matter what kind of success or failure we have in our professions.

Aphorism of the Day, November 3, 2023

The Bible does not exhaust God's word, because in the beginning was the Word, which was with God and was God.  Word is the embracing All in all that can be known and is coextensive with everything that can be known.

Aphorism of the Day, November 2, 2023

Religious communities tend to reduce and limit "God's word" to "holy texts," which of course have gone through years of having been interpreted when written, read and used and "voted" into official canons designating them as the "official God's word textbook."  The fuller notion of God's word is Word itself being one with God, thus meaning that any word in time and in timeliness can be a God-word to the one who experiences its piercing relevancy.

Aphorism of the Day, November 1, 2023

The words of Jesus about having no rabbis, fathers, or instructors is a warning about relying upon one's written resume and title of office and not manifesting the inner charism of ministry.  Through winsome service one verifies the presence of the messiah in one's life.

Prayers for Christmas, 2024-2025

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