the secret of writing

I have a quote scrawled in one of my notebooks from a writers' day I went to earlier this year.

The secret of writing is avoiding not writing.

- W. Goldman

Whether it should have the italics I don't know - was I adding my own emphasis?   But it sounds sensible.  I try and implement it as much as possible!


Image: mine

imperfect invitation

“IF WE WAIT until everything is perfect, we’ll never issue an invitation. Remember this: what is common to you is a banquet to someone else. You think your house is small, but to the lonely heart, it is a castle. You think your living room is a mess, but to the person whose life is a mess, your house is a sanctuary. You think the meal is simple, but to those who eat alone every night, pork and beans on paper plates tastes like filet mignon. What is small to you is huge to them.”

- Max Lucado, Outlive your Life

Used in welcome service 

a means of grace

“…HOSPITALITY  is a means of grace. It is an avenue, path, or opening to God’s grace in the world in which we both receive grace and pass it on to others. Means of grace are often very simple acts: eating together, praying together, listening to God’s word, or simply being together in fellowship.

Such concrete experiences become doors that open to the grace that infuses the universe. Hospitality is a way of life infused with grace, a participation in the grace of God all around us, not a set of particular actions or behaviours. Hospitality is more a matter of becoming attuned to grace, and participating in its movement, than it is trying to create a particular atmosphere or situation.

Put this way, hospitality can start to sound ethereal and vague. For hospitality is indeed less than discreet deeds and more of an orientation embedded in the Christian life, a way of being in the world that entails acts of welcome and sustenance, yet is more than those particular acts.

This way of being includes mercy, justice, and recognition. All of these characteristics speak of communities and individuals with a mature spiritual awareness of God’s grace and presence. It may be that the best way to cultivate hospitality is to cultivate a deep awareness of God’s grace and the means that open to it. Only out of that awareness and gratitude can hospitality be genuinely practiced.”

– Amy Oden, And You Welcomed Me: A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity

Used in welcome service

Big hat tip to the Missional Church Network for resourcing me with so many lovely quotes!  Now I want to go and read the books - a good thing.

prayer as a gift

Last night I was reading an excerpt from Tom Smail's 'Praying with Paul', in BRF's Quiet Spaces journal. Had one of those moments when I was struck by a mere few words.

He talked about how most of us, however theologically well-versed, carried an underlying sense that prayer and worship are things we must do in order to get in touch with God.  Somehow we have to cover the distance in order to communicate with him.  It's a real effort - and we feel we need the right techniques and quite a lot of spiritual strength to even try and reach the 'target' of God.  It's not something we would word that way, but it feels like it.

But then he suggests:

 "What if prayer were not this kind of task that daunts us, but a free gift graciously given and to be gratefully received? What if it were not the testing means by which we try to reach God but the kind provision that he makes to reach us?" Tom Smail, Praying with Paul

Prayer as God's provision to us.  A different way of looking at something we may struggle with - a release to know that it is an opportunity and a privilege for us to be able to pray - to talk to God!

I'm thinking about prayer at the moment and I found this a very releasing way of looking at it - it's not about the effort we make but the gift we've been given.  It becomes full of potential - 'how can I use this gift?', rather than 'how can I make the effort?'

on a day of remembering

Remembrance Sunday, 2009

giver of hope,
walk among those
who see no possibility
of a life unscarred by violence

bringer of light
sit down beside those
who see only darkness
and have barely a candle flame

bestower of love
carry the ones
who can no longer walk
without stumbling over grief

sender of peace
come to those
who walk continually
on the shards of war
that litter our world

give hope, bring light, bestow love victorious

send peace
O God of peace,
on this our day of remembrance.

***

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

- Lawrence Binyon, For the Fallen