Tall Monastic Guy: A Blessing over Denver Neighborhoods

January 06, 2012

A Blessing over Denver Neighborhoods

What is a blessing but a rain of grace falling generously into the lives of those in need;

And what neighborhood in our city is without need?

May the Spirit touch (this neighborhood) in this morning pause.

May this day provide a pathway strewn with hope and renewal.

May there be work today in (this neighborhood) that is God’s love made visible.

May a heart of grace and benevolence be born here today.

And may that birth bless the elderly with hope for the future.

May the resurrection be experienced in (this neighborhood) today

As old enemies are moved toward reconciliation,

Violent thoughts transcend into hugs.

And the voices of criticism are radically transformed into encouragement.

May the greed and excess dissolve into the soil of community gardens

Where neighbors cultivate families who share meals

and where children are free to play and explore their curiosities.

God breath upon (this neighborhood) so that when the people look in the mirror today they see themselves as they truly are... a redemptive reflection of you.

Amen.

Posted at 11:33 AM in Access, missional/incarnational, Neighborhood Stuff, prayer, Street Psalms | Permalink

Tags: blessing, Denver, Street Psalms

Comments

Amen this is my prayer for all communities of color, poverty, elders, children, those in and out of the church, but not out the love of Christ.

Posted by: Vittoria D. Whitsett | March 26, 2012 at 01:15 PM

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Words make Worlds...

"It becomes so clear to me as I grow older that people who change, and keep changing, are the only people who grow up." -Richard Rohr
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"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be." -John Wooden
"Receptivity without confrontation leads to a bland neutrality that serves nobody. Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression which hurts everybody." - Henri Nouwen
"Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of spirituality begins where we are now in the mess of our lives." -Mike Yaconelli
"But that doesn’t mean community is easy. For everything in this world tries to pull us away from community, pushes us to choose ourselves over others, to choose independence over interdependence, to choose great things over small things, to choose going fast alone over going far together." -Shane Claiborne
"Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create." Albert Einstein
"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Howard Thurman
"A nation that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." -Dr. Martin Luther King
"Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful--- Christian community is the final apologetic." -Francis Schaefer
"It is not allowable to love the Creation according to the purposes one has for it, any more than it is allowable to love one’s neighbor in order to borrow his tools." Wendell Berry
"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than the particular country in which he was born." -Francois Fenelon
"Ministry cannot be about maintenance, but it is about gathering, about embrace, about welcoming home all sorts of and conditions of people; home is a place for mother tongue, of basic soul food, of old stories told and treasured, of being at ease, known by name, belonging without qualifying for membership." -Walter Brueggemann
"Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get round to being the particular poet or particular monk that they are intended to be by God." "In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be." -Thomas Merton
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"We must become holy not because we want to feel holy but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us." Mother Teresa
"I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self." Henri Nouwen