Grief

 1. PRAYER

A Prayer for Those in Mourning 

Dear Lord, In the depths of our hearts, we carry the weight of sadness and the ache of mourning. We acknowledge these emotions for they are a testament to the love we held for those we have lost and the pain of their absence in our lives.

Help us, dear God, to embrace our sadness without guilt or shame. Grant us the wisdom to understand that grief is a natural and necessary part of the human experience. In our mourning, may we find strength in our memories, solace in our tears, and comfort in the support of those who walk this journey with us.

Lord, we also pray for the promise of joy in the morning. We trust in your unfailing love and the hope of new beginnings. Help us recognize the small glimmers of light amid the darkness, the moments of peace amidst the pain. Guide us on the path to healing so that as the dawn breaks, we may find joy once more. May our hearts be open to the beauty of life, even as we remember those who are no longer with us. In the name of your boundless love and grace, we pray. Amen.

2. MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/v-l0Tj0PdfM?si=Bkk-la3osu9bQ0J9

3. SONG

https://youtu.be/Gl2sqdfD2Q0?si=MPEK6erjc_pOfxtJ

4.  NARRATIVE

The Devastation of Grief

Monday, August 2, 2021

The Devastation of Grief
Monday, August 2, 2021

In the Hebrew Scriptures, we find Job moving through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s well-known stages of grief and dying: denial, anger, bargaining, resignation, and acceptance. The first seven days of Job’s time on the “dung heap” of pain are spent in silence, the immediate response matching the first stage—denial. Then he reaches the anger stage, verses in the Bible in which Job shouts and curses at God. He says, in effect, “This so-called life I have is not really life, God, it’s death. So why should I be happy?”

Perhaps some of us have been there—so hurt and betrayed, so devastated by our losses that we echo Job’s cry about the day he was born, “May that day be darkness. May God on high have no thought for it, may no light shine on it. May murk and deep shadow claim it for their own” (Job 3:4–5). It’s beautiful, poetic imagery. He’s saying: “Uncreate the day. Make it not a day of light, but darkness. Let clouds hang over it, eclipse swoop down on it.” Where God in Genesis speaks “Let there be light,” Job insists “Let there be darkness.” The day of uncreation, of anti-creation. We probably have to have experienced true depression or betrayal to understand such a feeling.

W. H. Auden expressed his grief in much the same way in his poem “Funeral Blues,” which ends with these lines:

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. [1]

There’s a part of each of us that feels and speaks that sadness. Not every day, thank goodness. But if we’re willing to feel and participate in the pain of the world, part of us will suffer that kind of despair. If we want to walk with Job, with Jesus, and in solidarity with much of the world, we must allow grace to lead us there as the events of life show themselves. I believe this is exactly what we mean by conformity to Christ.

We must go through the stages of feeling, not only the last death but all the earlier little (and not-so-little) deaths. If we bypass these emotional stages by easy answers, all they do is take a deeper form of disguise and come out in another way. Many people learn the hard way—by getting ulcers, by all kinds of internal diseases, depression, addictions, irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course or to find some appropriate place to share them.

I am convinced that people who do not feel deeply finally do not know deeply either. It is only because Job is willing to feel his emotions that he is able to come to grips with the mystery in his head and heart and gut. He understands holistically and therefore his experience of grief becomes both whole and holy.

References:
[1] W. H. Auden, “Funeral Blues,” Another Time (Faber and Faber: 1940), 91.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections (Crossroad: 1996), 53–55.

5.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/9LSJ4d5kubI?si=Ms0xcTcwdXXoF8bQ

6.  SHARING

7.  PRAYERS AND INTENTIONS

A Prayer for Comfort in Grief

Dear God, in this time of sorrow and loss, I turn to you for strength and comfort. Please wrap your loving arms around me and grant me the peace that surpasses all understanding. Help me find solace in the memories of my loved one, and guide me through this difficult journey of grief. Amen.

8.  SONG

https://youtu.be/hj_0pvIGkks?si=2q8tbtF_2Jg5v4J1

Happy birthday 

https://youtu.be/_z-1fTlSDF0

Love

1.  PRAYER

Gracious God, from love we are made and to love we shall return. May our love for one another kindle flames of joy and hope. May the light and warmth of your grace inspire us to follow the Way of Jesus Christ, and serve you in your Kingdom, now and forever.

2.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/D1ESe4rJNt4?si=FPBlyidQqw-RZIpx

2.  SONG

https://youtu.be/Dy-_z107XRo?si=Z1bLV5vsPhUuUkCO

4,  NARRATIVE

https://wmpaulyoung.com/love-is-who-you-are/#:~:text=Love%20is%20a%20place%20that,peace%20of%20the%20True%20Self.

Love is not really an action that you do. Love is what and who you are, in your deepest essence.

Love is a place that already exists inside of you, but is also greater than you. That’s the paradox. It’s within you and yet beyond you. This creates a sense of abundance and more-than-enoughness, which is precisely the satisfaction and deep peace of the True Self. You know you’ve found a well that will never go dry, as Jesus says (see John 4:13-14). Your True Self, God’s Love in you, cannot be exhausted.

Material gifts decrease when you give them away. Spiritual gifts, by contrast, increase the more you use them. Yes! You get more love by letting it flow through you, just as modeled by the Trinity. If you love, you will become more loving. If you practice patience, you will become more patient. If you stop the Divine Flow, you will be stopped up (“sin”).

Love is not something you can bargain for, nor is it something you can attain or work up to—because love is your very structural and essential identity—created in the image of the Trinity. When you are living in conscious connection with this Loving Inner Presence, you are in your True Self. God is forever united to this love within you; it is your soul, the part of you that always says yes to God. God always sees God in you—and “cannot disown God’s own self” (2 Timothy 2:13).

Many Christians live with a terrible sense of being rejected, because their religion is basically a worthiness game where no one really wins. That’s precisely not the Good News. It’s bad news.

The Gospel will always be misinterpreted by the false self in terms of some kind of climbing or achieving. Since the false self can’t even understand the command to love one’s enemies, it has to disregard the message as naive, which is exactly what most of Christian history has done.

Jesus’ rather clear teaching on love of enemies has been consistently ignored by all the mainline churches. Christians have been fighting one war after another, and excluding, torturing, and killing enemies right and left because the false self can never understand the Gospel. Yet we have been baptizing, confirming, giving communion to, and even ordaining false selves throughout our history. It is probably unavoidable, and God surely must be patient.

Once, after I gave an anti-war sermon, a businessman came up to me and said, “Well, Father, maybe in an ideal world. . . .” I know he meant well, but that’s what we’ve done with most of the teaching of Jesus. We interpret his meaning for some ideal world. Of course, the ideal world is never going to come so we can just ignore 99% of the actual teaching of Jesus, as the institutional church (and I too!) have usually done. We concentrate instead on things that Jesus never once talked about, like birth control, homosexuality, and abortion—bodily “sins” because the body can most easily carry shame. We shouldn’t disregard bodily shame or addictions, but they are not the core problem.

Jesus focused on issues of power, prestige, and possession—which all of us have largely ignored. I don’t think the church has had intentional bad will. It has simply tried to get the false self to live the Gospel, and that will never work. In other words, we’ve tried to have a church without fundamental transformation. Thus, we whittle down the whole Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’ direct teaching that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” (Matthew 26:52); and we look for absolutes in ever new secular places—like the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution which allows us to carry weapons. And this is done by a vast majority of Bible-quoting Christians.

*These thoughts were originally shared as one of Richard’s Daily Meditations. Sign up for them here

5.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/AzvcCXvcsZE?si=gTo56IaCMq_8BVdK

6.  SHARING

7.  PRAYER AND INTENTIONS

Your Love

Bless us with Love, O Merciful God; 
That we may Love as you Love!
That we may show patience, tolerance,
Kindness, caring and love to all!
Give me knowledge; O giver of Knowledge,
That I may be one with my Universe and Mother Earth!
O Compassionate One, grant compassion unto us;
That we may help all fellow souls in need!
Bless us with your Love O God.
Bless us with your Love.

- Author Unknown

8.  SONG

https://youtu.be/AdTEz3zwQJk?si=zNBBDdjxB0ZsAHOO

https://youtu.be/bpXwOSHTwsY?si=_1IXlBZD7HtKJwWd

Paula's prayer meeting 4/10/2024

Song

 https://youtu.be/ZqL-pybIcms?si=R8ZJBSoMUBVMSga0

Lyrics

Join in the Dance

D. Shutte

Join in the dance of the earth's jubilation!
This is the feast of the love of God.
Shout from the heights to the ends of creation:
Jesus the Savior is risen from the grave!

Wake, O people; sleep no longer:
greet the breaking day!
Christ, Redeemer, Lamb and Lion,
turns the night away!

All creation, like a mother,
labors to give birth.
Soon the pain will be forgotten,
joy for all the earth! 

Now our shame becomes our glory
on this holy tree.
Now the reign of death is ended;
now we are set free! 

 

 Prayer

 

Resurrection Prayer

                                                 Kathy Galloway

 

Christ our life,
You are alive - in the beauty of the earth
in the rhythm of the seasons
in the mystery of time and space
Alleluia

Christ our life,
You are alive - in the tenderness of touch
in the heartbeat of intimacy
in the insights of solitude
Alleluia

Christ our life,
You are alive - in the creative possibility
of the dullest conversation
of the dreariest task
the most threatening event
Alleluia 

Christ our life,
You are alive - to offer re-creation
to every unhealed hurt
to every deadened place
to every damaged heart
Alleluia.

You set before us a great choice.
Therefore we choose life.
The dance of resurrection soars and
surges through the whole creation,
This is grace, dying we live.
So let us live.

 

 

Photos csja Retreat and commitment ceremony for candidates

 

Fr Thom Miller on the difference between dread of loss of heaven and the pains of hell

 

1.  Prayer

Oh Lord, with you is forgiveness, with you is mercy and with you is loving kindness, Lord, let me enjoy an abundance of them, in Jesus name.  I come before you with a humble heart, acknowledging my mistakes and shortcomings. I seek your forgiveness for the wrongs I’ve committed knowingly or unknowingly. May my intentions be pure, and may I learn from my errors.Grant me the strength to make amends, to apologize sincerely, and to grow into a better person. May forgiveness flow through my actions, healing both myself and those I’ve hurt.In your mercy, guide me toward the path of compassion, understanding, and love. Amen.*

2.  Meditation 

https://youtu.be/HK6T685I8gg?si=fbslwyI_EWUyWmr8

3.  Song

https://youtu.be/0p9v2Y9qqKc?si=GffW3_VigVSSHCIJ

4.  Narrative

From Fr. Thom Miller’s Sermon

Growing up Catholic, I was taught to go to Confession. I learned the freeing and consoling words “Bless me Father for I have sinned!” My sin is real; I am a sinner.

I was also taught a prayer called, The Act of Contrition. I had to memorize it and say it during or after going to confession. The prayer started this way: Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee and I detest all of my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell.

To dread the loss of heaven and fear the pains of hell can seem like one and the same thing. They’re not. There’s a huge moral distance between dreading the loss of heaven and fearing the pains of hell.

The prayer wisely separates them.

Fear of hell is based upon a fear of punishment, dreading the loss of heaven is based upon a fear of not being a good, loving person. There’s a huge difference between living in fear of punishment and living in fear of not being a good a person. 

We’re more mature, humanly and as Christians, when we’re more worried about not being loving enough than when we’re fearful that we will be punished for doing something wrong.

As a Catholic kid, I worried a lot about not committing a mortal sin, that is, doing something out of selfishness or weakness that, if unconfessed before I died, would send me to hell for all eternity.

My fear was that I might go to hell rather than that I might not be a very loving person who would miss out on love, community and family. And so…..

I worried about not being bad rather than loving,  compassionate and forgiving.    I worried that I would do something that was mortally sinful, that would send me to hell; but  

I didn’t worry as much about having a heart big enough to love as God loves.                                                            I didn’t worry as much about forgiving others, about letting go of hurts, about loving those who are different from me, about being judgmental, or about being so tribal in my thinking, racist,  nationalistic, or narrow in my religious views that I would be uncomfortable sitting down with certain others at the God’s banquet table. 

The heavenly table is open to all who are willing to sit down with all.

I believe a non-negotiable condition for going to heaven, namely, the willingness and capacity to love everyone and to sit down with everyone.

It’s non-negotiable for this reason:

How can we be at the heavenly table with everyone if for some reason of pride, wound, temperament, bitterness, bigotry, politics, nationalism, color, race, religion, or history,  we aren’t open to sit down with everyone?

Jesus teaches this too.

After giving us the Lord’s Prayer which ends with the words,

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, he adds this:                                         

If you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you.                                                                          

Why can’t God forgive us if we don’t forgive others? Has God arbitrarily singled out this one condition as his pet criterion for going to heaven?

 No. We cannot sit at the heavenly banquet table...

If we are still selective as to whom we can sit down with.                                                                                                       If, in the next life, like here in this life, we are selective as to whom we love and embrace, then heaven would be the same as earth, with factions, bitterness, grudges, hurt, and every kind of racism, sexism, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism keeping us all in our separate silos.

We can only sit at the heavenly banquet when are hearts are wide enough to embrace everyone else at the table. Heaven demands a heart open to universal embrace. And so, as I get older, approach the end of my life, and accept that I will soon face my Maker,

I worry less and less about going to hell and worry more and more about the bitterness, anger, ingratitude, and non-forgiveness that still remains in me.                                                                                                             

I worry less about committing a mortal sin and more about whether I’m gracious, respectful, and forgiving towards others.

I worry more about the loss of heaven than the pains of hell, that is,

I worry that I could end up like the older brother of the prodigal son, standing outside the Father’s house, excluded by anger rather than by sin. Still, …….

I’m grateful for recognizing that I am a sinner

I am grateful for these most consoling words                                                                                           Bless me, Father for I have sinned

I am grateful for the Act of Contrition of my youth.                                                                                              Fear of hell isn’t a bad place from which to start.

5.  Meditation 

https://youtu.be/ots_4TIKt74?si=kUPAwZ8NZu6cwzRy

6.  Sharing

7. prayer and intentions

Oh Lord, your word declares that your mercy reaches higher than the heaven and that your faithfulness so astonishing, therefore, let your mercy and truth swallow up my short coming, in Jesus name.

8.  Song 

https://youtu.be/I1GiZL60c80?si=-TthUJmpVmCcoB7E