FRIDAY FAVORITES FOR PRAYER AND WRITING

Welcome to Friday Favorites! This week we have a beautiful roundup of posts we hope will help you on your quest for peace, silence, resilience, and faith.

Blessings,

Lisa and Prasanta

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Hollowed via Emily Polis Gibson (a poem about keeping vigil)

Outward Noise; Inward Silence via J. Brent Bill (the silence that feeds our spirits says, “Don’t just do something, sit there”)

We have to be willing to begin again via Kathleen Norris (when you experience failure in writing, in faith, and in life itself)

The Final (or Possibly Second-to-Last) Frontier via Amanda Cleary Eastep (on facing change and crossing the next threshold)

A Law of Deceleration: How I dumped the internet and learned to love technology agai via Paul McDonnold (on living a life of greater peace and stillness)

The Hobbit! via Malcom Guite (indulge in some comfort reading–listen to poet Malcom Guite reminisce and read aloud from The Hobbit)


FRIDAY FAVORITES FOR PRAYER AND WRITING

Welcome to Friday Favorites! We hope this day brings peace and that the following posts and poems lend encouragement and beauty to you.

Blessings,

Lisa and Prasanta

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Time to Heal via Jeannie Kendall (just as God never rushes, so your healing and recovery may take time)

Breakfast Epic via Brother Richard (a poem for your morning)

The Snowfall via Franz Werfel (a poem from a pre-Nazi Austria)

St. Brigid’s Cloak and Blueberry Jam via Charlotte Riggle (learn about St. Brigid, 5th-c. patron saint of Ireland)

Boundaries Breed Kindness via Chellie Wilson (protecting peace is a choice)

What do you journal about? via Anne Bogel (do you journal? read some new ideas here)


WEEKLY PRAYER: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Today, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we pray with the minister and civil rights activist for peace and enemy love.

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God, we thank you for the inspiration of Jesus. Grant that we will love you with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves, even our enemy neighbors. And we ask you, God, in these days of emotional tension, when the problems of the world are gigantic in extent and chaotic in detail, to be with us in our going out and our coming in, in our rising up and in our lying down, in our moments of joy and in our moments of sorrow, until the day when there shall be no sunset and no dawn.

Source


WEEKLY PRAYER

Today the Church celebrates the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. This week’s prayer is Francis’s Peace Prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

FRIDAY FAVORITES FOR PRAYER AND WRITING

Each Friday I share some of my favorite finds related to praying or writing. If I think it could help you pray or write better, or just “be” better, I’ll include it below.

Do you have someone else’s article or post to share? Join the Contemplative Writers Facebook group or follow me on Twitter (@LisaKDeam) to nominate your favorite articles, blog posts, and books by Thursday at noon each week.

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Quieting the Mental Committee to Hear God by Jan Johnson (a Renovaré podcast on contemplative prayer)

Who Are You? by Rich Lewis (how does one become the authentic man or woman that they truly are?)

The Shout of Sacred Consent by Eric Leroy Wilson (learning to live from a place of sacred consent)

My Friend, Francis by Abigail Carroll (on finding spiritual friendship with a beloved saint)

Returning to Rest by Tina Osterhouse (going to the the other side of fear, into a place of rest and companionship with God)

Why I Write (because don’t we sometimes need to remember?) by Leslie Verner (concerning one of my favorite questions – why does a writer write?)

What a Social Media Break Taught Me about Soul-Care by Karen Gonzalez (on developing practices, social media and otherwise, to foster a healthy pace of life)