
Prayer and Meditation | Rev. Sean Neil-Barron | March 7, 2020
Rev. Sean offers a prayer for integrating courageous love and Beloved Community into our daily lives.
Rev. Sean offers a prayer for integrating courageous love and Beloved Community into our daily lives.
Rev. Sean reads "There Is No Easier Way" by Elizabeth Nguyen.
Rev. Gretchen preaches about how Tough Love Saves Us All as we work for liberation and to dismantle racism. She explains Beloved Community and guides us in exploring how courageous love requires us to act with a systemic and collective lens.
Rev. Elaine shares a cautionary tale of ditching boundaries involving an exhausting, melty, ticking popsicle time-bomb!
Rev. Sean discusses boundaries as how we live in the messy middle between dependence and independence. He explores how boundaries are a practice to give structure to how we relate to one another and how boundaries are an act of compassion.
Rev. Gretchen explores staying put with those you love during the hard parts of life. She teaches that in promising to love someone in "good times and bad" we are not merely engaging with a distant and theoretical idea. We are promising to stay put through pain. A love that doesn't turn away when times get painful requires a soft and supple heart.
Rev. Sean tells the story of Jonah's attempt to travel away from God's call to go to Ninevah (and how Jonah then becomes fish food). He explores what happens when one runs away from what one is called to be.
Rev. Sean Neil-Barron offers a poetic dive into the meaning of tough love.
Rev. Gretchen draws on the story of Job to illustrate how bearing witness to another without fixing or minimizing is an act of courageous love.
Rev. Gretchen explores what we really mean when we say "love." She invites us to engage with the concept of love more deeply because "when we understand love not just as a word, but as an experience and a commitment, as a way of orienting our lives and the source of our hope, as a vision for the world as it could be, it will make all the difference. We will make all the difference in all the smallest corners of our lives, and across the whole of life itself."
Inspired by Imbolc, which marks the halfway point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, Rev. Gretchen offers a guided meditation to help us tune into the experience of waiting.