Dear Friends,
We hope that the first half of June has brought you many blessings – perhaps it is good to think back over that time & remind ourselves of the blessings, big or small.
This week’s blessing is one from Margaret Rizza’s Fire of Love, simply called ‘A Blessing’ & we hope it will bring you more blessings in this last part of the month. Gaza continues, Ukraine continues – let us pray for the people bereaved, wounded, struggling to keep their families safe & fed. Deaths in the Mediterranean continue and refugees continue to flee their homelands. So much to disturb our minds & hearts. And as we come nearer to the British elections let us ask God to guide us all in the decisions we have to make.
Have a good week – with our love & prayer
Summer Earth Blessing
Ray Simpson
How precious is the soil the Lord has made. It is rich & fertile; a single seed planted in her will bring forth a hundred seeds.
How beautiful is the soil the Lord has made. Frail seeds blown by gentle winds become garlands of colour, flowering in crevice & cranny.
How mysterious is the soil the Lord has made. Its deeps bring forth minerals which bring buildings, energy and ornament to our lives.
How fruitful is the soil the Lord has made. It brings forth crops of wheat & wood, of fruits & nuts, of roots & berries.
How hospitable is the soil the Lord has made. Can the sheep & cows eat grass without the soil? Even the birds who soar above the highest mountain must return to earth to find food. The earth provides a bed for the ocean, & a floor for humankind.
How like a mother is the soil the Lord has made. It contains us & feeds us, it warms us & sustains us.
God, bless our land & all who live in it.
Summer Solstice
Summer is the season of the radiant sun, of succulent fruits, long days, short nights, dancing flowers, fireflies, steamy weather and radiating heat. It is the season when the warm intensity of our sun signals vegetation to leap into fullness. The steady flames of the sun ignite a passion in the land, urging the fertility of all living things to produce an abundance. On this summer solstice we celebrate the day of longest light, this season of potency when the fiery rays of our immense sun fill our hemisphere with heat and energy for growth. Let us rejoice in the power of the sun and its ability to give life to our planet. Let us also rejoice and celebrate the inner light that sustains us, the light that empowers our spiritual ability to grow deeper and stronger.
To Be a Saint
To be a saint is to be human because we were created to be human. To be a saint is to live with courage and self-restraint, but it is more than that. To be a saint is to live not with hands clenched to grasp, to strike, to hold tight to a life that is always slipping away the more tightly we hold it; but it is to live with the hands stretched out both to give and receive with gladness. To be a saint is to work and weep for the broken and suffering of the world, but it is also to be strangely light of heart in the knowledge that there is something greater than the world that mends and renews. Maybe more than anything else, to be a saint is to know joy. Not happiness which comes & goes with the moments that occasion it, but joy that is always there like an underground spring no matter how dark & terrible the night. To be a saint is to be a little out of one’s mind, which is a very good thing to be a little out of from time to time. It is to live a life that is always giving itself away & yet is always full.
Frederick Buechner