Dear Friends,
At last our weather seems to be cheering up & is more like June.
The attachments today include a long & challenging one. The questions in para 1 are just the questions Pope Francis is asking us to make our own.
There is a ‘summertime’ one too and there is also an Iona prayer. We hope you will find something here that resonates with you as you are at the moment.
Our blessing in this last weekend of June is a celtic one, another one of Margaret Rizza’s this time from ‘Lighten Our Darkness’.
Sending you love & prayer
Queer Freedom
Ana-Maurine Lara
I actually had this love of this Jesus in the Bible, which is different than the Jesus we see, you know, in the films. The Jesus that I fell in love with was this, when I read the Gospel. What I saw was this man.. who walked around his life, his community, his world, asking two questions, which were, “Who is religion forgetting?” and “Who is power oppressing?”
It’s just those two questions over and over again. And what he did was ask those questions and then gather up those people around him, right? And back then it would have been, you know, the lepers, the tax collectors, the prostitutes. And so, he just gathered them up and he just ate with them, and he spoke out for them and he stood between them and those throwing stones at them over and over and over again, right? And, while he did that, like while he gathered those people, those hurting marginalized, pushed-to-the-edges people, he walked with them.
This part I love. He just gathered them all up, ate with them, shepherded them, took care of them, and then walked towards the empire. There was something about that that just lit me up inside. This idea that we take care, we fight for the people in our communities, but we also have this directional thing where we are challenging the power structures. We are coming at them. With our lives, we are saying, “We’re together in this, and we are coming for you. We are not afraid of you. You need to be afraid of us.” There are more of us than there are of them. We are walking direct, entirely political. Personal, communal, and political, right?
And so, the question for me was always like, okay, so what if we are walking around our communities and our lives asking, “Who is power oppressing? Who is religion forgetting?” If we’re asking those questions over and over again, then who do we end up with in our communities, right? If we do that now, who are we walking with? Who are we standing with? Who are we getting between the stone throwers and these people in there?
You know, they’re immigrants, they’re queer kids, they’re brown and black people, women, children, men, they’re disabled. They’re all of these people, and if we are not surrounding those people, standing between them and the lawmakers who would hurt them, standing between the stone throwers and them, then we don’t have a church. We have a country club. We have a voting bloc.
The Plentiful Gifts of Summer
Macrina Wiederkehr
Great Spirit of the South,
giver of abundant fruitfulness,
restorer of passion and enthusiasm,
I gather the richness of summer
with its contagious aliveness.
Your colours, strong and full, astound me,
like grapes inside me ripening on the vine.
I gather baskets of fruitfulness
and celebrate the wonders of growth.
Thank you for your overflowing goodness.
……………………………………………..
Great Spirit of the North,
your summer breath is sweet and warm,
saturating the flowers with perfume,
chasing the stars with moonbeams.
You bid me partake of Earth’s beauty.
It stirs in my soul and sings in my prayer.
I stand with a sense of satisfaction,
keenly aware of this season’s bounty.
Good memories of this summer feast
will flow through me for many long winters.
You Called Your Disciples
Iona community
Since you first walked that road
countless millions have followed you.
In all that we do as your disciples,
save us from false familiarity with your journey.
May we never presume to step into your shoes,
but make us small enough to fit in our own,
and to walk in love and wonder behind you.
Amen.