Spirituality – Page 8 – St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

Pilgrimage into the heart of Jesus: Looking for the Kingdom

When we think about God’s realized dream here on earth, we often use the expression “already/not yet”. This simple phrase sums up our theology that God’s kingdom is here and now, and also, and at the same time, is not yet fully realized. This statement is our source of hope, in that God’s kingdom will continue to unfold in our midst, and it is also our invitation, to be a part of that unfolding of the force of love.

This phrase (“already/not yet”) is the second lens through which I want to view my trip to the Holy Land. We will be experiencing the sites from the Biblical narrative, seeing where Jesus was born, baptized, offered healing, rode into Jerusalem, was crucified, and then resurrected. Seeing those sites is already completely exciting to me and will be totally amazing to me (“already/not yet”)!

However, I also want to look around, to see what God’s has been doing in these areas, in the past 2000 years. I want to look with faithful eyes and heart to see how God’s dream has continued to unfold, for our faith can’t only be centered on what happened, but must also be on what is happening now and what we trust will happen in the future to bring the kingdom ever nearer.

For instance, the part I’m pondering right now is about the old city of Jerusalem, which is the home of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. It’s fascinating to me that this particular spot has such significance in all the Abrahamic faiths. It makes me wonder, is the sharing of this holy space, as tense as it can be at times, the emergence of God’s dream?

My bags are nearly packed and I’m ready to go!

We keep making beads!

We want everyone who would like to be able to make Anglican Prayer Beads and learn how to pray them.

So we brought the beads to the people today. Thank you, Jeanine, for making this possible!

Here are some photos of people creating beads from clay, choosing the right spacer beads and laying it all out, and then stringing them.

If you would like to make a set and haven’t had the chance to do so, just let us know. We want you to be able to engage in this way to connect more deeply with God.

Building Faith: Brick by Brick

This Sunday we had a special offering for our young people ages 9-12 year olds.

Once a month we engage the curriculum “Building Faith: Brick by Brick”. It’s a time when our young people listen to a story from our scripture and then reflect on how it connects to their life, and then they build with LEGOs something in response. It’s all about helping our young people hear something from God’s story and figure out how it’s a part of their story.

The Great Family

Amazing story-teller, David Luo, drew us into the story of our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, who listened to God, followed God, and trusted God, and accepted from God the blessing of children who would shape the future of God’s people.

It was captivating to hear the story, to understand the deeper themes of loyalty, faithfulness, and hope, which can be present to us even in the times when it doesn’t seem realistic that what God tells us can be possible.

The children were drawn to the desert, were captivated by the figures, thought the river was fascinating, and wondered about the stones which represented Abraham and Sarah’s claiming God’s presence among them.

It’s wonderful how we invite our children into learning the themes which create the larger arc of the biblical stories.

Affirming our Healing Ministry

At St. Andrew’s, we are blessed with a number of people whose gifts include offering healing prayers to those in need of Christ’s healing love and grace. This group gathers twice a month for scripture study, prayer, reflection, and opportunities for deepening their relationship with God.

This past Sunday we celebrated the Feast Day of St. Luke, who was one of the gospel writers and also a physician. The theme of healing resonates throughout his stories of Jesus, who is always focused on drawing the poor, oppressed, and isolated people of the society into the center of his love.

At our worship yesterday, we anointed the hands of the healing ministers, saying, “May these hands be blessed to continue God’s healing work in the world.”

We also listened to and were inspired by a homily offered by Ms. Laurel White, one of our healing ministers, who speaks of the three cornerstones for healing: Holy Eucharist, healing prayers, and Confession of Sin. To learn more, please read her sermon which you can access on our website, under “Recent Sermons”.

You are all invited to join us for our meetings and become a part of our healing ministry.

Stringing beads for prayer

This evening we gathered for companionship along the way, for nourishment for our lives and souls, and we strung our beads, some of which we created last week out of clay, to create our own personalized Anglican Prayer Beads.

Oh, a little bit of fun, before we begin the hard work.

We all used olive wood beads from the Holy Land for our “Weeks beads” (the 7 between each cruciform beads). Seven is an important number in the Bible and symbolizes completion.

Lovely beads that complement the wooden beads

We also chose from a number of colors the spacer beads. It’s totally amazing how many different variations there were. No two were alike. Some used colors to represent the creation. Others picked colors which complemented their clay cruciform beads, while others chose colors which contrasted their clay cruciform beads. That’s part of the process of choosing and stringing your own beads – each string becomes your own and you see it as a way to express your identity and your particular way to interact with God.

Next week we will gather to pray the beads. Too often we come home from a bead making workshop with a beautiful set of beads and have no idea how to incorporate them into our prayer practice. We want to give everyone a chance to learn how to actually invite and allow them to make a difference in our lives.

We ended this evening with blessing our beads and sharing the Office of Compline together.

It was a wonderful and holy time together. Come and join us for our third session next Wednesday.

Anglican Prayer Bead Workshop I

Last Wednesday, fifteen people gathered in fellowship, ate dinner together, and then got busy in the fun work of creating our own beads for our Anglican Prayer Beads. We learned a bit about prayer beads during our dinner time and then rolled out the clay to make our own.

It was SO much fun. We chose 3-4 colors to work with, layered them by rolling them out, and then cutting them into segments, which we then rolled into beads. It was amazing the colors we chose and the results we came up with. It was as much fun to see what others created as it was for us to create.

There was a real sense of community in creating together.

This coming Wednesday we will take our homemade beads, join them with beads made from olive trees from the Holy Land, and put together our prayer beads. We’ll then bless them and make them holy for our use in finding our way toward God. Come and join us!

Here’s what your Anglican Prayer beads may look like!

Come and make your own set.

Simply Scripture

On our rainy Saturday morning, we gathered in the cozy and restful Parish Library and explored scripture together. One of the gifts of our time together is that we never do know where the conversation will go as we sit with and engage the scriptures. This time we looked at the scriptures from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) for the month of October.

This time we focused on the harvest imagery which is threaded through the various scripture passages from Lamentations, Jeremiah, and Joel. What was fascinating was how our conversation shifted to the period of dormancy, when God appears to be silent, but just as plants are actually in motion inside while appearing to be at rest or even dead from the outside, we discerned that God offers us silence (not an absence of God, but a quiet time with God) so that we can process what God has already revealed to us. Sometime the timing’s not right yet for us to move forward, sometimes our gifts haven’t come enough to fruition to be ready for use for the kingdom. The truth revealed to us in community and through conversation was that when God comes knocking at our door, our response can be simple (yes or no) but the impact on our life is profound and complex.

Rule of Life

This evening I spent time with the Daughters of the King (DOK) which is an order for women who make a commitment to a life of prayer, study, and work. There is a discernment process for those why may be interested in joining this more intentional walk with Christ in this particular way in community. Mother Barbara was asked to speak to them about forming a Rule of Life.

A rule of life orders our life with God. It grows out of a conversation with God, as we listen to how God is pulling us deeper into relationship. A rule of life often involves all parts of our life: how we worship God (daily prayer, Sunday Eucharist), our commitment to study (scriptures, tradition, with the use of our reason), and Action (outreach, stewardship, and evangelism).

Just like any relationship that we want to nurture, our relationship with God requires attention, presence, commitment, intimacy, time, and a lot of listening.

If you are interested in speaking to Mother Barbara about how to craft a rule of life that deepens your relationship with God, please contact her at 717-333-5590 or by emailing her at: rector@standrewsship.org.

Meditative Hike

In the stillness of the cool evening, we gathered to be intentional around our time with God. We began in prayer, chose a psalm passage, and then headed out to meander by the creek, contemplate and color, find stillness sitting on a rock in the water, crossing the water, and spending time repeating our psalm passage in our hearts.

After 45 minutes, we gathered to reflect. We all had a greater sense of peace. We all knew this was a good thing to do: to be intentional about quiet restful time with God. We all experienced our time somewhat differently, but also had a sense of being together in a group, even though at different places along the creek.

It is good to “Be still and know that God is God”.

Book of Psalms: How they respond to our life

Tonight, we gathered for dinner, then for a conversation about how the psalms were used in the liturgy of the Jewish temple. We learned that the themes of the psalms connected with major festivals which celebrated pivotal events in the salvation story of the ancient Israelites, such as the Passover and the Day of Atonement. In addition, they were used during rituals of purification, entrance hymns, victory songs, King’s birthdays or wedding times. The psalms responded to and led people forward in their thinking to how the ancient Jews structured their worship lives.

We then looked at how we as Christians use the psalms in our worship — always as a response to the Old Testament Reading. A response mandates that we say the psalm together and also says that the sentiment, or wisdom, or thought process of the psalm offers something that leads us in responding to the Old Testament reading in a faithful manner. We looked at the reading and response for Sunday — the grumbling prophet Jeremiah and the psalmist response, in both the NIV (New International Version of the Bible) and Psalms for Praying by Nan Merrill.

After all this discussion, we looked at how St. Benedict, as he formed the Benedictine community 1500 years ago used the psalms to respond to life, to draw people through the week to a place of faithfulness of God. It’s fascinating how we can use the scriptures to remind us about God and God’s faithfulness and we can structure our practice of praying the psalms so that we use certain ones to offer the support, comfort or challenge we may need (predictably) at the moment throughout the week.

We ended by listening to the chanting of the psalms by SSJE (Society of St. John the Evangelist). Here’s the link to purchase the CD: https://www.amazon.com/Guard-Us-Sleeping-Compline-Prayers/dp/1561012556

In the still of the night, after a long day, by candlelight, we could have all fallen asleep at the moment, lulled by the melodic chanting of the psalms by the monastic community, but woke up to eat pie and ice cream and wish each other a good night.

Our next series of fellowship, conversation, and engagement will be making Anglican Prayer Beads, which will begin on October 5th. Please join us!

Youth Mini-Mission Event: Serving at the Community Meal

A dozen young people showed up tonight to serve our community meal. It was an amazing experience. They worked so hard and so cooperatively. The older ones were shepherds to the younger ones. They served everyone who came to share this meal with us, offering them drinks, meals, and take-home packages. Then we gathered for conversation to reflect upon our experience together.

To see photos of the event, please see our photo gallery.

Here are the highlights which I saw:

Everyone jumped right in, doing whatever was asked of them, and felt comfortable doing it.
There was a gift in having all the youth (9-18 years old) together. We have incredibly kind and helpful older youth here who were always willing to be with and help those who may be younger.
There was real interaction between the guests of the dinner and our young people. At one point, one of our guests, who is a youth, joined the line of servers of young people and a new kind of community seemed to be formed.
Our young people immediately saw and spoke about how this was a family gathering this evening.
During our reflection time, I heard such compassion and empathy for others that my heart was very happy! We have young people who care deeply for people, who understand what Jesus is saying to us in feeding other people, understand how what they feel inside is actually how the food and meal are blessed.
One of the prayers which I will always hold in my heart I heard today, when we were praying for the people who came this evening. It was “for those who have lost their sunshine, may they find it again”. That’s deep intuition and compassion. Thanks be to God for the prayers of our young people!

It was a great event, except for the fire alarm going off through the whole dinner! I learned a lot from our young people and am ever in more deeper awe of them.

Blessings, Mother Barbara