News from SBCRC

I’m glad that people appreciated the intercessory prayer yesterday. There is something about placing headlines and images like that within the context of prayer that moves us to see it as something more than just news and information. It generates those “sighs too deep for words” that Paul talks about. It [...]

This is the video that was used last night in the Maundy Thursday service.  Unfortunately, last night there was no audio.  We don’t know why.  It worked fine before the service and immediately afterward.  I guess every Maundy Thursday needs its Judas.  Ours was technology.

A Warning: Al Pacino sticks closer to the script than I did on Sunday. The language is a bit rougher. However it was watching this PBS documentary on playwright Eugene O’Neil and, in particular, Pacino’s powerful reading of this scene that alerted me to the play. I thought I’d post it simply because [...]

Many of you made commitments this Lent to either give something up or take something on.  At the meal following the service this week at Mosaic we would like to encourage you to talk to one another about how that’s going.  We’re not expecting that miracles have occurred as a result of, say, your commitment [...]

Our time of confession during our Lenten services have been less directed than usual.  We’ve simply asked that you meditate on a short passage from a Song of Ascents and allow the Spirit and the words to, first, bring to mind that which prompts you to offer thanks and praise.   After that, we’ve been [...]

This is Billy Collins’ poem “The Art of Drowning.”

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept [...]

Stephanie White read “This is Our Creation” which she herself composed.
This is our creation
(and we are useless without it,
stooping only at will, only our own,
to request or attempt metamorphosis,
forever the child who can’t reach the sink,
forever begging, always begging,
pleading only when we need, only
for today, and protesting now
we’re helpless, now without,
now we must have the [...]

Wendy read “A Hymn to God the Father” by John Donne (1572-1631)
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive [...]

The poem Alex read is by Thomas Lynch.  It comes from his book Still Life in Milford.
Russ
Hot air balloons–
fat flaming birds
adrift in evening air–
put me in mind
of Russ, my giant
crazy neighbor,
daft and absolute,
prone to grand gestures,
dead now a year
who always said I should
scatter his ashes
down on his townspeople
from overhead
some August, he told me,
when they least [...]

This is just a reminder that we are hoping to have all of us commit Psalms 121 and 134 to memory over the course of Lent.  If you haven’t been going over it to this point, don’t despair.  We are only up to verse 4 on Psalm 121.
This is not just for the kids to [...]