Sound of God's Breath

I invite you to pause for a moment and take some time for some contemplative play.

Start by letting this image fill your mind as you focus on your breath and letting yourself slow down into this time and this space.  Letting your breath and this picture be all that you attend to right now.

What do you hear? What does the sound bring to mind? What feelings does it evoke in you?

Consider these questions also:

What do you see?
What colors stand out to you? Why?
What does your imagination do with this picture?
What words come to mind?
What favorite quotes from your favorite spiritual literature come to mind?


I invite you to join in conversation with me in the comments below what has come of your contemplative play time today.

Restorative Breath

Breath- frosty and seen
Air - crisp and refreshing
Quiet graceful falling snow
It is there that I find you God.

In the stoping and the pause
Is where my soul is still enough
to hear
Your breath whispering around me.

You are there in every season God
We just have to look.

Today I found you in the
Beauty of freshly fallen snow.

Today I heard you in the
Quiet blowing of crisp, cold wind.

Today I experienced you in the
Holy play of winter snow and
the call of a child to come outside.

Today you called to me as you do every day,
But today I really stopped to embrace your invitation
and in doing so

I found my breath.
Felt the air giving me your breath of life.
Heard the quiet that restores my soul.
AMEN.

Juxtaposed

I invite you to pause for a moment and take some time for some contemplative play.

Start by letting this image fill your mind as you focus on your breath and letting yourself slow down into this time and this space.  Letting your breath and this picture be all that you attend to right now.

What does this image of a bug found in spring juxtaposed upon a snowy landscape bring up for you? What possibilities does it raise in your heart?

Consider these questions also:

What do you see?
What colors stand out to you? Why?
What does your imagination do with this picture?
What words come to mind?
What favorite quotes from your favorite spiritual literature come to mind?


I invite you to join in conversation with me in the comments below what has come of your contemplative play time today.

A New Day

A new day dawns
And with it new possibilities.
New Possibilities for reaching out to the other.
New Possibilities for standing up for the marginalized.
New Possibilities for moving into work
To make creation into what You wanted God,
A creation built of love and interdependence.
A creation that works together.
A creation where we are contributors
To this unity and interdependence
rather than
contributors to divisiveness.

Lord, help me to be a contributor to your intended creation.

AMEN

Budding

I invite you to pause for a moment and take some time for some contemplative play.

Start by letting this image fill your mind as you focus on your breath and letting yourself slow down into this time and this space.  Letting your breath and this picture be all that you attend to right now.

I know what this picture looks like to me - but I really wonder what does it represent to you? How does that interpretation reflect what it is that you are hoping for right now?

Consider these questions also:

What do you see?
What colors stand out to you? Why?
What does your imagination do with this picture?
What words come to mind?
What favorite quotes from your favorite spiritual literature come to mind?


I invite you to join in conversation with me in the comments below what has come of your contemplative play time today.

Quiet Starts

Quiet Starts.
Snuggles with princess.
Breakfasts together.

A new routine for a New Year,
Done out of necessity.
But out of necessity comes -
Holy moments.
Moments of full presence.

God,
Thank you for this reminder,
That I don't have to look for you only in the deep holy.
Today you remind me
That you are present everywhere
Especially in the mundane of everyday life.
And it is because you are there that it becomes deep holy.
AMEN.

Melting

I invite you to pause for a moment and take some time for some contemplative play.

Start by letting this image fill your mind as you focus on your breath and letting yourself slow down into this time and this space.  Letting your breath and this picture be all that you attend to right now.

Ice melts into water which is flowing, strong, creative as it carves out passageways in the earth.  What in you needs to melt, to take a different form, to be used in a strong and creative way?

Consider these questions also:

What do you see?
What colors stand out to you? Why?
What does your imagination do with this picture?
What words come to mind?
What favorite quotes from your favorite spiritual literature come to mind?

I invite you to join in conversation with me in the comments below what has come of your contemplative play time today.

Created of God

Today's reflection is inspired by the introduction from John Phillip Newell's book The Rebirth of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings. 

God you have made me
And because you have made me
I am made of you.

You flow through me
And in my quiet hours
You invite me to dive into
The flow that is you.

You remind me that
My journey with you
Is not either/or
But instead is both/and.

You ask not only that
I believe in you
But that
I experience you.

In my experience of you God
I return again and again
To the idea that you have created me
Out of You

In that creation I experience
My belovedness
Settling me into
The belonging
You have claimed for me.

And all I can say is
Thank you.

AMEN.

Dawning Possibilities

I invite you to pause for a moment and take some time for some contemplative play.

Start by letting this image fill your mind as you focus on your breath and letting yourself slow down into this time and this space.  Letting your breath and this picture be all that you attend to right now.

What intentions for this coming year are rising in you?

Consider these questions also:

What do you see?
What colors stand out to you? Why?
What does your imagination do with this picture?
What words come to mind?
What favorite quotes from your favorite spiritual literature come to mind?

I invite you to join in conversation with me in the comments below what has come of your contemplative play time today.

Possibilities for the New Year

I have fasted and been silent, letting myself just be in the desert place I was.
And then, God, you gave me water in the midst of my desert wilderness.
In the experience of receiving this water my fast was broken.
It is time now to embrace both silence and word,
To come gently to the banquet of your knowledge.

May presence to you in silence be my water of life.
May listening to your words to me be my food of life.
May the promise of renewed knowledge of you be my sustinence.


Baren
Laid waste
Frozen through

Winter Frost
Pure snow
Beautiful Hope

Promises
Posibilities
New Hopes

How appropriate it is that the New Year come in winter.

We are given the opportunity to enter gently and reflectively letting our hopes for the year take root and blossom; just as nature is taking root - resting - waiting to blossom once again.

God, the way you weave all together in a beautiful intricate interdependence never ceases to leave me in awe.  Thank you.  AMEN