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Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

–Leonard Cohen

This month in America, as we celebrate our country’s birth, I can’t help but think about the big crack in the Liberty Bell. It seems the right metaphor for our cracked nation. Our beloved patriotic songs catch in our throats as the fissures that divide us grow deeper and the gash in our democracy grows worrisome and the sense of decency we once took for granted becomes fractured on a daily basis. Our ability to face the enormity of the crack and to cry hot tears into its depth is part of what it means to be fully human; but that’s not the whole story, as the late Leonard Cohen reminds us.

Cohen would offer, in his inimitable way, the upside of the crack: the light that gets in. We could name it grace—that pure light streaming through the cracks of imperfection, helping us catch vivid glimpses of something greater than our brokenness. . . .

 . . . . The rest of this essay called “G is for Grace” can be found at Spirituality & Practice, and also at Open Horizons. 

Join us on the journey. At your pace, in your own time. The beauty of an e-course is flexibility. The Practice Circle opens today! Click here to learn more! http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/ecourses/course/view/10218/nine-promises-of-lent

See you there!

So happy to announce that I will be joining process theologian Jay McDaniel in a co-taught Lenten e-course at Spirituality & Practice.  Join us on a Lenten journey into a deeper experience of the God of persuasive love in a web-like world of inter-becoming.  Share with your congregations, too!  Click here and read all about it:  http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/ecourses/course/view/10218/nine-promises-of-lent

Hope to see you there!

Blessings and Peace,

Patricia

“Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed.” ― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Oh, how comforting it is to brew a pot of tea when the temperature falls!   I enjoy discovering  metaphoric beauty–infused with little process theology–in ordinary things, like a single cup of tea. I hope you enjoy my latest process musing at Spirituality & Practice:  “Let Us Drink a Cup of Tea.”

During Advent, we wait for Christmas in the glow of burning candles: flames that stretch up into the darkness, as if in passionate plea. Our spirits burn, too, for we long for fresh manifestations of Christmas — tiny bursts of hope, swaddled in vulnerability and gentleness. Our waiting becomes almost an ache, a prayerful yearning for goodness and compassion to be reborn into our world of injustice, division, and fear.