Bend First Presbyterian Church

I am asked frequently, “What are you reading? Please post the books that you read.”

So, here is a list of some of the books I read in 2009 (in no particular order):

Jesus by Marcus Borg

Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf

Take This Bread by Sara Miles

Have a Little faith by Mitch Albom

Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor

An Altar In The World by Barbara Brown Taylor

Loving What Is by Byron Katie

Beyond Religion by David Elkins

The Shack by William Young

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Everything Must Change by Brian Mclaren

The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle

The Irrestible Revolution by Shane Clairborne

God Laughs and Plays by David James Duncan

Emerging Down Under by Ray Simpson and Brent Lyons Lee

Christianity For The Rest Of Us by Diana Butler Bass

Practicing Congregations by Diana Butler Bass

The Enneagram by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert

The Naked Now by Richard Rohr

The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso

Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

Gift of the Red Bird by Paula D’Arcy

From Sand to Solid Ground by Michael Norwood

In The Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen

The Dangerous Act of Worship by Mark Labberton

The Hole in the Gospel by Rich Stearns

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

See Poverty…Be The Difference by Donna Beagle

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

Plan B 3.0 by Lester Brown

Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon

Acts of faith by Eboo Patel

Please feel free to suggest books I should get around to reading in 2010.

In the words of Soren Kirkegaard, “For all that has been…thanks! For all that is yet to be…YES!”

Happy New Year

PSALM 51.10-12

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence

Or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation

And grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

ISAIAH 43.18-19

Forget the former things;

Do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert

And streams in the wasteland.

I Believe In All That Has Never

 Yet Been Spoken

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me, but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

                            -Rainer Maria Rilke

I had an experience in an “All You Can Eat” buffet that I recall every new year as we reflect on transitions and letting go of the old and welcoming the new. I used to take the idea of “All You Can Eat” as a personal challenge. I filled my plate to overflowing and finished round one. I got up from the table with my plate in hand ready to go back to the buffet for round two.

Halfway to the buffet I was stopped by a waitress who took her job very seriously. She said, “Stop. You can’t do that.”

I said, “What do you mean? It says ALL you can eat.”

“No,” she said, “You can’t take the same plate back to the buffet. It is against the law.” Wow! Who would’ve thought I was breaking the law. She said, “For hygenic reasons, you need a brand new plate when you go back to the buffet.”

A brand new plate…hmmm.

I often wonder how we carry with us plates from our past that have caked on grudges and resentments or disappointments caught in the cracks. What would it look like to enter the buffet of this new year with a new plate? What do we pray would be washed away? What do we need to let go of or release? What are those things we wish to put on our new plate in this new year?

Here is a spiritual practice I invite you to use during the month of January:

Place a clean plate by your bedside as a reminder that you begin each day with a clean plate.

Thought to contemplate: Reality is new every day and every day it asks to be shaped by my hands and heart.

Mantra: Let each moment be a new beginning.

I am not sure whether you make New Year’s Resolutions or not? There is at least one resolution I encourage you to make that can make a huge difference in the quality of your life and relationships.

It is a simple resolution but a profound one.

RESOLVE TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL IMPORTANT AND VALUED IN YOUR PRESENCE.

Whether it be your family, friends, people you work with or absolute strangers, resolve to make them feel important and valued. Think about when you are the happiest…it more than likely involves other people. Our relationships  are perhaps the most important factor in our happiness and quality of life.

I am very privileged to have a role that allows me the sacred gift of sitting with people as they reach the end of their lives. These final moments can be the most profound moments of people’s lives. Let me share a secret from sharing these moments that I believe every one knows intuitively.

People faciong death don’t think about what degrees they’ve earned, what positions they’ve held, how much wealth they’ve accumulated, what clothes they are wearing, what car they are driving.

At the end what really matters is who you loved and who loved you. It is the quality and the depth of love received and shared that rises to the surface as being the gift that is treasured most. Van Goethe, the philosopher, said, “The things that are most important are always at the mercy of the things that are least important.”

We can bring what is most important to our attention each day in 2010 by asking ourselves every day a simple and profound question:

DO PEOPLE FEEL IMPORTANT AND VALUED IN MY PRESENCE?

Here’s a simple principle that most people don’t understand: people don’t like or trust us for who we are or for what titles or positions we have. PEOPLE LIKE AND TRUST US FOR HOW WE MAKE THEM FEEL! Do people feel important and valued in your presence? Every one has two basic needs: the need to be valued and valuable…to know our lives matter!

Stephen Covey tells the story of a philosophy professor at Northwestern University who administered a test with 10 questions. The first 9 questions involved the meaning of life and you were expected to quote people like Aristotle and Socrates.

The students got to the 10th question which read: WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE WOMAN WHO CLEANS THE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT BUILDING?

One student after the test asked whether question 10 would count toward their grade. The professor said “You better believe it will. Your success in life is dependent on your capacity to understand every person you encounter every day is a person of worth and value and deserves to be treated that way.”

Do people feel important in your presence? Carry that question with you in 2010 at home, at work, at school, at church, in the grocery story, as you encounter strangers, into every situation and encounter.

Once upon a time, in a remote Swiss village, there stood a beautiful church. From miles around, people came to join in the glorious worship of that mountain valley cathedral. No other building in the land had an organ like the one that beat as the heart of that place. In the right hands, that organ could produce music that lifted souls to God and bound them together in joyful harmony. It could ring out chords so mighty and true that the very stones trembled with awe. It could play the melody of grace so sweetly that those who heard it were moved to acts of love and service.

But all that was long ago. Nothing like that ushered from those pipes anymore. You see something had gone terribly wrong with the instrument. Oh, it still played in a way. But the music just wasn’t the same. The tones weren’t nearly as rich. The harmonies weren’t there. The air supply grew weaker and weaker. Musicians and technicians of every kind were called in to work on the organ. With the arrival of each new authority, the hopes of the villagers would soar, only to be dashed again when nothing really changed, or when one of these “experts” actually succeeded in making the music worse.

After a while, people simply got used to the sound of second-rate music, and then NO music at all. In time, the life of the cathedral slowly ebbed away, till all that was left was a hollow shell, where once such glory had rung.

It was a dark and silent December night when a stranger arrived at the door of the empty cathedral. He said he’d come down from the great mountain above to visit the village, and asked the church’s custodian if he’d let him in. “It’s after hours,” the custodian said, eyeing the tattered clothes of the stranger. But the custodian’s child also standing there saw past the rags; saw something in the stranger’s eyes that seemed so warm and wise.

“Please let him in, daddy,” she said. The custodian softened. “I guess it’s all right, ” he said to the man, “it’s cold outside. You can sleep in the church, but just tonight.”

Jesus once said, “In so much that you have given care to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you have done so to me.” Those like that custodian’s child, who see with their heart, so often find that when they open their hearts to others, God meets them there.

It was just past midnight, when the custodian found himself awoke from a sound sleep. At first he thought he was still dreaming, for he could swear he could hear from the cathedral next door the impossible sound of pipe organ music. Not the sort of sound made by an old broken-down instrument, but music so utterly magnificent that it made the custodian want to laugh and pray and cry and sing, all at the same time.

Pulling on his boots and coat, he tromped out through the snow toward the cathedral, only to see torches heading that way from every direction – hundreds of people – shepherds, farmers, merchants, children, all drawn by the sound of the fabulous music now filling the night.

As the townspeople threw open the doors of the great cathedral, they found it ablaze with light of so many candles and such staggering sound that it filled the void with glory

There at the bench – playing with a passion and a genius few could remember – sat the figure of a stranger who wore the rags of a carpenter, but the air of a king.

The custodian approached the stranger and posed the question in every heart there: “Who are you, sir?”

The stranger replied gently, “My name is Gott.”

“No, no I mean WHO are you? How did you repair the organ when even the world’s greatest experts could not?”

Without saying a word, the stranger simply leaned over the keyboard, blew hard at some dust, and then sat back. Straining in the candlelight to see what was there, the custodian’s eyes began to focus. And then he saw it. Above the lowest keyboard, on the wooden panel where the stranger had blown away the dust of decades, there was a small brass plate with three engraved words, “Built by Gott.”

“Many years ago,” said the stranger kindly, ” I built this organ with my own two hands. Now, I have come to make it sing again!”

Heaven’s song became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth that our lives might sing and resound with the glory for which they were created.

PRAYER – Startle us on this holy night that we might make room and not miss, in the midst of all our celebrations, the real gift present in this room…your great gift of love.

The gospel of Luke says, “The time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room in the Inn.”

That short little phrase, “there was no room in the Inn” has become famous and plays a big part in most Christmas pageants. Most Christmas pageants usually include the character of the Innkeeper who is usually portrayed as mean and gruff shouting, “There’s no room in the Inn!”

Why does the Innkeeper get such a bad rap? What if the Innkeeper wasn’t that way at all? Who knows? Maybe he was a compassionate guy but he had simply given up every spare room he had. It was a busy night with the census and all. So what if the Innkeeper did the best he could and told this young couple they could stay in the stable in the back and even though he was busy he would try to look in on them from time to time and keep them warm.

We don’t really know anything about the Innkeeper but the one thing we do notice in this story is that like most everybody else in town, he MISSED perhaps the most significant event in all history. In mystery and wonder, God’s love entered the world in the birth of this child.

The angels announced it! The shepherds celebrated it! The wise men came seeking after it! It had been promised throughout the ages, and now it was happening. Yet, most every one in Nazareth that night MISSED IT. They were busy doing something else.

I love what the philosopher said, “The things that are most important are always at the mercy of the things that are least important.”

Robert Fulghum tells this marvelous story to remind us not to miss the real gift:

“The cardboard box is marked ‘the good stuff’. As I write, I can see the box where it’s stored on a high shelf in my studio.

I like being able to see it.

The box contains those odds and ends of personal treasures that have survived many bouts of clean-it-out and throw-it-away that seizes me from time to time.

A thief looking into this box wouldn’t take anything. He couldn’t get a dime for it. But if the house ever catches fire, the box goes with me when I run.

One of the keepsakes in the box is a small paper bag. Lunch size. Though the top is sealed with duct tape, staples and several paper clips, there’s a ragged rip on one side through which the contents can be seen. This particular lunch sack has been in my care for almost 14 years. But it really belongs to my daughter, Molly.

Soon after she came of school age, she became an enthusiastic participant in packing lunch for herself, her brothers and me.

Each bag got their fair share of sandwiches, apples, and milk honey and sometimes a note or a treat.

One morning when I was in my usual hurry Molly handed me two bags as I was about to leave. One regular lunch sack and the one I mentioned with the duct tape, staples and paper clips.

“Why two bags?” I asked.

“The other one is something else.”

“What’s in it?”

“Some stuff. Take it with you.”

Being in a hurry and not wanting to hold court over the matter, I stuck both sacks into my briefcase, kissed the child and rushed off.

At midday while hurriedly scarfing down my real lunch, I hastily tore open Molly’s bag and shook out the contents: 2 hair ribbons, 3 small stones, a plastic dinosaur, a pencil stub, a tiny sea shell, 2 animal crackers, a marble, a used lipstick, a small doll, 2 chocolate kisses and 13 pennies.

I smiled. How charming. Rising to hustle off to all the important business of the afternoon, I swept the desk clean into the wastebasket.

Leftover lunch, Molly’s bag and all its contents. There wasn’t anything in there I needed.

That evening Molly came to stand beside me while I was trying to read the paper.

“Where’s my bag?”

“What bag?”

“You know, the one I gave you this morning.”

“I left it at my office. Why?”

“I forgot to put this note in it.” She hands me the note and says, “Besides, I want it back.”

‘Why?”

“Those are my best things in the sack, Daddy, the ones I really love. I thought you might like to play with them, but now I want them back. You didn’t lose the bag, did you daddy?” Tears puddle in her eyes. “No, I just forgot to bring it home,” I lied. “Bring it tomorrow, ok?” “Sure honey. Don’t worry.” As she hugged my neck with relief, I unfolded the note that had not gotten into the sack. It read, “I love you daddy.”

“Uh-oh,” I looked at the face of my child. She was right. What was in the sack WAS something else. Molly had given me her treasure…her heart…all that a 7 year-old held dear. Love in a paper sack and I had missed it. Not only missed it, but had thrown it in the waste basket because I thought there wasn’t anything in there I needed.

It wasn’t the first time I felt my Daddy Permit was about to run out. It was a long trip back to the office but there was nothing else to be done. So I went. The pilgrimage of a penitent Dad.

Just ahead of the janitor, I picked up the waste basket and poured out the contents on my desk.

I was sorting it all out when the janitor came in, “Lose something?” “Yeah, my mind…worse, my heart.” “It’s probably in there all right,” he said, “What does it look like and I’ll help you find it?”

I couldn’t feel any more of a fool than I already was, so I told him. He didn’t laugh. He smiled, “I got kids, too.”

So the brotherhood of fools searched the trash and found the jewels. He smiled at me and I smiled at him. You are never alone in these things. Never.

After washing the mustard off the dinosaur and spraying the whole thing with breath freshener to kill the smell of onions, I carefully smoothed out the wadded bag of brown paper into a semi-functional bag and put the treasures inside. I carried the whole thing home gingerly like an injured kitten.

The next evening I returned it to Molly no questions asked, no explanation offered. The bag didn’t look so good, but the stuff was all there and that’s all that counted.

After dinner, I asked her to tell me about the stuff in the sack and she took it out a piece at a time and placed the objects in a row on the dining room table. It took a long time to tell.

Everything had a story, a memory, or was attached to dreams and imaginary friends.

Fairies had brought some of the things…and I had given her the chocolate kisses. She kept them for when she needed them. I managed to say, ‘I see,” very wisely. As a matter of fact, I did see.

To my surprise, Molly gave the bag to me once again several days later. Same ratty bag. Same stuff inside. I felt forgiven and trusted and loved. And a little more comfortable wearing the title of father.

Over several months, the bag went with me from time to time. In time, Molly turned her attention to other things, found other treasures, lost interest in the game and grew up.

Me? I was left holding the bag. She gave it to me one morning and never asked for its return. So I have it still.

Sometimes I think of all the times in this sweet life when I must have missed the love I was given. A friend calls this standing knee deep in the river and dying of thirst.

So the worn paper sack is there in the box left over from a time when a child said, “Here, this is the best I got. This is my heart. Take it. It’s yours. Such as I have, give I to thee.”

I missed it the first time, but it’s in my box now.”

In a few moments we will hear again…unto us a child is given…a gift…the gift of God’s heart…we’ll share the light one to another singing “Silent Night! Holy Night!”

I know I have missed it a few Christmases along the way for one reason or another.

Tonight, in the stillness, may your heart find room to receive God’s great gift of love for you!

The mystery of Christmas that is beyond words is that we turn our hearts to a God who is both as distant as that Bethlehem star and as close as the person next to us and as close as our own breath – as close as our beating hearts. And no matter what our circumstances this God will never, ever leave us.

A story . . . to help us embrace this truth – a story from an experience of church mission workers.

In 1994 two Christians were invited to teach children who had been abandoned, abused and left in the care of a government orphanage in Russia. Christmas was near so the visitors told the traditional story to some 100 boys and girls who had never heard the story before.

Throughout the story the children and staff sat in amazement. Some sat on the edges of their stools trying to grasp every word. When the story was finished, the children were given materials and invited to make a model of the manger.

When the teachers walked around to see if the children needed any help, one of them reached Misha, a small boy about 6 years old, and was startled to see not one but two babies in his model of the manger.

The teachers asked the child why. Crossing his arms in front of him and looking at this completed manger scene, Misha began to repeat the story very seriously. For such a young boy who had only heard the Christmas story once, he related the events accurately – until he came to the part where Mary put Jesus in the manger. Then he said, “When Mary laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no mamma and no papa so I don’t have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn’t because I didn’t have a gift to give him like everyone else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift. So I asked Jesus, “If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?” And Jesus told me, “If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anyone ever gave me.” So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and told me I could stay with him for always.”

As Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his cheeks. Putting his hand over his face, his head dropping to the table, his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed. The little orphan had found someone who would never abandon nor abuse him – someone who would stay with him for always.

For always. Misha, hearing the story for the first time understood it better than some who had heard it a hundred times.

Will there be two babies in your manger? Have you heard the Christ child tell you that you are welcome in his love for always?

Let that love hold you tonight, let it sink in that you have a place in God’s heart – God’s eternal love – not only tonight but forever.

And what’s more – we keep the child warm as we offer a coat to someone who is cold . . . as we offer our heart to someone who is alone . . . as we offer our forgiveness to someone who is estranged . . . as we offer our comfort to someone who is grieving.

We are invited to not simply observe the child born in the manger – we are IN the manger – and we are loved forever.

Choose silence, and love is apparent

When we choose silence, we choose to give up the reasons not to love, which are the reasons for going to war, or continuing war, or separating, or being a victim, or being right.

In a moment of silence, in a moment of no thought, no mind, we choose to give those up. This is what my teacher invited me to.

Just choose silence. Don’t even choose love. Choose silence, and love is apparent. If we choose love we already have an idea of what love is.

But if you choose silence, that is the end of ideas. You are willing to have no idea, to see what is present when there is no idea, past, present, future. No idea of love, no idea of truth, no idea of you, no idea of me.

Love is apparent.

Kathy Bostrom, Pastor of Wildwood Presbyterian Church in Chicago, wrote this beautiful Advent meditation.

Last year, in the weeks before Christmas, Kathy found herself in the hospital, recovering from her second major surgery during the year. It was mid-December. She remembers that a hospital is not a haven of quiet and peace and rest. She had a roommate who smoked in the bathroom and turned the TV on at all hours of the night. Across the hall an elderly woman cried out in pain every three minutes, day and night. A “code blue” sent emergency personnel and crash carts racing down the halls.

Kathy tells her own story best:

One night as I lay in my hospital bed, hooked up to so many machines I couldn’t even move without help and close to tears from the pain and frustration, I heard a faint sound. Amidst the cries of pain, blaring TV’s, and beeping monitors, I swore I heard a different type of sound altogether: a soft, sweet, gentle song. Then it was gone. Was I imagining things? That was entirely possible with all the medications coursing through my veins.

A few hours later, still awake and trying to block out the sounds of the woman wailing across the hall and the loud, angry voice of my roommate swearing on the telephone, I heard the strange, beautiful sound again. Could it possibly be? No, I must be hearing things.

When the nurse came in to check my vitals, I asked her: was it me? Or was there indeed a very different sound breaking through the harshness of this place?

“Oh,” she said, as she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my bruised arm. “It’s tradition here. Every time a baby is born in the nursery, they play Brahm’s Lullaby on the loudspeakers.” A lullaby on the loudspeakers?! Floating through the harshness of those halls – a lullaby?!

And right then, for the first time since I had come through the emergency room of that hospital, I smiled, albeit weakly. I can’t explain it but I felt hopeful. I felt peace. Lullaby on the loudspeakers; a baby is born!

During the remaining time I spent in the hospital, I listened for the sounds of that lullaby. Amidst the horrible sounds of pain and misery that surrounded me, I strained to hear the sound of hope, of life, of new beginnings. Lullaby on the loudspeakers. A child is born.

And I thought of another lullaby, which broke into the night nearly two thousand years ago to cold, lonely shepherds working the night shift, and in my heart, I heard the whisper of angels’ wings: “Do not be afraid: for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Do not be afraid, for over the sounds of people weeping and IV’s beeping and bombs bursting, over the cries of pain and suffering and sorrow, there is a heavenly lullaby: Do not be afraid – I bring you good news, which is for all people . . . which is for you. (The Presbyterian Outlook, 20 November, 2006)

The Shepherds filled with awe and wonder ran to see May who held in her arms the God of love – that we might hold in our hearts the love of God.

One of my favorite carols is “Away in a Manger” which is attributed to Martin Luther. It is a great hymn but there is one line that is just wrong. “Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Of course, he cried, he was a vulnerable, helpless baby.

That’s the incredible, profound, hard-to-grasp mystery we celebrate at Christmas - The notion of incarnation, Emmanuel, God-with-us, God shares our life - So, of course, the child cried. He cried for us . . . He cries with us. Our tears are his tears. He cried to remind us we are never alone in our tears or our fears.

Anne Lamott tells a story about when she had taken her two-year old son to Lake Tahoe, where the stayed in a condominium by the lake. There are a lot of gambling establishments, so all the rooms come with light-blocking blinds so you can gamble all night and sleep all day. 

One day Anne put her baby to sleep in his Pack ‘n Play in a totally darkened bedroom and went to work writing in the next room. A few moments later she heard her baby knocking on the door from inside. She got up to put him back to bed and then—every parent’s nightmare—found the door locked.

Somehow he had managed to push the lock button on the doorknob. He was calling, “Mommy, Mommy,” and she was saying, “Just jiggle the doorknob honey, push the button again.”

Of course, he couldn’t even see the doorknob in the darkened room. When it became clear to him that his mother couldn’t open the door, panic set in. She could hear his sobbing. His mother did everything she could think of: trying the door; calling the rental agency, the manger; leaving frantic messages on answering machines; running back to comfort her son there in the dark, locked room, terrified.

Finally, she did the only thing she could think of which was to lie down and slide her fingers under the door where there was a few centimeters of space. She told him over and over to do the same: to bend over and find her fingers. And somehow he did and he quieted down. 

They stayed like that for what seemed like a long time, until help came, him holding her fingers in the dark, feeling her presence, her care, her love.

Sometimes life can feel like we are that two year-old trapped in the dark, and God always is like that mother, present in our darkness. Christmas is the promise that God-is-with-us; it is the promise that God doesn’t forget us, abandon us, ever . . . There is a love holding onto us, even in the darkness, that will never let us go!

Gerald Coffee, in his autobiography, reminds us of the gift when he tells about his Christmas of 1968 in a North Vietnamese prison.

He was a U.S. Navy Captain whose plane had been shot down over enemy territory. On his third Christmas in a tiny cell, his Vietnamese captors distributed some candy bars. Gerald took a paper and silver wrapper and folded them into tiny symbols – a rosette and a star of Bethlehem.

He attached them to three straws and watched them in the light of a single yellow bulb in the silence of his sullen cell.

Gerald remembers with gratitude those sacred moments as he writes, “Here there was nothing to distract me from the awesomeness of Christmas – no commercialism, no presents, little food. I was beginning to appreciate my own spirituality because I had been stripped of everything by which I had measured my identity: rank, uniform, money, family . . . stripped bare. I continued to find strength and peace within. I realized that although I was hurting and lonely and scared, this might be the most significant Christmas of my life. I was so far away from home but I have to admit I felt at home within myself for the first time because (free from all distractions) I really knew God was at HOME within me.”

There’s nothing more important than coming HOME for the holidays . . . God made his home with us that we might come home to a place of love and acceptance, a place of strength and hope.

You’re invited to come home for the holidays . . . the journey’s no far. Remember, a place to call home is as close to you as your own breath . . . as real as the beating of your heart . . . as sure as the rising of the sun. so, before you rush off into the week to finish your last minute plans to make sure you’re ready for the holidays take a moment . . .

In the silence, wherever you are, wherever you’ve been, however you feel . . . God, right now, is inviting you to come home for the holidays. In the silence . . . come home. Because the great thing is that once we do . . . we can carry that home with us everywhere we go this week . . . we can be at home no matter what we face. We can share that home with everyone we meet. Take a moment . . . in the silence . . . come home for the holidays!

Here’s a link to yesterday’s message, “Journey Toward the Light – The Journey of Mary: Courage” http://www.bendfp.org/.docs/pg/10770