Winn Collier's Blog, page 64

Settling Into Lent

We enter the bright sadness. Sad for all that is broken. Bright for what God will awaken. But now the earth is silent and sorrowful.



The calendar tells me I am well into Lent. However, I don't know how well I'm into the practices and fasts I've taken on; they're coming, but it's been harder than last year to create the space I want (but resist).



This year, Miska has chosen for me (each of us choose the others' practice) to be off the computer every night by 8:00 and to have 30 minutes of s...

Sunday Liturgy: Cry to the Lord

A Litany from Deuteronomy 26:5-11:



We are small. We are empty.

We cry to the Lord.

We are strangers and aliens. We are misfits.

We cry to the Lord, the God of our ancestors.

We have worked so hard to hold our life together.

We lay down our life, and we bow before you, our God.

Do our words just drop into empty space? Does God see us?

The Lord hears us. God sees our affliction and our oppression.

Dare we hope?

The Lord will bring us out with a might hand and an outstretched arm.

Will we ...

Lenten Tweets

Rest assured, the irony of this post's title is not lost on me. Perhaps no two words in the English language belong together less.



I've resisted Twitter. I've gone back and forth and then back and then forth. I don't need more noise. They tell me writers must avail themselves of such things, but I don't want to use these mediums merely for marketing. And, of course, no one cares one whit to know that:  



12:07  I'm leaving for lunch now 



12:11  I'm driving to lunch



12:19  I'm sitting in...

Sunday Liturgy: The Lord is With You

At All Souls, the community where our family lives and loves, we have a shared liturgy each week. Liturgy is "the work of the people," and we believe that encountering God is something we do together. We all pray. We all question. Together, we all sit listening to the cues of grace. A good bit of what we do comes from the Book of Common Prayer and the Lectionary - we join the chorus of God's people in other places and in other generations. 

However, we also create our own movements...

Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr is much en vogue (not that he was ever out). Obama lists Niebuhr among his most influential philosophers, and certainly Reinhold left an indelible imprint on the theological and political direction of the last century (not to mention his infamy as the author of the Serenity Prayer). Eager to be a man of the times, I recently purchased Richard Fox's Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (3 stars) at one of our local used book shops.

I wanted to like this book. I was engaged...

Thaddeus Bogert

A certain character has visited enough times for me to begin to think of him as a friend (at the least). I'd like to introduce him to you...



*****

We rambled into Groten Hall, room 347, at a couple minutes to two. For the rest of our university career (except for this class), we would perfect the art of late, frantic arrivals. However, we were first year students, and this was our first day of classes. Most of us knew each other from freshman orientation, and now we would share First Year...

Continue to Pray

We will not fear though the earth should give way, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea. Psalm 46.2

Food, Fire and Light for Haiti

My piece on Craig Miller and his relief work in Haiti is now up on HalogenTV.

Credit Where Credit is Due

So at least for the moment, it appears Warren Buffet was right.

Let us Welcome the New Year

And now let us welcome the new year - full of new things that have never been ~ Rainer Maria Rilke







Another fresh start. The Christian year began with Advent, and now the calendar tells us of still another beginning.  We've purchased a new calendar for the wall - our old one finished, filled with scribbles and reminders and names, each mark reminding us of birthdays and evenings out and family deaths and dinners with friends. Reasons to celebrate and reasons for sorrow, but mostly celebrat...