Prayers for Others | Daily Scripture Readings | Daily Meditations
PRAYERS FOR OTHERS
“These dear ones, O God, bless Thou and keep, in every place where they are.”
Family & friends
Neighbors
…I met through the Refuge/Refuge Café
…I met during my parish rounds
…in difficult situations
…I met on the road
…who have endured loss
…who are incarcerated or on probation
…from indigenous nations
…from other parts of the world
…I work with
…who are hard for me to be around
…who are my “enemies”
…who I’ve hurt/wounded/broken friendship with
…from my evangelical days
…from my school-aged days
…who live near me
Places
My hometown and state…Places in pain…Places special to me
Institutions
Faith communities, non-profits and government agencies
DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS
DAILY MEDITATIONS
1 — First Day of the Month
2 — Second Day of the Month
3 — Third Day of the Month
Vocatus atque nonvocatus Deus aderit.
“Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” /
“Called or not called, God is always there.”
popularized by Car Jung, from Erasmus, who claimed it was an old Spartan proverb
4 — Fourth Day of the Month
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There’s a crack in everything,
a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
from “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen
5 — Fifth Day of the Month
There may be times when what is most needed is, not so much a new discovery or a new idea as a different ‘slant’; I mean a comparatively slight re-adjustment in our way of looking at the things and ideas on which attention is already fixed.
from Saving the Appearances by Owen Barfield
6 — Sixth Day of the Month
Never doubt in the darkness that which you believed in the light…
from Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead
7 — Seventh Day of the Month
Once the Cure d’Ars, a French saint of the eighteenth century, asked an old peasant what he was doing sitting for hours in the church, seemingly not even praying; the peasant replied: “I look at him, he looks at me and we are happy together.
as quoted in Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas
8 — Eighth Day of the Month
To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.
from Tragedies by Flannery O’Connor
9 — Ninth Day of the Month
“A Masai Creed”
We believe in one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it…God promised in the book of his word, the bible, that he would save the world and all the nations and tribes.
We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, doing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.
from multiple sources, including an On Being podcast interview with Jaroslav Pelikan
10 — Tenth Day of the Month
The answers you get depend upon the questions you ask.
from The Structures of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
…try to love the questions themselves.
from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
11 — Eleventh Day of the Month
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
from the entry for “Vocation” in Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC by Frederick Buechner
12 — Twelfth Day of the Month
“You like to tell true stories, don’t you?” he asked, and I answered. “Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.”
Then he asked, “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it?”
“Only then will you understand what happened and why.
“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them…
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
13 — Thirteenth Day of the Month
It is for your love and your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread that you give them.
Vincent de Paul, from Monsieur Vincent
14 — Fourteenth Day of the Month
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.
Mahatma Gandhi
15 — Fifteenth Day of the Month
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
Paul Farmer
16 — Sixteenth Day of the Month
Never doubt in the darkness that which you believed in the light…
from Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead
17 — Seventeenth Day of the Month
The kingdom of God will come as a civilization of poverty, in opposition to the civilization of wealth. The highest authority on the planet is the authority of those who suffer, from which there is no appeal.
Jon Sobrino
18 — Eighteenth Day of the Month
True greatness comes not by favoritism but by fitness…So Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness…If you want to be great, wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant…You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant.
from “The Drum Major Instinct” on Mark 10:35-45, preached by Martin Luther King, Jr., on Feb. 4, 1968
19 — Nineteenth Day of the Month
“The meaning of history occurs in the humiliated Christ.”
Interviewer: The Prophecy of the arrival of the Messiah remains for the Jews still ulfulfilled. How would the world be transformed if this prophecy came true?
Shalom Ben-Chorin: The world would become the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of peace, reghteousness, and love among all people. The nations would mold their swords into plowhshares and their spears into pruning hooks, as it was foretold by Isaiah and Micah. No nation would ever again lift a sword against another, and no one would again study the art of war…I see that as the goal of history, and if I could not believe in it, then I would have no hope…I think this waiting for the kingdom of God is only meaningful when it is not a passive but rather an active waiting. When we know that we are summoned to realize works of peace, righteousness, and love in our lives. Rabbi Tarphon expressed it very beautifully in the saying of the Fathers: “It is not yours to complete the work, but you are not freed from beginning it.”
from Who is Christ for Us? by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
20 — Twentieth Day of the Month
Never doubt in the darkness that which you believed in the light…
from Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead
21 — Twenty-First Day of the Month
22 — Twenty-Second Day of the Month
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
23 — Twenty-Third Day of the Month
“Sancto a Christo Crucificado”
anonymous Spanish mystic poem, translated by Thomas Walsh
24 — Twenty-Fourth Day of the Month
Call: Jesus Christ is risen!
Response: He is risen indeed! Alleluia, alleluia!
my favorite Easter refrain
25 — Twenty-Fifth Day of the Month
Peut-être — il faut toujours dire peut-être pour…
Perhaps — one must always say perhaps for…
from “Force of Law” by Jacques Derrida, quoted by John D. Caputo in The Insistence of God
26 — Twenty-Sixth Day of the Month
27 — Twenty-Seventh Day of the Month
There can be no event or entity that does not consist, simultaneously, of the visible and the invisible.
from The Powers That Be by Walter Wink
28 — Twenty-Eighth Day of the Month
29 — Twenty-Ninth Day of the Month
…And so the first question that the priest asked…the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” That’s the question before you tonight.
from the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., on the night before his assassination
30 — Thirtieth Day of the Month
31 — Thirty-First Day of the Month
A Rule offers creative boundaries within which God’s loving presence can be recognised and celebrated. It does not prescribe, but invites; it does not force but guides; it does not threaten but warns; it does not instill fear but points to love. In this it is a call to freedom: freedom to love.
Henri Nouwen