New Contemplative Prayer & Study Group
A new in-person contemplative prayer group & book study is forming at St. Stephen’s! This group will meet on the 2nd & 4th Thursday of each month in the sanctuary…
Petition
Image: The Temptation of St Anthony, engraving by Martin Schongauer, c. 1470–75 After offering an invocation that leads me through a door into the divine presence, I often find that my…
Invocation
A few years ago, I spent the summer praying through the Jawshan Kabir, a remarkable Islamic text that lists more than a thousand names for God. I was merely a…
Elaborating the Shape of Prayer
Faiths tend to build expectations for prayer, which can almost be thought of as a form of manners. Breaking the prayer form is impolite. God, of course, can handle impolite…
The Peace of God
There are many ways of praying and thinking about prayer. A common one is to consider prayer a kind of conversation with God. This conversation can take any shape and…
Entering the Divine Reality Through Prayer, Part One
In a previous post, I talked about ways to open a door into the divine reality that Christians call the Kingdom of God. I mentioned prayer in passing before going…
A Necessary Corrective
I've been writing about worship as a way of entering an alternate reality, which Christians might call the Courts of Heaven, The Heavenly City, The Heavenly Banquet, The Resurrection Life,…
The One Who Helps Us to Mature
This is a continuation of the discussion started in the post titled The One Who Walks in the Garden. There are, of course, other ways to look at the second…
The One Who Walks in the Garden
Once human beings became conscious of the world, we did very little for 180,000 years. We were hunter-gatherers who worked for about three hours a week and used only about…
A Covenant Formed of Questions
I write this on Good Friday. Throughout the night, different people have come and prayed in the Garden of Repose that we set-up in the sanctuary. Framed by trees and…