Dear Friends, 

This past weekend was filled with so much joy and love: the center of who we are at Epiphany. It is our center, not because of who we are as individuals, or of who we are as a community alone. It is our center because that is the center of God and is God’s deepest desire for us. It is our center because of our desire to meet God at the Center.

I continue to be excited about discovering with you what God calls us to and how we respond together. For this morning, for the celebration of new ministry that has just been marked, for the saints who came before and who we will call into our being with greater intention this coming Sunday, All Saints’ Sunday, for all the ways we continue to discern how we follow Christ into becoming Beloved Community with our time, talent, and treasure, I invite us into reflection on John O’Donohue’s poem this week.

I invite us to read it for ourserlves individually and then as one in community guided by out desire to meet God at the Center. The collective reading has the words in bold replacing the singular langugage.

A Morning Offering

I [We] bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me [us]
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

I [We] place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I [we] shelter,
Waves of desire I am [we are] shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind [our minds] come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me [us] to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May [we] have the courage today
To live the life that I [we] would love,
To postpone my dream [our dreams] no longer
But do at last what I [we] came here for
And waste my heart [our hearts] on fear no more.

In Peace, Dina+