![We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation by [Brian D. McLaren]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61lK5akpFGL.jpg)
Drawing from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, one of the most radical speeches in human history, this encouraging and practical guide connects acts of contemplation with action, providing biblically based and spiritually grounded practices for living into the beloved community today.
Discover how spiritual practices can change the way you interact with the world and inspire lasting change.
Small Group Guide — download here.
THIS LIVING THE KIN-DOM STUDY BY RIVA TABELISMA gives fresh eyes to the Lord's Prayer. Often learned by rote, the Lord's Prayer is a rich guide for how we can live out God's kin-dom in our lives. Tabelisma invites participants in this study to step away from our automatic recitation of the prayer and dive deep into the meaning of each line over the course of eight one-hour sessions. Each of the sessions examines a section of the Lord's Prayer from Matthew 6:9–13 as it is recorded in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
Minnesota Contemplative Outreach
Volunteers for Bringing Centering Prayer to Stillwater Prison): info@minnesotacontemplativeoutreach.org or www.minnesotacontemplativeoutreach.org.
For more information, please contact Mark Thiel.
First Things: Morning Centering Prayer for PeaceSustaining the intention of peace for the Twin Cities, we hold prayerful silence together, in unity, in love and support for all people in our communities:
Daily at 7:00 a.m., via Zoom
The Minnesota Council of Churches Healing Minnesota Stories provide group Sacred Sites Tour to Explore Indigenous Experience in Minnesota. These tours are designed to "create understanding and healing between Native American and non-Native people, particularly those in various faith communities".
Tours are led by Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs (Mohican) and Bob Klanderud (Dakota). The tours offer an opportunity to learn about Minnesota history from a Native perspective through story-telling and experiencing the sites in silence / meditation / reflection.
United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities offers a list of Resources and Actions Amidst amidst the Chauvin Trialand the Death of Daunte Wright, including opportunities for Prayer/Meditation, Holding Memory, Changing Policies, Impacting Public Discourse, and Engaging Our Emotions.
The Center for Mindful Self-Compassion offers 10 Self-Compassion Practices for the Crisis in Ukraine.
Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club offers monthly conversation on the Christian Mystical Tradition. Join Abbey of the Arts for a monthly conversation on how increasing our diversity of perspectives on contemplative practice can enrich our understanding and experience of the Christian mystical tradition.
This free series is a conversation between Christine Valters Paintner and author Claudia Love Mair. Read the book in advance and actively join this "journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation".
Learn more here.
Barbara A. Holmes' film series with The Work of the People: A Transcendent Leap (on our cosmic identities), Womanist Theology, Release the Fire (on Pentecost and the Spirit), Be the Mystery, Emerging Wholeness (on God's call to love our neighbor), A Contemplative Moment (on how contemplative prayer births prophetic proclamation and action).
The UCC's Join the Movement created an Election Season Spiritual Care Package: Soul Nourishment in a Time of Life-Denying Rhetoric - free and downloadable - full of video, audio, and written prayers created and facilitated by diverse voices from around the nation.
Engage the whole congregation in learning the 'whys' of a Land Acknowledgement - and let the Littles lead. Written by Minnesota author Ashley Fairbanks (Anishinaabe, White Earth), This Land introduces the idea of appreciating one's place on the land by appreciating the land's history, inviting readers to wonder - and discover - who lived on the land where they live, before they lived here. It's beautiful and profound and encourages wonder and exploration to learn the truths of colonizer and settler history, current realities of land ownership, and the current lived realities of Indigenous communities, as it invites us all to appreciate the lands we inhabit.
Introduce the book and gain essential background and insight from Sam Stroozas' MPR interview with Ashley Fairbanks. Listen or read the transcript here.
As we are embraced by God's reconciling love in worship, we are equipped to carry that reconciling love into our relationships beyond the worship space. Worship equips us for the work of conciliation, but the liturgy itself needs to be decolonized if it is to truly honor Christian commitments to God and neighbor. This book explores the reformed liturgy in its pattern of Gathering, Word, Table, and Sending, searching it both for colonial vestiges, and spaces of new possibility. Unsettling Worship invites the reader into a conversation about reformed worship in a setting of ongoing colonization. Worship should both unsettle us, and equip us for the essential work of making things right with Indigenous neighbors.
Doing the Deeply Spiritual Work of Land Acknowledgment
Tracy Kugler, a member of St. Paul's UCC in St. Paul, MN
~includes a strong list of resources for congregational or personal learning
A Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgment was compiled in conversation with a group of Minnesota Indigenous leaders.
Center for Action and Contemplation Podcasts:
Prayer walking can be a great way to get outside and connect with God and your community. Here’s some advice for turning a regular stroll into a means of discipleship.
Maps, Prayers, and Action by Vernita Kennen, Incarnation Lutheran Church (ELCA), Shoreview
Walking Humbly with God for Justice
Contemplation and action can open doors to changing systems of domination and oppression.
What are the actions that take you beyond belief and into action? Franciscan Action Network (FAN) Executive Director Michele Dunne shares her experience at the June 18 Poor People’s Campaign March on Washington and to the Polls.
Richard Rohr spent a week Contemplating Creation - short, daily devotionals to help us see and develop awareness of our oneness with creation.
Richard Rohr lifts up numerous contemplative artists reflecting on arts, contemplation, and justice work, in Finding God in the Arts, which ran August 15-20, 2021.
Barbara Holmes reflects on Crisis Contemplation, in When Crisis Comes and Crisis Contemplation; trauma researcher Joy DeGruy adds Healing Generational Wounds - all worth a read for those concerned about the extent of body trauma experienced generationally by our siblings of color and diversity; and being absorbed by all of us in these times of upheaval.
enfleshed's Contemplating Now podcast is great all the time.
This interview with Cassidy Hall on her work on the intersection of contemplation and Social justice is particularly good.
Richard Rohr asks leaders to become - or make room for - Becoming Wise Fools.
His Earth Day reflection, One Life, One Breath, features Native American attorney and sacred activist, Sherri Mitchell.
Sharing Felicia Murrell's Silence in Trauma and Healing week.
The theme of "Oneness", (May 23-28, 2021), culminated in Action Based on Oneness, citing contemporary mystic and activist-inspirer, Howard Thurman.
![The Mud and the Masterpiece: Seeing Yourself and Others through the Eyes of Jesus Audiobook [Download] - Narrated By: John Burke By: John Burke](https://g.christianbook.com/dg/product/cbd/f400/DA21141-CP.jpg)
