UCC author, Rev. Michael Mulberry, offers this free Lenten resource based on Katherine Hayhoe's, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. The resource kit includes a Day of Action Working Kit; a Baptism liturgy; Creation Communion liturgy; and an Ash Wednesday to Earth Day sourcebook, including additional liturgical elements, music suggestions, contemplative practices, and coloring pages.
Thanks to the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) Community member Colleen D. for sharing the Great Idea of a One Word Prayer:
'When circumstances seem too overwhelming even to know how to pray, I start with one word. I settle myself and bring one word into focus. Words like: help, resilience, patience, courage, stillness, breathing, hope, serenity. Then, I sit with God and keep the word present in my mind. I hope you too can experience the centering sensation from a simple one-word prayer with God.'
Learn more about the CAC here.
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.
Includes:
2024 Daily Meditations Theme
This year’s theme will explore contemplation as a way to build Radical Resilience so we can stand in solidarity with the world without burning up or burning out. Watch the video.
A Prayer for Wholeness and Healing with James Finley (5:10)Take a moment for prayerful meditation with CAC faculty, James Finley.
Accompanied by visual and audio cues, this guided mediation invites you to enter a deep healing space. James offers us, “May we continually reach out to the hurting places until only Love is left…”
Contemplative Sit with Brian McLaren (14:46)
Brian McLaren, CAC faculty and author of Do I Stay Christian?, invites us to enter a deeper silence by letting go of our habitual thoughts, assumptions, and feelings and to connect to a truth greater than ourselves. Embracing the stillness of contemplation can be challenging, but it gets easier with a regular practice. Return to this quiet contemplative sit whenever you feel called to open your heart to wisdom beyond your own.
I Love You Prayer (5:41)Christian meditation shifts us from ego to oneness, learning to see God in everyone and everything—including in ourselves. Recorded in 2022 at the Living School Symposium, CAC faculty James Finley, Ph.D., invites us to slow down and listen for God’s silent I love you in each breath. Return to this meditation anytime you feel called to surrender to Love with childlike sincerity.
Prayer for a Bigger Vision (1:55)
Prayer is a stance that allows us to experience Divine presence within ourselves and the world. Written originally for the 2006 Prophets Then/Prophets Now Conference, Father Richard Rohr’s prayer invites us to find hope and solidarity as active participants in the Body of Christ. You can listen to Fr. Richard recite his prayer, and come back to this practice anytime you need to be reminded that you are not alone.
Hosted by Dr. Barbara Holmes and Dr. Donny Bryant
The Cosmic We podcast goes beyond race and racism to consider relatedness as the organizing principle of the universe, exploring our shared cosmic origins though a cultural lens that fuses science, mysticism, spirituality, and the creative arts.
