Join the Advent Conspiracy!

As a continuation of our discussions of wealth and poverty, as a community we've decided to respond by making changes in the way we celebrate Christmas this year.

We're joining the Advent conspiracy.

Check out this video we watched in last week's LIFE Groups...



Can you believe that in the United States alone, we spend $450 billion a year on Christmas? As a community, we've committed to the four principles of the Advent Conspiracy:

• worship fully
• spend less
• give more
• love all

As part of our preparations for Christmas this year, we're going to support a project that provides access to clean water for people who have none. Specifically, the challenge we're undertaking is to give to this cause the same amount we spend on gifts for family and friends -- that is, to match our spending dollar for dollar. Most likely, that means spending less on gifts, since few of us can afford to double our typical Christmas spending, but it also means being more generous. We may also support a local cause as well -- that's a conversation we've just begun.

What do you think? Wanna conspire with us? Join the Advent Conspiracy!

Praying for Peace

Today is the International Day of Prayer for Peace, coordinated annually on September 21 by the World Council of Churches, in conjunction with the United Nations International Day of Peace. The objective of the International Day of Prayer for Peace:

"to encourage worldwide, 24-hour spiritual observations for peace and nonviolence on the International Day of Peace, 21 September, in every house of worship and place of spiritual practice, by all religious and spiritually based groups and individuals, and by all men, women, and children who seek peace in the world."

During our New Light Community Gathering tonight, we spent some time praying for peace in God's world. As we lifted up prayers for specific places of conflict and suffering, we placed stickers depicting doves on a globe. It was distressing, to say the least, to see a globe covered in stickers by the time we finished -- tangible reminders of the great suffering, much of it caused by sisters and brothers inflicting violence on each other, all over this earth God created. I can only imagine how God grieves to see God's children at war with one another.

And so, we pray for peace, and we pray that God will use us as instruments of peace.

Here's a prayer that we shared during our time of worship tonight:

Their plowshares are beat into swords

And now their plowshares are beat into swords – as are ours.
Now their pruning hooks are beat into spears – as are ours.
Not only swords and spears,
but bullets, and bombs, and missiles,
of steel on flesh,
of power against bodies….

And you, in your indignation sound your mantra,
“Blessed are the peacemakers.”
We dare to believe they are the aggressor,
and we are the peacemaker.
Yet in sober night dream, we glance otherwise
and think we may be aggressor,
as we vision rubbled homes,
murdered civilians,
and charred babies.

And you, in our sadness, sound your mantra,
“Blessed are the peacemakers.”
We do not love war,
we yearn for peace,
but we have lost much will for peace
even while we dream of order.

And you, in your hope, sound your mantra,
“Blessed are the peacemakers."
Deliver us from excessive certitude about ourselves.
Hold us in the deep ambiguity where we find ourselves,
Show us yet again the gaping space
between your will and our feeble imagination.
Sound your mantra with more authority,
with more indignation,
through sadness,
in hope… “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Only peacemakers are blessed.
We find ourselves well short of blessed.
Give us freedom for your deep otherwise,
finally to be blessed,
in the name of the Peacemaker
who gave and did not take. Amen.

— Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003)

Celebrating the Fourth of July with a Global Perspective

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
this is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;
may peace abound where strife has raged so long;
that each may seek to love and build together,
a world united, righting every wrong;
a world united in its love for freedom,
proclaiming peace together in one song.

This is my prayer, O Lord of all earth's kingdoms,
thy kingdom come, on earth, thy will be done;
let Christ be lifted up 'til all shall serve him,
and hearts united, learn to live as one:
O hear my prayer, thou God of all the nations,
myself I give thee — let thy will be done.

— Lloyd Stone & Georgia Harkness