Musings about Faith

***What is prayer? How do we pray? In the Gospel of St. Matthew (chapter 6) Jesus addresses these questions and expresses to his disciples some very new and different ways of understanding prayer. First, Jesus uses negative examples (verses 5-8): "Do not pray as the hypocrites do…" he tells them. Don't make a public spectacle of your prayer and piety. In fact don't even use very many words, the essence of prayer is not the words we speak to God. What then is it? "When you pray, pray in this way, Our Father…" ***What follows is perhaps one of the most important, beautiful and misunderstood prayers in the history of Christianity: "The Lord's Prayer." For what is most striking and important is that this prayer is rooted in Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom come. The Lord's Prayer is a Kingdom Prayer, and its placement at the conclusion of the Eucharistic prayer and before the distribution lifts that up before the faithful in a p...

***I am reading a book by Eugene Peterson entitled “The Contemplative Pastor” and on page 68 (In the Chapter entitled “Praying With Eyes Open”) he writes this: “Matter is real. Flesh is good. Without a firm rooting in creation, religion is always drifting off into some kind of pious sentimentalism or sophisticated intellectualism. The task of salvation is not to refine us into pure spirits so that we will not be cumbered with this too solid flesh… The Word did not become a good idea, or a numinous feeling, or a moral aspiration; the Word became flesh… The physical is holy. It is extremely significant that in the opening sentences of the bible, God speaks a world of energy and matter into being: light, moon, stars, earth, vegetation, animals, man, woman (not love and virtue, faith and salvation, hope and judgment…)” ***The history of the church is filled with believers trying desperately to escape their flesh. But Pr. Peterson reminds us of a central understanding of our faith – G...

Some Pastoral Reflections from Pastor Duncan: *****Last night I caught an episode of “How Weather Changed History.” This is an interesting show on the weather channel that presents how various weather conditions have impacted important historical events. Last night’s episode was about the Revolutionary War and it was really quite fascinating to hear the story told from that perspective. Watching this comes on the heels of seeing another show where a comedian went out to the highways and byways and questioned random people about various topics – mostly history and geography. It was, I suppose, funny at the silly answers that some folks came up with to questions like – Who was the first president of the United States? But on the other hand it is also very sad and distressing. If we are to be complete citizens of this great nation we need to know our nation’s stories; we need to know the people and events from the past that have shaped our present; we need to know and understand the...