I'M MOVING THIS BLOG SITE!

Hey everyone!

Exciting news...

We've moved this blog over to our new Intersect website. We'll have a few more capabilities with our new blog and it will tie into what Dave Livermore and I are doing with intersect.

We're moving all our posts to the new site and will have them categorized. All our new posts will now be there.

Thanks for journeying with us and we hope you'll enjoy the new features at our new site!



ps. I would like to thank Blogger for giving me a start into blogging and making this venue of expression possible. Keep up the great work!

Lent: Heartbeat...

Go to your doctor, and one of the first things they'll do is listen to your heart.

I don’t think about my hear that much. Maybe I should since, if it goes… I go.

The only time I hear my heartbeat is when I’m panicking, scared, alone, or after a long run. Something traumatic emotionally, or physically has to happen for me to notice my heart beating fast.

Lent serves as a season when we pay closer attention to our hearts. Often my spirituality can be reactionary… God, I’m scared, I’m alone, I’m stressed… help me. I need you.

Lent is pro-active. It permits space for me/us to search our hearts, listen closely and consider our condition. Heart attacks are too late. So are spiritual heart attacks.

And so I ask…

-- How healthy is my heart and what am I doing to keep it beating strong (where does my joy come from)?

-- What patterns are damaging my heart (sin, un-forgiveness, neglect)?

-- What corrective measures do I need to take (in my life, my patterns)?

I also hear my heart beat when I’m quiet.

And maybe that’s where it starts.

Help me really mean, ‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening…”

Ash Wednesday

Dear People of God:

The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting.

This is season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

-- The Book of Common Prayer (pp. 264-265)