Where we love is home- home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. Oliver Wendel Holmes, Sr.

Meditation: Having immigrated to the US from Germany 24 years ago, I thought that the US had become my home, and in many ways it has. Most of the time I consider home where my husband, my children and I live, and where my work and my church are. But when I am on vacation in Germany, I am reminded that extended family and friends from my early years are also home, because I love them. I do not miss Germany as a culture that much, as I can buy German chocolate, German bread and wine in the US. However, what I can’t “buy” are those love connections that go way back to my childhood. Therefore, I will always have to see myself as someone having at least two homes, and always missing one.

Prayer: God of Love, when we choose to leave the home we know, we often miss it. And then there are times when we lose our home without choosing it. We feel lost and even “homeless” when that happens. Jesus invites us to ground ourselves in Your love, so that we always have a home. Remind us of your loving presence. When life changes and we feel overwhelmed, let us find our home in You. Now and in the life to come. Amen

In my Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2

To be with old friends is very warming and comforting. Ian Ziering

Meditation: One of my oldest friends lives in Germany. We grew up together since kindergarten. I admired and loved her. She was an inspiration to me. When we left home to study, our connection became less intense, and when I immigrated to the US 24 years ago, we stayed in touch rather infrequently. However, I recently learned that she is having health challenges. A flood of emotions surfaced – strong feelings of attachment and care. As I will visit family in Germany in a few days, I decided to take a train all the way up to the north of Germany to see her, even if only for a few hours. Old friendships are amazing connections that never go away, attachments that are very strong and love that endures over many decades…

Prayer: God of love and friendship, I pray for my friend who is going through a difficult time. I am so grateful that I can travel and see her. Bless our time together. Be present with us as we reconnect. Provide healing for her. Thank you for bonds that never end and friendships that transcend time and distance. Amen

My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend. Job 16:20-21

When you discover first love as a teenager, your whole life revolves around it and you open yourself up to it. Patrick Dempsey

Meditation: When is it OK for our teenager daughters to start dating? This is the question that revealed to my husband and I once again that we come from different cultures, have different stories and hold different areas of anxiety. Our values, ideas of freedom, boundaries and restrictions that parents need to set or allow – all were suddenly on the table in new ways. As parents we struggled at first with how to negotiate our differences of opinion. We then found common denominators. We talked with our teen daughters about being honest and authentic in all relationships, about physical boundaries and about freedom and safety. We decided to trust our daughters. As parents of younger teenagers we remain present and available while providing a safe space in which they can discover and experience feelings of first love.

Prayer: Parent God, we are grateful for Your values. Be present as we are being stretched and challenged to grow as parents of teenagers. Take our anxiety and fill us instead with trust and confidence that we will figure things out alongside our children as they mature and grow. Let the same Christian values and principles apply to our children that apply to us. Thank You for the freedom You extend and the trust You have in us and in them. Thank You that You want for all of us wholeness of body, mind and Spirit. Amen

You say, “I am allowed to do anything”–but not everything is good for you. You say, “I am allowed to do anything”–but not everything is beneficial. 1. Corinthians 10: 23

 

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you. Susan Sarandon

Meditation: I recently taught spiritual care students about family systems. I shared how we can develop empathy for our ancestors. To do so, we need to imagine and take into account the cultural and historic events that they had to deal with. Those sometimes traumatic and stressful events shaped them and made them the people they became. As we realize the bigger story around our ancestors’ story, we realize that they are “not crazy”. Their behavior is a reaction to stress and trauma that made them cope and act in certain ways. As we develop more empathy for our family members, parents and grandparents, we also develop more empathy for ourselves. We realize that much of their emotions and coping mechanisms live on in us. One of the international students was moved to tears. She discovered for the first time that her parents had multiple levels of trauma to deal with. Her judgement and rejection of them gave way to new tenderness and compassion. Her tears were a healing balm soothing her long time resentment and transforming it for the first time into empathy. She felt something break open within her.

Prayer: God of history and of compassion, You know what our ancestors had to go through. And You know what we had to go through due to their ways of dealing and coping with their traumas in life. We pray for compassion and empathy for them and for ourselves. Heal us, free us from resentment and judgment. Increase our understanding for why they were the way they were. Help us to forgive them. Send us Your Spirit of compassion that heals our own wounds and our family relationships. Amen

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 1. Corinthians 1:3-4

The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results. Henri Nouwen

Meditation: When I think of our last President’s book “The audacity of hope” and of his many (now seemingly idealistic) statements, I sometimes feel discouraged. I feel even devastated when looking at the current President’s attempts to undo everything that was done by his predecessor in the eight years before. And then, I choose to ground myself in my faith. I am reminding myself that God’s realm grows in a different time and space dimension than my awareness often allows me to see. As I obsess about the recent past and the current circumstances, God’s perspective is looking way back and way forward. If I just get a glimpse now and then that Grace is real and that Love and Justice will prevail, I can breathe again. My own audacity to hope is being rekindled.

Prayer: God of generations before and generations to come, help us see Your Grace and Your Love in the midst of darkness and threat. Help us to hold on to the hope of Your redeeming presence that You have passed on to us through our ancestors. Help us to embody Your Love and Your Grace. Help us speak, work and empower all that brings Justice to this generation and the next. Thank You that Your perspective and sense of time is so much broader than ours. And we are grateful. Amen

He has regarded the prayer of the destitute and has not despised their prayer. This will be written for the generation to come, that a people yet to be created may praise the LORD. Psalm 102:17-18

I think loss of loved ones is the hardest blow in life. Marlo Thomas

Meditation: The experience after losing a loved one can feel like a long illness. It is a journey that leads us so deep into our own soul that we feel as if settling on the bottom of the ocean. We become emotionally unavailable to those around us. In the dark we are being guided back through memories of joy, wounding, longing and missed or shared connection. It can take years to recover. And yet, one day the fever of grief will break and healing will set in. The relationship, all that it was and all that it has not been able to be, is being blessed and we let go. Reemerging from the bottom of the sea, fresh air enters our lungs. Light can be tolerated once again and the surroundings become real in a new way. As if being called out of the tomb, life can begin anew.

Prayer: God of both – darkness and light, You are with us when we sink to the bottom of grief. You know the dark night of our soul. You have shared it with us when You lost Your own son. You hold us close while also holding us down, until we dare to confront the pain we do not want to face. You hold us until we allow for those joyful memories and the deep longing we want to avoid. You walk with us every step on our long grief journey, even when we feel feverish and alone. And then You pull us up and out. The fever of grief has run its course. You bring us back to life. We can breathe again. We are alive again. And we are grateful. Amen

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

 

What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade. Gertrude Jekyll

Meditation: The early summer days in the Southeast are lush, green, not yet as humid and hot as later summer months will be. Nature is soaking up the frequent rain showers, and intense and bright colors everywhere call for our attention. The nights are cool, yet warm enough to sit outside or walk until late in the night. I wish I could stay up until early in the morning. The night air is refreshing, soothing.  During the day the sun does not yet quite reach the intensity that it soon will have. It warms body and soul. These are special days, the young summer days.

Prayer: God of all seasons, our bodies and souls soak up the warmth of these early summer days. We thank You for this time of the year. We enjoy the lushness of nature. Thank You that things at work are slowing down some. Thank You for less traffic during the day and for a good book and children’s laughter as the sun sets. Thank you for families getting ready to take time off to travel. We enjoy and embrace these young summer days as a gift of Your abundant Grace. Amen

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. Song of Songs 2:12

I never feel lonely if I’ve got a book – they’re like old friends. Even if you’re not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And they’re part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life. Emilia Fox

Meditation: My mother lives her life surrounded by books. When she was a child after the Second World War, a book would often be her only place of comfort and refuge when she was faced with chaos or uncertainty. When she married young in the early sixties and became a pastor’s wife, she was not allowed to get a formal education and have her own profession. However, her love of books never ceased. As a child growing up in the parsonage, there were bookshelves all over the house filled with hundreds and hundreds of books. And the moment my father retired, my mother became a librarian. Her knowledge and love of books is contagious. She offers her passion for reading to others by managing the church library, which she has  done now for decades. I am deeply proud of my mother who is one of the most well-read persons I know. She never stopped reading and educating herself while offering her wisdom and love of literature to many others, especially women who would otherwise not touch a book.

Prayer: Gracious God, thank you for my mother’s love of books. Thank you for growing up in a home where books were present and all around. Thank you for my mother’s passion for reading and teaching. Thank you for her ability to befriend books and find a home in them. Thank you for her passion to create and build her own life around literature. Thank you for the friendships we have with books and with their authors who are like old friends to us. Amen

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. Proverbs 14:1

The entire political system is contrary to everything a feminine heart stands for. It lacks inclusion. It lacks tenderness toward children. It lacks honor for relationships. It lacks reverence for the earth. It lacks love. And without those things, the feminine psyche disconnects. Marianne Williamson

Meditation: Tenderness, inclusion, honor, reverence and love… these are the values that are currently being sacrificed. They are being killed and then buried under the political altar of the current secular religion that has taken over our land: The “Zeit Geist” religion that worships money and power, that increases wealth at any cost for those on the top and that creates intentional divisions based on the self-serving portrayal of a distorted reality. Many of us feel distressed. Many of us feel disconnected. Many of us are dispirited. And yet, there is a compassionate God who sees, hears and witnesses what is happening. A God whose essence is visible in Jesus who embodied those qualities of tenderness, inclusion, respect and love. Back then those in power killed and buried him, thinking that this way they had gotten rid of him. And yet, they could not silence him nor contain the power of his Spirit. After his death he gained even more power than he had during his life among us. And so once again, as we endure the killings and burials of our current times, we call upon and wait for God’s powerful Spirit of resurrection.

Prayer: Jesus, we call on Your Spirit to comfort all of us who feel disconnected, distressed and dispirited. Every day we experience many of our values in faith and in life being killed and buried. Sometimes we come close to losing heart. Compassionate One, we feel lost. Gather us, keep us connected with each other and with You. In the midst of our losses, we are grateful that we know You and the power of Your life, death and resurrection. Amen

Seeing the people, Jesus felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36

 

I’m not an aging gracefully type. But I do believe in aging with grace. Danielle Steel

Meditation: Our American society is obsessed with “aging gracefully”. Millions of dollars are being spent on looking younger. Sometimes all an aging person does is being obsessed about what others might think of his or her appearance. Surgeries are being chosen to pretend that aging is not happening. At the same time harsh self-judgment and fear of gossip are wounding realities for many, especially women. The thought of “aging with grace” can free us from this societal “dis-ease”. As we lean into God’s grace, we accept our wrinkles and our aging bodies and learn to love them. We allow ourselves to slow down. We do not try to prove anything to anybody. We are free from societal pressure. Grace is the most counter cultural blessing of all!

Prayer: God of ages, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for the freedom to age without shame and without the pressure of having to stay young at all cost. Free us from the struggle to pretend that we are not aging. Help us to be kind to our aging bodies. Teach us to listen to our bodies’ needs and to You, instead of listening to those who judge us or who gossip. You help us make peace with the later years of our life. And we are grateful. Amen

And I will still be carrying you when you are old. Your hair will turn gray, and I will still carry you. I made you, and I will carry you to safety. Isaiah 46:4