Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept. Anna Taylor

Meditation: When we grow up in families or environments that do not teach us how to set boundaries, we do not learn the important value of self-respect. Many enmeshed family systems do not allow individuals to have boundaries, to say “no”, to be different or to seek distance at times. All of those abilities are part of individuating from the family of origin and of becoming one’s own person. Self-respect begins with the permission to set boundaries, to make choices even if the rest of the group does not like the choice. “I will not let you treat me this way” is a sentence some of us learned to say late in life. But it is never too late to practice setting boundaries and deciding that certain people or behaviors are unacceptable or toxic. We are the temple of God. We decide what is healthy, holy and good for us. God’s Spirit gives us permission to say “No”.

Prayer: God, You empower us to become our own person. You free us from oppression and group pressure. You help us refuse being exploited, manipulated or used by others as You strengthen our sense of value and worth. Because You and Your Spirit live in us, we can ask for respect. We can even demand respect. We walk away from those who disrespect us or who want to destroy or abuse us. And we are grateful. Amen

Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. 1. Corinthians 3:16-17

Prayer does not change God, but it changes me who prays. Soren Kierkegaard

Meditation: God is always the One who moves towards life, always the One who wants healing, and always the One moving towards justice and reconciliation. Often we forget that. We feel like we have to pray hard as to convince God or to change God’s mind. We are using prayer as a means to “make God” gracious towards us or to hear our needs. God is often being portrait as an authoritarian parent or an angry dictator who we need to “please” or “sooth” by our words. However, when we pray, all of that anxious convincing and influencing of God is not needed. Instead, prayer is meant to remind us of who God is. Prayer means entering the realm of God that changes us. As a plant turns and grows towards the light, so prayer turns us towards God and in the direction of life. We are being exposed to God’s very nature. We are being embraced by light. We are filled with new life. Prayer renews in us healing thoughts and new hope for justice and peace.

Prayer: God, You get tired of our prayers filled with anxious pleading. Thank you that we can come to You with or without words and just be in Your presence. Thank you that prayer does not mean having to influence You or work towards a certain outcome, but that prayer means just being honest, vulnerable and open to Your life giving and healing presence. And we are grateful. Amen

When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long. Do not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.  Matthew 6:7-8

Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on. Henri Nouwen

Meditation: To a native German, born in the “land of discipline”, the notion that “discipline means to create a space in which something can happen that you had not planned on” sounds paradox. However, Jesus used paradox thinking many times to liberate people from their fears and preconceived notions of how things are or should be. Usually for most Westerners, discipline means planning life efficiently and fully, so that no moment remains “idle”, “lazy” or “unused”. Henry Nouwen claims the paradox opposite: Discipline has freedom and meaning, when we are planning not to plan, when we structure free time – open to curiosity, and when we set aside time for “doing nothing” – as a time of discovering our and God’s very “being”.

Prayer: God, often Your name has been abused to justify rigid and strict living. The Church through centuries projected You into the sky as a strict “Super-parent” watching every step we humans make, assuring that we remain disciplined. Protestant work ethic was born out of this fear based projection. We are grateful that discipline can mean curiosity and freedom instead of rigidity and fear. Amen

 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 2 Corinthians 3:17

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. Meister Eckhart

Meditation: The opposite of gratitude expresses itself in a habit of complaining. Sometimes this happens when people grow up with opposite experiences: either with being neglected or with being spoiled. Both experiences can easily create the illusion that “life or God owes one something.” When we are around people who are complaining all the time, we begin to feel negative and exhausted. This gives us a clue as to how they must feel on the inside. It is then helpful to remember that usually these people got injured either by “too little” or by “too much” in their life. Both -a  lack of provision or an overwhelming supply – can create a wounded attitude of entitlement, which then often leads to complaining behavior.  Gratitude is the opposite. It is the healing experience of trusting that there will be enough and of being in relationship with a providing God who wants to “give us enough” while also “protect us from too much”. When we receive life as a gift and focus most of all on the positive things we receive and experience every day, gratitude grows while complaining will cease.

Prayer: Provider God, heal us from our times of “too little” and free us from our entitled expectations of “too much”. Fill us with Your Spirit of gratitude. Help us to receive all the small and great things in life as gifts from You. Heal us, so we learn to trust in You to provide for us. Thank You for the transforming gift of gratitude. Amen

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I was helped; therefore my heart rejoices, and with my song I will thank Him. Psalm 28:7

How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year! Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Meditation: Sometimes loving partners go through different seasons in their lives at different times. While one might experience spring and summer excitements of new beginnings and fruitful happenings, the other might experience fall and winter as painful losses and the task of letting go, and then the frost and stagnation of winter. Our love will be impacted by this “being out of sync” with each other. It is easier when both partners go through the same seasons together at the same time, as they can easily share similar feelings and experiences and support each other through their parallel experiences. However, living in different seasons at the same time is challenging. It stretches the partners. At times it looks like love is being overwhelmed or overrun by those opposite experiences. And yet, those times might teach us more about love, patience and unconditional acceptance than we ever thought possible.

Prayer: God of love, You created different seasons in nature and in our human experience for a reason. We grow and mature as individuals and as couples as we go through those seasons in life. Help us find ways to be in different seasons and yet love each other. Fill us with Your Spirit so we can hold the opposites in love. And we are grateful! Amen

It was You who set all the boundaries of the earth; You made both summer and winter. Psalm 74:17

We may not be able to stop evil in the world, but how we treat one another is entirely up to us.”  Barack Obama

Meditation: The past months have been very stressful for many people around the country and around the world. We feel helpless as we watch major changes being made that we experience as destructive, dangerous and evil. And so we remember that the macrocosm of the world and the microcosm of our individual lives are interconnected. We regain our power when we focus on the world around us: how we treat people, how we speak about people who are different from us, how we extend love instead of hatred. God has not given us the Spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind (2. Tim 1:7).

Prayer: God of peace, we pray for our world in upheaval. We pray for the truth, for peace and justice to prevail. And we pray that You will fill us with Your Spirit. Let us use the power, love and sound mind You give us wisely. Thank You for wanting to put an end to violence and hatred. And let it begin with me. Amen

Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 1. Peter 3:9

I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard. Maya Angelou

Meditation: When we pray we do not “influence God”, as if we had power over God. We do not “make God do” anything that God would not have done anyhow. Instead of prayer influencing God, prayer influences us. As we pray for somebody else, we create a loving field between God’s love, our love and the person we are praying for. Whatever the need, whatever the sorrow, when we invite God to come and be present, it is us who become aware of God’s presence, as God was already there even before we prayed. God hears our pain, our hopes and fears. He heard us even before we made conscious words, as God knows our unconscious and pre-verbal longing and communicating, just as God hears our verbal attempts to express our needs. However, as we formulate conscious words and speak them before God, we are being changed. As we hear ourselves, and as we feel heard, our hearts open up. Something wonderfully healing happens.

Prayer: God, You are the One who listens when nobody else does. You know our hearts and minds from afar. Before we make words, You know our hearts and our needs. However, as we speak to You, we are being changed as we are being heard by You and as we hear ourselves. And we are grateful. Amen

It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear. Isaiah 65:24

Cancer affects all of us, whether you’re a daughter, mother, sister, friend, coworker, doctor, or patient. –Jennifer Aniston

Meditation: Last week I heard that one of my colleagues and one of my friends have a new cancer diagnosis. One has cancer for the first time, for the other it is the second occurrence. Both times it was shared with me as “information” through third parties. I was initially angry with the “heady” messengers and their ways of telling me. And yet, I think I am just angry at cancer being a reality. I felt myself going into denial and being paralyzed. I wanted to call or write, but did not know yet what to say. When I was a chaplain my role protected me when I was sent to families with a new cancer diagnosis. That was easier. As a friend and colleague, I feel more vulnerable, less protected, more scared.

Prayer: God, I pray for my friend and my colleague, as I have no words to talk to them yet. You know what they are facing. You know what their needs are at this time. I pray that You will surround them with love. I pray that they will experience You in the midst of their fear. I give you my anger and my fear. Free me from my own “stuff”, so I can be present with them and for them. Amen

And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Matthew 10:30-31

When my body joins my heart and mind when I pray, I feel alive and deeply connected with myself and with God. Dorothea Lotze-Kola

Meditation: There was a time in my life when I was completely disconnected from my body. This can happen to anyone who goes through depression, an eating disorder or through traumatic events. On the road of recovery, prayer often happens first in our minds. We find comfort in healing thoughts. And then we begin to also feel something while we pray. Prayer is deepening and begins to encompass our hearts as well. And as recovery continues, prayer begins to even involve our bodies. The healing power of prayer wants to restore the whole of us. And so today I pray when I walk. I pray when I run. I pray when I stretch and do yoga. As I learn how prayer can infuse even my physical being, I feel God with every fiber of me. And I am grateful.

Prayer: Healing God, you want to restore our minds, our hearts and emotions as well as our relationship with our bodies. We thank you when with every fiber of our body we feel alive and restored. When we enjoy being the body you made us to be, instead of treating our body as an object or something to discipline or to neglect. As our recovery comes full circle, Your ongoing loving conversation with us heals all of us, including our relationship with our bodies. And we are grateful. Amen

May the God of peace himself make you holy (“heal you”) in every way. And may your whole being – spirit, soul, and body – remain blameless when our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, appears. 1. Thessalonians 5:23

Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God. Henri Nouwen

Meditation: I remember praying a lot in my early thirties when I made the decision to leave my home country and immigrate to the US for good. I had nearly three years to make this life changing decision. I found courage, as I grew in awareness that no matter where I would make my home, God would be there. When I left Germany, praying became a way of finding my home in God over and over again. In God I could find refuge when my outer life circumstances were challenging, when they changed or when the US did not yet or does not anymore feel like home. Through prayer, my concept of “home” is being deepened and transcended as now my relationship with God and not a particular culture or language has become my place to be at home.

Prayer: God, You are our home. You offer Yourself as a place of refuge and comfort, no matter how our circumstances in life change. And we are grateful! Amen

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. Psalm 46: 1-3