Blue Eyed Ennis: Reflections On The Way To Pentecost

Reflections On The Way To Pentecost

We move nearer to Pentecost Sunday which marks the official end of the 50 days of the Easter season.

Christ had promised His apostles that He would sent His Holy Spirit, and, on Pentecost, they were granted the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The disciples began to preach the Gospel in all of the languages that the Jews who were gathered there spoke, and about 3,000 people were converted and baptised that day.

That is why Pentecost is often called "the birthday of the Church."

From the start it is clear that the source of all the disciples strength is the Holy Spirit.

So these are a few resources to help ask for that strength....

Prayer from the Iona Community Worship Book:

You keep us waiting.
You, the God of all time,
want us to wait for the right time in which to discover
who we are, where we must go,
who will be with us, and what we must do.
So thank you…for the waiting time.

You keep us looking.
You, the God of all space,
want us to look in the right and wrong places
for signs of hope,
for people who are hopeless,
for visions of a better world that will appear
among the disappointments of the world we know.
So thank you…for the looking time.

You keep us loving.
You, the God whose name is love,
Want us to be like you—
to love the lovely and the unlovely and the unlovable;
to love without jealousy or design or threat;
and, sometime most difficult of all,
to love ourselves.
So thank you…for the loving time.

And in all this, you keep us.
Through hard questions with no easy answers;
Through failing where we had hoped to succeed
and making impact where we felt we were useless;
through the patience and the dreams and the love of others;
and through Jesus Christ and his Spirit,
you keep us.
So thank you…for the keeping time,
now and forever, Amen.

This is Secret Garden, an Irish Norwegian duo, playing a beautiful, haunting melody, featuring the Irish whistle, Spanish guitar, Uilleann pipes and Violin.

Hymn To Hope : Instrumental

“When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart,

it is like the dawn breaking within you.

Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy;

where before there was fear, now there is courage;

where before in your life there was awkwardness,

now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness;

where before you used to be jagged,

now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self.

When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.”

John O Donohue

Look To The Day: John Rutter

To pray means to stop expecting from God the same small-mindedness which you discover in yourself.

To pray is to walk in the full light of God and to say simply, without holding back, "I am human and you are God."

A human being is not someone who once in a while makes a mistake, and God is not someone who now and then forgives.

No!

Human beings are sinners and God is love.

-- Henri Nouwen

Not the best quality recording but a lovely hymn Many Gifts One Spirit
Music and Lyrics by Allen Pote.

Lyrics

Many gifts, one spirit, many songs, one voice
Many reasons, one promise, many questions, one choice.

O, God, we pray for unity, give guidance from above.
In our differences unite us in the circle of your love.

O, God, remind us we are not alone.
Though we move on different pathways, we are walking to your throne.

Help us learn to love each other, show us ways to understand.
We are members of one familly, growing strong by joining hands.

O, God, remind us we are not alone.
Though we move on different pathways, we are walking to your throne.

Take our many ways of working, blend the colors of each soul
into the beauty of a rainbow.
Give us life, Lord, make us whole.

Holy Spirit by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend

Holy Spirit, living Breath of God,

Breathe new life into my willing soul.

Bring the presence of the risen Lord

To renew my heart and make me whole.

Cause Your Word to come alive in me;

Give me faith for what I cannot see;

Give me passion for Your purity.

Holy Spirit, breathe new life in me.

Holy Spirit, come abide within;

May Your joy be seen in all I do—

Love enough to cover ev'ry sin

In each thought and deed and attitude,

Kindness to the greatest and the least,

Gentleness that sows the path of peace.

Turn my striving into works of grace.

Breath of God, show Christ in all I do.

Holy Spirit, from creation's birth,

Giving life to all that God has made,

Show your power once again on earth;

Cause Your church to hunger for Your ways.

Let the fragrance of our prayers arise.

Lead us on the road of sacrifice

That in unity the face of Christ

Will be clear for all the world to see.

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More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

Reflections On The Way To Pentecost

Look To The Day: John Rutter

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