By: Deshna Ubeda
Your faith evolves, your beliefs evolve. You look at all text in a critical way, testing it for resonance. Yet, when you walk into your church, does the choir sing about Christ your Savior? Does your pastor talk about bible verses in such a way that is no longer relevant? In your faith communities do you lack the words you need to describe your beliefs? Does the word Christianity occasionally make you cringe? Does the sound of the church organ bring you back to days when a man in robes yelled hell's fury from a pulpit? Do you kindly ignore the blatant hypocrisy when scripture is read? Do you find that you love the sound of the choir, the feeling of holding hands and humming a tune, but have to roll your eyes at some of the lyrics? You gather with friends, with family to create a community of sacredspirituality, to share a common path- but do you have the words and liturgy to support it or are you using words from an outdated source, from a mistranslated text, from a time that is so far from our experience that it hardly relevant anymore? We have all been there at one point. Maybe you, lucky you, have found a faith community where the language is consistent with the commonly held beliefs- but you may not know how hard your pastor and music director struggle each week to make this possible. We want to help! We vow to continue to create, discover, and make available liturgy, music, and other resources that will provide your faith community- or just you yourself- with a language that is relevant and inspiring. We are excited to offer the following new resources: Holy Breath, Prayers for Worship and Reflection, by Gretta Vosper Another Breath, Prayers for Celebration and Reflection, by Gretta Vosper; and The Wonder of Life, Songs for the Spirit, by Scott Kearns. Gretta and Scott wowed us at the Common Dreams Conference in Melbourne, Australia with their amazing ability to use new and relevant language to describe the path of a progressive Christian spirituality. We are thrilled to be able to share these resources with you. We are also working hard on our Liturgy project- bringing together Liturgy from our contacts all over the world. Share yours today! We will soon make our first edition available to download. And coming up soon in our store: If Darwin Prayed, by Bruce Sanguin... "Overshadow our low estimation of our selves, with Spirit's esteeming presence. Overshadow our fear that you are calling us with Spirit's empowering grace." Check back in our store and in our library for these and other resources for your faith community.
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