Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friends,

My summer reading list includes "The Hopeful Family: Raising Resilient Children in Uncertain Times" by Amelia Richardson Dress. She writes about spiritual practices like forgiveness, Sabbath, generosity, and sacred reading or practices like Visio Divina. These patterns practiced at home are not only traditional offerings for Christian faith formation and growth at home, but they are supported by research and significant scaffolding for children to make meaning in their lives, to claim the Christian story as their own, and to experience the beauty of real forgiveness—and some tips on how to offer it and receive it with grace.

She includes short blessings for each practice. In the chapter on Sabbath she includes "a Blessing for the Weary—when responsibility presses down like the world on Atlas’s shoulders, may you have the courage to pray not just for strength to go on, but for the wisdom to seek rest."

She writes about mindful eating and the gift of meals together. Her blessing for that work is “Teach us to be whole in body, mind, and spirit, so that in our food we find spiritual and physical nourishment. Fill us with gratitude for each bit of Creation we find on our places and for the hands that brought this holy, ordinary gift to us.”

These are all ways we love ourselves, God, and our neighbors as the Collect for last Sunday and this week prays: O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The practice of being a Christian in any given season draws on our minds, bodies, and souls to live faithfully as who we are—people made to pray and to be in relationship with God whose love shapes all that we do and offer in this world. The practice part is because we don’t get it right the first time, but by grace we have opportunities to try again. Thank God for the aim and grace to love one another as best we can.

In Christ, 

—Mtr Taylor