Reimagining Our Complex #Life Present and Future

The Center to Awaken Kindness is happy to share with you a communion gift from the #Spirit deep within that has been made visible in the release of Bill Ressl’s chapter “A World in Need” in the International Yearbook for Tillich Research: Brokenness and Reconciliation. This international publication is devoted to creatively exploring a reimagining of our complex present and future.

Today, Sunday, #October 4, 2020 is #WorldCommunion Sunday – a time to celebrate the unity and cooperation that is the #soul of Christianity. Coming to the table to receive and celebrate the gifts of God is central in the Christian tradition. Communion is most often ritualized through symbols of bread and wine (or grape juice) in many churches. However, communion can be much more. At the core of the ritual of communion is a deep participation with God and with others past, present, and future. Communion as participation with the Spirit deep within becomes most fully alive through all of our daily actions. This form of communion invites the Spirit deep within to reach out through us and use us as a vehicle to share #kindness and #love with the world. This form of communion invites us to use all of our gifts and talents to create a Holy Communion that extends the symbols of bread and wine deep into our everyday lived reality.
 
While we have shared the gift of the Table this morning with our local congregation, we are now happy to share the link to Bill Ressl’s newest book chapter. The chapter, written for scholars of theology and practitioners in the helping professions, truly offers all of us a constructive framework for addressing how we can move through brokenness and into a new reconciled reality of life. A major key is to bring ‘listening love’ alive in our life and our world. The capacity to listen sensitively to one another and react spontaneously in #love and support of one another. Given the variety of brokenness visible throughout our daily life, and around the world, each of us is invited to begin renewing our part of the world – one step at a time. Together, by awakening small sparks of #kindness and #love, each of us and the wider world can begin to be renewed – not to the old forms that once existed but into a new reality where #justice, #love, and #hope prevail in powerful new ways. Ressl’s essay offers a theological reflection for individual and collective brokenness through a constructive framework encouraging re-newal.

Another recent publication from the Center to #AwakenKindness:

When times become rough – the tough increase their prayer life. We invite you to carve out a bit of time for prayer with our Fill Me Prayer Book. Meditate on the words of the Fill Me Prayer that came to Penny one morning as she was praying. As you meditate on the prayer, contemplate the related scripture verses and walk the labyrinth art designs with your finger. We pray that God fills you anew on your Spiritual journey.