Peace Out(doors)/Interconnect — current program
This is the most recent program from our Peace Out(doors) or Interconnect gathering.
Learn more about Peace Out(doors)
Learn more about Interconnect
Welcome — our time to join together
Greeting
First reading
Today’s first reading is by Matthew Fox.
Julian [of Norwich] advises us that when it is hard to see the goodness of things, when one is mired in the darkness and chaos is everywhere, it is all the more important to remember the goodness of things. Derek Walcott, a Caribbean poet who won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, declared in his acceptance speech that “the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.” To fall in love is to acknowledge goodness; goodness is about love, and love is about goodness. The goodness we must acknowledge in a time of pandemic and of human malfeasance is the goodness of nature itself and existence itself. It is deeper than history; far deeper than journalism, it reaches down to being itself. Neither a sentimental nor even a personalistic love is needed in times like ours so much as a love of creation, a metaphysical love — which is to say, a love of being itself.
Recognition of worship space (font, mandala, prayer journal)
Centering
The Word — a time for sacred readings
Recognition of scripture context
Abraham is a Biblical figure who is claimed by people across Muslim, Christian, and Jewish tradition. Despite his faults, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham that led to him being the spiritual ancestor of billions of people. In today’s scripture passage, some of the details of that covenant are revealed as the Lord debates whether to share the plans God put in place involving a pair of cities plagued by injustice.
Scripture reading
Today’s scripture passage is Genesis 18:17–21.
The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” Then the LORD said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.”
Special Reading
Today’s special reading is from Mark Nepo.
The true power of love at first sight is often missed because we insist on limiting its meaning to the sweep of falling into another person upon first meeting. To appreciate the deeper sense of this, we must uncover and reclaim the importance of first sight itself, which has more to do with seeing things essentially, rather than physically, for the first time.
We all walk around within the numbness of our habits and routines so often that we take the marvels of ordinary life for granted. It is first sight that opens the freshness of each moment, unencumbered by any of our habits and routines. First sight is the moment of God-sight, heart-sight, soul-sight. It is the seeing of revelation, the feeling of oneness that briefly overcomes us when nothing remains in the way.
At its deepest and most real level, the notion of love at first sight is spoken of in every spiritual tradition as the reward for being fully awake. Such seeing anew restores our sense of being alive. Paradoxically, first sight is recurring. In the same way that we wake every day, we regularly return to first sight in the rhythm of our wakefulness of spirit. Whenever we can see with that original vision — with nothing between us and the life around us — we can’t help but love what we see. To see so fundamentally opens us to love. To love so fundamentally is to see the world we’re a part of as the vibrant, ongoing creation that it is. So, it really manifests this way: at first sight, we find love; at our first true seeing, the love that is already there touches us.
In this regard, first seeing is an ever-present threshold to the majesty of what is. Certainly and beautifully, this happens with other people when we, upon first truly seeing another, fall sweetly into the miracle of their presence. But this is also possible, on a daily basis, upon first truly seeing ourselves, our world, our sense of God-again and again.
I can work across from the same person for years, and one day, because my own suffering has opened me more fully than I can remember and because the light floods that person’s face, I can for the first time truly see who they are and feel love for them. I can walk by the same willow, season after season, and one day, because of the sheen of after-rain and the lowness of the wind, I can truly see the willow like never before, and feel love for the willow in all of us. I can, in the mirror late at night, after seeing myself hundreds of times, see the willow and the light and the other in my tired face, and know that sameness as the stuff of God.
In truth, it has never been about first meeting, though this can happen, but more about first coming into view. As a breeze all spun out lets the water go clear, we finally stop talking, stop performing, stop pretending, and all tired out, we go clear, and the heart that rests in everything beats before us.
Response — our time to join in prayer and fellowship
Prayers
Fellowship
Sending — our time to focus from our immediate to our greater community
Centering
Unison Sending
Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our siblings throughout the world.
Give them today, through our hands, their daily bread.
Through our understanding, give them love.
Give peace and joy. Amen.
Works Referenced
Brueggemann, Walter. Genesis. (Interpretation: a Bible commentary for teaching and preaching). Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1982, 22–24.
Franklin-Hicks, Dax. “Nature’s Witness.” Daily Ripple. November 15, 2024. https://dailyripple.substack.com/p/natures-witness
