Points for week of April 16

April 17 Sunday-Ps. 23 is a psalm many have memorized and perhaps more love. What is it about this psalm that speaks to you? What does not speak to you? What could be another way of using the shepherd image? What does dwelling the house of the Lord mean to  you?

Monday-“At the root of humility is the Greek word humus, which means ‘earth’ or ‘earthiness’ – the earth that God made and called good, the earth from which God fashioned us.  Humility is the fundamental recognition that we each draw our life and breath from the same source – the God who made us and calls us beloved.” --- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

Tuesday-Our heads and hearts are full of crazy, often self-defeating, competing voices. We each have parts of ourselves we try to push away.These voices often fight within us for primacy.  Especially loud can be the inner Judge, who thinks she knows everything. There is a deeper and wiser voice, which is the Self, or sometimes called the Inner Witness. It is the calm and compassionate part that can sit in the center of all this chaos and behold it all. This is the voice of the soul. (Paintner, again)

Wednesday-What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action. (Meister Eckhart)

Thursday-"God refuses to be known intellectually. God can only be loved and known in the act of love; God can only be experienced in communion." —Richard Rohr in his meditation.

Friday-I came across a Dorothy Bass paraphrase of something written by Martin Luther, and it is worth pondering. "A whole life is made not of godliness but of becoming godly. A whole life is known not by health, but by getting well; not by being but becoming; not by rest but by exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on our way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. We have not reached the goal, but we are on the right road. At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle. But everything is being made new."

Saturday- A rabbi recently told a group of Christians that if you want to understand Judaism you must understand one word: "question." He said this is because Judaism is built on the premise of questioning everything. The minute one