Vox Veniae Podcast

Title: Does Fear Keep Us From Heaven?

How might fear keep us from experiencing heaven here and now? David Wallace examines how our commonly held fears impact our spirituality. [Luke 12:32-40]

God’s Love gets on eye level with us and God’s Liberation lifts up the marginalized. Christopher Mack shares how Hosea pictures God as a loving caregiver who we can mirror in our own life through steadfast solidarity and working for the common good. [Hosea 11:1-11]

Reflection

• How might you reflect on who you are called to be in the world and who we as a faith community are called to be?

Praying can be an act of naming that invites us into creative responses of redistributive justice. Gina Bastone-Trevino wrestles with the Lord's Prayer and a familiar parable in ways that stretch  us during times of crisis. [Luke 11:1-10]

Reflection

• What surprising strangeness can you find in re-reading the Lord’s prayer?

Resources

• Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community by Pádraig Ó Tuama: 
  • “Prayer is words and shape and art around desperation, and delight and disappointment and desire. Prayer can be the art that helps you name your desire. And even if the desire is only named, well, naming is a good thing, surely. Naming is what God did, the Jews tell us, and the world unfolded. Or perhaps naming is what the Jews did, and God unfolded. Either way, I’m thankful. Naming things is part of the creative impulse. Naming the deep desires of our heart is a good thing, even if those desires are never satisfied.”

• New Zealand Anglican Lord’s Prayer | He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa  
  • https://newzeal.salvationarmy.org.nz/church-community/women/resource/god-our-father-and-mother-free-printable-%C2%A0new-zealand-anglican-lords-prayer

If we understand Jesus as making the invisible, visible, then how might that reshape our faith and lived experience? Gena St. David invites us into a conversation about how the incarnation impacts our own bodies and upsets patterns of retribution. [Colossians 1:15-20]

Reflection

• What impact does reflecting on the incarnation have on your body?

Title: Plummeting in God's Love

This week’s Old Testament reading talks about setting a plumb line as a measurement against an unjust nation. Nicolas Acosta explores living a life rooted in prayer as a plumb line to anchor us in a chaotic world. [Amos 7:1-7]

Reflection

• How can  I find little moments to sink into God's love live this week?

Resources

• The Prayer of Examen: 

• https://voxveniae.com/the-prayer-of-examen/#.YsyMkOzML6Z

In a world enamored with violent power over others, ensuring security for only some, Christopher Mack shares an alternative empire defying wisdom from those on the margins. [2 Kings 5:1-14]

Reflection

• Where might you glimpse God in the surprises, setbacks, and ordinary moments of your life?

Resources

• Poem: Start Close In by David Whyte
  • https://newstoryhub.com/2018/01/start-close-in-david-whyte/

In a time of upheaval and in a culture of violence, Gena St.David guides us to consider how our spiritual community might become known for its immunity to violence through acts of creative confrontation, surprising defiance, and disruptive humor.  [Luke 9:51-58].

Reflection

1. What have we been taught about Jesus’ nonviolence?

On Juneteenth, Virginia Cumberbatch invites us into practices of acknowledgement, confession, and lament on our collective journey of liberation  [Romans 5:1-5].

Reflection

1. What might the church need to acknowledge before sojourning on its journey of reconciliation and justice?

This Trinity Sunday, Christopher Mack offers questions for reconsidering how the Triune Life of God invites us to strengthen our spirituality and our goodness toward others.  [John 16:12-15].

Reflection

1. As you prepare to approach the Table, where do you need grace to bear the seemingly unbearable?

Resources

1. Book: Why Did Jesus, Moses, The Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-faith World by Brian McLaren

• https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/altarpiece-the-life-of-christ-keith-haring/4gGyrQoV9HnbCw?hl=en

On Pentecost Sunday, Kimberly Culbertson invites us to lean in and listen for Spirit’s divine ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ over our lives.  [Acts 2:1-11].

Practices

• Invite the Holy Spirit into moments of disorientation, and in doing so, receive peace that only God can offer

Reflection

1. In moments of disorientation, can you turn toward the Spirit and receive peace?

Resources

1. Poem: Keep Yourself at the  Beginning of the Beginning by Hannah Emerson

• https://onbeing.org/programs/hannah-emerson-keep-yourself-at-the-beginning-of-the-beginning/
  

• https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-brain-and-the-spirit-gena-st-david/1140496719