Our religious communities at their best are places where we grow our capacities to be with experience in all its complexity and paradox, to listen deeply to one another, to allow ourselves to be seen and held in love, and to respond creatively and collectively.

Let this year be a clean slate for new beginnings.

There is hope through imagination.

In our lives, people sometimes do us wrong.

Let us imagine washing the feet of someone who has wronged us. Their feet, too, are calloused and muddy from the road.

Grief is welcome, a sacred part of the mourning.

May we release ourselves from the need to fit every truth neatly into our own language.

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”...

God, teach us to consider also how others experience the world. To understand how my reality and their reality are different and yet they share qualities of the same core desire. Teach us to listen for shared feelings, for places of connection. Teach us to be curious and open to hearing differences.

Spirit of Life, help us to be present with all that is our life, both our deepest sorrows and our greatest joys, so that we can truly live: engaging fully in our own life and in our community. Spirit of Community, Help us know how linked we are, how each one of our cares touches us all....