Daily Reading for July 4 • Independence Day

O God, mightily we pray for wisdom, courage, and strength to serve thee and this nation faithfully in the days that lie ahead. Remind us of our duty to promote the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty for all, to see to it that justice and compassion reign from sea to shining sea, and that the bountiful resources of a favored land are not only thankfully received but also gladly shared with the whole human family.

From a prayer by William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (1983), quoted in An American Prayer Book, compiled and edited by Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 3

It is the contemplative saints who most know the fear and pain as well as the joy and freedom of entering emptiness; they have chosen to confront that which has to be thrust upon the rest of us. They have stretched and yielded themselves to experience cleanly and clearly the hunger and brokenness of their own hearts and of our world. They have willingly sought to deprive themselves of anesthesia. They have claimed their desire to bear the beams of love, regardless of the cost.

At the turn of the fifteenth century, Julian of Norwich wrote, “I learned to be afraid of my instability. For I do not know in what way I shall fall. I would have liked to have known that—with due fear, of course. But I got no answer.” She faced her fear and was able to continue: “Both when we fall and when we get up again we are kept in the same precious love. The love in which God made us never had beginning. In it we have our beginning.”

Spaciousness is always a beginning, a possibility, a potential, a capacity for birth. Space exists not in order to be filled but to create. In space, to the extent we can bear the truth of the way things are, we find the ever-beginning presence of love. Take the time, then; make the space. Seek it wherever you can find it, do it however you can. Seek the truth, not what is comfortable. Seek the real, not the easy.

From “Entering the Emptiness” by Gerald May, in Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective, edited and compiled by Michael Schut. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Living the Good News, a division of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for July 2

“Do not worry about anything,” Paul writes to the Philippians, and then continues, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God” (4:6). This compact direction contains some very specific words about developing a life of prayer in the face of debilitating distractions. To begin with, Paul uses two words for prayer, one general and one particular. The general word proseuche refers to the overall process of praying. You do this when you simply place yourself consciously in the presence of God. It may or may not involve words. Thanksgiving, confession, intercession, praise, meditation, and contemplation are all included under the heading of proseuche, and when you pray you may do all, some, or none of these things. . . . In other words, prayer does not necessarily accomplish anything, at least anything of immediate benefit. When you pray, you’re hanging out with God, and that’s a sufficient end in itself.

The second word, deesis, has a narrower focus. The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates it as “supplication,” and that captures something of the flavor. It has to do with bringing particular requests to God’s attention. Paul says that we rid ourselves of anxiety by turning over to God the source of those anxieties, presenting him our supplications. . . . Both Paul and Jesus urge us to bring our deepest concerns to God, to place them in the Father’s care, and to leave both the results and the timing to him.

From Joy in Disguise: Meeting Jesus in the Dark Times by Edward S. Little. Copyright © 2009. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

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Daily Reading for July 1

The path I walk, Christ walks it.
May the land in which I am be without sorrow.
May the Trinity protect me wherever I stay,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The ninefold people of heaven of holy cloud,
the tenth force of the stout earth.
Favorable company, they come with me,
so that the Lord may not be angry with me.

May I arrive at every place, may I return home;
may the way in which I spend be a way without loss.
May every path before me be smooth,
man, woman, and child welcome me.

A truly good journey!
Well does the fair Lord show us a course, a path.

A Celtic journey prayer, quoted in Celtic Spirituality, translated and introduced by Oliver Davies, a volume in The Classics of Western Spirituality series (New York: Paulist Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for June 30

Glory to you, hidden Son of God,
because your healing power is proclaimed
through the hidden suffering of the afflicted woman.
Through this woman whom they could see,
the witnesses were enabled to behold the divinity
that cannot be seen.
Through the Son’s own healing power
his divinity became known.
Through the afflicted woman’s being healed
her faith was made manifest.
She caused him to be proclaimed,
and indeed was honored with him.
For truth was being proclaimed together with its heralds.
If she was a witness to his divinity,
he in turn was a witness to her faith. . . .
He saw through her to her hidden faith,
and gave her a visible healing.

From the Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron by Ephrem the Syrian, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament II, Mark, edited by Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998).

Daily Reading for June 29 • St. Peter and St. Paul, Apostles

Our understandings of vocation as individual and corporate response to and expression of relationship with the living God move beyond a matter of compulsive obedience to superior order or an acquiescence to preordained determinism. As in any creative partnership, communication is central to the relationship, and it is vital to vocation and discernment. Commitment to mutuality in relationship entails commitment to a conversational imperative, a free, open disclosure of self to the other, without which intimacy cannot be sustained.

This conversational imperative is in lively evidence in the stories and lives of Moses and the prophets, of Jesus and Paul. In theirs and countless stories related in the scriptures, in Hebrew midrash and Christian patristic writing, in the witnesses of saints, in sermons and songs ancient and modern we experience this lively, living conversation among partners intimately caught up in and bound to committed relationship. . . .

Jesus was at pains to insist that he neither wanted nor had followers, but friends. “I have called you friends,” he explains to his disciples, “because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (John 15:15). Those who sought to learn from him would not copy his attitudes and behaviors, but would undertake the more difficult business of plumbing their own depths, exploring and embracing their own selves, and shouldering full responsibility for their very being. Or, as he famously expressed it, they would take up their own cross—a cross that was distinct from his.

This learning process, this discipleship, is dynamic and subject to constant variation, consistent with any relationship between and among living beings. . . . The process of daily, constant learning about self and one’s world is a demanding discipleship and the central activity of discernment. Understood this way, we see that any so-called discipleship that obscures or escapes such learning is not worthy of the name; it is just evasion, denial, busyness, and distraction, and ultimately, destructive dishonesty. True discipleship not only dirties the hands, it breaks the heart, opens the mind, and stretches the nerves, as all good learning does. Yet, paradoxically, it is this very dangerous conversation that constitutes the core of discipleship and the intimate heart of relationship with God.

From Transforming Vocation by Sam Portaro, a volume in the series Transformations: The Episcopal Church of the 21st Century, edited by James Lemler. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for June 28 • The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

When Jesus comes to Jairus’s house, he says to the girl, “Get up,” and then he tells the others to feed her. “Get up” is the way it’s translated here, but it could also be “wake up” or “stir yourself.” The same word is used to speak of raising the dead. If we want healing in this world, we have to stir ourselves to get up and demand it, and expect healing as the proper way of things. We have to touch or move people in a way that lets them feel the suffering of others. We have to believe that healing is possible and do something about it. We may even have to wake the dead in our midst—those who can’t or won’t feel the suffering of so many around this world—and heal them enough to get busy themselves.

You and I have a vision of what the world is supposed to look like, a vision that comes out of the depths of our tradition—the reign of God, where all have enough to eat, all illness is healed, all strife is resolved, and people live together in justice and peace. That vision of shalom is our hope, and it undergirds our faith. God’s vision is stronger than death, and, indeed, after the crucifixion Jesus himself is gotten up to continue that healing work. His command to the community around the little girl is the same one we get: Now, get up—you’ve been healed. Come to the table and eat. But it’s not just a call to those of us gathered here today. It’s a call to the whole world: Get up! Expect and demand the kind of healing God envisions for us all! Go and feed the world!

From “City of God,” quoted in The Gospel in the Global Village: On the Road with Bishop Katharine by Katharine Jefferts Schori. Copyright © 2009. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for June 27 • Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, c. 202 (transferred)

If the languages in the world are dissimilar, the power of the tradition is one and the same. The churches founded in Germany believe and hand down no differently, nor do those among the Iberians, among the Celts, in the Orient, in Egypt, or in Libya, or those established in the middle of the world. As the sun, God’s creature, is one and the same in the whole world, so the light, the preaching of truth, shines everywhere and illuminates all men who wish to come to the knowledge of truth. And none of the rulers of the churches, however gifted he may be in eloquence, will say anything different—for no one is above the Master (Matt. 10:24)—nor will one weak in speech damage the tradition. Since the faith is one and the same, he who can say much about it does not add to it nor does he who says little diminish it.

Many barbarian peoples who believe in Christ . . . possess salvation, written without paper or ink by the Spirit in their hearts, and they diligently protect the ancient tradition. . . Those who have believed this faith without letters are “barbarians in relation to our language” (1 Cor. 14:11) but most wise, because of the faith, as to thinking, customs, and way of life, and they please God as they live in complete justice, chastity, and wisdom.

From Against Heresies by Irenaeus, quoted in Irenaeus of Lyons by Robert M. Grant (Routledge, 1997).

Daily Reading for June 26

I took my coffee out to the porch this morning, putting on my glasses first in case a bird should drop by the birdbath. Instead, a butterfly floated onto the butterfly bush. I have deprived myself of butterflies, I thought sadly. All my life they’ve been dancing in the air, and I’ve had my nose stuck in a book. Even now, I’d be reading the New York Times except that it didn’t come.

Beyond the butterfly bush is a holly tree, higher than the house. Roots, I thought. It has its roots in the earth. The earth holds it stable and straight and strong, the earth feeds it, rain comes to its roots through the earth.

Or is the natural life more like the visible part of the tree? Rooted and grounded secretly, it spreads strong branches on the supporting air, answers sun and rain and wind, embraces in its large courtesy the other lives of birds and butterflies, squirrels and chipmunks and little bright-backed bugs.

Either, or neither, or both. The whole tree lives by the life of God.

And I, planted to grow into a perfect nature, deep and tall and spreading, stunt my branches and wither my roots with malnutrition. In the midst of plenty, I’d rather read a book.

From The Quantity of a Hazelnut by Fae Malania. Copyright © 2005 by Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org