Archbishops' movement inspiring Christians worldwide to pray for friends and family

From Christian Today-

An ecumenical movement launched by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York has inspired a fresh wave of prayer among Christians for their loved ones.

In the four years since it was launched, Thy Kingdom Come has seen huge growth, with Christians in 172 countries now taking part. 

This year reached new milestones with endorsements for the first time from Pope Francis and the Queen. 

Earlier this year, thousands of Christians filled Trafalgar Square for a major prayer event in the heart of London on Pentecost Sunday that was led by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and joined by worship artist Matt Redman. 

There were also contributions from all five presidents of Churches Together in England, as well as the Bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally DBE, and the Methodist Church's Rev Trey Hall.

More here-

https://www.christiantoday.com/article/archbishops-movement-inspiring-christians-worldwide-to-pray-for-friends-and-family/133328.htm

The mindfulness conspiracy

From The Guardian-

Mindfulness has gone mainstream, with celebrity endorsement from Oprah Winfrey and Goldie Hawn. Meditation coaches, monks and neuroscientists went to Davos to impart the finer points to CEOs attending the World Economic Forum. The founders of the mindfulness movement have grown evangelical. Prophesying that its hybrid of science and meditative discipline “has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance”, the inventor of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress. Mindfulness, he proclaims, “may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years”.

So, what exactly is this magic panacea? In 2014, Time magazine put a youthful blonde woman on its cover, blissing out above the words: “The Mindful Revolution.” The accompanying feature described a signature scene from the standardised course teaching MBSR: eating a raisin very slowly. “The ability to focus for a few minutes on a single raisin isn’t silly if the skills it requires are the keys to surviving and succeeding in the 21st century,” the author explained.

More here-

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=fb_us&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR06QA_83pb3AZ8cWLRt2a6Zx4315yPZ-EZDHPp3KUg8vwis5nt6B1UrSvc#Echobox=1560504184

Praying for presidents? That's normal. Praying for Donald Trump? That fires up Twitter

From Get Religion-

Is it controversial to pray for the president of the United States?

Not really. Anyone who knows anything about religious life in America knows that, week after week, people in a wide variety of religious congregations pray for the president (and the nation’s leaders in general) in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes these prayers are short, inserted in a longer litany of concerns (as in the Orthodox Christian parish I attend) and sometimes they are longer and more specific.

Here is a special-use prayer drawn from the world of liturgical mainline Protestantism (The Book of Common Prayer used in the Episcopal Church): 

More here-

https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2019/6/4/praying-for-the-president-thats-normal-praying-for-donald-trump-that-sets-twitter-on-fire

Pope calls on all Catholics to join Anglican prayer campaign

From La Croix-

Pope Francis has urged all Catholics to join a global prayer campaign that begins at the end of this month called "Thy Kingdom Come."

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby met with Pope Francis on April 11 at the Vatican and used his smartphone to record a video message from the head of the Catholic Church.

The pope said all Christians seek to embrace the Holy Spirit.

In the video, he prayed this would "expand out hearts and the heart of the Church, from within, so that we could make decisions in obedience and with farsightedness and peace."

https://international.la-croix.com/news/pope-calls-on-all-catholics-to-join-anglican-prayer-campaign/10200?fbclid=IwAR3EkjZVTPPHdcFtlDg6IH0Mvh8qnQr1uPsHPZQ3DzVKQd0lZq2c0nKMsMc#

Why is our prayer met with God’s silence?

From American Magazine-

The poem “In a Country Church” was penned by the Anglican priest and poet, R. S. Thomas. A man enters an empty church. It is a cold day in the start of winter. He is seeking God. The same act is repeated countless times each day in churches all over the world, ever since there have been churches.

Here is a question to bring to the poem. Does the one who comes to this empty church seeking God find his Lord?

To one kneeling down no word came,
Only the wind’s song, saddening the lips
Of the grave saints, rigid in glass;
Or the dry whisper of unseen wings,
Bats not angels, in the high roof.

More here-

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/03/13/why-our-prayer-met-gods-silence

CCN holds mass prayer for rain

From Namibia-

A large number of people turned up at the University of Namibia’s Hifikepunye Campus on Sunday afternoon to pray for rain and other social challenges affecting the country.

The mass prayer was organised by the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN).

Although an invitation was extended to other churches, only congregants from the Anglican Diocese of Namibia, the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Namibia (ELCIN) turned up.

The prayer was necessitated by the lack of sufficient rainfall since the start of the rainy season, with farmers concerned Namibia could be headed for the worst drought in decades.

Contrary to the norm, many northern communal farmers have entered the third month of the year without even bothering to plough their crop fields.

More here-

https://neweralive.na/posts/ccn-holds-mass-prayer-for-rain

Not-so-hidden labyrinth now open in downtown Dayton

From Ohio-

Downtown Dayton has a brand new twisty path.

Reconciliation Labyrinth is now open at Christ Episcopal Church, 20 W. First St., Tom Schaefer, the project’s director, told this news organization.

The church considers it a public space. 

“It is not hidden in the bowels of the church,” he said. “It is out for there for anyone to use.” 
The church exceeded its $30,000 goal for the project by about $10,000. 

The money will be used for landscaping, printed material, maintenance and other needs. 

More here-

 https://www.mydaytondailynews.com/lifestyles/not-hidden-labyrinth-now-open-downtown-dayton/z5gDmZBqm6TCcS9XUVaqmJ/

Whatever Prayer Is For, It Isn’t That

From Freelance Christianity-

A week ago, the small Episcopal church that I frequently attend moved its morning services out of the sanctuary into a beautiful August morning, heading a half mile down the road to a town park on Narragansett Bay. A small table in the gazebo served as the altar, as twenty-five or so 8:00 service regulars enjoyed a modest version of taking the gospel into the streets (or at least onto the grass).

During the passing of the peace, one of the regulars at the adult education seminar that I lead after morning services once a month told me a story. Betty, who used to be a fifth-grade teacher, knows that I recently signed a contract to write a book on prayer with the working title “Prayer for People Who Don’t Believe in God.” One of her eleven-year-old students once posed the following problem:

What if there were two babies who were both sick with something that might be fatal. A whole bunch of people pray for the first baby to get better, while no one prays for the second baby. Is God more likely to heal the first baby rather than the second baby?

More here-

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/freelancechristianity/whatever-prayer-is-for-it-isnt-for-that/

Round and around we go

From Florida-

An ancient pathway is the newest addition to the Flagler College campus.

Located behind Alumni House (Anderson Cottage) on Seville Street, the labyrinth path has seven easy circuits.

A labyrinth is not a maze. There are no dead ends. You cannot get lost. One path circles into the center and out again. Often a labyrinth is used as a walking meditation — a short course reminder of life’s journey.

“Many of the labyrinths I’ve seen are wide open,” said Jill Craddock of St. Augustine. “Perhaps a soccer game going on next door. Or people walking across the labyrinth. I’ve always felt self-conscious. This one at Alumni House is fully enclosed. I can focus better.”

Alumni House and labyrinth were dedicated in May, but you don’t have to be enrolled or an alumni to walk the labyrinth.

More here-

http://www.staugustine.com/entertainmentlife/20180819/round-and-around-we-go

Modern Christianity’s Mental Health Stigma Must End

From Relevant-

“Are you OK, Rachel? You don’t seem yourself. You’re making quite a lot of mistakes.”

I could hear the disapproval in his voice. I watched my feet as I shuffled them side to side. I couldn’t look him in the eyes.

I wish I never told you about my anxiety.

It was in that moment when I drew the conclusion that I had made a terrible mistake—the mistake of disclosing my mental health struggle to my previous boss.

The only thing more threatening than mental health stigma is someone’s ability to hold your mental health against you. That’s what happened to me with a previous employer. Amidst a myriad other factors, I felt discriminated against for having anxiety in the workplace. And get this—it was a Christian organization!

“Have you prayed about this? You might want to consider getting prayer.”

More here-

https://relevantmagazine.com/life5/modern-christianitys-mental-health-stigma-must-end/

The Danger of Prayer

From Plough-

When we call on God, we are asking him to do something that we cannot, to bring into being something that we ourselves do not know how to create. We are seeking for the impossible to happen, for something to be changed irrevocably that we could never change. We are asking for a history to unfold for which we ourselves could never be responsible.

The question is: Do we have the faith that through our prayer the status quo can be shattered? Can we believe that at our call Christ will come among us to judge and save? When we ask for the Holy Spirit, are we ready for God to strike us like a burst of flaming lightning, so that at last we experience Pentecost? Do we really believe that God’s kingdom is imminent? Are we capable of believing that through our pleading this kingdom will break in? Are we able to believe that as a result of our prayer the entire history of the world will be turned topsy-turvy?

More here-

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/prayer/the-danger-of-prayer

At Current Rates Of Use World Could Run Out Of Thoughts And Prayers By As Early As 2019

From Out Abouter-

A worldwide shortage of thoughts and prayers may leave us with no choice but to actually do something by as early as January 2019, researchers are warning, after a recent study revealed the popular refrain is now fueling 93% of government inaction globally. And we are running out.

Dr. Tim Freely, a leading expert in thinking and praying, and author of the book Act Now Or Forever Wring Your Hands, explains:

“The trouble is that back in the 50’s, when they first started using this phrase as a catch-all for ‘I’m not motivated to actually do something here but feel obligated to open and close my mouth in some fashion or other,’ politicians and community leaders had no idea how much they’d be relying on this platitude by the time the 21st century rolled around. And now we’re just plain running out. Of thoughts. Of prayers. And of patience.” 

More here-

https://outabouter.com/2018/02/15/at-current-rates-of-use-world-could-run-out-of-thoughts-and-prayers-by-as-early-as-2019/

A Catholic picks up the Anglican Book of Common Prayer

From US Catholic-

Ever since I first learned the Hail Mary, I have loved prayer. Perhaps Sister taught us the Glory Be first. It’s shorter, more repetitious; if you know the sign of the cross, you’re halfway there. But it’s the Hail Mary I remember, specifically the pleasure of the word amongst. It was the mystical heart of the prayer for me—at least when I was six. I also loved the hallowed in the Our Father, and that ignominious lurked somewhere among the stations of the cross.

I loved the heightened language of prayer. As I grew older and my prayer matured, I loved the place to which the heightened language brought me, a place where I felt transfigured, fed, guided, and brought closer to God. I’ve stayed, with greater or lesser success, as close as possible to this place throughout my life. I’ve filled a timeless space with my life story. I have a history in prayer.
More here-

http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201602/catholic-picks-anglican-book-common-prayer-30549

Be amazed

Fro  Aeon-

On a chalk down beneath an iron-age hillfort and a grove of beech trees near my home in Hampshire in the south of England, a labyrinth has been cut into the turf. It looks almost like a tinted engraving. The short-cropped grass pillows up around the narrow pathways as if they had been pressed into something soft, and in the right light the milky soil shines through.

On the morning of my wedding, I walked the folded path to its centre. I say ‘walked’, but I was in a bit of a rush so it was more a trot – but I wanted to finish the thing, so I traced the path back out again.  I could never have gotten myself lost. In the Mizmaze there is one entrance and one exit, and one route between them: by one definition this makes it a unicursal ‘labyrinth’ rather than a multicursal ‘maze’, which presents choices between alternative paths.

After performing my private little ritual, I continued on down the hill to the registery office in town, where I got married. Why had I felt the need to go labyrinth-walking? I am not prone to this sort of behaviour. I feel skeptical about confabulated New Age rites. And yet something about the Mizmaze drew me to it that morning. I wanted to understand what that thing was – to discover what, in human history and psychology, mazes and labyrinths are for.

More here-

https://aeon.co/essays/how-walking-a-labyrinth-can-trace-a-route-to-self-knowledge

Why ‘thoughts and prayers’ is starting to sound so profane

From The Washington Post-

It’s become a sort of twisted American ritual: A lone white male shooter opens fire on a crowd of people. Americans cry out for someone to do something and are met with shoulder shrugs, mumblings about “the price of freedom” and assurances that the people elected to protect them are sending their “thoughts and prayers.”

Politicians have managed to make a once benign, if not comforting, phrase sound almost profane.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with praying for those who are suffering. In fact, if you are a religious believer, it’s an imperative. I’m not in the camp that dismisses prayer as superstitious mumbo-jumbo embraced only by the unenlightened. I’m a person who prays and who has been prayed for and knows its power.

But it’s not enough. Nor is it what we hire politicians to do. We elect them to fix problems, enact policies and keep us safe.

Instead, we have elected officials — many of them self-described conservative Christians who also happen to take money from the National Rifle Association — using cries for “thoughts and prayers” as some sort of inoculation against responsibility or action when it comes to gun violence.
More here-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/10/03/why-thoughts-and-prayers-is-starting-to-sound-so-profane/?utm_term=.8c1d46e783c4

Conservative clergy attack Barber for saying prayers for Trump ‘border on heresy’

From North Carolina-

Conservative clergy are returning fire at the Rev. William Barber for his criticism of ministers who prayed over President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last week.

At a Wednesday news conference in Charlotte, five faith-based leaders said that Barber, the liberal president of the North Carolina NACCP, was misguided and un-biblical when he called the White House prayer “theological malpractice bordering on heresy.”

“The scriptures are exceedingly clear that we are to pray specifically for our leaders,” said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, which organized the news conference. He also quoted Jesus’ command to pray for enemies. “It doesn’t matter which side of the political aisle you may be on, whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive, Jesus’ words don’t leave any room for the kind of qualification in our prayers set forth by Dr. Barber.”

Read more here:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/religion/article162559693.html#storylink=cpy

Why Anglicans should pray the rosary

From The Living Church-

Every time I get on an airplane, I pray the rosary. Flying is nerve-racking for me, even after several years of routine air travel. Praying the rosary comforts me and keeps me calm: I feel protected and able to trust that the plane will be a safe place for me, no matter what happens.

I did not grow up praying the rosary. It was not until I became an Episcopalian in my early 20s that I took it up as a serious devotion.

Some people would probably find that surprising. The rosary is not a particularly common devotion for Episcopalians. In fact, the invention of the so-called Anglican rosary in the latter half of the last century was intended to give Episcopalians a way of praying with beads without being associated with anything that seemed too Roman Catholic.

More here-

http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/08/15/why-anglicans-should-pray-the-rosary/

Americans united when it comes to saying grace

From Houston-

One by one, the Weiss family rounded up the nine grandchildren, who had been running circles around the barns. They gathered under a towering maple tree, around a table laden with barbecue meatballs and French silk pie, and grabbed one another's hands.

"We ask your blessing on the meal we're about to eat," said David Weiss, 75, head bowed under his camouflage hat.

"Amen," his family responded - a quintessential display of one of America's most enduring religious traditions.

A poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that saying grace is a widespread practice in the United States. About half of all Americans take a minute to say a prayer over their food at least a few times a week, the poll reveals, making grace an unusual commonality in a politically divided nation.

More here-

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Americans-united-when-it-comes-to-saying-grace-11227826.php

Tens of thousands of Christians around the world join in prayer for 'Thy Kingdom Come'

From Sight-


Tens of thousands of Christians in the UK and around the world have been taking part in a 10 day prayer initiative aimed at encouraging evangelism which comes to an end this Sunday.

The Thy Kingdom Come initiative, which runs between Ascension Day (25th May) and Pentecost Sunday (4th June), has been developed by the Church of England and championed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.

Last year more than 100,000 people joined in the initiative which Archbishop Welby said, speaking prior to the initiative, is not a "Church of England thing" or an "Anglican thing" but a "Christian thing".

"Jesus prayed at the Last Supper that we, those who follow Him, might ‘be one that the world might believe’," he said. "We are invited to make a lasting difference in our nations and in our world, by responding to his call to find a deep unity of purpose in prayer."

In a further statement made on 25th May, Archbishop Welby said prayer not only moves us closer to God but with each other. "It connects us with those whom we otherwise cannot see," he said. "Prayer breaks down division, in prayer we take each other’s hands and find our safe stronghold."

More here-

https://www.sightmagazine.com.au/news/7489-tens-of-thousands-of-christians-around-the-world-join-in-prayer-for-thy-kingdom-come

Also here-

https://www.christiantoday.com/article/thy.kingdom.come.prayers.for.the.world/109601.htm

Justin Welby: How to pray ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ and mean it

From Premier Christianity (Justin Welby)-

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby introduces a new prayer movement

Lately I have found myself constantly talking and thinking about prayer. This is not because I am an expert on it, or even particularly good at it. Nor is it because it’s the kind of thing I am paid to do. It’s because I see ever more evidence of the need for it. These words of Jesus in Luke 11 offer us a good foundation for why we pray: “So I say to you: ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Prayer begins by acknowledging that we don’t have what we need, we aren’t who we want to be and we don’t see what we long to see.

Last year the Archbishop of York and I invited people up and down the country to pray for the ten days between Ascension Day and Pentecost. The prayers had just one focus – a request to God for a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit so that those who don’t know the love of Jesus might turn, hear his call and themselves becomes his followers.

More here-

https://www.premierchristianity.com/Past-Issues/2017/May-2017/Justin-Welby-How-to-pray-Thy-Kingdom-Come-and-mean-it