Sweet Spots
Ideas and messages from Len Sweet.
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Pastor’s Prayer –6/28/15
Lord God, You have appointed me to be a pastor in Your Church.
You see how unfit I am to undertake this great and difficult office,
and were it not for Your help,
I would long since have ruined it all.
Therefore I cry unto You;
I will assuredly apply my mouth and my heart to Your service.
I desire to teach the people,
and I myself would learn ever more and diligently to meditate upon Your Word.
Use me as Your instrument,
only do not forsake me,
for if I am left alone I shall easily bring it all to destruction. Amen.
–Martin Luther
An Interview with Karen Swallow Prior
An interview with Karen Swallow Prior, author of
Fierce Convictions
The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More –
Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist
This week, the Open Table will feature an interview with Karen Swallow Prior about Fierce Convictions, writing, and what is on Karen’s “to do” list for the summer. read more…
The X-factor
Although this is our fourth week talking about technique, I feel that we have barely scratched the surface of the conversations we could have about its importance. We have talked about practice, magic, and exposure. And we have discovered that music is never simply a mechanical or functional process.
Excellent music is possible because of the internalization of technical skill. Practice becomes embodied, so that technique looks easy. Technique is necessary but should not be noticeable.
What we as listeners and observers should notice is beauty. read more…
Father’s Day Video
If you want to end your sermon with a great Father’s Day “story,” try using this Orgami video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZu5l3PCCHs
An Untidy Place
“Mainly what I do is try to portray reality, to show things the way they really are. . . . The way the world really works is that the world is not digital, it’s analog. Which means the world is an untidy place. And I portray it as an untidy…
Spiritual Formation
Some sociologists maintain that nearly 70% of adults in the “Western” world are emotionally immature, religiously primitive, and morally infantile. (See Dom Bernardo Olivera, OSCO, “Maturity and Generation: The Spiritual Formation of our Young People,” Spiritus, 3 [Spring 2003], 42.) You can be cognitively brilliant and intellectually sophisticated but emotionally…
Exceptional
“For Jesus, every person is an exception, says Oscar Wilde. “Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless mechanical systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat everybody alike: as if anybody or anything, for that matter, was like aught else in the world. For him…
E&D
What happened at the tomb that Easter morning was a revelation and exploration, not a seminar. We have made the Christian life more a R&D (Research and Development) seminar than a E&D (Exploration & Discovery) experience and revelation.
Children of God
God’s Spirit is at work in your spirit, taking you by surprise, training you, tracking you, transfiguring you into the image of God. St. Paul to the Romans: “You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship [i.e.,…
By the Sea
By the Sea Story Lectionary: Genesis (The Story of Jacob’s Ladder) Isaiah 9 Psalm 66 Psalm 34 Jesus Begins His Ministry in Galilee of the Gentiles (Capernaum) after John the Baptizer is arrested, and he Calls His First Disciples: Simon (called Peter) and Andrew, James and John (Matthew’s Witness) Jesus…