Breath prayer for today: Inhale with "Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit..."
Exhale with "Have mercy on us who need to breath."
Many of you know that I am one of the 100 or so volunteers with the National Response Team for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. I have been deployed to many, many disaster situations over the past 15 years, both natural and man-made disasters—from fires and tornadoes, hurricanes to mass shootings and industrial accidents. In all of those situations, I always had the opportunity to know that I would eventually leave. Right now I feel like I am deployed to an emergency scenario that has no end. What I do know now is that there are protocols for spiritual care that we follow in such places, the most basic of which is “put your own oxygen mask on first.” We can’t be spiritual leaders without practicing for ourselves those very spiritually life-giving practices that connect us to God and to each other—regular prayer and meditation, worship, bible study, yoga, etc. So…
In order to feed my own spirit, I am reading the offerings of my colleagues around the country. I’m also following the advice of my colleague MAMD--looking to what I, uniquely, can offer in this time. I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of spiritual and theological words that this crisis has unleashed. It’s a tidal wave. I can’t digest it all. The time I spend reading it, limits the time I can think and write on my own. What I can do is recognize the good stuff from the bad. In other words, I’m a better curator than a creator of devotional writing—separating the healthy stuff from the unhealthy stuff for spiritual hygiene. So...
In these blogposts you will see a lot of borrowing and curating.
In the meantime...breathe and pray.
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