by Coracle | Oct 19, 2023 | Contemplative Life, Creation
In this “Space for God” devotional, Ann Bodling (Coracle Spiritual Director) helps us to pray with Celtic Christians of centuries gone by. These followers of Jesus lived in a world saturated with God’s presence, which enabled them to extend a prayerful posture...
by Mary Gardner | Apr 14, 2023 | Contemplative Life, Creation
In this “Space for God: Beauty,” Rev. Mary Gardner (Coracle Spiritual Director) guides us into a meditation on the splendor of flowers—their vibrancy, their diversity, and their fragrance all pointing to the gratuitous love of God in creation. We hope you...
by Coracle | Feb 27, 2023 | Contemplative Life, Creation
Carly Smith, a participant in our 2022 Coracle Fellowship cohort, shares a poetic response to her time in the program and what she learns about the truth of God from watching nature around her. Chrysalis WhispersI gaze on you young one. You fill your life with green....
by Jeff Lindeman | Jan 18, 2023 | Contemplative Life, Creation
In this “Space for God: Beauty,” Jeff Lindeman guides us on a tour of creation, helping us to encounter its colorful diversity, complex symmetries, and staggering beauty as a gallery of God’s artwork. By spending time reflecting on the art, Jeff...
by Danny Nasry | Aug 14, 2022 | Contemplative Life, Creation
In this “Space for God” reflection, Danny Nasry (Coracle Community Minister) brings us into contact with the glorious over-abundance of God’s creation. Through water and daisies and even romanesco, Danny helps us slow down and let ourselves be awed...
by Ken Wettig | Jun 3, 2022 | Creation, For the World
What is a more important Kingdom Action priority, gun violence prevention, creation care, or racial justice? What often gets our attention is whatever is trending on the news cycle. I am no exception. Two trips to Canada within the last year highlight this tension....
by Laura Mastroianni | Apr 13, 2022 | Creation
At the end of February, I attended the Coracle Fellowship in Baltimore retreat on the Eucharist. During our time of Silence and Solitude, I felt compelled to go outside for a walk. I really tried to ignore that feeling. I’m not familiar with the area, and I didn’t...
by Danny Nasry | Jul 6, 2021 | Contemplative Life, Creation
I hope your summer thus far has been a gift, and full of the promise of more gifts just around the corner. Perhaps you have a little getaway coming up, or you just returned from a 4th of July celebration. Or maybe you’re enjoying simpler gifts, like the powerful...
by Danny Nasry | Apr 27, 2021 | Creation
“No matter how urban our life, our bodies live by farming; we come from the earth and return to it, and so we live in agriculture as we live in flesh.” – Wendell Berry (The Art of the Commonplace) One of the most important questions a professor asked me in...
by Karla Petty | Apr 21, 2021 | Contemplative Life, Creation
86. From Aurora LeighBy Elizabeth Barrett Browning TRUTH, so far, in my book;—the truth which drawsThrough all things upwards,—that a twofold worldMust go to a perfect cosmos. Natural thingsAnd spiritual,—who separates those twoIn art, in morals, or the social...
by Bill Haley | Oct 22, 2020 | Contemplative Life, Creation
I sojourned to south-central Montana in mid-September. The break came at the end of an unexpectedly intense seven weeks, and before a seven-week stretch that I knew would be intense, and unexpectedly became much more so. I needed this time to rest, to immerse myself...
by Tara Haley | May 27, 2020 | Creation, Justice and Mercy
“The name of our proper connection to the earth is ‘good work,’ for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that...
by Bill Haley | May 21, 2020 | Church Unity, Contemplative Life, Creation
This was originally delivered as a sermon at Washington Community Fellowship in the fall of 2010. In the season of autumn, we are often treated with stunning, breath-taking days of beauty. I cannot help but be reminded of the poem “God’s...
by Coracle | Apr 15, 2020 | Contemplative Life, Creation
by Ann Bodling, Coracle Spiritual Director In this strange, disorienting, sometimes-hopeful sometimes-fearful, sometimes-sad time, I can forget. The gifts are here, as always. The Presence of God is here, as always. To recognize them I need to notice, as always. And...
by Sarah Kohrs | Mar 23, 2020 | Creation, Justice and Mercy
I love puddles. On my way to volunteer with the local food pantry recently, every road into town had a puddle here or there. Plump robins and similar spring-happy birds were ruffling in the water, droplets careening off their feathers into splashes that mimicked the...
by Sarah Kohrs | Oct 14, 2019 | Creation
Graveyard. When you hear that word, what comes to mind? Perhaps neatly mown grass—short blades interrupted by granite headstones carved with names and scrollwork. Perhaps vases of flowers, trinkets, or similar tributes to the dead settled near the stones? Perhaps...
by Drew Masterson | Sep 24, 2019 | Contemplative Life, Creation
Robert Frost once defined poetry as a “way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget.” Poetry emerged as the first form of literary writing in human history way back in the 3rd Millennium BCE, and indeed the vast majority of ancient literature comes down to...
by Coracle | Sep 24, 2019 | Contemplative Life, Creation
A poem by Julie Harrison Eastwood Written during the first Coracle Fellowship retreat in January, on a grassy little island just big enough to sit on, beside the water. Forgiveness is Love, said the winter-swollen creek. Impatience is the brush-tinder for every bad...
by Bill Haley | Sep 20, 2019 | Creation
It was surely a surprise 10 years ago when God invited us to move from the inner-city of DC to rural Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley. It was unexpected, and unexpectedly good, a grace. It was as if the Lord was saying to us, “Thank you for your heart and service...
by Drew Masterson | Jul 25, 2019 | Contemplative Life, Creation
Before you read the quote from C.S. Lewis below, I highly recommend that you watch this performance of J.S. Bach’s Fugue in G Minor, commonly called the Little Fugue. Pay attention to how the opening lines of the piece ripple through different registers of the...
