by Coracle | Jun 4, 2025 | Coracle News
We are sad to share the news of the passing of Desiree Barker, one of Coracle’s early spiritual directors, on May 30 in Hoover, Alabama. Desiree was a beautiful and compassionate soul who deeply cared for others and accompanied many others on their deeper spiritual...
by Bill Haley | Jun 3, 2025 | Contemplative Life, Creation
I hope that the weather where you live has been as interesting as here in the Washington area–unpredictable, unseasonable, and gorgeous. In recent months, nature has been speaking more deeply to me of God (for example, in the breathing trees). I’m grateful to be...
by Coracle | May 29, 2025 | Contemplative Life
In this “Space for God” devotional, Debra Donnelly-Barton (Coracle Spiritual Director) walks us through the difference between a disciplined prayer life and a disciple’s prayer life. Rather than settle for a rigid form of prayer, she invites us to...
by Coracle | May 28, 2025 | Contemplative Life
Few passages elicit a more emotional response from women than the Luke 10 story of Mary and Martha. As a spiritual director, when I meet with someone new, I often start with a Lectio Divina on that passage. Initially, my purpose in choosing this passage was to explore...
by Scott Buresh | May 27, 2025 | Contemplative Life
“Love” by George Herbert LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack’d anything. ‘A guest,’ I answer’d,...
by Drew Masterson | May 23, 2025 | Contemplative Life
In this “Space for God: Beauty” devotional, Drew Masterson (college minister) guides us through a few musical and poetic reflections on the Lord’s Prayer. We tend to grow overfamiliar with this most beloved prayer, and these artistic responses offer...
by Bill Haley | May 21, 2025 | Contemplative Life, Coracle News
Sometimes called “the most influential pastor you’ve never heard of”, Gordon Cosby was one of my mentors. (Oh, what undeserved, mysterious Grace!) In retrospect, Gordon ranks high on the list of human beings who have not just taught me, but formed me. (How could I...
by Bill Haley | May 21, 2025 | Contemplative Life, Coracle News
Friends, you’re invited to a special Coracle weekend, June 13-14, 2025. 1) A retreat experience on Saturday, June 14: “Spiritual Formation FOR Kingdom Action IN Community” from 9:30 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Our vision for this time is to have a shared experience for...
by Coracle | May 17, 2025 | Contemplative Life
In this “Space for God” devotional, Roy Hange (Mennonite pastor and missionary) guides us through meditative reflections on three “cliffhanger” moments for God’s people through history. Appreciating the consistent character of God and...
by Scott Buresh | May 14, 2025 | Contemplative Life
“The Peace of Wild Things” By Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,...
by Coracle | May 8, 2025 | Contemplative Life
In this “Space for God: Beauty,” Bette Dickinson (artist and author) guides us into the deep wisdom of Jesus’ teaching in John 12:23, where he illustrates the upside-down growth model of his kingdom with the image of a seed falling into the soil. She...
by Ken Wettig | May 6, 2025 | Contemplative Life
The Lord said, “Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it…Noah did everything just as God commanded him.” ~ Genesis 6:14, 22 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with...
by Bill Haley | May 5, 2025 | Church Unity, Coracle News, For the World, Justice and Mercy
Join us for a presentation and discussion about “Race and Faith in America” in Arlington, VA on June 8. In his book Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, Eddie Glaude writes in 2021, “The American idea is indeed in trouble. It...
by Coracle | May 2, 2025 | Contemplative Life
In this “Space for God” devotional, Dr. Barbara L. Peacock (Author and Spiritual Director) guides us into the practice of lament. She offers us time and space to lament whatever is weighing most heavily on our hearts in this season, and then helps us to bring those...
by Jessica Clark | Apr 30, 2025 | Contemplative Life
Most Thursday evenings, throughout winter and spring, I’ve joined a listening prayer cohort at a local-to-me urban retreat center (I reside outside of Seattle, WA), which has provided a restful pause to the week’s activities. Guided by a spiritual director, we reflect...
by Coracle | Apr 25, 2025 | Contemplative Life
In this “Space for God” devotional, Laura Merricks (Spiritual Director) guides us into a time of visio and lectio divina centered around the image of Jesus as our good shepherd. She traces this image through scripture and then invites us to dwell on it...
by Bill Haley | Apr 23, 2025 | Contemplative Life, Liturgical Seasons
Around this time two years ago, a friend gifted me with an insight that was not hers, but rather from a line in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”: “Let him Easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” Easter as a verb! Wow!...
by Amy Boucher Pye | Apr 17, 2025 | Contemplative Life, Liturgical Seasons
In this “Space for God: Lent” devotional, Amy Boucher Pye (Author & Spiritual Director) guides us through the first half of Passion Week. She helps us slow down and attend to Jesus’ intentionality through a turbulent week— from his anointing at Bethany and...
by Scott Buresh | Apr 15, 2025 | Contemplative Life
“Now stay focused on Jesus, who designed and perfected our faith. He endured the cross and ignored the shame of that death because He focused on the joy that was set before Him; and now He is seated beside God on the throne, a place of honor.” (Heb. 12:2)...
by Coracle | Apr 11, 2025 | Contemplative Life, Liturgical Seasons
In this “Space for God: Lent” devotional, Rev. Anne Grizzle (Spiritual Director) guides us through a reflective overview of the events of Holy Week. From the Triumphal Entry to the thief on the Cross, Anne invites us to prepare our hearts to fully immerse ourselves...
