Why Saint Laika's?

My name is Lois Keen. I'm a priest in The Episcopal Church in Connecticut. I'm a retreat leader, a liturgist, a contemplative, and a parish priest. I post to Fresh Springs Retreats Facebook page on rotation with others. When I post, I mostly share posts from other sites which come through my Facebook newsfeed. One of those sites is St Laika's - an online, virtual, and very real, worshiping community, developed by the Reverend Jonathan Hagger in Great Britain, with content provided by Jonathan and others, including me.

I've been asked by my colleagues at Fresh Springs to write a little about why St Laika's has meaning for me. I've been with St Laika's since it was founded, by Jonathan Hagger and a community that followed his blog, back in the days before Facebook, when blogs were, for us older folks, the social medium. Jonathan wrote commentaries, posted news from around the world, gave us a forum for discussing the issues in the Church, particularly the Anglican Communion, and fostered community among us. We knew one another as well online as we might have done if we met face to face. Eventually, Jonathan posted a full service of prayer, which developed over time into a blog for virtual worship and prayer, St. Laika's. The blogging community chose together St. Laika, the little dog that was sacrificed needlessly by being shot into space in a Russian sputnik and died alone, a martyr to our scientific curiosity.

With the advent of Facebook, blogging communities began to fade. Which is not to say that blogs are dead. It is to say that my experience is that the community of discourse that blogs fostered has now shifted to Facebook and other social media. So, Jonathan made the shift to Facebook. Facebook, we learned, gave us greater exposure to the world, and the world to us, through sharing the postings of Eucharistic services, daily prayers, daily devotionals of various saints ancient and modern, and the opportunity to ask for prayers for ourselves and others around the world.

I enjoy worship face to face, in a community gathered in a physical place. As a parish priest this happens at least every Sunday, and sometimes more often. At the same time, I enjoy gathering virtually in this community called St. Laika's, where people from many countries can gather together not necessarily at the same time, but in the same place over time, be present for one another, and pray for one another. Though most of us have not met face to face, we are more than Facebook "friends", we are community.

The content of St. Laika's is high. The community of contributors is excellent and has varied interests. We are not a closed community - the most recent posting of a service of Holy Communion for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany has been experienced by over 2,000 people since it went up on Saturday. And most important, in this community there are truly no outcasts. Or, more truly, this is a place for all outcasts, as well as the rest of us.

If the institutional Church has turned you off or turned you out, there is a place for you at St. Laika's. And if you are in love with the Church Institutional, there is a place for you here, too. God is Love; where true Love is, God it there; God is here at St. Laika's. Come and see!

The Adventure: Chapter X - Interpretation

Steven Charleston, Bishop, wrote on Facebook today, Tuesday, December 31, 2013, the Eve of the New Year and of the Holy Name of Jesus: "Dreams are for religion"

Photo credit: Lois Keen

In an interview with Deborah Arca, reprinted with permission in Crux, the magazine of The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut 2013 issue, Nadia Bolz-Weber said that the story of God and the people of God and redemption and Jesus interprets us. We may think we are interpreting the story, but "ultimately we submit to being interpreted by it".

In a lecture given in the summer of 2003 on the island of Iona off the western coast of Scotland, Philip Newell said that we carry the presence of God in our being. He challenged us to look into our hearts and ask what God has written into us.

What has God written into you? Then look at Christ and compare the two - what you believe God has written into you, your life, your thoughts, your desires, your dreams, and what you read about Christ, AND what you have experienced of Christ through and in your life. If there is discord between the two accounts - what you believe God has written into you, and what the stories and your experiences of Jesus say - then go back and look deeper into yourself, "for you have misread your own heart".

He said, and I quote from my journal of that day, "Christ, the truth, is at the heart of our being, not outside of us. We can misread ourselves, but the text is still there - listen for it." In other words, the text of Jesus and the text of ourselves is written on our hearts. Repentance, Newell said, is to wake up - to wake up to who we really are. "That is our journey, to wake more and more."

Then Philip Newell said this. In the early Christianity of the British Isles the Christians understood there to be two scriptures: The little book, which is the written Bible, and the big book, which is Nature and the World. Notice which is the greater.

Photo credit: Lois Keen

Putting these two together, Bolz-Weber and Newell, I am scripture. You are scripture. That tree is scripture. The relationship between me and you and that tree is scripture. All are as authoritative as the written words we call Holy Writ or Scripture writ large. When we interpret the written word, the Little Book, we do so in the context of the Big Book, which includes our own experiences, the scripture God wrote into our hearts at our birth, which is also constantly interpreting our lives, as is the Little Book and the whole of creation.

Bishop Steven wrote that theology comes naturally to us. It does not require special training or rules. When we wonder about the sacred and our lives, and try to fit the pieces together - God and our thoughts about and experiences of God - we are being theologians. "Rules are for games. Dreams are for religion", he writes.

So imagine. Dream with me. What does it look like to have all of Scripture - Little Book and Big Book - interpreting your life? What does repentance look like if we shift our definition and see repentance as waking up to who we truly are, living, breathing scriptures, the presence of God in the world?

What if our journey, our adventure, is this: being scripture ourselves and being interpreted by the words of scripture and being interpreted by all creation, and repenting - that is, continually waking up - to the consonances and the dissonances and to who we really are in God's dream of us, and waking more and more and more?

What has God written into you?

Photo credit: Lois Keen

The Adventure: Chapter IX - Original Thought

“Lyin’ on my back in a cornfield back in Kansas

I think I might’a had my first original thought"

(Chely Wright, “Your Woman Misses her Man”)

Do you find yourself reading something or hearing someone say something or do something and comparing yourself to that person unfavorably?

Photo Credit Newlin Keen

I’ve spent my life comparing myself to other people and coming up short. My shrink said, the other day, “How do you know what you see is the truth?” Good question.

I envy bloggers who write spiritually deep things. I envy people who are doing what I want to do and are making money at it and are published. I envy those who every day can come up with an original thought that inspires others to share it with still others.

Of course, it’s not true that I have never had an original thought. I have original thoughts about scripture all the time. Last week I had an original thought about the dishonest steward or accountant in Luke’s gospel. A man had an accountant, a steward, and some people came to the man and said the accountant was dishonest. So the man demanded an accounting from the steward before he fired him. So the accountant thought, how can I make sure I can still make a living after I’ve been fired? So he called the man’s debtors and made deals with them – you owe this? Pay only that. – ensuring that they would remember him and help him out when he was fired.

My original thought was that Jesus is thinking of himself when he talks about the steward who slashes everyone’s bills before collecting on them. Only Jesus outdoes the steward. He cancels all our debts. Today, I read someone else musing on the same possibility. That doesn’t make my thought unoriginal. It just makes it validated.

I also have this blog, where almost everything I post here is original, and if it isn’t, what I do with it is my original thought. And I realized today that a lot of what I am envying is actually attributed to the greats: mystics like Hildegard of Bingen, scientists like Albert Einstein, presidents like FDR, women activists like Helen Keller.

So, now I know intellectually that comparing myself to other people who seem to me to be more wonderful than I am, more popular, smarter, more inspiring, and more original, is a waste of time and emotion. It won’t stop me from doing it. I’ve been doing it for too long. However, it will bring me up short every time I catch myself belittling myself in comparison to someone else, and make me wonder why. Because I realized today there is an integral link to my envy, for that is what it is, and the things I wish I could or would do, and there is no reason on God’s earth why I shouldn’t do those things I want to be doing. In fact, in a very real sense, I am doing a lot of those things, and on my way to doing others. I’m just not yet adept at recognizing my own accomplishments.

The antidote, then, to the downward spiral into self-denigration is this: What have you already accomplished? List them. Thank yourself for them. Even if they are very small.

Photo credit Lois Keen

I want to be part of a spiritual community of practice that companions others who need someone to walk along with them. Today I envied a community of Episcopalians that are doing that in another state. Then I realized I’m one step, no wait, two, three, more steps already on the way to that kind of community. I start hospice chaplaincy next week in a tiny way, one day a week, and it is a step, an accomplishment. I’m trained to be a consultant for congregations in transition and as opportunities open up I will companion them. I have been asked to be chaplain to a community of intentional prayer practice. I have a full schedule of supplying for worship on Sundays.

Each day, each week, I take some small step. But, because I can't not put myself down for not having the whole plan together yet, I said to my shrink, “But the writing…aarrgggghhh...overwhelming. I don't think it will ever happen” And yet, I write something, no matter how little, every day, not always for the literary value but because I cannot, not write. And as I thought about this, I said to him, "If I do this every day, one day what I really want to share with the world will find its way onto the paper and I'll be off and running."

Next time I compare myself and my habitual reaction is to look down on myself, as I envy the other, I will look over this list and then add to it what I have next done to become a practitioner of intentional companioning.

And as to spiritual practice – I commend this practice of noticing what you have done, and honoring yourself for it, and thanking yourself for it. And if you are a God person, give thanks to God.

Photo credit Newlin Keen

Where prayer is valid

"You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid."

These words are from T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding", from his Four Quartets.

Little Gidding was the home of Nicholas Ferrar.

The links above will tell you something about Nicholas Ferrar and the community he established with his family, about Little Gidding itself today, and about the fourth poem "Little Gidding" in Eliot's Four Quartets. They are here to provide a background for my practice yesterday.

Pope Francis asked for a day of prayer to be observed yesterday, Saturday 7 September 2013, a day of prayer for peace. At Little Gidding one of the spiritual practices was to keep the Night Watch, during which members of the family would read through the entire Psalter during the night hours. I chose, yesterday, to pray through the Psalms yesterday from noon to 5:00 p.m. as my prayer for peace.

I've done this before. In times of great need that supersede my personal wants, I turn to the Psalms. Reading them through takes from four to five hours. In this practice I find myself in what Eliot, in "Little Gidding", calls "the intersection of the timeless moment".

Photo credit Lois Keen

It is Saturday. I have been praying the psalms and suddenly I am moved to lift my eyes from the page and look around me. I gaze upon my garden, and past that to the labyrinth painted on the parking lot of the closed church next door, then to the trees and green of the church property and then beyond it all to the little piece of Norwalk, the neighborhood in which I live.

There I wonder about the gardens of Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq - are there still gardens there? What about the neighborhoods there?

Another time I notice the breeze. It is a cool, sunny, clear day with no humidity. I wonder if there is a breeze somewhere in Syria and is it conferring a benediction on those who notice it, the blessing I am feeling right now.

A black squirrel crosses the path of my vision. A robin perched on a branch over my head whinnies. I wonder about the animals in those countries torn my strife. I have a very light lunch and I eat it very slowly, wondering when the people, in the countries for which I am keeping vigil before God, have last eaten. Was their meal interrupted? Did they have to eat on the run, gulping down hurriedly whatever they could lay their hands on? Or might God grant a brief respite for people to eat together, in companionship, love, community?

Photo credit Lois Keen

All afternoon it was like this. Reading Psalms 42-72 I walk the labyrinth instead of sitting. The words from Psalm 63 stand out starkly: "O God, you are my God, eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water." I stop to clean a water tub next to the garden and fill it with fresh water - an enacted prophecy. I put the hose in and leave it to fill the tub as I read Psalms 64 and 65. As I read verse 9 of Psalm 65, "You visit the earth and water it abundantly; you make it very plenteous; the river of God is full of water" I look up and see the water has just now reached the rim of the tub.

"You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid." The Psalter of the Hebrew Scriptures have been the place of valid prayer for centuries. I have come to steep myself in those prayers and offer them to God, as others before me have done. I have some insights as to how God might be using my offering. And I let go of intentions so that God's Spirit might use these prayers in whatever way is most needed.

"...And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongues with fire beyond the language of the living."
(T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding", Four Quartets, 1944, Faber and Faber Limited, London.)

Grace Episcopal Church, Norwalk, Connecticut
Lois Keen

The Adventure Chapter VIII: We Begin the Specifically Spiritual Bit

A week or so ago the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton posted on Facebook an essay from the August 21, 2013 issue of The Christian Century magazine called "Boxed In" by M. Craig Barnes writing on the Faith Matters page. All but the first two paragraphs are behind a pay wall, I'm afraid, but if you have Facebook, and you type in Elizabeth Kaeton under "search", you can page down and find the article, I'm sure.

I'm way behind in my reading of The Christian Century. I'm a subscriber, and I read the article on Facebook, before I read it again, today, in the paper edition of the magazine itself. It helped me understand a bit more what is going on with me spiritually.

Today as I led the people in praying the opening Collect, or prayer, at Saint John's Episcopal Church in Waterbury, Connecticut, I noticed that I was - there was a time I would have said "entering into the prayer in a new way". Now I know better. I was reading the words and entering something beyond the words, behind the words, through the words. I was somewhere I have not been aware of being, and yet, I can't say that, really. Because I've been aware of something like it the past couple of days.

Photo credit Lois Keen

I've noticed when I read a motto on a Facebook post - for instance, "Let your light shine so brightly that others can see their way out of the dark", or "Sometimes this is all you need" written across a photograph of a path in the woods, or one of Bp. Steven Charleston's wonderful daily meditations - where I would normally think "That's nice. I think I'll share that", I'm now processing the words, seeing myself in them, doing them, seeing the implications of them in a way I wasn't doing just a week ago.

I have written that I'm looking on these months until December 31 as a sabbatical, the one I never got around to taking. Today, reading again the essay in The Christian Century, I found myself thinking, "This is what a sabbatical is about." No exclamation point. Just, "This is what a sabbatical is about."

M. Craig Barnes is president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He begins with the Benedictine way of accepting a new novice. The novice enters a room, asks Christ to receive him and to not disappoint him, then he is asked to take off his street clothes and put on the habit. His street clothes will then forever live in his closet along with his habit. It is a sign of his vow freely given. Every day the novice can choose which habit to wear - to put on the monastic habit or regain his street clothes and return to the world.

Barnes wants us to remember this as we reflect on the vows a clergyperson takes and the life we take on as he writes about burnout.

There are a lot of things that a pastor rubs up against as they live out their profession - the late night calls to the hospital, the annoyances of a problematic wedding, the number of funerals, the administrative stuff. But these are not the things that mark burnout. Burnout is when pastors begin to "think they are stuck in the church" with no way out.

As I read that line, I thought, "Hmm, I never did feel that way. I never felt stuck. I had times when I read the want ads and considered working for Borders, or as a teller in a bank. But I never felt I had no choice except to stay in the priesthood. Not in an enduring way. The occasional moment, but not a pervasive sense of being trapped."

The next paragraph that caught my mind was this: "It isn't that hard for a pastor to leave a congregation and get a job with a nonprofit organization, seminary or church bureaucracy..." Well, yes, I thought of that. "But these extensions of the ministry of word and sacrament change little about the pastor's identity. The real problem is what to do for the pastor who envies the calling of the lawyers, doctors, butchers and candlestick makers."

Aha! And here was where I knew I never wanted to be, or want to be, anything other than what I am: A priest in the Episcopal Church. The punch line came with the closing sentence: "What the church desperately needs is for its leaders to freely choose the habit of pastoral ministry as a means of being drawn closer to God." Light Bulb Moment!

That is exactly what has been slowly happening to me ever since that fateful Friday on the way home from vacation and I found myself saying to myself that I was on my way home to an adventure.

I have never felt close to God. I wanted to be, but only because I thought I was supposed to be. I knew that probably it was because of things experienced in my childhood. I had accepted that I might be this way for the rest of my life, at least on this side of life. And yet, here I am, drawing closer to God. And in drawing closer, I have felt free to explore as many ways of serving God as I might want to. I see that I am free. I have the freedom to choose how I live out my vocation. The street clothes are, as Barnes points out, and never were, "meant to be a judgment," a sign of failure. They are a sign of freedom. And each day I choose the habit rather than the street clothes.

Photo credit W. Newlin Keen, Jr.

I am drawing deeper and deeper into this adventure. In Sunday supply I am finding again the joy I have in celebrating the Eucharist, in preaching, in leading people to God in Christ Jesus. Today I found that I rejoice when I lead worship in Spanish - there's a feel of the words in my mouth that draw me ever closer to God through the people of God. And the options open to me as a priest are becoming endless.

All of which is to say that something is happening to me. It is not all hearts and flowers. There are some briars in there and not every path is smooth. Today the deacon told me that when something wonderful happens it will probably be among the most needy, who can't give me a living. So be it. He also said that just meant I'd also go among those who are least needy to get them to pay for work with the most needy. Ya gotta laugh at that one! I'd need new skills for that, but, then, is that not exactly what I did in my first call, as curate at the Cathedral of Saint John in Wilmington, Delaware when I went to civic clubs and gave speeches and wrote grants to raise money to fund my work as director of the cathedral's children's community center?!

But at the core of it all is the sudden awareness of drawing closer to God. I'm not used to this feeling. I wonder where it will go.

The Adventure Continues: Sermons August 25, 2013

Here is a link to the sermon preached at the National Cathedral yesterday, because you deserve the best.

Below it is the text of my sermon from yesterday, preached in English and Spanish at Saint John's Episcopal Church, Waterbury, Connecticut.

If you want the Spanish version, please let me know.

As you read these sermons, I want you to know that I did not see the Very Rev. Gary Hall's sermon until tonight, Monday, August 26. Any likeness of intent between the two is coincidental absolutely.

The Adventure continues.

Sermon August 25, 2013 by

The Very Rev. Gary Hall, Washington National Cathedral

or copy and paste:

http://www.nationalcathedral.org/worship/sermonTexts/grh20130825.shtml

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Sermon by the Reverend Lois Keen

August 25, 2013

St. John’s Waterbury

Luke 13:10-17

Isaiah 58:9b-14

If you remove the yoke from among you,

the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness

and your gloom be like the noonday.

On Tuesday I saw the movie The Butler. The movie is the story about a man, an African-American man, who becomes a butler in the White House. His name is Cecil Gaines. I expected the movie would be about life in the White House. I expected state dinners and famous guests.

Instead the movie is about the fight for civil rights for African-Americans. The character Cecil Gaines is based on a real butler who worked in the White House during the time of the freedom riders, desegregation, and the Black Panthers, from Eisenhower to Reagan. So we see Cecil in the White House, standing as a servant, silent, invisible, in the Oval Office listening to arguments about his people, black people, alongside scenes of his son at a lunch counter sit-in.

We see his son in jail.

We see his son following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We see his son on a freedom bus when it is fire bombed.

We see his son in jail again.

We see his son in jail a lot.

When Dr. King is murdered, we see the son of the butler cease following Dr. King’s way of non-violence.

We see him join the Black Panthers, a militant organization pledged to get freedom for African-Americans at any cost.

We see him decide to leave when the Panthers begin to talk about killing people.

I grew up during the era of civil rights. I was fourteen when my family moved to Lewes Beach, Delaware where I saw and experienced segregation and racism. My mother was told by our new white neighbors that we white children were not allowed to play with the black children who lived in the ghetto one block from our house. I attended a segregated school. I worked at a soda fountain news stand where I was instructed to not serve any black person who sat at the counter. I was fired from the job after one week.

I was a freshman in college during the freedom rides and the assassination of President John Kennedy. I was at the University of Delaware in Newark Delaware when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and Newark, Delaware erupted in riots.

I was on the side of desegregation, on the side of assuring the right to vote to African Americans, on the side of full civil liberties for all people. I still am.

The movie about the butler, Cecil Gaines, brought back that time so strongly that I was crying uncontrollably because of my memories of the horror of living in a racist society and the cost of making racism illegal. A horror I hadn't even dared to think about at the time. And because when I and others dared to elect an African American man as president of these United States, all the hate that is racism came back again. I asked myself, “Will it ever end? Will I ever live in a nation that is not racist?” And my question now includes the racist underpinning to our attitude toward immigrants.

Racism is bondage. It binds the African-American; it binds the immigrant. And it binds the racist. This coming Wednesday, August 28, this country marks the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. Fifty years ago two hundred fifty thousand people demonstrated peacefully for civil rights and economic equality for African-Americans. The people walked down Constitution Avenue, down Independence Avenue, and then gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for speeches, songs, and prayers. It was exactly 100 years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the African slaves in this country. At 3:00 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous “I have a dream” speech.

Well, 50 years later, things are a little better, but not much better. Racism is still alive and well in these United States. And racism has been extended to immigrants of all kinds.

 Two thousand years ago a crippled woman, bent over double, enters the synagogue. Jesus heals her. It is the Sabbath. The religious authorities scold the woman. “Come any day for healing, but not on the Sabbath!” they cry. You can have freedom any day of the week, but not on the Sabbath!

And Jesus, who came to free all those who are in bondage of any kind, replies, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?"

Christians are expected to follow Jesus. We are expected to do what Jesus did. Jesus came to free everyone from bondage and, therefore, we are to work to free everyone from bondage too. When we do not work to make everyone free, when we do not counter racism in ourselves and in others, we become like the leaders of the synagogue who wanted the crippled woman to remain bent over double one more day. Wait a little, they say. Freedom will come eventually. Be patient.

This is what the ministers in Birmingham, Alabama said to Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Be patient. Someday your people will have equal rights with white people. Someday they will be free. Be patient.

There is no more time for patience. When we work for freedom for everyone – freedom to vote without restriction of sex, color, or culture, freedom to earn a living wage, freedom from being imprisoned because of what a person wears or the color of their skin or the language they speak – then we become like Jesus, who has no patience for waiting just one more day to set free a woman in bondage.

Bishop Michael Curry, in his sermon for today, is preaching that God has a dream. God has a divine purpose for this world. God has a dream for every person who is living today and every person who ever lived. God will not rest until God’s dream comes is realized.

This is what Jesus is all about. This is what Jesus came to show us. This is what Jesus is telling us in today’s story: In God’s dream, there is no one in bondage. And God expects us to work with Jesus to free everyone who is in bondage – to free everyone from poverty, hunger, discrimination, crippling fear, racism.

In Jesus, God shows us how to become more than a collection of our own self-interests. “[Jesus] came to show us how to become the human family of God.” You and I are expected to help God’s dream become true.

For me, this means I must understand the unwarranted privilege I have of being a person with fair skin whose ancestors came from northern Europe. I will not be free until this land is free for everyone. I will not be free until I have done everything I can to assure that every person of whatever color, faith, or land of origin is as free and as privileged as my race is. I long for that day. I know many who long for that day. I know of others who will keep that day from coming as long as they can. But Jesus will not wait forever. Jesus is for freedom. The day will come when those who are in bondage are set free.

God will not rest until God’s dream is realized. And, Bishop Michael Curry says, “…miraculously God will not do it without us.” 

Or, to paraphrase St. Augustine and Bishop Desmond Tutu, according to Bp. Michael,

Alone, God won’t do it.

Alone, we can’t do it.

But together with God, we can.

Pray to become one of the people who will do everything they can to help Jesus to make God’s dream come true, through the power of the Holy Spirit. And God help me to become one of those people, too.

For,   “If you remove the yoke from among you, …

The LORD will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to live in…” 

for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it.   (Isaiah 58)

Adventure: Snag in the Road Continues

ECF Vital Practices shares the latest from Bp. Steven Charleston. Of course, I take this is a sign just for me!

Photo credit Lois Keen

ECF Vital Practices

Why is it we often do the same thing over and over, and then are surprised when the results are the same? Steven Charleston reminds us to "open the windows of grace..."

Steven Charleston

Open the windows of grace. Don't wait, shut up in a closed room, hunched over the same old plans, breathing in the airless atmosphere of failure, praying for rescue, expecting only more of the same. Open the windows of grace. Let a fresh wind flood your room, let it scatter the paper plans on the floor, stir up the dust, wave the curtains like flags of victory, give you a new air to breathe. Open the windows of your soul to receive the grace of God, blessings like breeze, life new like morning air.