Piloting Faith: The job of an artist...

A Word for the Day...

Religion was never intended to be fundamentalist. Like soft clay eager to be molded by a skilled artist, religion best serves all of us when it is practiced with openness, creativity and an eye to beauty. When it becomes a "paint by numbers" experience, it abandons its artistry. It becomes too simple, a faded copy of an original work.

Michelangelo once said, “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

Faithful living should take you on wild and wonderful adventures where love and kindness serve as your guides. When you find yourself taking on postures of judgment, dominance and exclusion, you destroy the art. You become a faded copy of what God dreams for you to be.

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

Teach me a child's way of living in my heart and mind today:
playful
open
curious
unguarded
innocent
quick to giggle
delighted in the moment
easily contented
ready for hope - and hope big - all over again
forgetful of yesterday

I want to change and become little in my spirit. Teach me what that looks like.

Help me to let go of the grown-up stuff I'm so prideful about, like what I think I know, especially about you.

Remake me like a child in all the right ways, that I may walk the path of love.

Amen.

(adapted from The Prayer Wheel by Patton Dodd, Jana Riess, and David Van Biema)