070417 “The Journey Toward an Undivided Life” at Tuesday Breakfast with Kerry Holder

This message is about how we can celebrate human qualities and capacities of reflection and action. Contemplative prayer enables people of faith to take action in God effectively. But how do we become still and wait on the Lord? God has provided unique prayerful opportunities, if one merely tries.

The mystery of silence stills the ever fragmenting nature of modern culture and moves us, succinctly and deftly toward an undivided life and world. Peace within, peace without.

Below is an open letter that Reverend Kerry Holder sent to Pastor Ron Smith as an introduction to her message at our Tuesday morning Prayer Breakfast. Regrettably, the last 10 to 15 minutes of Rev. Holder’s presentation, because the batteries to the digital recorder died. In the missing portion, Rev. Holder reviewed some of the traditional forms of contemplative prayer including the Prayer Labyrinth and Lectio Divina. The last story was a beautiful short biography of the founder of the Taize ecumenically monastic community in France and how the 90-year old Brother Roger Schutz funeral was conducted in Romanian, because he was stabbed to death by a Romanian woman during a public worship service. Ironically, the focus on contemplative and meditative prayer left our group with a closing celebration in silence in place of our traditional prayer and/or song.

Ron,
Thanks again for your thoughtful responses. I will look forward to seeing you.
I will be speaking on "The Journey Toward an Undivided Life," in which we will celebrate the human qualities and capacities of reflection and action. Based in the contemplative, action in God becomes most effective. How do we still ourselves to get there? What uniquely prayerful opportunities await the one who even tries? We will explore together the mystery of silence, which stills the ever fragmenting nature of modern culture and moves us, succinctly and deftly toward an undivided life and world. Peace within, peace without.
My vitae: I am Kerry Elizabeth Holder. I am an Irish American, Child of God whose spiritual lineage springs from a tiny inter-racial farming cooperative in South Georgia called Koinonia or Habitat for Humanity or Ground Zero or the Open Door...depending on which Christian Community sprung from the original farm, you may perhaps have landed in. My Grandmother taught me to get in the trenches with Jesus since I was toddling and that is basically what I have done - Sometimes more, sometimes less. I went to Princeton Seminary and served the homeless of Philadelphia while at Princeton as an Episcopal Priest, I served on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana for seven years and have worked in interfaith and inter-racial ministries in Alabama since 1998. I am a native of Appalachia. I have two beautiful human beings with whom I have been entrusted for a time; Lily my daughter is five and a Wood Sprite and Christian is eleven and a Noble Fiddler. I will marry June 2nd of this year.
I met Pastor and Mrs. Smith while leading a band of wandering minstrels called "Constellation," across the red hills and black flats of Alabama in the hope of building bridges. I am grateful for the meeting and the invitation to come to Dexter.
Thank You Pastor,
The Rev. Kerry Holder