Hi everyone,

We had another wonderful prayer last night at Dayspring.  Tonight was Eucharist with Father Bill Clarke.  We celebrated the feast of All Saints/All Souls combined together.  The front of the altar was decorated with the photos of core members who had died over the past years and also this past year.  The community is still grieving over the death of two wonderful members last year...Annie Kingsmill and Rosie Decker. We sang and clapped and danced to the sights and sounds of this magnificient liturgy. How I wish more people could experience the deep richness of our prayer at Dayspring.

At the end of our liturgy, Tom Krysiak from our house asked me to take a picture of him.  I followed him as he knelt before the cross (the picture above).  I was taken by his prayer position.  One might think this was posed but this is a natural position for Tom.  He is a deep man of prayer and loves to pray.  I was also taken with his closeness to the cross.  This is not a position we are comfortable with.  We want to shy away from the cross in our lives.  We associate it only with pain and suffering. It reminds me of the old saying "Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die".  Tom is not afraid of the cross, but rather embraces it each day in his life.  There almost appears to be a secret Tom knows about the cross and maybe his closeness to the cross is to listen and hear what the cross wants to tell him.

When we live pain and suffering in our story, our natural reaction is to move away from the cross and run and hide.  But I believe more and more that if like Tom, we draw closer to the cross in our life, it wants to tell us a secret, a secret of hope.  The cross holds for us the secret to unlocking our pain and sorrow. I believe this is why Jesus embraced the cross, he knew of its secret.

As I live my sabbatical year and face my own pain, I pray for courage to draw closer like Tom to hear the secret the cross wants to share with me in unlocking my own story.

Until next time....

Jeff