memory on Presence

Have you seen The Good Place ? You should. The afterlife comedy TV show, starring Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, offers a quirky take on heaven and hell which offers plenty of grist for the mill fo...

On a trip to France during college, I (Cyd) was walking through a historic garden in Paris with my older sister. Rounding one of the reflecting pools, we both caught a familiar scent and stopped dead ...

Preaching Commentary The resurrection was inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us today. Granted, their reasons would have been different f...

O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude...”

Barbara Brown Taylor recounts her first experience with caving, the exploration of caves that are not prepared or made easily accessible for inexperienced explorers. Her guides gave her a bit of helpf...

This scripture guide is adapted from the Summer Settings sermon guide Mountains I . Why Start with Mountains? We start with mountains because there are an abundance of Bible passages related ...

Why Start with Mountains? When we join the story, Elijah has been in conflict with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel over the turning of the nation and the people toward Baal.  Meanwhile, a drought has s...

Holy God, we forget you are near. We forget that you are everywhere. We are so wrapped up in our own worlds that we cannot see beyond ourselves. God, you are so much greater! Lift up our heads. Lift u...

Steadfast, ever faithful God, you are always with us. Day in and day out, you provide for us, you show us your grace, you inspire awe within us as we experience your goodness. But almighty God, our me...

"Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was."

Lord, our hearts are not large enough, our memory is not good enough, our wills are not strong enough: Take our hearts and enlarge them, Take our memories and give them quicker recall, Take our wi...

I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect.

Without the binding force of memory, experience would be splintered into as many fragments as there are moments in life. Without the mental time travel provided by memory, we would have no awareness o...

Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.

"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered…What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then-that is the real meeting. The other is only...

Memory is the fabric of our souls. It enables us to integrate and make sense of the experiences of our bodies, minds, and spirits. It makes us who we are and allows us to keep our loved ones close, ev...

Everything we do proceeds from a decision of will, involves our intelligence and perception, leads to emotional reactions or experiences, is approved or disapproved by the conscience, and is registere...

Maybe the most sacred function of memory is just that: to render the distinction between the past, present, and future ultimately meaningless: to enable us at some level of our being to inhabit that s...

One of humanity’s problems is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness can happen at multiple levels, from a simple problem of recall to a posture of hard-heartedness and disobedience toward the command-giver. Wh...

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

Memory is one of the highest powers in our nature. By it day is linked to day, the unity of life through all our years is kept up, and we know that we are still ourselves. In the spiritual life, recol...

The Props assist the House Until the House is built And then the Props withdraw And adequate, erect, The House support itself And cease to recollect The Auger and the Carpenter— Just such a retrospect...

Gracious God, you shower us with so many blessings, yet we struggle to share them with others. You love a cheerful giver, but we sometimes give grudgingly. We forget that all we have is yours, and tha...

Pastor: Oh Lord our God, we have forgotten who you are and what you have done for us. Your great and miraculous works for us are lost in the recesses of our minds, and we could not care less about you...

Sometimes you will never know the value of something, until it becomes a memory.

The resurrection was inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us today. Granted, their reasons would have been different from ours. The Greeks did...

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.

Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”