Thank you to Andrea for “Poem: Gaia at Ely Cathedral.” It is nursing my muses as I prepare a worship service and sermon for the second Sunday in the season of Creation. The installation itself as well as the poem bring the planet into the scale of the story, make it a child to be tended, a wonder to be worshipped, a greater representation of the Divine than all the paint ever laid on stone.
A friend and I traveled from Fort Worth TX to Austin to hear you speak and preach. I was so very surprised to look on the church website from the hotel room in Austin to see the event had been canceled!!!
I would have loved to hear you speak in person but it is understandable to put safety first. Even though we missed you, the weekend was good with much to do in the Austin area!
Thank you for all your content to share with us week after week. Blessings from Texas!
I really am sorry, Caroline. I hope you'll return when we reschedule. I'm glad you had a good time in Austin with your friend - and are so graceful in understanding the decision.
Thank you so much Diana. I will keep an eye on your return visit! Maybe you can visit when it is a little cooler because it was blazing hot this past weekend. Spring is nice with all the bluebonnets and wildflowers especially in the Austin Hill Country area!
You are an inspiration in many ways to this reader and many others! I always appreciate your thoughtful sharing of spiritual truths!
For years I have kept a gratitude journal. Every night I write what happened that day that I am grateful for. It is a practice that helps me be centered on God’s generosity and love
The comments today have been thoughtful, moving, and engaging. Thanks so much to everyone adding your insights and stories to this Sunday Musing. I appreciate The Cottage Community so much!
This parable has become my favorite ever. I gave the Christmas sermon on it last Christmas Day in my LDS congregation. I juxtaposed the grace in that parable with Christmas Day being the “dawn of redeeming grace”. Thanks for bringing out the envy lesson In It for me.
One of the OT lectionary options for today was the end of the book of Jonah, where the prophet flips his lid when God relents from destroying the repenting city of Nineveh. Drawing connections between Jonah and the early-day workers turned out to be surprisingly fruitful.
Pointed out in the sermon I listened to this morning--those standing idle in the marketplace at the end of the day were those no one wanted to hire. Truly the last. "Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’
Thank you for the thoughtful (and thought provoking) reflection. One minor correction...the researchers who looked at envy and environmental decision making are not at the National Institutes of Health. They are in the Department of Psychology at Wuhan University. The National Institutes of Health maintain the database with the description (and full text) of the paper.
Your honesty in your opening graph pulled me in. How often have I scrolled through Facebook and found myself being envious? You move us through the exasperation so many of us feel towards the vineyard owner, so unfair, so capricious. But you don't leave us there. You take us up to the mountain top, where we see at last that the antidote to envy is gratitude.
Great topic, Diana! Yes, envy is countered through gratitude. But doesn't envy basically originate from a spirit of scarcity, disconnection from God? If one is envious, it's because one has chosen to experience inadequacy, lack. It's through that feeling of inadequacy that 'generosity' is mis-understood as an affront, where envy emerges as an attempt to rectify that lack, to fill that separation. Yes, through gratitude, one is 'saved' from envy because gratitude is a choice-decision that yearns for reconnection with the love-source, and thereupon one is able to 'realize' God's abundant generosity for all.
Wow, I enjoyed your expose on envy. For me, envy is a sentiment that hides in so many places in my thinking life. It is on of my five major defects of character. I sometimes feel it is a sentiment that’s hard-wired in my brain. Thank God for plasticity.
We all dwell in the same vineyard. There is no need for hierarchy. We all dwell in the same vineyard. TRUE. But the wealthiest of us dwell more comfortably than others. And the truth of that festers as suffering in the hearts and minds of those who have less. Who can blame or shame them?
There is no need for hierarchy. TRUE. But hierarchies came into being with the first gatherings of human beings into tribes, villages, cities and nations, and hierarchies are very much in existence today. And the truth of that festers in the hearts and minds of those on "the bottom". Who can blame or shame them?
It will require a different world than we currently inhabit for these truth to be upended. Lord haste the day of that reordering.
"God sendeth rain on the just and the unjust."
Ecclesiastes 5 . . .
Thank you to Andrea for “Poem: Gaia at Ely Cathedral.” It is nursing my muses as I prepare a worship service and sermon for the second Sunday in the season of Creation. The installation itself as well as the poem bring the planet into the scale of the story, make it a child to be tended, a wonder to be worshipped, a greater representation of the Divine than all the paint ever laid on stone.
Thank you for your Sunday Musings!
A friend and I traveled from Fort Worth TX to Austin to hear you speak and preach. I was so very surprised to look on the church website from the hotel room in Austin to see the event had been canceled!!!
I would have loved to hear you speak in person but it is understandable to put safety first. Even though we missed you, the weekend was good with much to do in the Austin area!
Thank you for all your content to share with us week after week. Blessings from Texas!
I really am sorry, Caroline. I hope you'll return when we reschedule. I'm glad you had a good time in Austin with your friend - and are so graceful in understanding the decision.
Thank you so much Diana. I will keep an eye on your return visit! Maybe you can visit when it is a little cooler because it was blazing hot this past weekend. Spring is nice with all the bluebonnets and wildflowers especially in the Austin Hill Country area!
You are an inspiration in many ways to this reader and many others! I always appreciate your thoughtful sharing of spiritual truths!
For years I have kept a gratitude journal. Every night I write what happened that day that I am grateful for. It is a practice that helps me be centered on God’s generosity and love
The comments today have been thoughtful, moving, and engaging. Thanks so much to everyone adding your insights and stories to this Sunday Musing. I appreciate The Cottage Community so much!
This parable has become my favorite ever. I gave the Christmas sermon on it last Christmas Day in my LDS congregation. I juxtaposed the grace in that parable with Christmas Day being the “dawn of redeeming grace”. Thanks for bringing out the envy lesson In It for me.
One of the OT lectionary options for today was the end of the book of Jonah, where the prophet flips his lid when God relents from destroying the repenting city of Nineveh. Drawing connections between Jonah and the early-day workers turned out to be surprisingly fruitful.
Pointed out in the sermon I listened to this morning--those standing idle in the marketplace at the end of the day were those no one wanted to hire. Truly the last. "Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’
What a spotlight!
Preached in this today, with a few more scratches on my manuscript just before delivery, thanks to you my dear friend!! 💜
Always glad to help out a friend!
Thanks you . . .
Thank you for the thoughtful (and thought provoking) reflection. One minor correction...the researchers who looked at envy and environmental decision making are not at the National Institutes of Health. They are in the Department of Psychology at Wuhan University. The National Institutes of Health maintain the database with the description (and full text) of the paper.
Right! Sorry!
Your honesty in your opening graph pulled me in. How often have I scrolled through Facebook and found myself being envious? You move us through the exasperation so many of us feel towards the vineyard owner, so unfair, so capricious. But you don't leave us there. You take us up to the mountain top, where we see at last that the antidote to envy is gratitude.
Great topic, Diana! Yes, envy is countered through gratitude. But doesn't envy basically originate from a spirit of scarcity, disconnection from God? If one is envious, it's because one has chosen to experience inadequacy, lack. It's through that feeling of inadequacy that 'generosity' is mis-understood as an affront, where envy emerges as an attempt to rectify that lack, to fill that separation. Yes, through gratitude, one is 'saved' from envy because gratitude is a choice-decision that yearns for reconnection with the love-source, and thereupon one is able to 'realize' God's abundant generosity for all.
Wow, I enjoyed your expose on envy. For me, envy is a sentiment that hides in so many places in my thinking life. It is on of my five major defects of character. I sometimes feel it is a sentiment that’s hard-wired in my brain. Thank God for plasticity.
Carl Sutter
We all dwell in the same vineyard. There is no need for hierarchy. We all dwell in the same vineyard. TRUE. But the wealthiest of us dwell more comfortably than others. And the truth of that festers as suffering in the hearts and minds of those who have less. Who can blame or shame them?
There is no need for hierarchy. TRUE. But hierarchies came into being with the first gatherings of human beings into tribes, villages, cities and nations, and hierarchies are very much in existence today. And the truth of that festers in the hearts and minds of those on "the bottom". Who can blame or shame them?
It will require a different world than we currently inhabit for these truth to be upended. Lord haste the day of that reordering.