Listening Hearts: Day 139

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Here is today’s question:

What is one book that was better than the movie version?

Listening Hearts: Day 138

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Here is today’s question:

What is one good thing that happened today or that you hope will happen today?

God is a … chicken?: A children’s sermon

Sometimes I get to share children’s time teachings with my congregation. When I do, I’ll share them here. Today’s children’s teaching invites children to think about metaphors and similes from nature that describe God.

Before or after watching the video, considering helping the children who will watch collect a few items from nature to help them write their own simile to understand God’s nature. You can help them fill in this sentence: God is like a ____________ because they both ____________.

You can watch the entire service here.  

Listening Hearts: Day 137

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Here is today’s question:

Do you like live action or animated films better?

Listening Hearts: Day 136

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Here is today’s question:

What is a happy memory you have of springtime?

Listening Hearts: Day 135

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Today’s question:

Are you a good cook?

Prayers during a Pandemic: For those who mourn

Our family is taking time daily to pray about the current global health crisis. Our prayers will likely reference the Christian tradition, but we’ve written with an ecumenical and agnostic audience in mind.

If you’d like us to pray for you, let us know. If you’d like us to write a prayer for you or for a concern you have and share it here, just ask. You don’t have to share your name if you don’t want to, and we won’t share it or any other identifying details about you here or elsewhere.

Today we pray for people who are mourning the loss of a loved one.

Today we pray for all those who mourn the loss of a loved one. We pray for those whose losses are recent as well as those who have lived long with grief.

We pray for those we do not know as well as those familiar to us, including [Remember now the names of those who are grieving, including ourselves]. We honor the lives and memories of those they loved and miss, and we stand as witnesses the the challenges of complex grief over the loss of people whose actions were often hurtful or harmful.

We think of those who work with grief daily, including counselors and therapists, chaplains and pastors, doctors and nurses, funeral directors and death doulas. We are grateful for their training, labor,and dedication. We pray for them strength, stamina, and love for those they serve.

We pray for those struggling with the complexity of grief, for those who feel they are drowning in it, for those caught off-guard and pushed off-center by its sudden appearances, for those expressing grief as anger, for those feeling orphaned, for those feeling abandoned, for those feeling alone. We pray for them focus, rest, stable footing, insight and peace, comfort and good memories, companionship, and connection.

We mourn with those who mourn, without end; we pray that we can be brave to enter the grief of others when invited.

We are thankful for the vulnerability of those who grieve. We are thankful for lives of love.

A painting of seven people in a sickroom, some seated some standing, grieving over the death of a loved oneAbove, Death in the Sickroom by Edvard Munch (1893) shows seven people in a room, a bed at the center, several cups, including one of a bright red liquid on the nightstand next to it. At right, a man leans his hand against the wall. At right, a woman sits in a chair facing the bed. Several figures have their hands clasped as if in prayer, their heads bowed.

 

Listening Hearts: Day 134

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Here is today’s question:

What is one fruit you don’t like in a fruit salad?

Listening Hearts: Day 133

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Here is today’s question:

What is one way that you have shown your mother that you love her?