02 March 2008

Girl Scout Cookies Update & Obama in RI, part iii & Learning to Pray

On Thursday the VOR went to the cookie mom's house of our town to pick up the 60 boxes of cookies #1 sold (most were to church people and our family in WV).   We purchased 8 boxes of pure sugary delights: thin mints, lemonades, peanut butter patties, peanut butter sandwiches and carmel delights.  By Saturday two boxes were down, by 6:30 this afternoon: four boxes down - yeah they don't last long around here.  

Myself and a neighbor talked this early this morning, around 6:15, I was going out for a walk, he was going out for coffee.  This neighbor was at the Obama event too, he was unable to get inside. The one troubling absence was the lack of members form the Hispanic community.  RI has a very large and politically active Hispanic community.  I suppose the members of Senator Clinton's campaign reads my blog.  Why?  Today I noticed several Senator Clinton signs about the town. Can't wait till Tuesday.  Senator McCain will win big, of course - although Governor Huckabee has been here two times and folk seem to genuinely like him.  And as before I believe Senator Obama will win 5,500 votes (difference college students and the amorphous South County).

Now onto the big news of today.  I am leading a Lenten study on evangelism using Unbinding the Gospel.  One of the big themes of the book is to encourage folk to deepen their spiritual lives.  Somewhere in the middle of the study it became apparent the folk who were in attendance needed some guidance on prayer.  So I introduced contemplative prayer, didn't call it that.  The people ate it up, I was dumbfounded.  This morning one person who was unable to attend the last session came up and asked me saying: "I realized reading chapter 3 that I do not know how to pray."  I just about fell over.  

I entered seminary with the hope of adding a contemplative component to baptist life.  In high school, after joining the church, I had a hunger to learn the basic of Christianity.  I read the bible all the time but prayer did not make much sense to me.  I asked around but everyone looked at me like I had horns growing out of my head.  I asked my pastor and he ordered Richard Foster's book on Prayer, thus began my journey.  

I have introduced silence into the worship, delivered sermons on lectio divinia, spiritual disciplines and other studies on prayer - but no one would bite.  Then all of a sudden folk are biting like crazy.  

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