So, I’ve got a few other reflections slowly simmering currently but I wanted to share two quick announcements. When my first kids headed to college this year, it was requested / demanded that we send daily photos of Scout to them as they would be in doggo withdrawal. So, I decided to add a little bit to it and start sharing doggo devotions with them. As I’m out with Scout on walks or she’s doing things especially cute or interesting around the house, my wife and I are also thinking of Scripture passages to go with them for our kids and also for others. So, here’s a sampling of the ones thus far. They’re posted on instagram at instagram.com/dailydoggodevotions if you want to bookmark the page or give us a follow.
It honestly goes along with what I have been doing the last 8 or so years of finding where we see Scripture in life around us. It is about the intersections of faith and life - they aren’t separate things. How do we find ourselves in the story of God and the story of God in our lives?
I read something of this this week in one of Richard Rohr’s daily emails. He wrote about Claire of Assisi and the experience of medieval frescoes and art in cathedrals:
Medievals had a great way of doing this type of meditation. When a cathedral or local church was being frescoed, a painter would come to town and the subjects for the paintings that were being commissioned for the church’s walls and ceilings would be decided. But whom would the painter use for his artistic models? Most often, he wandered the local streets, interacted with the villagers, and decided whose faces he might portray. One day you might go to church and find yourself in a fresco listening to Jesus preach. Maybe your face would represent one of the disciples, or one of the women who cared for Jesus. Perhaps one of your children would be listening to Jesus teach. In any case, you would be placed right in the story of the gospel; your face would actually be central to the story.
This is what Clare is asking us to do. Take the gospel for the day, a gospel from mass or the liturgy of the hours, or a gospel passage from a daily devotional and imagine yourself in the midst of the story. Who would you be most comfortable portraying? What are you hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting? Clare asks us to spend a few minutes really entering into the gospel story of Jesus’ public life and imagining what it would be like to be there. . . . (https://cac.org/daily-meditations/an-ordinary-prayer-2022-10-07/)
Announcement #2 coming later today