Tag Archives: Boston

The Deeper Silence of Boston

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This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN the Sunday following the bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It draws on Red Sox player David Ortiz’s nationally televised statement “This is our (expletive) city!”; Richard Rohr’s “Finding God in the Depths of Silence” (Sojourners, March, 2013), and the Epistle of James’ insight that the “tongue” (i.e., speech) is “a restless evil” ready to curse others even while it blesses “the God and Father of us all.” “Brothers and sisters,” writes James, “this should not be so!”

The sermon calls for engagement in the inner silence that moves down into the undivided reality that words so easily and quickly divide and destroy. It ends with the Pie Jesu from Gabriel Faure’s Requiem and the invitation “Be still, and know that I am God.”

For people AT HOME in Boston today

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Areas of Greater Boston are in lock-down this morning because of the madness that lit the fires of hate and violence, whatever the reason(s) behind the bombings at the Boston Marathon. In times like this, I often turn to deeper sources for strength, hope, and peace. Veni Creator Spiritus is one of them. The second and third stanzas of the lyrics, attributed to Rabanus Maurus in the 9th Century C.E, become in 2013 a prayer for the people locked in their homes in Boston:

Thy blessed unction from above
is comfort, life, and fire of love.
Enable with perpetual light
the dullness of our blinded sight

Anoint and cheer our soiled face
with the abundance of thy grace.
Keep far our foes, give peace at home:
where thou art guide, no ill can come.

To hear the plainsong, beginning with the ringing of a bell, Click Come, Holy Spirit, Our Souls Inspire.