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Lent, Leaning toward Easter March 2010
Looking for support for your faith journey, worship resources, devotional material, or contemplative companionship? Tracking Holiness is here to remind you of the Love waiting for you in each moment of your existence.
Published by The Sanctuary Foundation for Prayer, this occasional enewsletter offers links, suppport, prayer, and connection for the scattered followers of Christ.
We hope you will find some help in staying on track with the grace and holiness waiting for you right around the next bend. |
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New Holy Ground Issue
 EVIL -why is it?
what is it?
how to respond to it?
Truth in Advertising -
This essay does not cover all the evil ground. However, the reader will be challenged to claim Christ's power and learn the dirty diaper approach to responding to evil in our midst.
 Holy Ground - Year Subscription $35.00 If you are not a subscriber, $35 will see that a year's worth of 4 issues will be mailed to your door. Purchase with Pay Pal here, or send your check to 1600 SW Campbell Ave, Topeka, KS 66604. If you would like a free sample issue, email us at [email protected] or phone 785-354-7122. |
Grants Awarded to The Sanctuary Foundation
- The Presbytery of Northern Kansas awarded the Sanctuary a grant to develop tools of social networking and web based approaches to supporting our mission in 2009 - 2010.
- The Synod of Mid America awarded us a grant in 2009 to support our ministry of spiritual direction.
- From 2008- 2010 The Pastoral Care Fund, a private fund of The Topeka Community Foundation, has provided funding to us to offer spiritual guidance to persons in our community who are isolated by age, poverty, illness, or disability. Due to the depletion of the Pastoral Care Fund, this is the last year we will receive funding to provide care for those with financial limitations. We are looking for new sources so we may continue to respond to the growing need for spiritual care among the poor and disabled.
- Two designated gifts from generous donars will help fund the completion of our new book project. Executive Director, Loretta F.Ross, will take time off this summer to finish the new book.
We are deeply grateful for this generous support and for all the gifts our readers and benefactors have made to us. Thank you so much! |
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Events
Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center presents
BETWEEN a ROCK and a HARD PLACE
Obstacles, Resistance, and Pitfalls to Spiritual Growth
Loretta F. Ross, M.Div., M.A.
The PRAIRIEFIRE program at the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center invites you to join us for a day of learning and renewal as we explore the obstacles, resistance, and pitfalls to spiritual growth. This seminar is intended for all persons who seek a day of spiritual growth and renewal.
Friday, April 23, 2010
8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Fee: $50 (includes lunch)
Westminster Presbyterian Church
4114 Allison Avenue▪ Des Moines, IA
Register by contacting the Center (515) 274-4006 or [email protected].
Read More ________________________________________________________
 + Midday Prayer +
most Fridays 12:15-1:00
a word, a bit of community, mostly silence
1600 SW Campbell, Topeka, Ks |
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Finding Contemplative Community
One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
Psalm 27: 4
I often hear from persons who feel isolated and not understood in their experience of faith and prayer. Some individuals feel lost in an extraverted culture, and a "doing" oriented church.Others think that since they cannot pray as the books say or their pastor teaches, prayer is just not for them. Though there is ample Biblical support for a focus on prayer and contemplation, many have suffered as they forced themselves into other people's definitions of the "proper" life of faith, discipleship, or pastoral leadership.
The verse above, sometimes referred to as the contemplative vocation, offers a picture of a kind of faithfulness which is in stark contrast to much of the way we live our lives. Yet many sense that something is amiss and distorted in the way we relate to one another and to God.
When I began The Sanctuary over twenty years ago, I wanted to offer a different sort of ministry than what many churches were offering. Not because the churches were bad or failing, but because I sensed there was something more we were missing. For too many people, church was not "holy" in the sense of being sacred, set apart, and safe. The stressed out church workers, the rush, rush, the endless meetings, programs, and producing had somehow captured our attention. We had exchanged our attentiveness to Christ, our beholding and rejoicing in the great beauty of God, for attentiveness to our own performance.
Not without similar struggles, we at The Sanctuary have attempted to set up a "roadside fruit stand," where people may find encouragement, support, guidance, and the grace to simply be and to have that being be enough.
With the tools of the web, social networking, and blogging we need no longer be isolated, but may find strength and guidance in the larger communion of others who share a similar vision.
Please share your concerns, wisdom, and support. We need each other. There is too much praying to do and too much beauty to behold for any one of us to walk this way alone. |
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JUICY FRUITS
something to chew on, savor, and taste the goodness of the Lord
Once divinity
sprouted
underneath a woman's heart.
She who had been so empty
walked in fullness.
Now Earth,
who carried patiently
the son of humanity as he ripened,
contracted
the forces of deliverance,
squeezed him
through the narrow channel of the cross,
disgorged the stone
in a rush of living water,
and thrust him
wet and slippery
into the arms
of the astonished church,
which at the same instant
held
the body of Christ
and became it.
from Quem Quaeritis? (Whom Are You Seeking)
Loretta F Ross
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Looking forward to the conversation and the beauty,
Loretta F. Ross
The Sanctuary Foundation for Prayer | |
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| "The stressed out church workers, the rush,rush, the endless meetings, programs, and producing had somehow captured our attention. We had exchanged our attentiveness to Christ, our beholding and rejoicing in the great beauty of God, for attentiveness to our own performance." | |
| Spiritual Direction
information and appointments 785-354-7122
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