God's love for you during Global Dark Night of the Soul

“Now we have no symbolic life, and we are all badly in need of the symbolic life. Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul—the daily need of the soul, mind you! And because people have no such thing, they can never step out of this mill—this awful grinding, banal life in which they are: ‘nothing but….’ These things go pretty deep, and no wonder people get neurotic. Life is too rational; there is no symbolic existence in which I am fulfilling my role, my role as one of the actors in the divine drama of life.”
—Carl Jung

Dear Friends,

We are called now to both work in the world and to care for our inner prayer life. Saint Teresa of Avila gifts us with symbols we deeply need in this global dark night of the soul. She tells the story of her life through the symbol of a castle, revealing her soul’s journey with God in her breathtaking book, The Interior Castle.

As she shares her experiences and the image of the “interior castle,” she invites us into an imaginal journey with God—toward the center where the human and divine meet in ecstatic, holy union. God, our beloved friend, is always with us, always already present, whether we walk in the dark night of the soul or in the final dwelling place of brilliant light. No striving, climbing, or moralism is needed in this intimate pilgrimage with God. Teresa teaches us simply to open the door through prayer and reflection, for God’s love for us is vaster than we can possibly imagine.

Similarly, our church mantra reminds us:
“God loves you, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

The Journey Within

This inner pilgrimage is like entering a hologram or mandala—nothing like exploring a typical building. The journey to the center, where the light of God shines brightest, leads us inward through many layers of the soul. Like a flower enfolding its center, the soul contains countless rooms, bridges, gardens, and labyrinths—seven dwelling places in all.

Teresa begins her book:
“…I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or a very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms.”

Her reflections lead us into the depths of ourselves, beloved by God:
“…where my God-given life is attempting to grow.”

The outer edges of the castle are dark and filled with frightening creatures, but as the soul enters deeper, the atmosphere changes—darkness gives way to light. At the center is the mystical marriage, the holy union with the Holy One.

God is not “out there” somewhere but present within our own interior souls and also within our collective soul across the cosmos. These teachings are gifts for us in this time of global darkness.

Carl Jung, Teresa of Avila, and John Welch

Father John Welch wrote:
“Teresa is telling us the story of her life of prayer. The journey through the castle is the story of a growing union with God as the soul enters more deeply into prayer. Prayer is the door to the castle and prayer is the activity which allows one to be drawn to God at the center. Teresa’s relationship to God was alive within her, and it grew through times of peace, tension, fulfillment, emptiness, and transition.”

John Welch, author of Spiritual Pilgrims: Carl Jung and Teresa of Avila, passed away a few days ago. We give thanks for his life and for the ways he built bridges between Jung, Teresa, depth psychology, religion, and Christian mysticism. May he rest in eternal peace with God, joining the communion of saints with Teresa and John of the Cross.

Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross

Teresa of Avila, the 16th-century Carmelite nun, mystic, and Doctor of the Church, is celebrated on her feast day, October 15. This fall we will study and celebrate her life and teachings in worship, reading both The Interior Castle and John Welch’s Spiritual Pilgrims.

We will also reflect on her partner in reform, John of the Cross, who authored The Dark Night of the Soul. Together, their teachings help us understand our collective global dark night and call us to deepen our prayer and contemplative life.

Our Interfaith Secret Prayer Garden

Here at the John Cobb Eco Farm and Mary Magdalene Retreat Center, we have created a symbolic Interfaith Secret Prayer Garden with twelve altars on twelve trees. This garden invites pilgrims to pray and contemplate, circling around the farm and centering in our “manger church”—a symbol of home, God, and our common humanity.

Like Teresa’s castle, our manger church is a metaphor for dwelling with God in harmony with creation. Reading Teresa’s writings, poems, and prayers, we find her presence with us still—guiding, encouraging, and offering symbolic gifts of light in this time of global darkness.

Poem

“Soul, you are my room, you are my house, you are my dwelling.
If, through your distracted ways, I ever find your door tightly closed,
do not seek me outside yourself.
To find me, it will be enough simply to call me,
and I will come quickly. Seek me inside yourself.”

Prayer

“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing upset you.
Everything changes. God alone is unchanging.
With patience all things are possible;
whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone is enough.”
—Teresa of Avila

Sending love from my heart to yours,
Rev. Bonnie Tarwater

Opening and Blessing of the New Mary Magdalene Retreat Center

Please join our celebration of Mary Magdalene in Dallas Oregon, Sunday afternoon on July 20th. For those in person, we will begin our blessing with a guided tour of the newly named Mary Magdalene Retreat Center at 2 pm, including the Tiny House, the Dream Incubation Guest House, and the Interfaith Secret Prayer Garden and twelve altars on twelve trees over the five acres.

The new Labyrinth and Wailing Wall offer more sacred portals and places for prayer and contemplation. Please bring your prayers and blessings to this beautiful sanctuary. The Anointing Ritual at 4-5 pm is offered both in person and on Zoom. Dinner will immediately follow at 5 pm, for our weekly potluck party. We will be serving a salad bar with fresh vegetables from our garden and quiche made with our farm fresh eggs.

New interest, scholarship, writing and artwork about Mary Magdalene has revitalized the teachings of Jesus in recent years. The Beloved Companion the Complete Gospel of Mary Magdalene, translated by Jehaanne De Quillan was

published in 2010 and is considered to be a part of the "gnostic" tradition of newly discovered gospels. These "secret" teachings of Jesus are about self-transformation and highlight the inner heart knowing too often left out of the institutional church for the last 2,000 years. This breathtakingly beautiful newly published gospel features Mary Magdalene as teacher as well as the beloved companion and partner of Jesus. God is not seen exclusively male and is most often named Spirit. Jesus calls Mary Magdalene a tower of strength. She is presented as the most spiritually advanced of the disciples and the one Jesus appoints as his successor. ""When all have abandoned me, only she shall stand beside me like a tower, a tower built on a high hill and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden, from this day forth, she shall be known as Migdalah for she shall be as a tower to my flock and the time will soon come when her tower shall stand alone by mine."

Mary Magdalene, the Beloved Companion of Jesus gifts us with a revisionist history and a story of radical spiritual maturity. Jesus and Mary offer us a partnership model that we desperately need at this historic time.

Don't look outside yourself, Jesus says, "....rather The Kingdom of God is within you and it is outside you......when you know yourself you will be known." Jesus repeats many times that our spiritual practice is to tell the truth. "The Kingdom of God is within you, and outside you, as well as spread upon the earth but too many do not see it." We are encouraged to trust our direct experince of the divine, not to be dependent on a priest, teacher or intermediary, but the truth of our heart. Spirit is found in the natural world and, "the Kingdom is spread upon the earth and people do not see it." This is our practice at Church for Our Common Home.

Perhaps the most extraordinary gift of The Beloved Companion, is Jesus' invitation for us imagine our Inner Great Tree of Life, “There is a great tree within you that does not change , summer or winter......…..and he showed me a vision in which I saw a great tree that seemed to reach into the heavens; ……..the roots of this tree are in the earth which is your body………… And I felt my soul and all that I could see dissolve and vanish in a brilliant light, in a likeness unto the sun. And in the light, I beheld a woman of extraordinary beauty, clothed in garments of brilliant white. The figure extended its arms, and I felt my soul drawn into its embrace……” 

You are invited to draw, paint, color sculpt etc. your Inner Great Tree of Life and to share your artwork with us. Our reflections together with this new gospel and guided meditation about our inner tree are a fantastic way to revitalize our religious imaginations and deepen our spiritual practices to connect to Spirit, Mother Earth and the vast cosmos of galaxies. We hope to hang your tree icons and create a "Love Forest" of artwork. May we experince our oneness and sacred interconnected web of life underground, above ground and spread out upon the earth and in the cosmos reaching toward trillions of galaxies. Please take a photo and send, email, snail mail or hand deliver your tree artwork as a kind of blessing for the Mary Magdalene Retreat Center. We will treasure your artwork and share it with others.

Please find an audio meditation about the Inner Great Tree of Life that may aid or inspire you to make a tree artwork on our church website homepage.

Come love and be loved in the natural world at the Mary Magdalene Retreat Center. We offer self-guided or structured retreat stays, counseling services, dream honoring, nature experiences, an art studio in the barn, barn mural painting, gardening in the biodynamic vegetable and flower gardens, berry and apple picking, as well as care and interaction with the goats, chickens, cats, rabbits and ducks. Enjoy bonfires, sing-alongs and spectacular star gazing. You are welcome to join our weekly Dream Group, Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina group, and weekly Sunday worship often with the animals in the barn.

We invite your blessings and prayers for this sacred sanctuary and our common home, Mother Earth. Contact us to make a reservation and with prayer requests, revtarwater@yahoo.com (858) 248-5123.Camping available, WWoof host farm, World Wide Opportunities for Organic Farming

Invitation to Blessing of new Mary Magdalene Retreat Center

Mary Magdalene teaches, “There is a great tree within you…..and he showed me a vision in which I saw a great tree that seemed to reach into the heavens; ……..the roots of this tree are in the earth which is your body………… And I felt my soul and all that I could see dissolve and vanish in a brilliant light, in a likeness unto the sun. And in the light, I beheld a woman of extraordinary beauty, clothed in garments of brilliant white. The figure extended its arms, and I felt my soul drawn into its embrace……” The Beloved Companion the Gospel Mary Magdalene

Dear Friends,

Fear not. You are a part of the Earth and the cosmos and your soul is immortal. A new story and cosmology is experienced as we develop close and caring relationships with the natural world and in dreams, visions and creative artwork. 

Close your eyes and imagine you are a tree – you are The Great Tree of Life; you are a Tree of Wisdom.  Imagine and see - like a mental movie - your inner tree with roots down deep inside the dark earth, with a strong trunk and boughs reaching into joy and the brilliant light in the vast cosmos. You are firmly rooted in the earth and freely moving to the music of the universe. Please join us in our study of, The Beloved Companion the Gospel Mary Magdalene, edited and translated by Jehenne de Quinne. This gospel published in 2010 includes a guided tree meditation and visualization for inner healing and transformation with and for Mother Earth. You are invited to have a conversation with your inner tree, your soul as well as with real trees and their world wood wide web. The oldest and largest tree in the forest Suzanne Simard names the Mother Tree in Finding the Mother Tree; Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. She explains that the Mother Tree is not a female tree. What the Mother Tree does is like what a loving mother does. Her huge caring network of relationships communicates and provides caring and nourishment with other trees and other species in a huge, interconnected web in the forest, even while she is dying. May we be more like the Mother Trees.

Sit or lie down anywhere or perhaps on the earth with your back up against a tree and perhaps begin a conversation. They say trees are shy so we may want to begin a conversation with our back toward the tree. Listen. What do you feel and experince? Trees, like our own souls, bodies, minds and spirits are a part of the sacred whole. It is time to develop inner strength and become like a tree during these difficult historic times.

You are invited to draw, paint or color some kind of tree and share your artwork with us. We hope to hang your tree icons and create a forest of trees connecting us to the world wood wide web of trees and one another.  We will have an outdoor forest of tree images we hope to hang for our Mary Magdalene celebration.  Science has helped to understand the Cosmic Tees of Life and it has always been an ancient universal symbol of the living universe.  Our intention is to meditate and pray with and for the trees as we honor our interfaith, interconnected, and interspecies web of miraculous life.

“I talk to the trees………”  here at Church for Our Common Home is both a literal song lyric we sing and now we add, “I paint you the trees……..”   as another way to interact with the trees and the natural world. The trees are the lungs of the earth and are especially magnificent here in the Pacific Northwest forests. Everyone can draw and or color a tree and all ages are invited to make tree icon art. You are also welcome to come here in person to paint a tree. Feel free to use any medium or explore any creative ideas the meditation may inspire. Please take a photo and send, email etc. or hand deliver your tree artwork as a gift for the John Cobb Eco Farm and newly named Mary Magdalene Retreat Center. We honor the partnership model of love between Jesus and Mary Magdalene and all of us and the natural world and each of us and God called by many names.Please join us to celebrate Mary Magdalene Feast Day, Sunday July 20th.  We will offer a tour of the twelve tree altars in the Secret Interfaith Prayer Garden and Labyrinth at 2 pm as well as the retreat guest rooms, guest house and new Tiny House. Bring your “Inner Tree of Life Icon” to becoming of a forest of trees.

There will be a healing and anointing worship service 4-5 pm and a potluck dinner immediately following in the Resurrection Rose Garden. Please share this invitation with others who may be interested in studying this newly published Gospel of the Beloved Companion, making tree art and learning about our retreat center. We welcome you to come love and be loved by the natural world. Please RSVP and contact us with any questions and to make reservations for a retreat.

 Love and blessings,Dr. Walter Rutherford and Rev. Bonnie Tarwater

Contemplation, Stories and Celebration giving up hopelessness and joylessness for Lent

Dear Friends.

"Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged." said Mark Twain. Today on Ash Wednesday we focus on death. "You are dust and to dust you will return." You may be like me and ask yourself today, if I was sure I was going to die soon, how would I live my life differently?

I am giving up hopelessness and joylessness for Lent, what about you? Our Lent program is called " Contemplation, Stories and Celebration!" Emergency preparedness is the theme of his year's EMO Earth Summit March 16th. I have added a unit to the emergency program curriculum, and it has become our Lenten program. Yes, we need to 2 Be 2 Weeks Ready with food, water, medicine, etc but we also need to be ready to take care of ourselves and one another body, mind and SPIRIT! We need to get our spiritual practices ready. Hard times are ahead. Let us be reminded that our earth crisis, including ecological catastrophe, war, genocide famine, fascism, injustice......is a call to wake up and unite for our survival as a human family. Every crisis is an invitation to grow up, transform and change.

We will be using Elizabeth Johnson's book of meditations for Lenten study, Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth. A reading from this brilliant theologian everyday will help us stay God centered as we focus of our church's vision to love and care for our common home, the natural world.Three spiritual practices we will focus on this Lent as a church. Three categories to pack and prepare for in any possible emergency, Contemplation, Stories and Celebration.Contemplation: We need to regularly practice our silent prayer practices, and we need them IN and WITH the natural world. A labyrinth is a silent walking contemplation and is now a part of our outdoor Interfaith Secret Prayer Garden. We walk and silently commune with God called by many names, and the natural world. Being outside surrounded by trees, sky, earth, feeling the earth, smelling and hearing the breeze and the animals is a holy practice we encourage at Church for Our Common Home. As you walk in silence you may want to repeat silently as you breath in, God of Love have mercy on me. On the outbreath you may silently pray, May your desires come to birth. Amen. Church for Our Common Home also offers a weekly Centering Prayer group, another silent prayer practice both in person and on Zoom for your "emergency preparedness." If you don't have a silent mediation or prayer practice, now is the time to begin one, before an emergency crashes in.

Stories Sharing stories with one another is what we will do when we have no internet or TV. This lent we will "prepare" and share our favorite stories from the bible, our lives, the lives of religious teachers and admirable people from Mary Magdalene to Greta Thunberg, fairy tales, as well as dreams and visions. Story telling is an ancient spiritual practice whose time has come back. "Healers throughout the world recognize the importance of maintaining or retrieving the four universal healing salves: storytelling, singing, dancing, and silence. Shamanic societies believe that when we stop singing, stop dancing, are no longer enchanted by stories, or become uncomfortable with silence, we experience soul loss, which opens the door to discomfort and disease. The gifted Healer restores the soul through use of the healing salves. It has long been recognized that these healing salves reawaken and sustain the divine child within us and return to us the qualities of wonder, hope, and awe." Angeles Arrien, The Four-fold Way: walking, the paths of the warrior, teacher, healer and visionary.

Celebration Labyrinths historically were used in cathedrals for silent contemplation but also as dance floors for festivals. For the Earth Summit after we walk the Labyrinth in silent contemplation we will sing, dance and eat smores as another way of blessings the new Labyrinth. This is an urgently needed spiritual practice today. CELEBRATING! Our weekly worship service in the barn with the animals and Earth Crisis Support Group and Potluck Parties is our regular celebration practice. Joy! "Joy is the proof of God's existence." Meister Eckhart How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice.

We will celebrate both Easter AND Earth Day on Sunday, April 20th. As an untraditional church, we are dedicated to care for the Earth AND God centered as we nurture our religious imaginations about God. We will invite you to make a sacred promise to one another to God and to the Earth for Easter and Earth Day. We will ask you two questions at our first membership ceremony; what do you want to give to Church for Our Common Home? What support do you need from Church for Our Common Home? One way we will support you is in offering spiritual practices of "Contemplation, Stories and Celebration."

We thank the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon for inviting Church for Our Common Home to be a Faith Partner Community. It is an honor to partner with EMO for the Earth Summit and every day of the year. We thank you for your leadership and brilliant work in Oregon, not only in earth justice, but immigrant justice, legislative advocacy, etc We are thrilled to be a local host faith community for EMO and their Earth Summit for the third year.

THANK YOU, KATHY, for generously creating a labyrinth in our interfaith prayer garden. Thank you also to the financial generosity of Dr. Catherine Banbury, Ms. Janet Wiscombe and Mr. Ed Lai and many others who volunteered to make this project possible.

John, we feel your spirit here at your John Cobb Eco Farm. You continue to bless, guide, encourage and love us and give you thanks. As you modeled and taught us Dr. Cobb, "Where there is life there is HOPE." Daffodils are blooming, the grass is brilliant green and our purpose to care for our common home and teach and preach about the God of love. This God of our ultimate concerns is calling us into an open creative future. You are the God of mercy who loves us and is with us, now and always. You are with us in our suffering as well as in our hope and joy. We give you thanks. THERE IS HOPE FOR THE WHOLE CREATION and we give thanks. God is good, all the time. This is the Good News of the Gospel.To Be Two, aka 2 Be 2 Weeks Ready. is an excellent emergency preparedness program we are using every Sunday until the Earth Summit,

Oregon Department of Emergency Management : Be 2 Weeks Ready : Hazards and Preparedness : State of OregonDon't forget to bring yourSilent Contemplative PrayersMusic and Party Spirit and Stories as we prepare for emergencies, body, mind and spirit. Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, EMO. Visit website link of EMO here.

Good News Religious leaders law suit

Dear Friends,

Thank you to the faith communities who filed a lawsuit this week against the US government. You have given us HOPE! We stand with you in solidarity and will support you in any way we are able. Join us this Sunday in worship as we celebrate this lawsuit and its articulation of our Biblical vision of caring for and welcoming immigrants, strangers and "the least of these." The lawsuit begins with these inspired words,

"Plaintiffs in this challenge are 12 national denominational bodies and representatives, 4 regional denominational bodies, and 11 denominational and interdenominational associations, all rooted in the Jewish and Christian faiths. Plaintiffs and their members are Baptist, Brethren, Conservative Jewish, Episcopalian, Evangelical, Mennonite, Quaker, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Reconstructionist Jewish, Reform Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, United Methodist, Zion Methodist, and more. They bring this suit unified on a fundamental belief: Every human being, regardless of birthplace, is a child of God worthy of dignity, care, and love.1 Welcoming the stranger, or immigrant, is thus a central precept of their faith practices. 2. The Torah lays out this tenet 36 times, more than any other teaching: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). In the Gospels, Jesus Christ not only echoes this command, but self-identifies with the stranger: “For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). Plaintiffs’ religious scripture, teaching, and traditions offer clear, repeated, and irrefutable unanimity on their obligation to embrace, serve, and defend the refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in their midst without regard to documentation or legal status. https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2025/02/Mennonite-Church-USA-v.-U.S.-Department-of-Homeland-Security-Complaint.pd

MORE GOOD NEWS! In a recent headline in The Catholic Reporter, Feb.11, 2025, by Christopher White, “Pope decries 'major crisis' of Trump's mass deportation plans, rejects Vance's theology” “ Pope Francis has written a sweeping letter to the U.S. bishops decrying the "major crisis" triggered by President Donald Trump's mass deportation plans and explicitly rejecting Vice President JD Vance's attempts to use Catholic theology to justify the administration's immigration crackdown. 

"The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness," reads the pope's Feb. 11 letter.  

Since taking office on Jan. 20, the Republican president has taken more than 20 executive actions aimed at overhauling the U.S. immigration system, including plans to ratchet up the deportations of undocumented migrants and halt the processing of asylum seekers. 

The pope's letter, published by the Vatican in both English and Spanish, offered his solidarity with U.S. bishops who are engaged in migration advocacy and draws a parallel between Jesus' own experience as a migrant and the current geopolitical situation. 

"Jesus Christ … did not live apart from the difficult experience of being expelled from his own land because of an imminent risk to his life, and from the experience of having to take refuge in a society and a culture foreign to his own," writes Francis…………The pontiff also goes on to clearly reject efforts to characterize the migrants as criminals, a frequent rhetorical device used by Trump administration officials

Packing for Emergency Body Mind and Spirit

Dear Freinds,

You are invited to come add your blessings to our new Labyrinth. Come walk a pilgrimage of silent contemplation, Sunday, March 16 th and help and add your blessings and prayers to this new addition to our Interfaith Secret Prayer Garden. We invite the vision of peace on earth and ask for prayers to develop tender merciful lives of forgiveness and love of enemies. Come hear the inspiring story of how the labyrinth came into being through generosity and honoring of Spirit, synchronicities and friendship. It is a time of overwhelming crisis and emergencies for our human and nonhuman family here on our common home planet earth. Come walk the Snake Labyrinth in contemplative silence with and for God called by many names, the natural world and our human family. This three fold practice is symbolized by the three-legged stool at the center.

We will also sing, play music and DANCE on the labyrinth and during the Earth Summit! Historically labyrinths were used both for contemplative silent prayer as well as for celebrations and they became dance floors for special festivals.

The Oregon Emergency Preparedness Office curriculum for emergency preparedness invites us to imagine we are preparing for a two-week camping trip and we will need enough food, water, warmth, shelter, medicine etc. but WAIT!

DONT FORGET TO PACKSilent Contemplative Prayers and Party Spirit!Church for Our Common Home is honored to host the yearly Earth Summit of the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, (EMO. Visit website link of EMO here.) This is our third year of hosting in our barn and outside here at the John Cobb Eco Farm. This is a hybrid event in person and on Zoom that connects us to ecumenical and interfaith communities in Oregon. We will have a bonfire, sing, dance, share stories, walk the labyrinth as well as learn how to prepare for emergencies. Join us every Sunday 4-5 pm pst at Church for Our Common Home worship begining this Sunday and before the Earth Summit to learn how to prepare for emergencies, body, mind and spirit.

John B. Cobb passes away the day after Christmas..........God rest his soul

Dr. John B. Cobb Jr. passed away the day after Christmas just a few weeks shy of his 100th birthday. God rest your beautiful soul, John. We will miss you and will always love and pray for you and hold you in our hearts. Thank you for the gift of your life, teachings and gentle kindness. There are no words to express our gratitude for all you have given to us.

John attended our small house church that has become a "Manger" or "Barn Church" for we worship with the animals in the barn. John Cobb has supported me as a Christain minister and our untraditional church dedicated to care and love of our common home, Church for Our Common Home in countless ways since it began in 2015. We are deeply grateful and appreciated his loving presence for worship almost every Sunday at 4pm pst for many years on Zoom. Recently, he invited me to write the last chapter of his last book, Confessions, "Can Women Save Christian Discipleship?" Our work together inspired the creation of Earth Crisis Support Groups and Potluck Parties and are the Guidelines and Appendix of Confessions.

The audio version of John reading the book has just been made available. You are invited to listen to John's gentle loving voice share about the teachings of Jesus. Click on this red link to purchase on Amazon, Confessions (Audible Audio Edition): John B. Cobb Jr., Bonnie Tarwater, John B. Cobb Jr., Bonnie Tarwater, Process Century Press: Audible Books & Originals

Our New Years gift to you is this Dream Incubation (link below) of music and prayers. You are also invited to make a reservation to come stay at the newly opened Dream Incubation Guest House here at the John Cobb Eco Farm in 2025 to honor the wisdom of your dreams. We invite the old female whales, elephants and old wise women to join us in the dreamtime this year as we unite beyond the veil to love and care for all creatures here on our common home and habitat, Mother Earth. Dreams come not just for us, but for the healing and wisdom of all of us. Please enjoy and join the whales in singing as well as lullabies and prayers,

and click here on this red link, Dream Incubation 2025

Genocide or Peace on Earth

Dear Freinds,

Will we live a beautiful vision of Peace on Earth and create a Peaceable Kingdom for all creatures in 2025 or live a life of fear and be silent and complicit with Empire, geocide and war? If we take the teachings of Jesus seriously the Christmas story is a parable that offers a clear answer and teaching. God, called by many names, calls us to follow the way of Peace on Earth, to live a radical counter cultural life of justice and love, not a life of Empire, genocide and war. Christmas asks us; Will we live a life in solidarity with the vulnerable and meek, refugees who are fleeing genocide or the powerful and violent inflicting genocide?

Join Church for Our Common Home with our vision of Peace on Earth, a global "Peaceable Kingdom" where humans are living in harmony with one another and the natural world. I have created the image above of whales, elephants, trees, Mother Mary and her baby, an old woman in prayer as a Christmas gift and image to activate our religious imaginations as we create lives of prayer and action.

Come enter the Christmas story with us in worship and in our "manger ministry" with its radical vision - but be warned. It is a profoundly anti imperial story and ministry that challenges us to stand in solidarity with those experiencing genocide not those inflicting genocide. Please join us in prayer in the streets, here in our manger church and small farm and retreat center and in the imaginal realm of our interconnected hearts and spirits around the earth with our vision and prayers of Peace on Earth. We have never needed one another and a vision of a new WAY to live and work for Peace on Earth and good will toward all creatures more than this Christmas.

The inspired Lutheran minister of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, is Rev. Dr. Munter Issac. Above is the image of, Baby in the Ruble. This year, its new name is, Baby Still in the Ruble. Please join us in joining him in his new The Papers Project. Go to link, that provides us with tools to address the silence. The Papers Project | Providing tools for conscientious communication

Here is a photo of Pope Francis praying in solidarity this Christmas at the Vatican with all those people and "Babies Still in the Ruble" in Gaza. The baby Jesus's in his manger scene is lying on a Palestinian scarf called a Keffiyeh.

Is 2025 the year for old woman together with other old wise creatures to organize both in prayer and in action? The Dali Lama said,  "The world will be saved by the western woman." What did he mean? We have a spiritual crisis as a human family and it seems to be common sense that it will only be transformed with a spiritual vision of Peace on Earth that invites women as well as all creatures to the table.

On Sunday, 12/29 4 pm pst I will visit our beloved teacher and friend of Church for Our Common Home, Dr. John B. Cobb Jr. Together we will offer a Zoom worship with him from his home in California. Our scripture about Jesus' grandmother Anna (Luke 2:36-38) will begin a conversation to explore a program for old creatures and especially women, elephants, whales and Mother Trees. Like other large mammals, trees and creatures us old women, often live long lives. John Cobb, turns 100 years old in February 2025. We will begin to pray, talk imagine and plan with him. What is God calling us to be and become in the new year? Perhaps we will begin a Truth, Justice and Love Commission, of some sort to do the necessary truth telling and healing after colonialism, Empire and war? Who and how will we invite people and creatures to join us? It is both a new and an old story that we need. It is vision of Peace on Earth, goodwill toward all creatures. We need your prayers and presence, your intuitions and ideas. You are not alone. If you are reading this we are together this Christmas. I am sending you love and wish you a Merry Christmas. You are invited to God's table and feast with all creatures. Stay close. Call. Come. Join us.