Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Celtic Christening for wee lad Gabriel Joel O'Brien - born 12/21/2010

Please join our global Open Hand community on Sunday evening, August 7th at 5:30pm for the Celtic Christening and pitch-in feast to celebrate the life of Gabriel Joel O'Brien, son of Joe and Mary O'Brien. (Reynolds home - 3173 N. Delaware Street)

Let's welcome home the O'Brien family as they journey to Indianapolis all the way from Brisbane, Australia. Can't wait. Good on ya mates....!

cheers,
O'

Sunday, July 3, 2011

A Celtic Summer Dedication - Robert Leonard Bernlohr

"Love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free. Be more like the man you were made to be."

The Challenge: Creative people like Mariann and Andy, and creative communities like Open Hand, often want to do more than simply reanimate that which has come before. Often there exists an impulse to create anew. In such a context creative folks look for signs of life and then begin to participate in and with it.

But many institutions and families go the other way. Rather than discovering life and building organic structures to give shape to this life, they inherit stale structures and go looking for life. This is a Herculean task. They also tend to value control, stability, and the ability to quickly resolve tension with a solution. However, one of the dominant currencies of creativity is tension - the ability to hold seemingly opposing forces in dynamic relationship without privileging one at the expense of the other or too quickly resolving it. New life is messy and doesn't always fit neatly into preexisting categories.

We are often concerned with orthodoxy (right thinking) or orthopraxy (right doing), but pastor and writer Dwight Friesen has suggested a third category ortho-paradoxy, that is, living rightly in the tension and mystery of the mysterious and revealed God of the Scriptures. Doing so requires and invites a radical dependence on the Spirit of God living in and working through his people in creation. Creativity values tension because it creates possibility, the chance that something might happen should the environment exist in a way that allows for life to emerge organically from it. Amen. Intuitive Leadership Tim Keel

The Charge: Andy and Mariann.... "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your hearts and try to love the questions themselves...Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." AMEN. Rilke

The Blessing: Now is your chance to bless this family with a personal word of love and encouragement.

Song of Worship - Sigh No More (Mumford & Sons)

Serve God love me and mend
This is not the end
Lived unbruised we are friends
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea, one on shore
My heart was never pure
And you know me
And you know me.

And man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing.

Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be.

There is a design
And alignment to cry,
Of my heart to see
The beauty of love as it was made to be (x4)

Celtic Prayer of Dedicaiton

Thou Being who inhabits the heights
Imprint Thy blessing betimes,
Remember Thou the child Robert of our tribe,
In the Name of the Father of peace;
When the priest of the King
On him puts the water of meaning,
Grant Robert the blessing of the Three
Who fill the heights.
The Blessing of the Three
Who fill the heights.

Sprinkle down upon Robert Thy grace,
Give Thou to him virtue and growth,
Give Thou to him strength and guidance,
Give Thou to him flocks and possessions,
Sense and reason void of guile,
Angel wisdom in his day,
That Robert may stand without reproach
In Thy presence,
He may stand without reproach
In Thy presence.

Women (gather around Mariann and Bobby and lay hands of them)

Men: The first blessing is in the name of the Father, representing wisdom.

Men (gather around Andy and Bobby and lay hands of them)

Women: The second blessing is in the name of the Son, representing peace.

Children (gather around Thulani and Bobby and lay hands on them)

Everyone: The third blessing is in the name of the Spirit, representing purity.

AMEN!