Thank You!

The CLF applauds the vision of the members of the congregations listed below. We are deeply thankful that they have chosen to hold special collections during their services to benefit the CLF’s Prison Ministry. If your bricks and mortar congregation holds special collections, we hope you will consider joining them in supporting this life-changing ministry.

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REsources for Living

What if you had x-ray vision like Superman? What would you use it for? Of course, real x-rays let you see through skin and muscle to the bones underneath, but they wouldn’t let you look through the walls of buildings to see what the villains were up to inside. But never mind. It’s our game of pretend, and we set the rules.

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On Living (Part I)

Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example I mean without looking for something beyond and above living…

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Clarity of Hindsight

Knowing what you now know, would you do it all over again? Whatever it is. Marry your spouse? Pursue your career? Buy that house? Go to that college? Enlist? Join the Peace Corps? End that relationship? Plant that crop? Invest in those stocks?

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Finding True Identity

Filled with the holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert. (Luke 4:1) He’s really not much different from us, the man who walked deep into that desert.

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Possibilities and Limits

We are on a dismounted patrol to the top of some ancient ruins. A short walk, but the ground is loose and steep. Rocks and dirt slide down as we walk up. The only way to make it up a steep hill while laden with gear is to look ahead but watch where you put your feet.

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Solemn Te Deum for Peace

Can you imagine it? Palestinians and Israelis settling down together in their common lands bound together by the silver covenant of Jordan…

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The Wellspring of Decency

The wellspring of decency is loving this life in which people die, people suffer, there are limits, and we make mistakes. The wellspring of moral action is not utopia, not a counterfactual vision, not a declaration that the world could and should be otherwise.

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Gratitude

Often I have felt that I must praise my world
For what my eyes have seen these many years,
And what my heart has loved.

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Abundant Life

It is a dream of a creek, bubbling, dancing, pouring; sun-dappled and butterfly-haunted, laced with blossoms and grasses for which I have no name. In February, which is when I know it, it is in spate, swift with the melted mountain snows.

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