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“When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
~ Mary Oliver
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"Dear Lord, bring me through darkness into light. Bring me through pain into peace.
Bring me through death into life.
Be with me wherever I go, and with everyone I love.
In Christ's name I ask it. Amen.”
~ A prayer by Frederick Buechner, written at the request of his brother, Jamie, as he was dying of cancer.
Source: The Eyes of the Heart
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“Community can be a terrible place because it is a place of relationship; it is the revelation of our wounded emotions and of how painful it can be to live with others, especially with ‘some people.’ It is so much easier to live with books and objects, television, or dogs and cats! It is so much easier to live alone and just do things for others, when one feels like it…. While we are alone, we could believe we loved everyone.”
~ Jean Vanier (1928-2019)
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“Every time you close another door—be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of busyness, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection—you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God. This is a movement toward full incarnation. It leads you to become what you already are—a child of God; it lets you embody more and more the truth of your being; it makes you claim the God within you.”
~ Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996)
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“What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier . . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own . . . ”
~ Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets”
“Well-schooled in a false sense of control, we usually cling to the illusion of power as we struggle with the paradoxes of life. Each of us knows those times when we dig in our feet, stiffen our body, tighten our jaw and demand rational explanations for unexplainable events… As we encounter experiences for which there are no answers, no rational explanations or solutions, we arrive at a point where, in faith, we are asked to stand in a Mystery that far exceeds our human understanding.”
~ Doris Klein
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“Coming together for worship, individuals may release their fragile hold on ‘my truth’ for an hour or two in order to explore the timetraveling, ego-rattling, neighbor-loving dimensions of ‘our truth’ instead. As anyone who has ever been part of a congregation knows, this has less to do with being of one mind than it does with being of one body. The deepest truth any congregation has to tell is that those who do not agree on much of anything can still care for one another through almost everything, thanks to the ministering Spirit in their midst.”
~ Barbara Brown Taylor
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Celtic Prayer
You are the peace of all things calm
You are the place to hide from harm
You are the light that shines in dark
You are the heart’s eternal spark
You are the door that’s open wide
You are the guest who waits inside
You are the stranger at the door
You are the calling of the poor
You are my Lord and with me still
You are my love, keep me from ill
You are the light, the truth, the way
You are my Savior this very day.
~ Celtic Oral Tradition
Holy Spirit, giving life to all life, moving all creatures,
root of all things, washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes, healing their wounds,
you are our true life, luminous, wonderful,
awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098 –1179)
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We can make our minds so like still water
that beings gather about us that they may see,
it may be, their own images,
and so live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet.
~ William Butler Yeats
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I beg you, Lord,
let the fiery, gentle power of your love
take possession of my soul,
and snatch it away
from everything under heaven,
that I may die for love of your love
as you saw fit to die for love of mine.
~ Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)
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Kara Suggs and Abigail Adigun prepare for Youth Sunday Sermon
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“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
~ Mary Oliver
Charlie Fuller
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The final secret, I think, is this: that the words “You shall love the Lord your God” become in the end less a command than a promise. And the promise is that, yes, on the weary feet of faith and the fragile wings of hope, we will come to love him at last as from the first he has loved us—loved us even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, because he has been in the wilderness with us. He has been in the wilderness for us. He has been acquainted with our grief. And, loving him, we will come at last to love each other too…
~Frederick Buechner
“It feels so insignificant, and yet this is the liberating secret: I am precisely the gift God wants—in my full and humble surrender to my ordinariness—which ironically is my eternal specialness. All I can give back to God is who I really and fully am! That is all God wants. Yet this seems so boring and pedestrian to us, if we want to be high flyers.”
~ Richard Rohr
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The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive
was not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship.
Not a rolled-away stone,
but a carried-away church.
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~ Clarence Jordan (1912-1969)
“Do not abandon
yourselves to despair.
We are the Easter people
and Hallelujah
is our song.”
~ POPE JOHN PAUL II
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(1920 – 2005)
“Well-schooled in a false sense of control, we usually cling to the illusion of power as we struggle with the paradoxes of life. Each of us knows those times when we dig in our feet, stiffen our body, tighten our jaw and demand rational explanations for unexplainable events…. As we encounter experiences for which there are no answers, no rational explanations or solutions, we arrive at a point where, in faith, we are asked to stand in a Mystery that far exceeds our human understanding.”
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~ Doris Klein, Journey of the Soul
“Although it is important and even indispensable for our spiritual lives to set apart time for God and God alone, our prayer can only become unceasing communion when all our thoughts—beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful—can be thought in the presence of the One who dwells in us and surrounds us… The main question, therefore, is not so much what we think, but to whom we present our thoughts, because to pray unceasingly means to think and live in the presence of Love.”
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~ Henri J. M. Nouwen
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Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.
~ “Thirst” by Mary Oliver
“You hollow us out, God, so that we may carry you, and you endlessly fill
us only to be emptied again. Make smooth our inward spaces and sturdy,
that we may hold you with less resistance and bear you with deeper
grace.“
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~ Jan Richardson
We’re located at 16th and O Streets NW—in the heart of Washington, a mile north of the White House. We are part of the Dupont Circle and Logan Circle neighborhoods. Need more info? Call us or click below.
We look forward to greeting you in person. In the meantime, you can request prayer or ask a question by calling or sending an email.
At First Baptist DC, giving is the fuel that powers every congregational expression of hospitality, compassion, generosity and justice. FBC relies on the congregation for regular, sustainable financial support.
The First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C.
1328 16th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 387-2206
Office Hours
Sunday 8:30 AM–2 PM
Monday-Thursday 8:30 AM–4 PM
Friday-Saturday Closed
