Commoners Communion Podcast show

Commoners Communion Podcast

Summary: Hosted by folk-psalmist Strahan, the Commoners Communion podcast is a conversational look at Christian spirituality through the lens of beauty, mystery and revelation.

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Podcasts:

 Practicing Newness Devotional: Giving Away | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 5:08

Take the week to wrestle with God, asking him to shed light on the following questions or any others that arise through this weeks reflection. Give him space to respond, to heal, to resurrect. What promises has God given you that you can see becoming fully formed in 2018? Take a moment to remember God’s presence with you through all the stages of your journey and to thank him for doing what he said he would. What promises haven’t made it this far yet? Ask God to bless and keep those. Take note of the fear, anxiety or the nerves associated with acting on and giving away this promise. Invite God to fill that space with courage and peace. Finally, take a moment to ask God if there is anything else he would like to say to you in this moment. Father, you have kept your word to us. You always keep your word. As the rain falls and achieves its purpose so you have and will fulfill the promises you’ve made in our lives. We glorify you, adore you, and celebrate you for walking with us through every part of this journey. We acknowledge that it’s not always easy to walk with Christ, but that it’s beautiful, good and true. Now, bless our work. Our going out and our coming in. So that the world may know the love of God and his affection toward all that he has made. For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

 Practicing Newness Devotional: Persevering | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 5:34

Take the week to wrestle with God, asking him to shed light on the following questions or any others that arise through this weeks reflection. Give him space to respond, to heal, to resurrect. Take a moment to consider times when God has threshed or tested the promises he’s given you. Feel the emotions of that time. Have you been in a personal season of displacement, emotional difficulty, testing or dryness? Are you there right now? How does it change your understanding of that season to place it in the context of the threshing of grain to separate the healthy from the unhealthy, the constructive from the destructive, the dark from the light? What encouragement can you draw from knowing this is the final stage before the baking and sharing of the bread? Spirit, Counselor, Friend. We ask that you would soften our hearts where they have become hardened. We know that you feel the grief that we do, and that you care. Encourage our hearts. Convey afresh our Father's love for us and remind us of the vulnerability of Christ on the cross, our Saviour who promised he would be with us till the end of the age. Forgive where we have lost faith and hope in your promises, and heal us. Allow us not to become cynical but to walk out of our threshing with honest and open hearts. We thank you for this season and that we have not walked it alone. Amen.

 Practicing Newness Devotional: Removing | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 5:41

Take the week to wrestle with God, asking him to shed light on the following questions or any others that arise through this weeks reflection. Give him space to respond, to heal, to resurrect. What might it look like today for you to start actioning what God has been growing in your life? How may the fulfillment God’s word to yo look different today than what you’d thought in the past? What old ideas do you need to let go of to move forward with God’s promise today? Being honest with yourself and with God, what emotions do you feel thinking about actioning God’s promise to you? What must you die to, take up, or express to him to take hold of it fully today? What things must be let go of to make new room to begin the “doing” part of your journey? Father, we acknowledge that we have not always cared for what you’ve sown in our lives. We’ve neglected your promises at times not valuing what may have felt either too small or too overwhelming to face. Today, we ask for the strength and creativity to watch over that which you’ve sown in our lives. Give us grace and empower us as we journey into the unknown future with you. We trust you, we long for you to have your glory amidst us. Amen.

 Practicing Newness Devotional: Watching Over | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 4:40

Take the week to wrestle with God, asking him to shed light on the following questions or any others that arise through this weeks reflection. Give him space to respond, to heal, to resurrect. What does it look like for you to watch over the seed of God’s promise today? In what ways have you neglected those promises to date, allowing them to fall prey to fears, the agenda of others, insecurities or the desires of the world? Looking back, how have you faithfully cared for those promises, protecting them from the elements of life that would otherwise whittle them down or steal them? What does watching over God’s promises look like for you today/tomorrow in the life space you’re currently in? Father, we acknowledge that we have not always cared for what you’ve sown in our lives. We’ve neglected your promises at times not valuing what may have felt either too small or too overwhelming to face. Today, we ask for the strength and creativity to watch over that which you’ve sown in our lives. Give us grace and empower us as we journey into the unknown future with you. We trust you, we long for you to have your glory amidst us. Amen.

 Practicing Newness Devotional: Receiving | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 4:54

Take the week to wrestle with God, asking him to shed light on the following questions or any others that arise through this weeks reflection. Give him space to respond, to heal, to resurrect. Take the week to wrestle with God, asking him to shed light on the following questions or any others that arise through this weeks reflection. Give him space to respond, to heal, to resurrect. What seeds (promises), past and present, has God spoken clearly to you in your life? What seeds have been sown less definitively in the quiet place or in the bounds of your imagination? What have you received in the past that needs revisiting in this moment of your life? What seed may God be giving you right now in your life? Tonight? This week? Father, Creator, Giver, we thank you for the promises you’ve sown in our lives. We acknowledge Holy Spirit that you have brought these to us, they’re sacred to us, let them breath and have life from this day forward. We recognize that not all the seed you have given us is what we had asked for, possibly not even what we personally wanted want, but we join with you Christ, now in your strength, through the cross, toward resurrection in allowing them to be sown in the soil of our imaginations. Plant what you will Lord. we’re longing for your kingdom. In Jesus name. Amen.

 Practicing Newness - Season One Devotional | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:44

To finish off this first season we'll be embarking on a five-week devotional journey through Isaiah 55. Each week there will be questions to wrestle with, devotionals to meditate on and prayers to prompt you into your own space with God.  So, set some time aside over the coming month to reflect on what God has given you and what he may be resurrecting in you this season, month and year. Journal out your thoughts and prayers, wrestle with God a little, and hopefully, relent the past and welcome the present-future.

 Episode 9: Practicing Newness | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 24:36

Practicing newness isn't just a nice idea, it's the earthy foundation of our entire Christian spirituality. In this podcast, I share the ways that I have practised newness in the process of my own journey and talk about how this makes our Christian spirituality truly revolutionary.

 Episode 8: Exile | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 20:35

Following on from our last episode, this week I'm looking at the concept of exile - spiritual, physical, emotional, societal - and how we both flourish in the wilderness and find our way back into the city afterwards. Exile can be the seedbed for character growth, destiny, newness and a more loving life. I share how I've found this to be true in my own life and we look at an important historical figure who experienced exile in their own profound way.

 Announcing The 'Prose To Poetry' Tour! | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:39

In a daring move of unprecedented nervousness, I'm taking Commoners Communion on the road! I'm hoping to invite more people to join us in these conversations and to connect face to face with all of you who have been listening, writing and sharing. Throughout the North Island tour, I'll be sharing on living a life of poetry (maybe even sharing some of my own poetry God-willing), starting some discussion, Q & R and maybe even a little liturgy to ground us in the Great Tradition. My hope for the tour is that we can start brewing a community that crosses cultural, denominational and social boundaries to encourage each other to live a life of beauty, mystery and revelation.  It feels like there has never been a more important time to see beauty in the other nor to find new language and ways of being in a world starved for connection and intimacy. I'm really excited to come hang out with you guys and share the love. Arohanui, Strahan.

 Episode 7: Poor In Spirit | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 20:53

I'm doing something a little different in this episode. I sat down last week to record an entirely different episode and couldn't deny the leading to go off script a little and share what I was feeling the Spirit saying to a few of us. Not everything in this episode will apply to everyone listening, but I hope it's an encouragement to those whom it does connect with. You may know someone who could be encouraged to hear this one. If you do, feel free to pass it on. Spiritual life is about seasons and sometimes there can be a shift seasonally that applies to both individuals and a whole. I sense that we're in one of those seasons right now and by giving a voice to it I hope that you can feel that you're not alone and maybe even gain a little more strength to step out of it. Commoners Communion is really a community of people searching for a new way of being in a social, political and spiritual landscape that is rapidly changing around us. If you've found this podcast it's probably because you feel that, and in some way you've experienced your own kind of estrangement in the process. If that's you, this podcast is a word to you. Arohanui, Strahan.

 Episode 6: Hongi | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 19:04

Intimacy with God is not an option in our spiritual walk, it's the entire point. We were kissed by God in the beginning and restored to wholeness by a kiss by Christ. In a culture starved for intimacy, we're invited to receive the hongi of God and to share that hongi with the world as we reconcile earth with heaven in the age we live.

 Episode 5: Revelation | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 20:36

God is not an idea, a political persuasion or a theology we can knit tight. He is a Person who transforms knowledge into revelation through the process of spending time with him. In today's information age we need more than ever to sit with him, and others, in the tension of what we think we know and that which we don't. Revelation is the way in which we draw God's eternal present into the social, economic, political and ideological battles we face and it's the deeper beauty of our claim of living within the life God himself.

 Episode 4: New | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 22:56

It can sometimes be hard starting a new year. What do we do with unmet promises from the year before? How do we hope for flourishing in times of transition or tension? Just as there are times and seasons in the earth and times and seasons in our lives, there are also times and seasons in kingdom spirituality. In this episode I share what I feel God has been saying to me over these past months about 2018 and how we can start the year open heartedly and with intention.  The music in this podcast is kindly provided by Rhys Machell from his meditative album 'In Glass'. Click here to hear more.

 Episode 3: Mystery | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 20:16

We don't often celebrate the beauty of not-knowing in our walk with God, but if he truly is Spirit, truly the God of all existence, then embracing mystery is foundational to our walking with him. God is not always interested in telling us the why of what we're going through, because in the tension between our longing and our lack he's making his goodness all the more satisfying to us.  The music in this podcast is kindly provided by Rhys Machell from his meditative album 'In Glass'. Click here to hear more.

 Episode 2: Beauty | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 18:20

In this episode, Strahan discusses how beauty can be lost and found in the pilgrimage of our faith and why beauty should be central to our walk with God. The music in this podcast is kindly provided by Rhys Machell from his meditative album 'In Glass'. Click the link in this episodes Podcast notes to hear more.

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