Matt Nightingale

@mattnightingale

Alejandro’s husband. Co-pastor of @wearethequest.bsky.social. Founder of @commonsanctuary.bsky.social. Spiritual director. TED talker. All Christian, all gay, all the time. #FaithfullyLGBT #BLM He/him

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Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· 8d

And for our lectio divina practice, we read an excerpt from our beloved Rachel Held Evans’s recently-published book of essays, Braving the Truth. Thank you to @jennadewitt.bsky.social for choosing the song and text, creating the graphic, and reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· 22d

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read excerpts from Fr. Gregory Boyd’s “Barking to the Choir.” Thank you to @claytongladish.bsky.social for choosing the song and reading, creating the graphic, and reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jul 7

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read Jan Richardson’s “A Blessing for the Brokenhearted.” Thank you to Izzy for choosing the song and text, and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jun 30

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read Matthew 11:27-30 from The Passion Translation. Thank you to @ace-reporter1.bsky.social for choosing the song and text, and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🚨🚨🚨PLEASE CONTINUE READING THIS THREAD FOR IMPORTANT CONTEXT ABOUT THE TNT! 🚨🚨🚨

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jun 23

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read Henri Nouwen’s “Allow Yourself To Be Fully Received” from his book The Inner Voice of Love. Thank you to our friend @brie22.bsky.social for choosing the song and text, and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jun 16

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read “Scandalous God” from the fine folks at enfleshed dot com. .

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jun 16

We started with a meditation based on the Welcoming Prayer, followed by community guidelines and check ins.

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jun 9

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read “Glitter Prayer 40: A Prayer for Holy Celebration” by Leo Jones-Morton. Thank you to @bek-hen.bsky.social, who chose the song and text and who read so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jun 2

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read @amandaudiskessler.bsky.social’s “The Light Comes as a Rainbow.” Thank you to @krtall.bsky.social for choosing the song and the text, and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

The light comes as a rainbow
Infusing us with colours Assuring us of welcome
A covenant of care
The rainbow fills horizons
Surrounding us with beauty
Reminding us to honour the love that's always there
The light lives in our bodies Inspiring us to wonder Inviting us to passion
A covenant of joy
The rainbow is a present
A gift to all creation
A promise from the holy to bless and not destroy
The light grows in our healing
It draws us to each other
It helps us to imagine A covenant of peace
The rainbow is a model Of difference in relation
Apart and yet together, the colours never cease

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jun 1

Just a quick reminder. Happy Pride, Beloved. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Jun 1

Great evening in the Castro with my friend, author @timothysrodriguez.bsky.social, in conversation about his new memoir, Conversion Therapy Dropout. Thank you, Tim, for sharing your story with the world. Thank you, Fabulosa Books, for hosting us. And thank you to everyone who joined us!

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 30

I’m excited to partner once again with @commonsanctuary.bsky.social and @wearethequest.bsky.social to bring some great music to Novato! Join us on Wednesday, July 22, at 7pm as we welcome award-winning singer-songwriter Bobby Jo Valentine for an evening of songs and stories.

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 30

Loving this new Highwomen album! 😍

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 27

San Francisco! Join Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez and me at Fabulosa Books in the Castro THIS SUNDAY NIGHT, May 31, at 7pm. RSVP here: thethirdplace.is/event/conver...

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 27

I just feel like y’all deserve an update.

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 26

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read my original poem entitled "it all belongs." It felt a little vulnerable sharing my own words like this, but lectio invites us to simply be with the reading and see how the Spirit might want to speak to us... I'm okay with that. 🙂

the older i get, the more i think and dream and read and pray and hope,
the more i realize that all of these
complicated feelings, experiences, identities, griefs, and joys
will stay with me forever.
there is no arriving. there is only integrating.
and i am invited to stretch my arms, my heart, my mind wider,
to hold all of these things at the same time.
because all of them are true.
there is no either/or, there is only both/and.
and somehow,
whether i understand it fully or not, i know, deep down,
that this is the path to true peace.
somehow, it all belongs.

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 25

Omg it’s perfect! I’m really enjoying my new baking obsession.

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 25

He's so proud of his new insult. It's like watching a 6-year-old calling people "poopyhead."

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 23

So proud of my son Zach! 🎉🎉🎉

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 19

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read "Go to the Limits of Your Longing" by Rainer Maria Rilke. Thank you to @gray-therapy.bsky.social for choosing the song and text, and for reading so beautifully for us.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 17

Something tells me I’m the only person in the world with these six albums pinned in Apple Music. #GenXvangelical

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 16

Should I face my childhood religious trauma head-on y/n

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 14

This arrived yesterday. I'm so very grateful to be credentialed by Wild Fig. Their mission: "To root Christian ministers and ministries in a diverse network of mutual relationships so that the way of Jesus can flourish in the world." Yes and amen. 🙏🏼

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 12

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read Psalm 8, from Andy Patton's Darkling Psalter. Thank you to @kurtsimonson.bsky.social for choosing the song and text, creating the graphic (using your own stunning photography!), and reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· May 5

And for our lectio divina practice, we read "the transfiguration" by the wonderful @jfkantrowitz.bsky.social. Thank you to @terranen.bsky.social for choosing the text, for creating the graphic, and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

sometimes i feel like peter
when he was with jesus
and moses and elijah showed up

just so happy to be here
with such people as you
that i say silly things

like, "shall i build us a shelter
to contain all this glory
before it explodes into the world

"a clubhouse to keep
our little clique together
on this mountain?"

sometimes i forget
that to be transfigured
is to change, to grow, to widen

to be turned into fire, a blazing bush
consumed, but not consumed
expanding, radiating light

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Apr 28

And then for our lectio practice, we read an excerpt from Lisa Sharon Harper's The Very Good Gospel. Thank you to @smwright953.bsky.social for choosing the song and the reading, making the graphic, and reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

"The darkness is limited by the light.
Suffering is not in perpetuity.
The light may take generations to come.
But it will come.
We long for a world without pain, sorrow, and death.
But in the beginning,
when God could have rid the world of misery,
God did not choose to do so.
God's governance is positioned against destruction, wickedness, and all things that cause misery.
And though God does not eliminate the darkness, God exercises mercy by placing boundaries on it.
In God's kingdom, darkness does not overcome.
The light always breaks through.

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Apr 21

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read some thoughts from Frederick William Faber. Thank you to @theplayfulphd.bsky.social for choosing the song/text and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

We are creatures. What is it to be a creature? Before the sun sets in the red west, let us try to have an answer to our question. We find ourselves in existence today...
We have been alive and on the earth so many years, so many months, so many weeks, so many days. ... We know nothing of what has gone before us
So it is with the creature man. He finds himself in existence. ... He has no notion why it was that his particular soul rather than any other soul, was called into being, and put into his place. Not only can he conceive a soul far more noble and devout than his, but he sees, as he thinks, peculiar deficiencies in himself, in some measure disqualifying him for the actual position in which God has placed him. And how can he account for this? Yet God must be right. ...He clearly has a work to do, and came here simply to do it ... Every step which a creature takes, when he has once been created, increases his dependence on the Creator. ..
This is, in fact, his true blessedness-to be ever more and more enclosed in the hand of God who made him. The Creator's hand is the creature's home. ...

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Apr 14

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read Chelan Harkin's "The Worst Thing." Thank you to @wholeheartedmindy.bsky.social for choosing the song and the poem, and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.

The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.

The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Apr 7

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read a selection from Henri Nouwen's The Inner Voice. Thank you to our sister @brie22.bsky.social for choosing the song and the text, and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

You have an idea of what the new country looks like.
Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there.
Even though you know that you have not found there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones.
Now you have come to realize that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells.
You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires the death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.
Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on.
Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.
It seems that you keep crossing and recrossing the border. For a while you experience a real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back to the old country. To your dismay, you discover that the old country has lost its charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer.
from The Inner Voice
Henri Nouwen (1932 - 1996)

Matt Nightingale@mattnightingale· Mar 31

And then for our lectio divina practice, we read "What We've Forgotten" by @christawellsmusic.bsky.social. Thank you to @jjr222.bsky.social for choosing the song and text, and for reading so beautifully for us tonight. 🙏🏼❤️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️