Featuring Aaron’s sermon from Sunday, a link to our recent blog post from the Mission, Vision, and Values Team, as well as links to several of our content clearinghouses for all your SJC content needs!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday and links to all our content!
Featuring Aaron’s sermon from Sunday, and a reflection from Steve Garnaas-Holmes shared out by Anne. Also links to several of our content clearinghouses for all your SJC content needs!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, a guest selection from the Seacoast Queer Choir, a request for support for our Garden project, and links to all our content!
Here is my invitation to you: Let yourself be present in each moment, battle and celebration. Let yourself try and let yourself fail. Let yourself celebrate and let yourself mourn. Let yourself be in the darkness and grow towards the light. Growth is here to be your teacher, friend and lifelong companion. It is not stagnant, but it is here to stay.
I still disinfect everything and remind them to wash hands, distance, and wear a mask when needed. It is now done with laughter and the wise words of two seven-year old girls who often say to me, “Nana, you worry too much about us, we will be fine.” As I watch them grow in love, I see they are right. We will be fine.
The poet David Whyte continues to be a light in the darkness for me. I commend his poetry to you and also his Ted talk found at this link https://youtu.be/u9Lu85L111Y or simply search Youtube for David Whyte Ted Talk. I cannot help but think of our beloved community of SJC during this challenging time when I read his poem “Santiago” and watch his Ted Talk. I pray it provides you with hope as well.
Santiago by David Whyte
The road seen, then not seen, the hillside
hiding then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you as if leaving you
to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,
when you thought you would fall,
and the way forward always in the end
the way that you followed, the way that carried you
into your future, that brought you to this place,
no matter that it sometimes took your promise from you,
no matter that it had to break your heart along the way:
the sense of having walked from far inside yourself
out into the revelation, to have risked yourself
for something that seemed to stand both inside you
and far beyond you, that called you back
to the only road in the end you could follow, walking
as you did, in your rags of love and speaking in the voice
that by night became a prayer for safe arrival,
so that one day you realized that what you wanted
had already happened long ago and in the dwelling place
you had lived in before you began,
and that every step along the way, you had carried
the heart and the mind and the promise
that first set you off and drew you on and that you were
more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way
than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach:
as if, all along, you had thought the end point might be a city
with golden towers, and cheering crowds,
and turning the corner at what you thought was the end
of the road, you found just a simple reflection,
and a clear revelation beneath the face looking back
and beneath it another invitation, all in one glimpse:
like a person and a place you had sought forever,
like a broad field of freedom that beckoned you beyond;
like another life, and the road still stretching on.
But our work together is a union, a joining together that involves intense, sacred moments of vulnerability, trust, emotional intimacy, and even love. In helping clients reach their goal for protection – sanctuary – in the U.S., my work is as much about fortifying them for battle as it is about gathering evidence and preparing legal arguments.
My earliest memory of seeking is from when I was three years old. I remember awakening in the middle of the night to our house shaking violently in a terrifying thunderstorm. The angels were bowling above me! Feeling very small and scared, I crept carefully down the long, dark hall, seeking the comfort and reassurance of my parents. Once nestled snugly in their large, warm bed, I quickly fell back to sleep.
As we drove off, I noticed the sun breaking through and, all of a sudden, the fog and clouds started to lift. Like a moment in the Wizard of Oz, when everything turns from black and white to color, the immense, sprawling vineyards unfolded. In the distance a medieval church tower appeared, and behind it more and more acres of vineyards on the hillsides. My heart leapt at the beauty of this slow uncovering of the countryside.
And the best part is that along the way I have gotten to know a remarkable, welcoming, loving bunch of folks called “the St. John’s family” for which I will be eternally grateful to now be a part of.
So there you have it—I am just another humble example of “seek, and you will find; ask, and it will be given to you; knock, and it will be opened to you”.
The words “God will provide” and “God willing” are often used in the Caribbean by people of faith. On the islands we lived a simple God-fearing happy life focused on simplicity. Tourist are often surprised by the stress-free traditions we maintain, the don’t worry be happy lifestyle. To live in the Caribbean, you must have faith in everything.
So, when I get tired of my own challenges and the confinements that COVID has brought to my life, I seek inspiration of those before and around me, who despite all odds and often at great personal sacrifice , persist to meet basic needs and to those who persist to move the needle for justice. When I think of them, I am renewed and humbled.
