Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday and links to all our content!
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!
Via media, is not about compromise, but about achieving a better path through consideration of different, valid points of view. Importantly, we are not doing this on our own. Remaining Christ centered and Spirit led can both give us the solace to navigate the day to day, but more importantly, find where God is calling us to make a difference to help find the middle way.
What if we intentionally share in the middle, rather that discount others from the poles? I can practice tolerance and acknowledge that everyone has something good to contribute. Clarity can emerge from the complexity of multiple realities, when we take time to ask questions, get to know one another’s life experiences, values, and ideas about problems and solutions. Conversations can integrate the needs and wants of many and release the joyful energy of collaboration. We can blend the past, present and future into constructive and hopeful ways for individuals, communities, country and world. We can do it once and many times!
Julian marveled at the tenuousness and fragility of life – of all that was created. But rather than fear, it brought up for her the love of God, that creating and sustaining love that holds all things, both in this life and eternally. In that hazelnut she found a sense of peace – a reassurance of God’s presence in her life.
Humility - for a person of faith - is knowing exactly who you are, what you are capable of, and where you fall short. It also means knowing that your deepest identity lies in the Christ that you are waiting for. In America, in November 2020, maybe humility is the most radical and disturbing challenge in the Gospel.
Bishop Rob offered this prayer, written in another tumultuous time (16th Century Spain) by Juan de Yepes y Alvarez, better known to us as St. John of the Cross. His prayer resonates with me as I pray for patience in this time of waiting and I offer it to you with my prayers for you, for me, and for our nation.
How will they move forward? How do they make sense of everything that happened in the past few days? What is their role in the future that awaits them? How will they live out their faith when so much has changed? Where is God in the midst of all this? I’m starting to ask myself the same questions. For now, the answers aren’t clear. But the waiting remains.
Have patience. Easier said than done. I hear people say that they are, “Praying for patience.” I must confess that I think to myself…”Oh DON’T do that!....Pray for GRACE!” I know it is just theological gymnastics but, right now I believe the world needs grace. Grace to hear, grace to see, grace seek to understand, grace to let a winner win and grace to let those who lose grieve and God willing GRACE to remember that we are all in a part of the same family…the human family.
When you are 8, 5, and 3, you aren't consumed with worry about the political environment or nervous about COVID. They are excited about the changing seasons. Building the "biggest" pile of leaves and getting your parents to jump in it is nirvana. The only thing better is thinking about the next season and how much snow we might get[Randy Philbrook] (starting, quite possibly, this coming Friday!). My dad was right - kids do sense things adults don't, and the opportunity for joy is around every corner.
Let your light shine!
My point is: there is a heightened awareness of grace right now. And this week, I felt that grace because of the response that both I had and my peers had to my epic mom fail. That levity kept me going this week, I have to tell you. Life is pretty serious right now and it felt good to throw my hands up in the air and acknowledge the fact that I don't have it together right now. And, no one else does, either.
“Joy comes as a gift when you least expect it. At those fleeting moments you know why you were put here and what truth you serve. You may not feel giddy at those moments, you may not hear the orchestra’s delirious swell, or see flashes of crimson and gold, but you will feel a satisfaction, a silence, a peace—a hush. Those moments are the blessings and the signs of a beautiful life.”
