Weekly Reflections
Shining like the sun
I had to look through my books to find this Thomas Merton paragraph this week. I was recalling a special time in college when I was suffused with love for everyone I passed as I walked through the crowds of studentson the way to class. I knew it was a gift off the Holy Spirit to be so filled with a love for and appreciation for the many manifestations of the image of God. Oh, to have the Spirit bring that same fresh and expansive love to each of us who follow Jesus!
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world.
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Choosing to believe
This morning, I'm choosing to believe in the quiet, steady goodness that still lives in this world.
In the kindness of strangers.
in the courage it takes to just keep going.
On the small, sacred moments that remind
us we are never alone.
You don't have to carry everything today.
Take a breath. Let grace meet you where
you are.
There is still light breaking through, still
love holding it all together, still hope rising
in places we least expect.
And so today, we walk forward, gently,
bravely, together.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Pray this with me
Today, Lord,
let nothing and no one
shake my faith in you,
keep me from your love,
rob me of my hope,
dull my thirst for justice,
shade me from your light,
threaten my integrity,
seduce me from fidelity,
still your voice within me,
indulge my pride and envy,
sway me from the truth I know,
persuade me to act foolishly,
diminish my self-worth,
trigger my anxieties,
steer me from your path,
tempt me with forbidden fruit,
weaken my conviction,
curb my will to serve you,
smooth-talk me with flattery,
hold me back from prayer,
take advantage of my fears,
encroach upon my conscience,
make me doubt your mercy,
close my heart to others,
dampen my soul's joy,
hide me from your presence,
distract me from your Spirit's way,
shield me from your grace
or hinder me in any way
from knowing, loving, serving you,
my Lord, my God, my all...
Amen.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
May you find some quiet time today
May you find some quiet time today,
And use it to find peace and joy
Within yourself, and then send both
Out into our troubled world.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
From Pentecost to Ordinary Time
The joy of Easter and Pentecost must have felt like breaking to the surface to gasp for air after a long plunge beneath the cold water of Jesus’s arrest and trial and execution. First the pure shock of rushing air, then the head-shaking joy of surprise, and finally the wonder-struck delight of rejoicing in Joy itself: He is here? It must have felt like a happy, heaving breath with the heart racing and lungs aching after being pressed to their limits.
What if the Holy Spirit’s rushing wind on Pentecost felt the same as the breath of Jesus in the Gospel of John? The disciples might have recognized it immediately and looked at one another in amazement: It is the Holy One again! We know this is the breath of God.
…There is no epilogue to Easter. If Resurrection has taught us anything, it is that what looks like the end is only the beginning. Ordinary Time now unfolds before us, brightened by the holy flames and rushing wind of Pentecost. Jesus beckons, inviting us to join him on the way of discipleship, deepening our practice of Easter joy every day.
May the Living God draw close today, even within locked doors. May you feel the breath of the Holy Spirit, the mighty wind hovering over chaos to create anew. May you see Christ’s wounds and know that your own suffering is held within them. May the joy of God carry you onward, every day.
(Laura Kelly Fanucci, Living Easter)
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
All the treasures
In Colossians Paul expresses his hope for the Laodiceans :
“…that they may be encouraged in heart, knit together in love, and filled with the full riches of complete understanding, so that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ,in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Colossians 2:2-3
What would we do without Jesus, who contains all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? We can face any fear or perplexing circumstance, & also the most mundane decisions, open up to Him in easy conversation, & ask, simply, “what’s going on here?” or “what should I do here?” and He’ll tell us. We just have to believe & not doubt, and all those treasures will open up for us.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Feet of Peace
How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of the one who brings peace, says the prophet, and I would add “along the beach, in the care facility, in the church sanctuary, along the streets in the neighborhood, and in the grocery stores.” Too many feet are the bearers of bad tidings. The feet of the peaceful ones are, indeed, welcome, winsome and healing. When I hear footsteps approaching, I long for them to be the steps of peace bringers, peacemakers, peacekeepers, peace seekers.
I am once again struck with the feet of the very ones in our congregation, whose work in the world is so often to bring peace. One has come alongside several families displaced by the SoCal fires. still looking to find longer term housing. Another helps to raise money for fresh water in Africa. Someone else had been caring for family members who are ill and another has gone to the side of one in grief and despair. Each one has taken herself to the place of being peace for someone else—at home, on-line, in the world around her—in speaking words of peace or in just showing up wordlessly with peaceful presence.
Jesus, looking over Jerusalem, sighed saying, “Would that you knew the things that made for peace!” We all echo that same sigh. And we do what we can to be the beautiful feet that bring the kind of peace that Jesus promises.
Resurrection
Beloved, you are my shepherd.
You lead me in good paths
for your name’s sake.
—Psalm 23.1, 3
Resurrection is not just comfort,
it’s courage. It’s a signpost.
It points to the victory
of love and nonviolence
over evil, death and injustice.
It indicates the good path
where our good shepherd leads us,
through the shadowed valley of suffering,
to bring to the table of grace
even our enemies.
For, dying, love endures.
Failing, love wins.
So we follow good paths
with courage to live gently,
to serve humbly, to forgive freely,
to risk boldly for the sake of the vulnerable.
Such is the path to life
that can’t be taken from us, even by death,
an abundantly fruiting tree,
rooted in the eternal heart of God.
So nourished in this peculiar green pasture
of dying and rising,
and so gently led
by our dying and rising shepherd,
with love and courage we go.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Fifty glorious days
Fifty glorious days, from Easter Sunday all the way to Pentecost. For fifty days, the Church feasts. For fifty days, she sings alleluia. For fifty days, she lives in the joy of the Resurrection as if it just happened, because in every Eucharist, in a very real sense, it does.
Consider what that tells us. We spent forty Lenten days fasting and preparing for Easter. The feast gets fifty days of celebration. The Resurrection wins. The joy is longer than the sorrow! That is not an accident. That is theology, beautifully baked right into the structure of the year.
During Eastertide, the Church dwells in the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, the days when Jesus appeared to His disciples after rising from the dead. Then came the final ten days, from Ascension until Pentecost, when the disciples waited and prayed together in the upper room for the promised Holy Spirit. This is the story the Church invites us to inhabit each year.
The fifty days of Eastertide give us unhurried time to sit with the stories of the risen Christ. Work through them slowly across the season:
· Mary Magdalene at the tomb — John 20:11–18
· The road to Emmaus — Luke 24:13–35
· Jesus appears to the disciples — John 20:19–23
· Doubting Thomas — John 20:24–29
· Breakfast on the shore — John 21:1–14
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation