The great mystery of God’s love is that we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting, as if we are not broken. In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness as a brokenness in which we can come in touch with the unique way that God loves us. The great invitation is to live your brokenness under the blessing. I cannot take people’s brokenness away and people cannot take my brokenness away.  But how do you live in your brokenness? Do you live your brokenness under the blessing or under the curse? The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing.

~Henri Nouwen from a Lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center

This week our sermon series shifts from the beauty in God’s creation design for rich, harmonious diversity, and the commission for people to move out across the earth and establish people groups, cultures, languages and differences (multiethnicity), to the grievous brokenness that quickly dominates the earth. From the Table of Nations to the tower of Babel. From affirmation and embrace of the glorious fullness of God’s gifts to the need for confession, lament and repentance. In short, to the reality of sin. In order for us to fully and honestly participate in God’s Kingdom of reconciliation, we must examine our brokenness, individually and corporately. As we examine the biblical accounts of idolatry, ethnic division, prejudice and minority fears, we are invited to place all of our brokenness under the blessing of God’s undeserved gift of grace and forgiveness. This is our only hope. Thanks be to God.

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Rev. Brenda Salter McNeil, recognized internationally as one of the foremost thought-leaders in reconciliation, is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church and on the pastoral staff of Quest Church in Seattle, WA. In her book, Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice, she helps to set the tone that we are seeking at Pasadena Covenant as we begin our year-long focus examining the Brilliance of the Multiethnic Kingdom. Here are some of her reflections:

It’s vital in the task of restoration, however, that we experience enough safety to open ourselves to one another and allow hope to penetrate the dark places between us.

Reconciliation is possible only if we approach it primarily as a spiritual process that requires a posture of hope in the reconciling work of Christ and a commitment from the church to both be and proclaim this type of reconciled community.

The challenge comes in accepting that if there is any hope of birthing new life, chaos must be part of the environment for a time.

My hope isn’t that we change the social order but instead that, like Jesus and his disciples, we build small cadres of the Beloved Community that can infiltrate society and change it from the inside out over time.

In small and big ways, we give people glimpses of what the future vision looks like. This is our mission, and we must never lose hope, knowing that God has the power to bring the kingdom — on earth as it is in heaven. God has the power to bring shalom.

What we need is an ongoing spiritual process that involves forgiveness, repentance and justice that transforms broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flourish

Amen, Sister Brenda, Amen. Let us all continue to pray for the Spirit to help us in our weakness, as we have conversations and prayers around ethnicity, race, discipleship, reconciliation and being the Beloved Community in a world that desperately needs shalom. 

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

We all seem ripe for a blessing of peace this week. As the days and our hearts feel heavy with the weight of all of the painful events of these past months, as we make our best efforts to enter into fall and the new school year, may we all know the peace of Christ that passes all understanding.

Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the gentle night to you

Moon and stars pour their healing light on you
Deep peace of Christ
Of Christ, Of Christ, the light of the world to you
Deep peace of Christ to you

Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the gentle night to you

Moon and stars pour their healing light on you
Deep peace of Christ
Of Christ, of Christ, the light of the world to you
Deep peace of Christ to you.

            John Rutter

Gaelic Blessing

View video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qvMFlL62XA

Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Here are some Scripture prayers that we can all pray for each other as we persevere under challenging pandemic circumstances - beginning a new school year, juggling work and home needs, dealing with loneliness, depression, exhaustion, health issues, fears, irritability and weariness. Take heart, from Eugene Peterson's The Message:

We pray that you'll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.  
                                     Colossians 1

Is anyone crying for help? God is listening, ready to rescue you. If your heart is broken, you'll find God right there; If you're kicked in the gut, he'll help you catch your breath.
                                    Psalm 34:17-18

Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.  
                                 1 Corinthians 13:13

Take the old prophets as your mentors. They put up with anything, went through everything, and never once quit, all the time honoring God. What a gift life is to those who stay the course! You've heard, of course, of Job's staying power, and you know how God brought it all together for him in the end. That's because God cares, cares right down to the last detail.  
                                    James 5:10-11

Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Out of words myself this week, I relish these poems from Christian writer of poetry and essays Luci Shaw at age 91, in her new book The Generosity. She reflects on this anxious time which we find ourselves, reminding us that the Spirit has us tethered…
 
VIRUS
 
The absurdity of a world
on its knees, behind its doors,
whose fingers, even, may be traitors
and whose breath, created for living,
may breed death. Its instruction:
Split up. Stay apart. This is now
The ultimate act of friendship.
 
Like the moon of light at the bottom
of the well, hope shines small,
But if we stay, head over edge,
we may watch the deep water shimmer
with supple possibilities. At noon
a pale sun shines, telling us
we may still live in the light.
 
HOW?
 
How shall we sing the Lord’s songs
in a strange land? The old rhythms,
the melodies of praise, strangle
in our throats and the words
fall to the ground like leaves in autumn.
The air thickens with suspicion and doubt
and who’s to say anymore, what
is true enough to last, to prevail?
 
Isolation feels like a punishment
for offenses we never performed.
 
Let us trust, now the ground under
our feet—that which has proven steady
for generations. Look up. The heavens
are still there unclouded beatific.
We breathe, even though masks clothe
our faces. Prayer surrounds us, close
as our skin, weaving for us garments of
trust and solace. Even in our isolation
we are joined in love, never alone.
 
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

My race/antiracist reading list this summer includes some of the usual suspects (Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram Kendi, among others). But just as crucially, I’ve been spending time with Mildred D. Taylor’s Logan family. Outspoken, whip-smart Cassie Logan entered my girls’ life in the fourth grade, when they first discovered her story in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Unusually for Depression-era Mississippi, Cassie’s tightly-knit Black family owned their land, and the book tells of a year when they fought to keep it. I adore Cassie and her brothers, their no-nonsense grandma and their wise, thoughtful parents. I remember the girls’ extensive classroom discussions about racism, and it was also important for them to encounter a Black protagonist who was not a slave.

 We also read and loved Taylor’s powerful sequel, Let the Circle Be Unbroken. I’ve reread both books this summer, and they are as rich and compelling now as they were years ago. But there’s more to their story, and I’ve been relishing and learning from the new-to-me chapters of the Logan family saga. Taylor’s 2001 prequel, The Land, chronicles the childhood of Cassie’s biracial grandfather, Paul-Edward Logan, and his quest to acquire his own land. Born to a plantation owner and a slave woman, Paul-Edward has to reckon with his heritage and make his own way, and he does both with strength and spirit. I also picked up The Road to Memphis, which follows the teenage Cassie, her brother Stacey and several friends as they spirit a friend out of town after a racially charged altercation with three white men. (Bonus: the reissued paperbacks feature covers by 2020 Caldecott Medalist Kadir Nelson, who recently illustrated a New Yorker cover featuring George Floyd.) 

 Taylor’s concluding Logan novel, All the Days Past, All the Days to Come, picks up Cassie’s story in adulthood. She travels the country as part of the postwar Great Migration, finds both love and grief in California, and goes back home to Mississippi to participate in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Taylor returns to her perennial themes of justice, equality, fierce pride and the Logans’ deep love for their land and one another. If you and your family are looking for great read-aloud books, Mildred Taylor will stir your hearts about the painful black experience in America.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. — Jeremiah 17:7-8

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Matthew 5:3

Most of us want to be independent, resourceful, and resilient. We prefer to be the ones who help others, rather than need help ourselves. When Jesus says happy and to be congratulated are those who find it hard to make life work sometimes, it all sounds counter-intuitive. And that’s true – so much of what Jesus teaches goes against what we think is usually the case.

Interestingly, the words of Jesus in Luke are not so much about those who are “poor in spirit,” and struggling with guilt, or feeling inadequate, or anxious about problems too hard to solve, or low in spirits. Luke’s Beatitude says “Blessed are you who are poor,” and by that he means those who don’t have enough money or enough to eat. But that lack of material security also causes poverty in spirit, anxiety about tomorrow, feelings of injustice and just the struggle to keep hoping.

One way or another, we’ve all been in places and times when our own resources are not enough. We may even feel that blessing has passed us by, God’s interests are elsewhere. Jesus’ words make a promise. When we are at our lowest, God is there, in strength, in grace, and in the power of a love that understands those deep longings we all have, for life to be fruitful, and for hope to pull us forward.

“For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” is not a promise of something better, sometime; both Matthew and Luke promise that when we are at our lowest, ours is the Kingdom of heaven. Like treasure discovered in a field, God will not leave us bankrupt. Like seed growing on good ground, fruit will grow out of our lives; like a mustard seed growing into a tree that shelters the birds, so is our faith - and so is God’s kingdom in our hearts.

Blessed are the poor in Spirit… When we reach the place where we run out of resources, ideas, and solutions, we never run out of God’s love for us, or God’s grace to help us. The kingdom of heaven is that place in our lives where we trust God to care for us no matter what. And no matter what, He does…for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
 
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

A kind of weariness has caught up with me this week. (I am on a few days of much-needed vacation). In many ways my life has been nonstop engagement and adaptation since mid-March. Four months later my corner of the world has adapted to the limitations of pandemic. My patients and our congregation I serve are all on Zoom, all the time with the understanding that we will not gather in person again until it is safe for every one of us. This week it has finally hit me, though. Now in these quieter days of summer there is time for me to feel the feelings for myself. Over and over again, I have told people to be gentle with themselves because pandemic magnifies our vulnerabilities. Time to heed my own words.

I read Jacob’s words in Genesis, “Surely, the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” and realize I could say nearly the same thing. Yes, God is in this place, this time of pandemic. I know this is true, and yet, I often forget the power of this truth. Those angels ascending and descending in Jacob’s dream are a lovely metaphor for God’s continued work in the world. God moves through the world, through us, in ways we seldom grasp in the moment. Our failure to notice God does not negate God’s presence, God’s works of love.

Too many of us are simply waiting for pandemic to be over. Too many are already acting as if COVID-19 is not real and poses no threat. Too many of us are not considering how our actions might affect others. We are so desperate to “return to normal” that we are not attending to what God might be asking of us in this very moment. Yes, it’s hard to be without direct human contact. Yes, it’s hard to avoid crowds. Yes, it’s hard to be without a variety of things we have taken for granted. And it is harder for those who don’t have the option of working from home, those who rely on public transportation, those who work in healthcare, and teachers being asked to go back into classrooms, and many others who cannot distance themselves from others due to circumstances. The reality is that pandemic is hard for all of us in different ways. Pretending that everything is “normal” also gets in the way of recognizing the movement of the Spirit.
 
Psalm 139 reminds us that there is no place we can go where God is not already there. Even in pandemic, God is with us, waiting for us to notice. Right now, God is sowing seeds of goodness, grace, love, forgiveness – seeds of the Kingdom – throughout the world and among us. We know there are those who sow seeds of fear, hatred, division, and violence. Our focus ought to be nurturing the seeds of God’s realm, making sure these seeds grow and bear fruit. While we cannot necessarily remove the other things, we can choose not to nurture them, not to strengthen them, not to let them grow in our lives or in our communities. We don’t need to worry about saving souls; God has that covered. We need to focus on saving lives. We need to do everything in our power to prevent the worsening of this pandemic – everything from adhering to the basics such as wearing a mask and physically distancing to the more complicated decisions of how and when to safely meet in person. In addition, we can fiercely advocate for those who often go unheard and unseen and devalued by those with decision-making power. And we can choose to stop making judgments about how other people are coping with pandemic; most people do the best they can with what they have.
 
Surely, God is in this with us! Even in the moments when we forget or fail to notice, God is present and moving in the world. May we trust God’s presence enough to act with loving-kindness toward ourselves, our neighbors, and the whole of Creation.
 
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Skillful Savior, as you build your church from the entire human race, you gather in sinful, broken people who long for your Kingdom. You take us as individuals and build us into so much more than we could ever be on our own—a spiritual house, a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. May your beautiful church flourish everywhere!

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation