“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” Fred Rogers

As I scroll though my Facebook feed it is so easy to just be angry, depressed and just want to give up.  We have been practicing social distancing for what seems to be forever, and we are now seeing the injustices of our racial biased culture come to a head, again.  We are tired, weary, anxious, angry and we wonder what can I do to help? How can I make a difference when I am stuck inside?  We have been hearing that staying home makes a difference, so we do that, but we want to do more.  What else can we do? We can listen.  We can listen to the ones that our culture has harmed for so long, we can listen to their pain.  We can offer our support, our solidarity and ask for their forgiveness.  We have also seen amazing pictures and reports of police listening to protestors, putting down their shields and showing solidarity with those who have been harmed for so long.  These pictures give me hope. How do we help? We listen without judgement, without interrupting and making our excuses, without saying but that is not what I think nor how I believe.  We need to listen to the pain that our society has inflected and let it sit with us and that is humbling and hard to do.

I participated in an interfaith book group that read The Book of Forgiveness by Bishop Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu.  It is a book of hope and can help us find a new way to be in relationship with ourselves, family, and whole groups of society who we need forgiveness from.  It can help us become helpers and live out our faith in a more complete way.  I believe that this is one of the ways we can move forward in our country. In this book Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Chair of The Elders, and Chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with his daughter, the Reverend Mpho Tutu, offer a manual on the art of forgiveness—helping us to realize that we are all capable of healing and transformation.

Tutu’s role as the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission taught him much about forgiveness. If you asked anyone what they thought was going to happen to South Africa after apartheid, almost universally it was predicted that the country would be devastated by a comprehensive bloodbath. Yet, instead of revenge and retribution, this new nation chose to tread the difficult path of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Each of us has a deep need to forgive and to be forgiven. After much reflection on the process of forgiveness, Tutu has seen that there are four important steps to healing: Admitting the wrong and acknowledging the harm; Telling one’s story and witnessing the anguish; Asking for forgiveness and granting forgiveness; and renewing or releasing the relationship. Forgiveness is hard work. Sometimes it even feels like an impossible task. But it is only through walking this fourfold path that Tutu says we can free ourselves of the endless and unyielding cycle of pain and retribution. The Book of Forgiving is both a touchstone and a tool, offering Tutu’s wise advice and showing the way to experience forgiveness. Ultimately, forgiving is the only means we have to heal ourselves and our aching world.

We have a lot of kingdom work to do and it will be difficult; however, I have hope.  We are all God’s children and all the red, yellow, black, and white children are all precious in His sight.  We need to live into that and act like we really do believe that.  When we help others, we show God’s love and for better or worse that is how God tends to work in this world of our, through our actions. 

Gracious and Loving God, create in us a heart that will listen to pain, pain of injustice, pain of depression, pain of loneliness, fear and change.  Help us to humble ourselves and accept the pain that we have caused.  Help us to be the hope in this world, help us to bring peace. Help us to work together and create a nation that more closely reflects what you call us to be.
Amen

Blessings, Suzanne

Hungry, I come to you, for I know you satisfy. I am empty, but I know your love does not run dry.
So I wait for you. So I wait for you. I’m falling on my knees, offering all of me.  
Jesus, you’re all I’m living for.                                                                                                                          
Broken, I come to you, for your arms are open wide; I am weary, but I know your touch restore my life. 
So I wait for you. So I wait for you. I’m falling on my knees, offering all of me.  
Jesus, you’re all I’m living for. 

By Kathryn Scott

I have been singing these words since service on Sunday. I can’t get them out of my head, I don’t think I want to get them out of my head, my mind, my heart and my Spirit have become weary.  

For a couple of months we have been witnesses to so much illness, pain and death, from the Covid-19 virus to the surmounting injustice. All I can say is that we are a broken and hurting people. When I find myself wondering what can be done to change this or any situation, I believe I must first ask God to show me where the brokenness is within myself, calling it, naming it, and allowing God to begin the healing process within me. I believe in times like this we all are called to ask God where in our lives we need to be changed. Is it our words, thoughts, actions or the lack there of? If we are not open for God to show us what needs to be done and willing to do the hard work then our faith, our words, our actions become stagnate and mean nothing. 

Spiritual work is not easy, it’s a journey, it’s often painful. Confronting our standard ways, catching and stopping ourselves and or our family and friends, putting yourself out there to say “that’s unacceptable” and stand for the marginalized within our circle of influence is what we are called to do and who we are called to be. For what has the Lord required of us? To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. (Micah 6:8) We all have influence somewhere, it may not be huge or mighty. You may think you are not powerful enough to make any difference,but God’s strength is made perfect in our weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:9).

So may I ask of all of you if you will join with me, to go before God and offer ourselves, to lay down what needs to be changed within us at Jesus feet so that we may be renewed as a people of God so we may go forth into a hurting world and be the change we believe there should be. Lord in your mercy…

Creator, open our hearts to peace and healing between all people. Creator, open our hearts to provide and protect all children of the earth. Creator, open our hearts to respect for the earth, and all the gifts of the earth. Creator, open our hearts to end exclusion, violence, and fear among all. Thank you for the gifts of each day. Amen.
A Native American prayer

Blessings,

Brenda

I have 2 brothers and 3 sisters.  We are scattered all over the country.  My two oldest sisters live in Hawaii where my mom also resides.  Another sister lives in Rhode Island and I have a brother in Washington State and another brother who lives a couple of blocks from me in Huntington Beach. Even though we live apart from each other we have always kept in contact through our group chat that we have named 6 kids and a mom.  My 91-year-old mom chimes in occasionally but most of the activity comes from the siblings. I have always enjoyed the conversations that pop up. 

As we all started hunkering down in our homes the conversations have increased. My brother Phillip one day sent us a quote that meant something to him.  He gave us the initials and we had to guess who had spoken those words. His original plan was to share 7 quotes one a day. But we were all enjoying the connection with each other and he continued the next day and the next each day sharing a new quote.  The guessing continued and conversations were sparked about the relevance or what the quote meant to us. There has been some fun with it as well as he throws in a quote here and there from our family history.  These quotes have given us much laughter.  Some of his quotes have stumped us and my brother in law resorted to Google.  He was dubbed a “cheater” and was disqualified from guessing the next day.  

The meaning of the quotes has been valuable but what the real benefit has been for me through all of this has been the connection I have felt with my family who are spread out across the states and the hope that has come from these conversations. Our morning text is something that we all now look forward too each morning.  

I’ll end with this morning’s quote as it was just what I needed to hear today.  

Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise.  V.H.  

No googling.

Dear God, Thank you for the gift of siblings and friends and the history that we share with them that keeps us grounded, help us to learn and grow in new ways. We give thanks for all the people who use their voices throughout history who inspire us to be better give us hope, courage and remind us that we are all your children and loved by you.  Amen

Marty

Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old. 
I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
— Isaiah 43:18-19

Did you watch the launch on Saturday? Did you see the docking on Sunday morning? It was hard to watch and not think back to what has been. I remember the long shots of the Saturn V slowly lifting from the pad. I remember pictures from Mission Control in Houston, full of tubes and wires. I remember the grainy black & white images from the capsule with row after row of switches and dials. This looked so different, so sharp, so close, so clear. Honestly, it looked to me like an Apple Store was being launched, controlled from… an Apple Store. While the suits look a little retro, the overall impression is, “this is new!”

There was tension, too. Of course for me there has been tension ever since Challenger. I hold my breath  every time I hear “go at throttle up.”  I shade my eyes, like I do when I watch a horror movie, and peer through the cracks in my fingers. I felt like I couldn’t cheer until Doug and Bob were connected to the ISS.

Whenever we encounter something new, we try to place it into the framework of our experience.  We will say, “this is like the time…” or “this tastes like chicken…” As we have faced the novel coronavirus (novel, of course, meaning “new” and previously unknown) both scientists and laypeople have attempted to address it from the perspective of what we have previously experienced. This is useful, because if something has worked before against something similar, then it might work on this! When we have faced similar pandemics, we know what can help stop the spread.

Often, however, comparisons might not apply. No, this isn’t just like the Flu. Our previous experience might get in the way. Worse, we often get stuck repeating the mistakes of the past, or the emotions and judgements of our previous experiences prevent us from being open to the new. This is the basis of pre-judging. We make up in our minds about the new before we can even experience them – so we never really comprehend them!

I am convinced that God is doing a new thing in this moment. I don’t mean that God wills, wants, or intends for these hundreds of thousands to die, nor of the millions to suffer. But we might allow ourselves, in this time of crisis, to discover what is truly important to us – what is essential – and to change our lives to better reflect those priorities. 

We learn from the past. We build on the foundation of the past. And God is doing a new thing.
Can you see it?

Open us, O God to the new things you are doing. Move in us to calm our fears and strengthen our confidence. For you are our Rock and our Refuge. Help us to honor the past, to learn from our victories and mistakes, and then to cleanse our hearts and minds in preparation for the new opportunities you bring. Fill us with your love and sense of purpose, that we may boldly go into your new creation. We pray this in the name of Jesus, our companion and guide. Amen.

Pastor George

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called you out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. 
Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.”
1 Peter 2:9-10

New technology often promotes revolutionary change. The development of the printing press spurred the Protestant reformation. With the printed Word of God available to individuals, believers could begin to read scripture for themselves and not rely upon the authority of church leaders. When English monarchs, as leaders of the English Reformation, authorized and commissioned the printing of English translations of the Bible, individual believers were able to understand and interpret the word in their own language. All of this reinforced the idea of a priesthood of all believers. Individuals in community had both the authority and the responsibility to be in relationship with God and to be servants of God in the world.

Of course there were limits to this new technology. It was expensive. Printing presses were cumbersome and slow to work. Only the wealthy could afford complete Bibles. Only those able to read could make use of a printed Bible. More importantly, there would be a sense of loss of the full experience of hearing the Word spoken aloud in a community of believers.

We have been blessed in this time of crisis with new technology to help us stay connected. We are participating in a forced revolution in our lives of work and worship. And yet there are great limits to this technology. Facebook, which is a free service, can be cumbersome. It often slows our feed, so you get glitches and pauses in the stream when you watch at home. Many of us have had to buy new equipment in order to see and be seen, to hear and to be heard online. The learning curve is often steep, and we find ourselves spending the first 25% of a meeting reminding each other how to use Zoom. So, manageability, affordability, and literacy remain blocks to complete participation.

Worst of all is the loss of experience. Zoom meetings are exhausting for many, because they feel so different from being in the room with our coworkers. Streamed worship is not the same as being in the worship space with fellow believers.

— just as I typed these words, my wife shared that there will be no in-person summer camp for the kids, and they have chosen not to participate in the online offering, because it will not be the same experience as being there –

And yet. And yet. It was through that clunky printing press — and through that expensive and demanding printed Word — that a new community came to be. People began to understand that the word and work of God were in their hands. Now it can be through this technology that we understand that we don’t have to be in a room together to be in community together. Through this technology we can understand that every one of our homes is a sanctuary, every one of our hearts is a temple, every one of us is a priest and a servant of God!

And, when we do gather together in person, we will understand in new ways, that we truly are the Body of Christ!

Of course we will always have access to the oldest, simplest, purest, least expensive, and surest means of communicating with the Almighty: prayer.

Gracious and loving God, creator of life, author of innovation, move in our hearts and minds as we open ourselves to new ways of being the church. Help us to remember our core beliefs, and to act on them. Strengthen us as we deepen our relationships with you, with each other, and to the world. We hurt for those whose lives have been taken or harmed by this disease and by the racial animus that motivates so many. Grant us wisdom and courage to speak up, speak out, and act for healing and justice. This we pray through Christ our Savior. Amen.

(Now please excuse me, I need to get to work on a backyard summer camp for the kids!)

Pastor George