Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4
How can we be joyful in a moment like this? Ross Gay responds “How can we not?” Poet, writer, community gardener (Bloomington community orchard), professor of English at Indiana University, he trains his gaze to see the wonderful alongside the terrible, attends to and meditates on what he loves, even in the midst of difficult realities and as a part of working for justice. I have recently been reading Gay’s The Book of Delights, his marvelous volume of essays written daily over the course of a difficult year. He writes as a bi-racial man, attuned to the complexity of living in America, calling for joy and inviting his readers to NOTICE, to practice, to think and write about delight every day:
“It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study. A month or two into this project delights were calling to me: Write about me! Write about me! Because it is rude not to acknowledge your delights, I’d tell that that though they might not become essayettes, they were still important, and I was grateful to them. Which is to say, I felt my life to be more full of delight. Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight. I also learned this year that my delight grows—much like love and joy—when I share it.”
As far as I know, Ross Gay is not a follower of Jesus but his exhortation to cultivate delight is very much in line with the Psalmist David’s “Take delight in the Lord”, an answer to the problem of what is to become of evil and evildoers. Focus on the ways that God is visible and revealed in this world, risk delight in the face of the hard things before us. And God will be found. And the Kingdom will come on earth, as it is in heaven.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
"A waiting person is a patient person. The word “patience” means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her womb." Henri Nouwen, The Path of Waiting
How are you doing with hope? Are you able to patiently keep believing that underneath all of what is roiling our broken world are the steadfast promises and forward-moving Kingdom of God? It is challenging to ‘nurture the moment’ when the crises of anti-blackness and police brutality, immigration and civil rights are filling our every screen. Let's think of this waiting and hoping as a mental and spiritual positioning within the big world filled with pain, suffering, joy and beauty of which we're a part, even as we are staying in place. I join you in seeking patience, even as we take actions that the Spirit is prompting to live out the gospel in its fullness!
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Are you seeing the photos of the amazing sourdough starters people are concocting, reading proclamations of folks taking up new hobbies, renovating rooms and backyards, adopting puppies, successfully purging every closet and storage bin and offering these accomplishments up for affirmation and envy on social media? Good job everyone, but for some people, just getting through each day is enough.
How about we give everybody a break?
This is hard. To live with continuous uncertainty about what is next, to make daily adaptations that make it possible to work from home and not lose heart. It is hard to meet all of your kids changing needs, help them to bear all of the losses in this time of sheltering and have the resilience to survive their frustrations and meltdowns. You don’t have to be good at living in a pandemic, at least not every day. You can have horrible days where everyone goes to their room to be on their screens and you chuck lunch in there because you are all done seeing each other. You can reach the end of your patience and reboot over and over again because that’s what it takes to live such a disrupted, unnatural life.
Maybe this great pause isn’t an opportunity to be productive, but rather an opportunity to ask ourselves why we think our self-worth is tied to production. Maybe we finally learn how to be with ourselves. Maybe each of us learning to be a little kinder to our own selves and each other, to be a little more patient, to be a little more generous would change the world way more than one person being hyper-productive. This inner work is hard. It is painful, and it is going to take time and right now we have that. We just keep keeping on the best we can and don’t give up, like practicing an instrument or a dance or a skill.
And maybe somedays are pajama days. Maybe somedays are cry and yell and then apologize and try again days. We don’t have to be good at this. I am not even sure we have to try to be good at this every day. Take a lot of naps. Do nothing. Brag about that. No one is good at this, we are all just practicing. This is ordinary discipleship—living each day in front of and in conversation with a loving God who will supply what we need to just practice being faithful and gracious. That is enough.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Here we are again, in the long stretch of Ordinary Time in the church calendar, with all the big holidays and celebrations over. The first half of the Christian year, ranging from Advent to Pentecost was devoted to tracing the grand arc of God’s saving action in Jesus Christ. Now we are in the everyday stretch where we have space to find our place in God’s story.
And we are in a pandemic, a global pause to shelter-in-place and face into our fragility and vulnerability. Our cities are filled with traumatic distress, protests and marches that erupt into violent confrontations. Is this a moment that will lead to transformative change?
This is a time for listening, for practicing empathy as Pastor Steve exhorted us Wednesday. And it is a time for listening to the history of God’s people who prayed to and contended with their God over injustice, heartache, unsatisfied longings and the brokenness of the world in which they lived. Our summer sermon series begins this week with Nehemiah and ends in mid-September with the intimate prayers of Jesus with his Father. And each month we will have a church-wide prayer vigil—to help us lean in and offer our prayers together to the God who hears. Come Lord Jesus.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
From Ruth Haley Barton, Transforming Center:
One of the strangest moments in the disciples’ life with Jesus might have been that conversation where he is trying to talk to them about his impending death (John 9) and then says, “It is to your advantage that I go away.” At that moment I’m sure they could not have imagined how that could possibly be true. To them, the physical presence of Jesus right there with them had been their greatest good; but they would soon learn differently. For us as Christians, one of the most confounding things about this pandemic is the need to practice social distancing and almost complete withdrawal into our own homes. And yet, to refrain from gathering and hugging and passing the peace and ministering with the sign of the cross goes against everything we know and practice. The cancellation of group gatherings where we can be physically, emotionally and spiritually present with one another along with being prohibited from participating in our normal in-person connections with family and friends is excruciatingly difficult, in part because it feels unloving.
And that is why this statement from Jesus is oddly helpful and encouraging. It points out that there are moments when it IS loving to “go away”—and clearly this is one of them. In our current situation, to stay away is as an expression of love and care for others as much (if not more) as it is protection for ourselves; seeing this “staying away” as a loving gesture helps somehow. Henri Nouwen comments, “In Jesus’ absence a new and more intimate presence became possible, a presence which nurtured and sustained and created the desire to see him again.”
My guess is that once we make it through this crisis, we will never again take for granted the ability to gather, the privilege of being together body and soul. Our desire to be together again will be strong and sweet and will nurture something new among us. We know what happened to the disciples after Jesus went away: his Spirit came to them in a most dramatic way as tongues of fire resting upon their heads in the Upper Room. Against the backdrop of Jesus’ physical absence, they experienced a new reality—the reality of presence in absence.
So I wonder if this, too, is something God wants to be teaching us—what it means to be present even when we’re absent. Even as we seek ways of staying connected with those whom God has given us and continue to do ministry in creative and caring ways, we might also trust that absence can foster a different kind of intimacy and presence. By prayerfully holding those we love in God’s presence even when we can’t be physically present, we might experience something of what Rosemary Dougherty describes: “In spiritual community, there is a bonding that goes beyond human expectations…At times the strength of spiritual community lies in the love of people who refrain from getting caught in the trap of trying to fix everything for us, who pray for us and allow us the pain of our wilderness and our wants, so that we might become more deeply grounded in God.”
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:8
I needed this reminder recently and perhaps you do too. These words are a touchstone that serve as not only wise guidance, but permission, yes permission, to at least occasionally turn thoughts away from the breaking evening news, away from fears, away from sorrow, away from grievances, away from social media trivialities, away from [fill in the blank], and toward what is noble and right and pure and lovely and excellent and praiseworthy.
There are lots of reasons to stock our minds well:
To be catalyzed, expanded, and ignited. Those of us who have battled a blah spirit and lifeless mind upon occasion in this pandemic won't find it difficult to draw a link between the state of our spirit and the state of our mind.
To stay optimistic and not lose hope or vibrancy. The world is full of wonderful things.
To know the richness, vastness, and beauty of that which has been divinely created.
To form a solid foundation from which to launch action.
To be equipped for creativity and resilience for the days to come.
It's always OK to be a student of what you've already learned long ago and have needed to learn again and again. May your day be one of joy and hope. The world is full of wonderful things.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
For most of us, the coronavirus pandemic represents a completely unprecedented circumstance, as novel as it is life-changing. No event in recent history has affected us as profoundly and pervasively. Not only does it remind us of our physical fragility, it undermines economic security, throws daily routines topsy-turvy, wreaks havoc on plans and isolates us from friends and neighbors. The stressful external forces this pandemic unleashed are exerting a deep internal effect (I am revealing my bi-vocational identity as a pastor-psychologist here). This crisis has introduced wide-ranging uncertainty and we are all chronically aroused and stimulated by the stress, while at the same time there is a daily repetitiveness that can be wearyingly familiar and mind-numbing after ten weeks of confinement. These are REALLY difficult circumstances for all of us to deal with personally and professionally, not to mention as a church body who longs to be together and do ministry, when the conditions are right.
Many people are feeling restless, frustrated, concerned about the effect a shelter-at-home summer is going to have on their already frazzled kids. Others are beyond ready to resume life beyond home and are itching to move beyond this current phase of restriction. Some are anxious about a premature effort to restart that might mean trouble later. What do we do?
Your pastoral staff and leadership team are deeply aware of these tensions and conflicting forces. Our deepest desire is to discern well the best practices for emerging from this quarantine, to remain surrendered to the Spirit as we consider every aspect of what is at stake moving forward. We love you all and want to be wise as we make decisions!
Our Town Hall gathering on Sunday the 24th at 10:30 is to let you know the “state of the church” and the issues we are thinking about as we ponder what it means to return to campus in the future. Please continue to pray vigorously for God’s guidance, for those in our community who are experiencing great hardship or health/mental health challenges and for each of to “clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and peace.” (Colossians 3:12)
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Reflections on Psalm 23
Shepherding God, my desire is to follow you to those green pastures and still waters. I want to rest in you. Yet, rest is rare in these days of crisis, and stillness is fraught with exhaustion. Caring for your people, and finding the right path through this deep valley weighs heavily on my spirit. I often forget that you are with me and that it is your ways that I seek. Awaken me once again to your presence that I may live in your pastures even now.
Restoring and renewing God, you know my heart even before I do. You know the fears I will not give voice to, and you know the dreams I hardly dare to acknowledge. May the whispers of your spirit bring a new assurance and restore peace to my soul. With every budding flower and every soaring bird, I am reminded that you are at work restoring Creation. Yours is always a promise of new life. Grant me the courage to trust that promise.
Ever-present God, it isn’t evil that I fear, exactly. It is the anger, the despair that drives some people to aggression or selfishness. I fear the ignorance propagated by inadequate public leadership. I fear the desperation that grows in so many of my neighbors. I fear the frailty of this body of mine. Enter into these fears, God of life, and renew a right spirit within me.
Comforting God, you are present even now amid COVID-19. While faith will not protect me or anyone else from this virus, your Love can guide humanity if we let it. We can show up for our neighbors who have lost loved ones, employment, hope. We can share resources and not hoard them for ourselves. We can find hope for this world, for humanity, for a future unlike our past. If we rely on your Love, it becomes possible to address the brokenness highlighted by this crisis. Guide us all onto the path that will end all fear of the “other” and heal divisions we have created.
Merciful and healing God, I am at a loss for words when it comes to the suffering of so many. It is hard to believe that healing will come. It is hard to believe that the whole world won’t sink into despair that is impossible to rise out of. Yet, you promise all who seek you will find goodness and mercy. May this be true for those who are grieving… for those who struggle with symptoms of mental illness… for those who have no hope… for those who believe the lies of the politicians… for the politicians themselves… Guide us all to the cup that overflows.
God of life and Love, you have opened the gate of possibility for us all. We can give in to fear or we can choose Love. Forgive me for the moments when Love seems impossible and wholeness seems elusive. You are the gate to new life, to abundant life. Abundance of joy and Love and forgiveness and mercy and so much more are possible even in this time. Fill me with gratitude for all that I have and enable me to pass through your gate to live a life of generosity and grace.
In gratitude and hope, I pray. Be with all who struggle to live in hope and Love. Be with all who risk their lives for the sake of others. Be with all who are surrounded by death. May every human being experience the wonders of your Love and the life of abundance you freely offer. Awaken the hearts and minds of every dreamer and visionary to speed the day of hope and healing for all people. In the meantime, teach me anew what it means to trust in you – in your presence, in your Love, in your grace, in your mercy, in your forgiveness that I may share your abundance with all whom I meet. In the name of the One who came to teach us how to Love one another, Amen.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Sometimes only poetry helps me to find words for what I am experiencing. During this pandemic, April is National Poetry Month. This week I needed Wendell Berry:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
As I was reflecting on the “shelter in place” that we are all practicing, the phrase “stay put” came to my mind. The Oxford English Dictionary describes “stay put” as a colloquialism that originated in the US in the mid-19th century. The OED defines the verbal phrase as meaning “to remain where or as placed; to remain fixed or steady; also fig. (of persons, etc.).” This everyday hanging out in our houses until further notice, for the sake of the common good, also reminds me of the Benedictine rule for monastic life: to stay put in one place (stability), listen well to God (attentive obedience) and be changed by God (conversion through lifelong conversation). So much of ordinary life falls under this rubric.
Could staying in place be a pilgrimage for us during this stressful, uncertain time? I’m not interested in spiritualizing a very serious global disaster, but perhaps there is an invitation for us to reconsider how we live. We tend to think that movement is good, particularly up the ladder, up the power grid, up the chain of command, up the salary structure, up up up. Or at least movement of any pleasant variety: seeing the world, visiting all the new restaurants, being free and unrestricted. It will be awhile before those are our options. Is that the life to which we want to return?
We are not all called to be Benedictines or to follow their rule, but it can be both rewarding and challenging to re-imagine how staying in place is part of a high calling. Thinking about this time as an opportunity to be spiritually formed helps us walk continually in the presence of God. In order to open our ears to God’s voice and our eyes to God’s presence among us, Benedict tells us we must keep our hearts and minds open to the ways that God is moving us, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.
What are you to be about sitting at the same window every morning? Sitting in the same chair, sitting at the same computer, lying in the same bed? Serving your family hour after hour? A you juggle conflicting priorities, negotiate broadband issues, soothe hurt feelings and manage cabin fever, to whom are you listening? What do you hear? How are you being changed?
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation