We are all living according to our habits, and those habits shape most of our life. And our unconscious choices form us just as much as our conscious ones. A habit is a behavior that occurs over and over again, and often unconsciously. We can be formed in patterns that we might never consciously choose if we were aware of them. 

 In Justin Whitmel Earley’s The Common Rule, he writes:

 Formation is what you practice and do—things that are caught. The most important things in life, of course, are caught, not taught, and formation is largely about the unseen habits. That’s why to fully understand habits you must think of habits as liturgies. A liturgy is a pattern of words or actions repeated regularly as a way of worship. The goal of liturgy is for the participants to be formed in a certain way…Notice how similar the definition of liturgy is to the definition of habit. They’re both something repeated over and over, which forms you; the only difference is a liturgy admits that it’s an act of worship. Calling habits liturgies may seem odd, but we need language to emphasize the non-neutrality of our day-to-day routines. Our habits often obscure what we’re really worshiping, but that doesn’t mean we’re not worshiping something. The question is, what are we worshiping?

At PasCov, we are taking up liturgies for the next few months to introduce and remind ourselves that we want to be formed spiritually by some new communal habits. We want to see how habits shape our hearts. We want to set in place practices that form us to become the lovers of God and neighbor we were created to be. It is the way of Jesus.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Diana Butler Bass wrote recently about pandemic trauma, the dislocations we have all experienced in the past 15 months. We've been dislocated in four major ways:

1) Temporal dislocation
We’ve lost our sense of time as it existed before the pandemic. How often have you thought: What day is this? What time is it? Did I miss an event? What month is it? That’s temporal dislocation.

2) Historical dislocation
We’ve lost our sense of where we are in the larger story of both our own lives and our communal stories. History has been disrupted. Where are we? Where are we going? The growth of conspiracy theories, the intensity of social media, political and religious “deconstructions” – these are signs of a culture seeking a meaningful story to frame their lives because older stories have failed. That’s historical dislocation.

3) Physical dislocation
We’ve lost our sense of embodiment with others and geographical location. For millions, technology has moved “physicality” into cyber-space and most of us have no idea what to do with this virtual sense of location. Without our familiar sense of being bodily in specific spaces, things like gardening, baking, sewing, and painting have emerged as ways of feeling the ground and the work of our hands. We’ve striven to maintain some sort of embodiment even amid isolation. But the disconnection between our bodies, places, and other bodies has been profound. That’s physical dislocation.

4) Relational dislocation
We’ve lost our daily habits of interactions with other humans, the expression of emotions together in community. Have you worried you won’t know how to respond when you can be with your friends without distance, with no masks? How it will feel to be in large groups again? How will work or school feel back in person, with others at the next desk or waiting on customers face-to-face, or in the first in-person meeting? What happens when the plexiglass comes down, the mask is off? That’s relational dislocation.

As we begin to regather, we've been praying that engaging in the spiritual practice of focusing on "Every Moment Holy", noticing and attending to God together in our everyday lives might help us reorient and rejoin each other in the months to come. There are some wonderful liturgies written to help us with this communal practice and each week's sermon will focus on one aspect of paying attention to God in all things.

Take a breath. Settle in. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us and help us to see Jesus.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Reading recently in the New Testament, these words of Paul's shimmered for me: "He will also strengthen you to the end." (I Corinthians 1:8). Yes, please, to strengthening.

I looked up strengthen in my trusty hardcover Webster's New Dictionary for Synonyms—which still sits next to my desk decades after buying it used for $4.98 at Half-Price books—and found these synonyms for strengthen: invigorate, fortify, energize, reinforce. Yes, to all of that. God will strengthen, God will invigorate, God will fortify, energize, reinforce. Ever and always.

If each of us were to make a list of all that has zapped our reserve, our sense of strength, over the past year, I dare to assume that no list would be empty. In God's mercy, may all entries on such a list be converted to strength. May all entries come to eventually commingle generously with joy of the deep and abiding variety. He has promised and he will do it.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

A writer I have just finished reading on the church and racial justice, (Drew Hart, Assistant Professor of Theology at Messiah University, author of who Will be a Witness: Igniting Activism for God’s Justice, Love and Deliverance and Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism) gave a closing commencement prayer of encouragement. I also just watched Steve’s interview in the Wednesday Reflection with Marianne Haver-Hill, with their conversational focus on outreach and evangelism. I think we at PasCov can hear his words as a credo, words to take to heart and live boldly:

In the gospel of John 20:21, the resurrected Jesus says to his disciples “As the Father sent me so I send you.” So I pray that as you go from here you go not only proclaiming the name of Jesus but that Jesus Christ would be preeminent in your life, that you would immerse yourselves in the birth, life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus, that you would take Jesus’ way seriously as you remain attentive to the least, last, and lost, that on your way you would grow in love for your neighbor and your enemies, that God would transform how we view the Samaritans, the poor, and the vulnerable of our own society, and that we would join God’s liberating love, God’s compassionate solidarity and a deepened hope in God’s dream for all creation.

I pray that you would be attentive to God’s presence and the transformation of your mind, body and soul.

‘May you find God in the most broken of places’ [line from Dr Soong-Chan Rah’s commencement address], in the cracks, margins and edges of society.

May we go from here yielded to God’s Spirit, full of grace, mercy and truth with an ever-increasing vision of God’s beloved community.

In the Triune God I pray, Amen.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Friday evenings, from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day, is the neighborhood 'block party' at the Triangle. Many crowd the neighborhood area, camping out with folding chairs, wine and blankets. They eat, drink and socialize. It was never a 'must go' for me; I was just an occasional attendee.

As an introvert, I don't generally love noisy gatherings—this one included. For years, I resisted the crowds and traffic, the chaos of blaring radios, local band music and surging packs of kids roaming the streets. 

Now that party is all I think about. It shimmers like a dream, catches in my throat: the sparkling late afternoon sun, the guitars echoing off the home walls, the smell of grilled food and car exhaust. I want to ask the party for forgiveness, to take me back. I want to walk down the hill and join the festivities, swirling and twirling among my neighbors as much as I want my next breath. 

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation 

And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself.

             Ephesians 3:17-19

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Shepherd me, Jesus.
You know the still waters I need to drink from,
the green pastures my soul needs.
Lead me there.

I think you will lead me to what I desire
but that's wrong! What I desire is you.
Lead me there.

Lead me out of my fears and wants
into the path of your life.

The paths of righteousness 
lead through the dark valley, don't they?
Lead me anyway.
I will follow you,
not my fear.
Even there I shall not want.

Friend, you set a feast for me—
and invite my enemy!
You lead me to come and sit—
and I am in your house,
and my cup overflows.

Beloved, your goodness and mercy have married me.

May they shepherd me
all the days of my life. 

__________________ 
Steve Garnaas-Holmes 
Unfolding Light 

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

In one recent study, around 27 percent of young people report that feelings of isolation, loneliness and lack of social contact are having an effect on their mental health and emotional wellbeing. Among those over 55 years, 71 per cent have struggled with lockdown and the prolonged restrictions on social mixing with friends, family and the wider community. It isn’t hard to imagine the sadness and emotional struggles of folks who need to see familiar faces, hear friendly voices and be in supportive company where they know they matter.

Whatever else the church is, it is a place where loneliness is acknowledged and friendship is offered to everyone. Christian community is about welcome, belonging, sharing, understanding, listening, laughing, reassuring, encouraging, valuing and caring. We are called to embody and practice all of these, but the energy source and motivation is and must be the love of God.

When Paul wrote, “Hope doesn’t disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us” (Rom 5:5), he was telling the church where it could find the resources to be the loving Body of the compassionate Christ. “We love because God first loved us”; our love for others is the overflow of God’s love, channelled through our words, actions and relationships to others. Those early Christians, and just as much, you and I, “Once we were no people, but now we are God’s people; once we had not received mercy but now we have received mercy.” (I Peter 2:10) And so, having freely received, we are called to open our hearts and freely give.

It’s hard to know how and when this pandemic will be over. But however that comes about, here is a cry of the heart from all around us. In a lonely society, we Christians can be conduits of friendship, a community where love and compassion flow freely. We are God’s people, a community of the Gospel, a place of welcome, a safe place in a world that feels unsafe and uncertain. I can think of few more important acts of mission and Good News sharing than us becoming a befriending community reaching out with the welcome of God to people brave enough to admit they are lonely,

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

I’ve been reading Luke 24:13-35 this week, the first post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Though eagerly gathered to hear the miraculous news that was being reported, the disciples were nevertheless terrified when that good news appeared in front of them in all-too-real flesh. What seemed conceivable at one remove — perhaps it had been a ghost on the road to Emmaus — was suddenly, shatteringly, staggeringly present.

We can sympathize with the disciples' confusion, as we struggle to reconcile joy and sorrow, certainty and uncertainty, to experience Easter as unalloyed joy. Those who watched their beloved teacher be crucified and the women at the cross experienced great trauma as they witnessed him suffer injustice. When resurrection came, their joy was immeasurable precisely because it was attached to the trauma. And so, the joy was not a simple thing, like seeing flowers bloom in the spring. It was a joy attached to so many other emotions, a feeling so complex we likely do not have a word for it in the English language.

This is Easter joy.
It does not exclude the suffering world.
It does not silence the witness of injustice.
It does not simplify the problems of evil and suffering to an easy answer.

Easter joy is a symphony of hard, complex emotions.
In his book, Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird points out that when we go in search of peace in prayer, we often find what feels like chaos. But, he says, it is precisely in this meeting of confusion and peace that healing happens. Not by erasing our pain, but by opening a path for grace. The resurrection did not erase the pain of Christ’s passion, nor does it take away our own troubles. I find in this gospel a space where those of us who are rubbed raw by sorrow in the midst of joy, who are simultaneously mourning and rejoicing, can reach for healing. Stretch out your hands to me, says Jesus, touch my wounds and find a glimmer of peace. For I am here with you, wounded and yet whole, to the end of time.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12:23-25

Jesus clearly knew that he was about to die, but also that glory awaited him on the other side. As his followers we suffer too. We grieve and die. And yet, as the apostle Paul says, we ‘do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.’ (1 Thess. 4:13) Our grief is tempered by hope, because, as C. S. Lewis said, “[Death is] only the beginning of the real story… the Great Story, which no one on earth has read which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation