The holding cross in the photo is made of olive wood and was given to me as a gift at a time when peace was hard to come by. 

 Holding it this morning and praying for the peace of Jerusalem and Gaza, I'm aware of the contested soil on which this wood was grown, and long ago, the soil on which stood that one cross amongst the countless thousands Rome manufactured and utilized as instruments of terror, oppression and control.

Over the years the cross has shaped itself to my hand, or perhaps my hand has simply become familiar with its shape, weight and texture. Either way the cruciform shape, gripped in praying hands, is an acknowledgement of the world's anguish and the pain of God in Christ. 

 "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1.19-20)

 May it be so!

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

            The reason I speak to them in parables is that
            ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen,
             nor do they understand.’
                      —Matthew 13.13


I rest the Bible in my lap.
Pick it up again, read again,
set the Bible down.
A moment. Then
I stumble through the parable
one more time.
Nothing comes.
This is not bad,
maybe even as it should be.

I go out into the woods.
I sit on an old stump and say,
“But what does this mean?”
and laugh at myself.
I sit longer, listening,
and then listening,
till at least I hear the air,
and something inside something
speaks silently to something
inside me.

Is it any different when I listen
to a neighbor?

I am learning to repent of my certainty,
to simply be mindful
that I don’t know,
to keep listening for what I haven’t heard.
To receive what is offered
without compulsion to master it,
to grasp, to understand.
Just listen and wonder.
Let the silences speak to each other.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. (Isaiah 43) 

n recent months I have been very aware that many in our church family have been suffering in various ways, it seems to be a particularly heavy time with much illness and other difficulties. I have the privilege of serving you and therefore of knowing many of the things you are going through. I also see the ways you care for one another and uphold each other in times of need. A church family is just that, a group of people intimately connected to one another in Christ, who journey together through the joys and the sorrows of life.

Times of hardship and ill health force us to rely on each other more. That’s not a bad thing! We are not made to live in isolation from each other – we are made to be part of a family. That’s why we pray for each other, encourage each other and serve each other when we are in need. 

That’s why it’s so important to be connected with a small group or social group within the church. Our Sunday morning gatherings are great but can’t provide for all our spiritual needs. We need places where we feel carried and can help to carry others to the God who will always be with us.  

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

It has been a week of ordinariness: tending to a sink leak, doing my fixed hours of psychotherapy sessions, grocery shopping and meal planning, weekly chores, myriad emails, evening phone calls when I know folks are home, watching Teddy put his face in the water at his last swim lesson for awhile, paying bills, weeding the front beds, finishing an amazing book, and trying to get enough sleep. As I reflect on these unremarkable days, Tish Harrison Warren’s words from Liturgy of the Ordinary came to mind and I had to track down this paragraph to share:

Alfred Hitchcock said movies are ‘life with the dull bits cut out.’ Car chases and first kisses, interesting plot lines and good conversations. We don’t want to watch our lead character going on a walk, stuck in traffic, or brushing his teeth—at least not for long, and not without a good soundtrack. We tend to want a Christian life with the dull bits cut out. Yet God made us to spend our days in rest, work, and play, taking care of our bodies, our families, our neighborhoods, our homes. What if all these boring parts matter to God? What if days passed in ways that feel small and insignificant to us are weighty with meaning and part of the abundant life that God has for us? Christ’s ordinary years are part of our redemption story. Because of the incarnation and those long unrecorded years of Jesus’ life, our small, normal lives matter…If Christ spent time in obscurity, then there is infinite worth in obscurity…There is no task too small or too routine to reflect God’s glory and worth.

Good words to ponder.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation 

A story from one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye:

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: 
“If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” 
Well — one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. 
“Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
“Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?” 
The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, 
“No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later. Who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”
We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies — little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — from her bag — and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands — had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate — once the crying of confusion stopped — seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

This is the world I want to live in; this is the church I want to be in the world. The shared world. A sacred canopy of trust.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation 

"Give us this day our daily bread" is one of those lines in the Lord's prayer that, for me, is a mnemonic device to make sure as I lead a congregation in saying it my mind doesn't skip a track. In the center of a prayer about the hallowing of God's name, the coming of the Kingdom, the forgiveness of sins and scary temptations there is a loaf. God's will is done and his Kingdom comes when people have daily bread. Daily bread, a phrase that sounds straightforward in English but which translates a word used nowhere else in Greek literature. The classicists and linguists have had a field day suggesting its meaning, but the more settled view is that it means 'bread for the coming day'. So, if I pray it in the morning I'm thinking of today; if I pray it at night, I'm looking to tomorrow. Either way bread enough for one day—and this prayer reflected a society in which people were paid daily. Think about it, if you're sick and can't work, how do you eat?

Jesus knew about bread, and about hunger, about the rich and the poor, the powerful and the vulnerable. "Give us this morning bread for the day...Give us tomorrow bread for the day..." The same Jesus looked on a hungry crowd and multiplied five loaves and two fishes into an ad hoc food bank. That act of extravagant mercy is defining of the church, bread for the hungry, rest for the weary, a place to sit down and be nourished, space to be human. "Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it" and so the Eucharist was handed to the church in broken bread gratefully shared. No, the church isn't a food bank, it is a mountainside with loaves and fishes; and it is a community which resists the iron systems of economic discrimination, which calls in question cash value by demonstrating the genius for generosity.

Give us this day our daily bread, Lord.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation 

Breathe on me, breath of God:
fill me with life anew,
that I may love as you have loved
and do as you would do.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
until my heart is pure,
until my will is one with yours
to do and to endure.

Breathe on me, breath of God;
fulfil my heart's desire,
until this earthly part of me
glows with your heavenly fire.

Breathe on me, breath of God;
so shall I never die,
but live with you the perfect life
of your eternity.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

More Doors in Scripture

Acts 16:25-26 “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly a strong earthquake shook the foundations of the prison. At once all the doors flew open and everyone’s chains came loose.”

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Gal. 5.1) I wonder if Paul was remembering that night in Philippi when he wrote those words. Charles Wesley likewise, “My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.” When Jesus comes chains fall off, and doors fly open!
 
1 Corinthians 16:7-9 “I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.”

“If the Lord permits”. Christian life isn’t about always getting what we want. Sometimes the Lord opens doors and in saying yes, we have to say no to other things. Obedience to God’s call is the only way to serve God effectively. “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
 
James 5:8-9 “Be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Don’t grumble against each other brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door.”

James is a no-nonsense apostle. He knows that grumbling is an inner form of judging others. The judgmental spirit is like friction that wears away the woven fabric of a community. The Lord is near. God knows our hearts, inside out. The opposite of grumbling is gratitude. Grumbling, is when we pay too much attention to other people’s faults, and too little attention to our own inner critical spirit. The Judge is standing at the door – of our home, office, church, heart.
 
Revelation 4:1 “After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this."

The open door is a window. Revelation gives us a glimpse into the worship of heaven. We hear hymns, reverberating around the throne, giving glory to the Lamb of God. That door standing open, is like us standing at the door of a crowded auditorium, hearing the most glorious music vibrate through our souls. And we are invited to join in, our voices blending with theirs in the biggest ever scratch Messiah!

‘You are worthy, our Lord and God,
    to receive glory and honour and power,
for you created all things,
    and by your will they existed and were created.’
 

Grace and peace,  

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation 

Revelation 3:20 “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with them, and they with me.”

Jesus has never been a gate-crasher. God is not sheer force banging on the door of our lives. God is love. Not sentimental, hand-wringing love, but the strong, patient love that has existed eternally in the heart of God. The one who knocks on the door of our lives, comes in the humility of God, seeking our answering love. And the hand that knocks bears the scars that are the proof of that love.

Revelation 3:8 “I know your deeds. See, I place before you an open door that no-one can shut. I know you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”

God is our strength, and there is an ever-open door into God’s presence. All around the world Christians face opposition, persecution, all kinds of closed doors. The door that no one can shut is the door into the presence of the God who is “an ever present help in time of trouble.” We don’t always have strength, but we do have God’s words of promise, and he knows our deeds, and our hearts.

John 20:6 “A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Read that again. Locked doors can’t keep Jesus out. Normally we lock doors to stay safe, to keep us in. The disciples were scared, demoralized and finding safety in numbers. Their real safety was the discovery that Jesus was loose in the world, their world. Faith in the resurrection isn’t just believing in the empty tomb; it’s believing that just as the rock-solid door of the grave gave way to the Risen Christ, that same Lord comes to us no matter how strong the barriers of our fears.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

LOVE DEEPLY

 
Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But this should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds.
         The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you. They will become part of your self and gradually build a community within you.
                  Those you have deeply loved become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you. The wider the community of your heart, the wider the community around you. Thus, the pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear. 

Henri Nouwen
The Inner Voice of Love

Grace and peace,  

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation