Post Easter Reflection

 The historical truth about authoritarian governments is that subjugation of the masses and cruelty as a cudgel for obedience is the entire point.  The guy at the top is almost always an unusually self-hating narcissist who craves the feeling of being superior to all around him. In the Christian Church this past week, we walked in the steps of one who did not cave in to the narcissistic power structures of the early first century. Rome had it's own problems with subjugated populations from a string of ill Emperors.  At the same time Judaism had it's own unique way of organizing a "power-over religious institution."  Such is the ways of Empire structuring - intimidate all the institutions of a society into worshipping the head and garner their cooperation.

But beginning on Maundy Thursday this past week we were pulled into the acts of remembering to whom and with whom we ultimately and specially belong.  "Maundy" is derived from an Old French word that meant "command or mandate".  Many churches, on this Thursday before Easter, observe foot washing as a liturgical act of remembering Jesus' act of washing the disciples feet and commanding them to "love one another."  It is in loving others (and all of God's created order) that we all flourish.

Good Friday is often observed in visiting the "Stations of the Cross" - the final stopping off places in Jesus' forced travels through the Roman & Jewish gauntlet of legalities to nail him to a cross of state-sponsored shaming.  It was an act to discredit Jesus and threaten would-be followers to tow the line for Rome and "religious authority." 

Holy Saturday is the pause.  The waiting of the world for the final word to drop.  Will death have the final say?

Then the Easter proclamation, first by Mary Magdalene, "the tomb is empty."  Then the appearances of the Risen Jesus start being reported throughout the region.  Death cannot hold this sacred Love that designed creation and set love, acceptance, forgiveness, grace, hope, and peace to nurture and sustain the well-being of all God's creatures. 

That realm, God's realm on earth -- not an authoritarian regime, lets love and kindness loose.  Lets free will and personal sovereignty be the rule of life. Lifts us through blessing and admonitions to thoughtful consideration of purpose with the daily question posed: "Is this the world you want for yourselves, your children, and your children's children?"  If the answer to that question is "Yes!", then remember!  Remember the acts of resistance in grace and purpose that Jesus acted out and taught.  Remember the long string of disciples through the ages who have perpetually harkened back to "The Way of Jesus." Remember and follow him in your daily interactions, your votes, and your voices. 

Sovereignty of Spirit

In response to the Saducces question about which of the seven dead brothers the passed-down wife belongs to:

Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.  Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection."

  -Luke 20:34-36

When I heard this passage read at one of the special Holy Week services, I heard for the first time the freedom this passed-down woman received by Jesus' explanation.  She was no longer bound by the definitions and expectations the death(s) of her husbands (and culture) loaded onto her. She was, for the first time in her life, her own person.  Nobody could tell her who she was or what she could do with her life.  She was as free as angels and children!

The Apostle Paul makes reference to the fact that if we believe in Christ we are also raised as new creatons with him.  Our own resurrections are found in our Christ Life that we live out both in our souls and in our community here and now.  We are no longer strictly bound by the rituals, doctrines, legalisms, and cultures of older times. A New Age has dawned and we are granted Sovereignty of Spirit -- true freedom to fully be the creation God breathed into us from the first moment of our spirit-awareness.  We are free to become the full blossom of Love's fingerprint, stamping our unique identity in this time and the time to come.  Angels celebrate all of us who are in the resurrected life. 

So what new expressions of you do you wish to undertake?  How do you go about finding your sovereign identity?  What supports do you need to put into your life so you take hold firmly of your angel-like freedom? 

What happened to the cloud of witnesses?

When I asked Zelens’kyi why he had remained in Kyiv, he said that he “could not have done otherwise.” Explaining his choice, he began not from the specific predicament, dramatic though it was, and not even from himself. He spoke of his love for his parents, and what he had learned from them. He had not chosen them, and yet in his love for them he was free. He compared that love to the decision to remain in the capital as the war began: something self-evident. Staying was not something he did alone: he was in the company of those who had taught him when he was younger and those who had elected him. He was in the company of others who were also taking risks. He understood the situation, he said, because of what it meant to represent others.

Snyder, Timothy. On Freedom (p. 19). Crown. Kindle Edition. 

In the church we talk often about the "cloud of witnesses."  These are the people, our ancestors and saints, who have gone before us.  Hopefully, they have left us good lessons, vibrant virtues, and positive regard for all humanity.  Their lessons can carry us through life on the humane, gracious, and ethiscal side.  When we are faced with difficulty and hard choices, that company of witnesses keeps our communities and country on a steady compassionate course.

What we're living in today in the United States is a government that has been blinded by greed for money and power to the point that uttter chaos (and cruelty) is raining down on all who lack money, influence, or white/male privilege.  The more egregiously forgotten the words and lessons of our forebearers become (they're actually erasing histories of women and POC) the more moral poverty and physical danger we fall victims to.  

My lifelong involvemtent in the mainline Christian church supplied me with goood lessons from the life of Jesus, good role models, and steady watchful love.  My forebears taught me how to care, how to think for myself, and to always be kind.  I don't begin to understand the world of Donald Trump or Vladamir Putin where life is a constant bitter rage and retribution, where money crowds out all compassion and regard for the dignity of others. 

It is part of my dream for the future, that there is a strong remnant of people in the United States left who have the bravery and conscience to pull the burning embers of criminality, greed, cruelty, and misery from the fire and water them down with decency, thoughtful considerations, and a shoulder to lean on in tought times - no matter your race, sexuality, gender, class, religion, or status. 

Human Dignity

In the Lent II passages of Wilda Gafney's women's lectionary, we hear about Jacob leaving Laban's ranch in the dead of night with Laban's two daughters and a bunch of his flock.  Laban catches up to them and insists Jacob agrees to make a covenant to stay exclusively committed to Laban's daughters. In the Gospel, there is the story of the woman who touched Jesus' garment and received Jesus' healing (and blessing) from more than a decade of constant menstrual flow. In both cases, the women were extended privileges that were not routinely extended to most women in that day. Life in that time for women and any people stuck with any kind of characteristic outside the dominating male culture resulted in exclusion and frequently death or abuse. That has been a human "norm" for eons. 

Humans have had an ugly vocabulary that gets used somewhere in the world daily.  Words like pogrom, misogeny, genocide, segregation, apartheid, terrorism, homophobia, and a slew of epithets demeaning "undesirable" ethnic groups. Frequently, governments or wealthy classes use awful terms to raise their own lofty arrogance and privilege or to build their dominance and social cohesiveness using hate.  They exaggerate despicability of others to seek security for strictly "their own."  It's a disgusting human social quality.

Jesus is pro-human dignity.  In his interaction with this woman, he adopts her problem as his problem.  He calls a halt to the clamoring crowd.  He puts them all on pause, while his complete attention is lovingly directed toward her plight. Many doctors have let her down. She is ostracized by her community. She likely has difficulty meeting basic needs like food and water. She's considered "unclean" and "untouchable" in Judaism.  And while her mere touch of his garment heals her, that moment is too significant to her life to let it pass anonymously. It needs the attention of the crowd. "This People! This is what true faith looks like!"

We are living in a fraught, ugly time.  The forces of exclusion are marching.  Those with the hardest lives and the shunned ones are being targeted with blame and scapegoated for every perceived wrong. They're being bound and placed on transport planes out of the country (in place of the trains that did the same in 1939 Germany.) I think the clamoring crowds need some lessons in faith, lessons in human dignity, and to be reminded of Jesus pausing the crowd to look inwardly at their immoral constructs. All people are of sacred worth, imbued with dignity and deserving of respect.  Kindness, generosity, and faith keep civility alive in society.  Walking the way of Jesus is to notice the smaller, insignificant people dwelling on the edges, the ones society considers "dangerous," or "of little worth."  We're to see their need and bring what aid we can to them. Our communities should be places people can thrive, where they're healed and welcomed, and not be punished and or kicked aside. This is the Way. 

    

Dry Bones

Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, we are cut off completely."  Therefore prophesy, and say to them, "Thus says the Lord God: 'I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.'" 

                                                                                           --Ezekiel 37:11-12 NRSV

The chaos occurring in the U.S. government alongside an hourly stream of news about it leaves us exhausted and feeling dried up, our minds suspended in incredulity, and in the end anxious and cut off.  Hopelessness may cozy up next to us, pull closed the shutters and we find ourselves reacquainted with numbed deadness. Ezekiel asks in this kind of moment, "Can these bones live again?: I hear in the question a lingering ray of hope. Ezekiel is asking "Can we expect something unpredictable?"  

In his most recent book, On Freedom, Timothy Snyder insists that there can be no freedom when everything is predictable. At first this didn't match up with my idea of freedom. I want freedom to be a stable, mutually understood value on which all humans depend. Yet, as I read on, it began to be clearer. It can't be called freedom if there is only one choice. The more choices, the more freedom to opt for one of those. And yes, therein, the door is opened for us to make "wrong" choices, or choices not to our liking, or even as we're witnessing bad for the earth and its inhabitants in general!

I believe most of us would agree that God has ultimate freedom.  Who hasn't wished from time to time that they were God so that they could choose the physically impossible thing to happen?  But then if anything can happen by our choice, I have a feeling we wouldn't keep any banks open for all the people wishing they had all the money they desired. Enter the larger moral questions of freedom.  Freedom has to be tempered with virtue. The choices people make ideally should be in the best interests of everyone.  Virtues reflect the best of how things should be, what the best choice is.  Knowing what should be gives us a compass heading for how our freedom should be exercised in any given circumstance.

I suggest that pondering and implementing the more virtuous pathways forward may open up futures we cannot predict, which leads to more freedom for all.  When we are feeling dried out, lifeless, stressed, and caught in the bottom of a deep rut (grave?), the direction to choose might lie in the direction of acting virtuously, even if you don't feel it in the moment.  Like being kind, generous, giving aid, or offering a blessing to the people you meet. Single acts of virtue can lead to transformation in someone's day or even in your own soul!  Let's set humanity truly free by doing the unpredictable -- by acting virtuously.

Shalom & May Prosperity Knock Frequently on Your Door!

Mark

 

The Field of Heart

Those on the path are they who have heard; then comes the devil and takes away the word from their hearts in order that they not believe. Luke 8:12

To follow the Path of Jesus is to do so with heart, soul, and mind in the same way that the first Commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. I believe that all creation, including every human being, is in God's body and dependent on God's heart to nurture and supply us with all that we need. (Pause and feel/hear that rhythm underlying your own heartbeat.) God's heart is a mother's heart - a good mother's heart -- and no compassion, love, gentleness, or goodness is spared. 

But in our world there is an opposition force.  Scripture calls this the devil or Satan.  This force is one we can choose in our use of free will. Free will is character and choosing our character is a lifetime daily decision. If we choose to pursue the opposition way it is like putting a blockage in the flow of life, and the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace...) withers. The result of a blockage is growing jealousy, greed, competition, lies, possessiveness, isolation, and even violence, all of which only hasten death.

We, in the United States, are experiencing the symptoms of a heart attack, a concerted blocking of godly generosity.  Cynicism and withdrawal is a natural response to repugnant behavior that is hurting others. Yet that is a plan to avoid treatment of the condition.  Adopting the Path of Jesus is God's modeled plan for addressing clogged channels of love. So lift up your voices.  Sing praises to our Mothering God. Share a smile, a small act of kindness, and an encouraging word.  Let the Godly flow of all things helpful go through you and out to fill the field of heart with the seeds for peace.       

Sacredness Within

She brought an alabaster jar of ointment. Then she stood behind Jesus’ feet, crying, and began to wet his feet with her tears. She wiped them with her hair, kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.  --Luke 7:38

The lectionary my church is using this Sunday asks us to reflect on Luke 7:36—50, the story of the (unnamed) woman) who anoints Jesus' feet with oil, tears, and her hair. It is a touching scene. Luke describes her as a woman, well known in the community for having many sins. Jesus meets her gesture with mercy and forgiveness. Simon, the well-off Pharisee at whose house this scene takes place, questions how Jesus allows her to touch him in this way.  Jesus answers him that she was lavishing him with love in measure for all the sins for which she was forgiven.  He contrasts this to Simon's small heart and the lack of love he has shown to Jesus since they arrived at his house. Which of the characters in this story understood their sacredness more? 

Jesus' sacredness comes as a given in the gospels.  It's something he tries not to flaunt, but his frequent actions and words reveal a for-real confidence and certainty in his spirit.  

The Pharisee presumes his sacredness.  Much as many in the religious structural orders assume a certain haughtiness about their position with God, their lack of sensitivity and perception of those around them betrays their puffery.

Then there is the woman. I'm just going to give her a name, for she deserves one. I choose Desiree because she knows where she comes from and desires greatly for the Messiah to see her and remember her.  She takes her full authentic self, casts aside all the cultural baggage that villagers have heaped on her, and takes the radical steps for a woman to trespass in a wealthy man's house, side-stepping all the gossip about her, and without asking touches Jesus in a quite intimate way - even by our own social standards today!  And Jesus filled with Spirit, accepts her, forgives her, blesses her, and receives from her what she has - profound gratitude to him for restoring her sacred worth.

How do we connect with our sacredness?  For from out of our sacredness comes our resilience to roll with what life throws at us. Our sacredness instills us with a peaceful countenance and a firm confidence of knowing whatever may come we will survive.  We will have the certainty to take loving actions toward all those we come into contact with because our sacred will recognize and speak to the sacred in another.

So some sacredness-building ideas:

1) Affirm and love yourself. If you can look in a mirror and say "I love you," and mean it then you're on the right track.  If not, practice it, no matter how stupid you feel, until you don't feel that way and do find truth in the statement. While you're at it, get in the habit of every time you see yourself in any reflection, find something that you really like in what you see.  

2) Look for the good.  Being critical, judgemental, and assuming the worst is a culturally inculcated habit-forming creed but it's not the lead step of one with healthy sacredness. It is a harmless assumption and probably quite often true that everyone you meet has something bubbling under the surface that is not okay with them.  Our trite auto-response of "Fine" to another's question of "How are you?" is more due to a lack of trust/time/closeness or sheer overwhelmedness.  We don't have to pry the truth out of anyone. Just know that "fine" probably doesn't wholly mean fine and pray for them - or better yet, when you part, offer a short blessing like, "May everything come together for you today just right."

3) Do spend some time daily looking for joy, gratitude, love, kindness, and things to praise for going right.  When we look for something, we have a far more likely chance of finding/seeing it.  When you see it, you feel it, and that feeds your soul's sacredness. Along with this time can come some compassionate prayer -- lifting or "sending energy" to others you know are in need.  The Spirit realm is holding the world together. I believe that!

4) Nearly every place has a park or a place where nature's beauty still holds out against concrete and structures. Take advantage of being in that space at least weekly.  In Japan, far more densely populated than most places, they are encouraged to do "forest bathing" which has been proven to lower blood pressure and stress.  God's greatest sacred moment was birthing you and creation at large. Sacred rubbing elbows with sacred generate more. 

5) Confessing your screw-ups takes away the tarnish on your sacred. I don't have to list the "sins" for you to watch for.  You have a built-in detector and you know when there is a wrong that is smudging up your spirit. Confess it and be done with it.  Confessions are still heard by priests/pastors, but it doesn't have to be a "religious authority."  Good friends will listen.  I find trees remarkably well-equipped!  You can write it out (and then burn it). And then, go back to #1!

6) Don't forget to be kind.  It's among the best exercises for endowing your sacredness.

May a galaxy of Blessings flood your day!

AMEN. 

   

Making Peace

For where there is jealousy and selfishness, there will also be turmoil and everything vile.  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere.  And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for they who make peace."  - James 3:16-17

The present state of things in the United States could summarized as "in turmoil." Certainly, some wisdom from above would be welcome.  But I don't believe a big rain cloud of wisdom will drop from the sky and dump the listed virtues on the population, or even just our politicians!. Those virtues - peace, gentleness, reasonableness, mercy, etc. are available only to those who actively seek, perceive, and adopt them for their own.. Sadly, that isn't an automatic occurrence.  It is sometimes difficult to find those virtues under one's roof!  There are plenty of reports that even in monasteries and abbeys these qualities are known to take flight. Living in a hermitage might get you close, but that's not practical for most. So what can we do?

I know that we can put our heads in the sand and swear off paying any attention to the news in this quest for peace.  But that is, in essence, leaving the world to fend for itself.  As we already see that doesn't work out well when power structures are hellbent on grabbing as many of Earth's resources as they can for their own power and gain.  When cruelty becomes the goal and masses are being hurt. We see, too, that the evil this brings also tends to corrupt the religious structures and we see dimensions of this evil in Christian Nationalism. So we shouldn't build any hermetically sealed bubbles to ignore what is going on. Jesus didn't.  So neither should we.  But what can we do?

We can limit our consumption of news. Take in enough to know where things are going. Participate in what ways you're comfortable.  This is the public engagement phase of life.  But then it is important to withdraw, to remember, and to recognize that this entire planet is the tiniest of specks in a colossal galaxy.  God's "church" is the universe and God will be here for us regardless of what transpires. Take time out to bask in silence, and practice breathing deeply from your toes to your head. Pick one of the above virtues and think about it for the duration of time you can give over to the meditation.  For instance, what does gentleness feel like?  When have you been gentle with someone?  What would the world be like if gentleness were the primary indicator of social welfare (rather than the economy as it is now?)  Then, make a pact with yourself to try living gently for the rest of your day. Every day you can take a different virtue. This is the way to righteousness. It is the way to make peace.  

Combating the Sorrows & Losses

 

In the long run, change is as much devotional as it is psychological. It is out of love that we ultimately reshape our lives. It is a matter of discipline, a word has the same root as the word disciple. In other words, “To what will we be devoted? What is it that we will love and serve?” ---Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

 The news this week has not been great.  Plane crashes, incompetence & lying being crowned, jobs being removed, the judicial system being undermined, and people deported. Lots and lots of grief and loss being purposely foisted on 330 million people with not much aim apparent toward a positive goal.  I think a good reflection point is in the questions Francis Weller poses above.

One of this Sunday's texts in the Wilda Gafney Lectionary is found in Luke 7. It is the story of Jesus at Nain raising a child from the dead and putting them back in their mother's arms.  Putting the metaphysical miraculous element aside, we can see behind the scenes with a larger lens the fact of the earth's "life cycle" at work.  The completeness of life that we are granted only temporary & partial direct experience of is the flow from living through death.  Like the moon, we only see the lighted side, never the dark backside. 

Throughout life, we experience gain and loss, birth and death. Too often, we plunge ourselves into wallowing in our losses while the gains we experience seem fleeting. I say we do it to ourselves because, far too frequently, it's our brain's interpretation and in-built assumptions that anticipate, exacerbate, or extend our anxiety and misery.  We are wired to expect "the worst" and thus kick start our worry and sense of loss before "it" even happens. How often has "it" not turned out as awful as we imagined? Do we make "it" worse by bottling it up and recycling it over and over in our heads?  I have done that until I am sick of "it" and of myself for allowing it.  Which I don't believe is where God wants any of us to live.

Humans have an extraordinary capacity to change things. We can look at glasses as half full or half empty.  If we carry a belief in the unseen "hereafter" being a glorious improvement over life on earth, death loses a good measure of its pall. As Weller says above, change is devotional as much as psychological. How much devotional time - meditative time - do we spend imagining ourselves in positive spaces surrounded by joy, gratitude, hope, promise, peace, and love? Do we have the positive habit of looking for those virtues bubbling to the surface all around us, all the time?  I call it taking time out from stress. Can we imagine (using the power of our brain) shifting ourselves into a Jesus-loving space where we can feel Jesus loving us and us loving like Jesus? 

I believe there is a realm that is very near, just beyond our physical touch, that operates on the purely virtuous side of life. We are every bit as much spiritual beings as we are physical ones.  The spiritual side breaks into our lives many times a day.  Does it pass us by because we're too busy in our heads/lives to take notice?  Do we look for it? It IS there. Reshape your life with Love. Take it as a New Year's challenge.  Who/what will you be loving and directing Love toward?   

Gifts Received, Gifts Given

 Gifts Received, Gifts Given

A Sermon given on Jan. 19, 2025

Renton United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ

Mark Fredericksen, ND, MDiv

Based on 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

 

A saying my mom was fond of reciting at me when any of my pals would call me some awful name was, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”  Have you heard that before? Did the saying do anything to make you feel better? Naw, me either, because the ways that we can be hurt don’t only involve our physical being but, too frequently, real injury can be inflicted by words said. If they get repeated, they can dig a trench in our psyche such that we adopt them and make them into who think we are.  If those words dig into our very soul, they may keep us handicapped or knocked down our whole life long.

As you heard, a big part of my healer’s mindset is holding together the belief that we are complete human beings who have physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, and socio-cultural parts.  I think of our soul as being the underlying processing unit that knits these connections together into the authentic person, we are according to God’s design. Our soul provides the gears to make us what we are. But if there are missing gears or damaged gears it’s going to impact our ability to be authentic. Sadly, our society, culture, and technology have pulled us in directions that discourage authenticity and because we can’t be ourselves in the mold that God made us to be, we have a lot of problems like what we’re having. I am sure that you probably would like to see the world a lot differently.  I’m assuming that you would like to experience authenticity.  It’s a hard thing to come by in our society with our past histories and traumas.  So, let’s explore a concept that we can work with to help make a difference – if not for the world, maybe for ourselves or a small corner in which we live.

There is a theological practice borne out of Judaism called ZimZum.  To explain it completely would take several days in a retreat, but I’ll boil it down to its simplest idea.  Instead of Creation being made by a power-exerting God. ZimZum embraces the notion of a love-exerting God who opens a space within Godself for a womb where the love spark for creation is breathed in and grows.  We, and all we know, are growing inside of God.  Through Christ we see the potential love can create and manifest.  This means a) God is our mom, b) God intensely cares what happens to ALL of us.

With those givens – we come to 1 Cor. 12. A wise loving God knows what we need and has provided us with many gifts to enable us to thrive and realize our full authentic potential both as individuals and as an entire species. God is pumping love into the system as an empowering enlivening force for our world.  The Apostle Paul lists a few of these as Gifts of the Spirit. Our souls crave and need all of them.  I don’t believe it is in any way limited to these 12 as there are other passages with different gifts listed.  I also don’t think that we are limited to having just one or two, which is not what some of the Spiritual Inventory makers preach with their online questionnaires.  To reach our full authentic love-empowering selves we need to be open to receiving all the gifts God is providing.   One of the questions that you might ponder or journal about at home is this: What are the gifts you carry in your soul?  And what ones is your soul wanting you to have?

Call me an idle dreamer or an impossible romantic, but I have believed in my heart and soul my entire life that love – a true agape love – such as that demonstrated by Jesus, such as that preached about throughout the New Testament, such as that God imagined to spark the universe -- you know – the ideal we see being strived toward early in the book of Acts – if the Church could model that/live that what would become of the wars, the greed, the grasping for power, the racism, sexism, the hating, the monetizing of everything?   Even though the Church historically and at present has failed to live this out on so many levels I still hold my small little candle of hope that I can do better, that we can do better, that the Church can be better/do better, and that my light and maybe ours together will be the light that the darkness cannot swallow up.

To get there we have to daily recommit ourselves to seeing and receiving the gifts God is placing into our lives in front of us.  To see something we have to look for it.  Get in the habit of assessing/taking an inventory every day of all the good you saw – compassion shown, joy felt, gratitude expressed, love demonstrated, kindness offered, and miracles worked. Since the 1^st of January, I have been keeping a Joy Jar.  I have a small Mason jar and each day I try to write on a small slip of Post-it note a joy I felt, and I put the paper in my Joy Jar.  I have found that when I’m asking myself what I’ve enjoyed (note that word: En-JOY) my thinking changes as well as my perception of what joy is.  Our culture has taught us to be so serious & critical that we don’t realize we’re enjoying things when they’re right there in front of us.

In this process of looking for and taking note of what we are receiving, the table begins to turn. We begin to think things like – “Why couldn’t I do that!”  I could be more positive.  I could smile more.  I could be more willing to offer a helping hand.  I have a gift for listening – I could reach out to someone.  Let me tell you – I’m doing some work in the area of grief and loss.  And what I’ve learned is EVERYBODY has loss and grief.  EVERYBODY.  And the single best healing practice for it is simply telling the story to someone.  Who hasn’t got time to listen?   Though I will admit that listening without offering fixes and advice is a hearty challenge – and maybe it IS a gift.  One that you have? 

 But see?  THIS is how the Holy Spirit spreads. We for too long have been lulled into Christian complacency of expecting the Holy Spirit (or God) to fix every wrong.  But the wrongs get fixed when we activate and use the gifts we’ve received.   Are you sitting under a bushel?  Letting your light be hidden?  Feeling sorry for yourself or frustrated or angry at the stampedes of hypocrisy and greed and violence it seems the whole world is descending into?  I’m convinced it’s taking place because we all have been lured into shutting down, separating ourselves, isolating & withdrawing, and hoarding what gifts we have and not sharing what we have.  What we’ve already been given.

Finally, the last benefit of sharing our gifts is through that experience we get insights into who God made us to be. We find out where our authentic self has been living. And we take a step closer to being a full loving representation of God-in-Christ to the world.