In Advent, we celebrate that God is with us.

God is near. In John 1, we encounter a God, who became flesh and blood to dwell among us. God with skin on, here with us, Immanuel. It is absolutely breath-taking.

The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.
[I John 1:14 MSG]

All this so that we would see what God is like. So we would see this one-of-a-kind glory, this extravagant goodness, and this bountiful generosity.

This is the mystery of the incarnation (God in human form) that now by the Holy Spirit continues in us, the church. Our shared, everyday lives are to be a sign and a witness that God is near.

For are we not meant to be the community of God embodying the compassion of Jesus in the neighborhoods we live in?

Like Christ, aren't we to be faithfully present amongst our neighbors in the particularities of our places, seeking healing, peace, and the flourishing of all? Are we not called to be fit together brick by brick to be a dwelling place for the presence of God?

God is building a home. God's using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what God is building. God used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now God's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home. [Eph 2:21-22 MSG]

This is why our current models of church fail us. For we are not called to be individualistic, spiritual consumers but followers of Jesus -- being formed and knit together to join God's work of transformation in the world. Much is at stake. For our current brand of Western Christianity seems to have not only lost its mooring but its spiritual vitality and social credibility. It has sold-out to nationalism, economic imperialism, and the idols of technological progress, materialism, and wanton individualism.

Alan Roxburgh, in Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World, argues that the traditional, institutional church (like other social institutions) no longer works; it is unravelling. The good news, however, is that underneath the unravelling, God is up to something.

“The Spirit is busy re-founding the church for our time... showing us how to embody a way of life that makes space for alternative patterns of organizing life together—not more and better church programming that tries harder and harder to attract people, but a thicker sense of community that joins people together more holistically and organically."

We are called to be the church.

To be an incarnational community that participates in and demonstrates God's goodness to our neighbors.

This is why we emphasize faithful presence over a slick worship gathering and formational practices over spiritual consumption. We want to join God's work already present here in our place, at our neighborhood dinners, at Turning Point community meals, at the Social Justice Book Club, at One Cup Coffee, and at the Methadone Clinic. We want to join with God's work of peace and wholeness in our community by partnering with the city, the schools, local nonprofits, our neighborhood association and other faith communities. And we want to live a way of Love here together in this place in a way that is compelling to our neighbors.

As the letter to Colossians puts it, “In Christ, the fullness of Deity is presently living in bodily form—and you [Colossians, together among yourselves] have the fullness of Christ” [2:9]. This radical vision of a local community incarnating the reign of God now, of God’s future penetrating the present through a Spirit-led extended family, was vital to the dynamic witness and power of the early church.

No one has ever seen God,
not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
who exists at the very heart of the Father,
has made him plain as day.
[John 1:18 MSG]

Jesus, our Immanuel, came to show us a God with us and among us. And as followers of Jesus, we too, are called to be God with skin — embodying the presence of God in the world. We are called to be a visible, viable, social alternative. We are to be a transformative community living life together rooted in our places, joining in God’s work of renewing all things. So that all those around us can see this God as plain as day and can experience God's love present with and among them.

by Jessica Ketola

As part of our current series, “Fire in My Bones,” I spoke this past Sunday about what fires me up: life, death, and creativity.

You are – we are – creative people made in the image of a creating God, called to be generative, vital forces in this world.

Though many of us understandably associate creativity with the arts, creativity is not limited to artistic expression. Consider that every conversation we have is completely improvised. Creativity is in everything: leadership, neuroscience, parenting, justice-seeking, coloring, biology, gardening, cooking, athletics, spirituality, friendship, ethics, law, love, meteorology, medicine, and on and on it goes.

But, of course, we know that the world doesn’t always feel like a generative place. There are deaths, both literal and spiritual, that haunt us, stifle us, keep us small. Shame can feel like death. So can comparison or consumerism or fear, or perhaps a death-dealing word or trauma from our past.

What is totally baffling and wonderful is that the story of God is one of entering directly into sites of death and creating new life from those very places. Jesus, who names himself The Way and The Truth and The Life, literally dies and is buried. Death isn’t the whole point of Christ’s story, but it’s the way that The Way goes in order to begin the birthing of the new creation, something no eye has seen and no ear has heard. It’s from this place that Jesus’ words from Revelation 21 resound most prophetically: “See! I am making all things new!”

Creativity tangles with death. Life dies before it can be resurrected. I’m not sure there’s any way around the relationship between life, death, and new life, but I am sure that God has made each of us with unique, creative gifts that contribute to the ongoing new-life-ing of the world. We’re not alone here even when it feels like death because God is with us. And as Diane, Rich, and April pointed out on Sunday, we are with each other. We need others to help call us further into the fullness of our creative, generating selves and to encourage us when we try to discount our good gifts.

So how has God made you to be a creative, vital force in the world? Do you feel alive in your creativity? Or are you in a deathly place? How can we, as your community, help you to imagine with God what creative aliveness is for you? If you want community support, I encourage you to be brave and reach out. Who knows what could be waiting?

by Carrie Cates

We've been talking about the fire in our bones. Why do we exist as a church? In the sea of churches out there, why are we so passionate about God's dream for us and our community? And as I have been pondering this, I truly believe that we are poised for such a time as this.

THE DREAM
Every single person on the planet today is longing for love and for meaning, for wholeness and shalom, to come home to their true selves and to join in God's work of renewal in the world. [I blogged about this last week here].

THE PROBLEM
And yet we know that the world around us is deeply fragmented with fear, hate and greed and hostile to the flourishing of our own souls, our communities, and our environment. And our own souls are fragmented too, captive to anxiety and fear, hustling to be enough and to escape the tyranny of our own shame. The gods of this age, individualism, narcissism, technology, and consumerism have promised the American Dream (which btw is not God’s Dream). But instead of freedom, they have actually enslaved us, oppressed us and ravaged our world. Our 24-7 frenetic lifestyles, addictions to screens and fragmented families and communities have left us anxious, ill, depressed and lonely like never before. And the world is literally on fire as glaciers melt and rain forests burn.

THE HOPE
​We believe there is another way to live. We believe that the church exists to invite people into love and meaning and to join God in the renewal of all things. As The Practicing Church, we join this work of renewal and healing in the world by practices that ground us in the love of God.

THE JOURNEY
As The Practicing Church, we invite you to take this transformational journey into love. And it is a journey inward to heal from your wounds and to come home to your true selves. It is the journey outward as you step into your true vocation and your life’s work joining in this work of renewal in the world. And it is a journey we take together. We were never meant to do life alone.

Practicing Love
And so in order to take this journey, we must engage in practices of formation, mission and community. As The Practicing Church we want to be followers of Jesus that are “practicing” our faith. We believe that living into the way of Jesus takes practice – and that our faith is much more than something we add to our already busy, stressed out lives, but rather, it is a way of life.

For there is no magic pill. We’re not just going to snap our fingers and instantly be transformed into a Mother Teresa, living a life of love and meaning. It doesn't work that way. We all know it takes practice to acquire a skill, whether we are practicing medicine or yoga or learning a new instrument, language or business. What we practice, we become. And so we know it will take practice to live into the way of love. For it is never convenient or easy. In fact, we will have to swim upstream against the tides of culture.

The Power of Community
In order to journey upstream, we believe we absolutely need each other. We cannot do it alone. There is power in community and this has been proven again and again in every context and culture. Where you and I might fail on our own, our chances of succeeding go up dramatically if we join with others around a common goal. Community holds you accountable to be the person you say you want to be, the person you are meant to be.

Living True
If we are to have any hope of embodying love in this world in such a way that is actually good news to us and to our neighbors, we must walk the talk. We must live true. We must be people of love. We must be healing and growing and practicing together to become the kind of people that the world is longing for the church to be. And we will need each other to reengage our faith as a profoundly earthy, bodily and communal experience in the midst of an age of secularism, technology, frenetic lifestyles, anxiety, fragmentation, disembodiment, and loneliness.

JOIN US
There is another way to live. Journey with others to practice the counter-cultural way of love and be a part of something good in the world. We will journey with you to take the road less traveled and to hold you accountable to be the person you were meant to be. Take the journey of transformation to come home to yourself and to step fully into God's work in the world!

by Jessica Ketola

Photo by Gian-Reto Tarnutzer 

Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash

Every single person on the planet today is longing for love and for meaning. God has put eternity in our hearts. We innately know what we were created for. We are all longing to be reconciled to ourselves, to God and to each other. To experience shalom, wholeness, union with God and with one another.

And yet our culture is deeply fragmented, divided, polarized, given to racism, greed, violence and war. And our souls are fragmented too, captive to anxiety and fear, hustling to be enough and to escape the tyranny of our shame.

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.” - Kant

We all long for meaning, to be a part of something good in the world. We long to join in God’s reconciling work in the world. To offer our gifts in a meaningful way. To step into our true calling. And to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

And yet, the forces of individualism are crushing. We suffer anxiety, loneliness and depression like never before. For the individual was never meant to bear the full weight of meaning. And the gods of consumerism have enslaved us to our insatiable desire for more, stripping away our very humanity for the profit of the dollar. We have been turned into consumers instead of the creators that we truly are.

It is our calling as The Practicing Church to invite people into LOVE AND MEANING.

To proclaim the glorious mystery of God’s grace -- that the gospel is actually good news to our neighbors. And the only way we see that happening is if we together decide to embody love in place - in our work places, schools, and neighborhoods. To actually live in such a way that folks begin to see that God is not like the projections of a wrathful, harsh or distant god. God is good. Like the pinch-me-wake-me-up-I-must-be-dreaming-kind-of-good. Apart from love, everything else is like a resounding gong, a clanging cymbal [I Corinthians 13].

This has become absolutely non-negotiable for me. We must walk the talk or shut up and go home. Of course, we are not going to be perfect. We are human, both beautiful and broken. But we have to own up to our brokenness and be real. If we are going to talk about this God of Love, we must practice the way of love. If we are going to say we are followers of Jesus, then we actually need to be practicing and living this provocative, counter-cultural way of love. If we are going follow the command to love our neighbors as ourselves, then we better well know and love our neighbors!

For this way of love frees us to be who we are created to be.

At The Practicing Church, we desire to be a transformational community. To call people to awake from their slumber to the life that God has called them to. We want to be a prophetic community that says to the world, there is another way to live. To truly embody love and to live out the teachings of Jesus together in such a way that reveals God’s goodness to the world. And we want to invite each and every person on the transformational journey.

Come home to your true selves, own the brokenness and the beauty of your stories, and step fully into your work in the world.

This is the reason we exist. This is the fire in our bones.

by Jessica Ketola

by Jessica Ketola

It is hard to put into words what we experienced this past week in El Paso as we put our bodies in a place that is groaning under the weight of injustice. Our lament began with "the practice of relocation, taking our very bodies to the hard places and tarrying long enough to be disturbed."[Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing]

And disturbed we were.

Children in cages. Ripped out of the arms of their parents and caregivers to be locked up in squalid conditions with overcrowding, filth, scabies, lice, and abuse. Forced to drink water from toilets and sleep on cement floors, without access to showers or human decency. We heard stories of children ripping out the laces of their shoes and considering hanging themselves. And in the last six months, seven children have died.

It's too much. It's simply too much to bear.

As we placed our feet on this grieving soil and resolutely marched around the barbed wire fences and cement walls of the detention center, we felt the heaviness of tyranny. As we stood at the gates crying out and beseeching the powers on earth and in heaven for justice, our bodies bowed in solidarity with the groans of those within on hunger strike. And the signs we carried in the shape of tombstones with names and ages of many more who have died here became oppressively heavy. How is this evil being perpetrated without any oversight or accountability?

Rev. Dr. Robin Tanner words reverberating from the night before, “Here at the threshold between nation states, in the beauty and injustice across the borderlands, I say so goes the borderlands, so goes the world. This is the holy site of our collective moral awakening as a country. From every granule of sand to the winds that sweep El Paso, we must answer: Who will America be?”
​
I know this is heavy. Know I am not without fierce and stubborn hope. And certainly, there will be a call to action.

But first, first, we must feel the weight of this moment.

As we gathered for the Mass on Sunday night, we came together across different faiths and divides to cry out for justice. Jews, Muslims, Christians and those following their moral conscience united in a powerful way to join the on-the-ground resistance with Border Network for Human Rights. And I have never experienced anything like it. We were disturbed, disrupted, grieved, challenged, provoked and stirred.

Citing that his father was a migrant, Imam Omar Suleiman offered an impassioned rebuke of the treatment of migrant children and families: “Our faiths are on trial. As a Muslim, I believe in Jesus — peace be upon him. I believe in Abraham — peace be upon him. I believe in Moses — peace be upon him. [Now let’s put this in context for a moment] Jeff Sessions used verses from the Bible to separate those children from their families. Donald Rumsfeld used verses of the Bible to justify the bombing of innocent children in Iraq. Verses from the Bible and the Koran have too often been used to hurt rather than uplift. If you say that Jesus is in your heart, but you would put him in a cage today, you are a hypocrite. If you say that you believe in Moses, but you would let him drown, you are a hypocrite. If you say you that believe in Abraham, and that you are following in the footsteps of Abraham, but you would turn him away from these borders, you are a hypocrite. It is not the humanity of these people that’s on trial; it is our humanity.”

This is more than thoughts and prayers, more than even aid and relief for the immigrant. This is about us. Our humanity. Who do we want to be and what kind of America do we want to be?

And God help us, what kind of Christians do we want to be?

“There is a text that says when God called Ezekiel in the midst of the exile, he told Ezekiel to lay down for seven days in front of the people (Ezekiel 4:4),” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach. “I’ve studied the scripture and as I have looked at it, I have come to understand that the reason Ezekiel was instructed to lay down in front of the people, was because he had to feel and pay attention to the experience of the people so the prophetic word he spoke articulated their audible moans and groans. In this way, our voice isn’t just ours alone. We are responsible for amplifying the voices of people who are struggling, and this includes our immigrant brothers and sisters.”

And so this week, I encourage you to lay down. Lay down until you feel the groans of our suffering siblings. Lay down until you hear their audible moans.

This weighty moment begins with lament.

​MORE ABOUT MORAL MONDAY

WATCH LIVE STREAM
Moral Monday Day of Action | July 29

MORNING JOE ON MSNBC
Rev. Barber brings Moral Monday to El Paso

COMMON DREAM
"It Doesn't Have to Be This Way": Faith Leaders Rally at Detention Center Demanding End to Inhumane Treatment of Immigrants 
"We condemn and call evil and unjust the caging of people, the making people drink from toilets, the refusal to even give them a toothbrush," the group continued. "You're holding angels in this place. But you will not hold them forever. We join them now, and not only do we bring condemnation, but we bring hope. It doesn't have to be this way. America, turn around. America, repent. America, stop. America, change your ways."

OP ED - JONATHAN WILSON-HARTGROVE
The Family Values We Need at the Border 
“This is not simply a partisan disagreement about immigration policy. It is a moral crisis that forces each of us to decide who we are. Either we accept the demonization of black and brown immigrants that assumes God has ordained white American culture as superior. Or we act now to demand that the Trump administration end its war on immigrant families.”

EL PASO TIMES
Faith Leaders Head Protests Against Treatment of Migrants at Moral Monday in El Paso 
Our own Stephanie Drury was cited, "I just can't handle that children are dying in custody," protester Stephanie Drury, 44, of the Vineyard Christian community in Seattle, said about her reason to come to El Paso. "It makes everything more real," Drury said of her trip to the border. "It's eyeopening to see what's happening. You can't turn off the news and distract yourself and pretend it's not happening."

RED LETTER CHRISTIANS
Who Will America Be? 
“What we saw at the border was damnable. As people of faith, we are called to welcome the immigrant as our family,” Rev. Dr. Barber concluded. “We need Christians to rise up and challenge theological malpractice that allows people to look the other way and not challenge injustice.”

MORE ABOUT DETENTION
▪This past year, 900 children have been detained (in spite of promises to end family separation last summer).
▪An average of 2,000 children every month are unaccompanied children in custody awaiting placement in detention centers and shelters.
▪According to lawmakers, we have a “broken” and "horrifying" system of immigration detention at the nation's southern border where women in one cell were allegedly told to drink water from a toilet.
▪For-profit detention centers run by The GEO Group and CoreCivic benefiting from bodies in cages and Border Patrol expanding without oversight are regularly in violation of International Human Rights and Constitutional Rights.​
▪ The 'Remain in Mexico' Program is dangerous, cruel and chaotic. It puts migrants in grave danger. El Paso is one of the safest cities in America while Juarez is one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
▪ The President's declaration of a national emergency was an abuse of power, yet strategic as it is the only reason the military can be deployed on American soil.
▪ Our Southern border is the third militarized border in the world although terrorists are a non-issue while our Northern border is not militarized even though there have been accounts of terrorists crossing.

Photo by Alex Woods on Unsplash

​This week we continue our journey through the Psalms as a way to let our prayers be formed by the longings, praises, songs and laments of our ancestors. And as I talked about last Sunday, I think one of the most remarkable things about the Psalms is that they are so raw and human. These are not sanitized and strange words that are irrelevant to our human experience and keep God at arms length. Rather, these are our gut responses to God that draw us into the depths of relationship in the midst of our gritty, wonderful and often painful human experience.

For the Psalms are a mix of poetry and prayer. Far from decorative or surface ideas, the language of poetry calls us into the depths. Eugene Peterson in his book Answering God: The Psalms as Tools For Prayer says, “Poetry grabs for the jugular. Far from being cosmetic language, it is intestinal. It is root language. Poetry doesn’t so much tell us something we never knew as bring into recognition what is latent, forgotten, overlooked, or suppressed.”

The Psalms text is almost entirely in this kind of language. As we read the Psalms, we aren’t looking primarily for ideas about God, or for direction or moral conduct.

We are looking to find the experience of being human before God exposed and sharpened. To be laid bare intimately and honestly before the God of the universe who knows our name.

And this can be daunting for us. We are all too accustomed to talking about God rather than talking to God. The Psalms invite us to move beyond these cerebral discussions to deal with the very viscerally felt prayers of our humanity.

The psalms are disturbing if you read them—all of them. It’s easy to take the familiar comforting ones at face value. We love Psalm 23 speaking about our Good Shepherd and Psalm 145 speaking of our God of compassion. But what about the cries of despair, outrage and vengeance? "How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever?" (Psalm 113:1) "Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?" (Psalm 139:21), even venomous words, "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" (Psalm 137:9)

At first, these words are offensive and off putting. How is it possible that they ended up in our sacred text? And yet we must let go of such romantic notions to catch God's nearness to us in the thick of our human flailing. Walter Brueggemann offers a framework for understanding the whole book of Psalms. And while not every psalm can be fit into a neat category, the majority of the psalms can be viewed in one of three ways: Psalms of Orientation, Disorientation and Reorientation.

It is easy to understand the Psalms of Orientation. These are the Psalms we have come to know and to love. These are the Psalms when life goes as we expect it to and when life is ordered by God's ways. Psalms of blessing and gratitude and worship to our God of creation.

But it is much more disconcerting to read the Psalms of Disorientation. These Psalms are the reaction of the faithful to God when the world they once knew is broken. When life doesn't go as planned and God's goodness seems elusive. When the city of God Jerusalem falls to conquering Babylon, you don't sing Psalms of God's goodness. Rather, you weep, you cry out in outrage and you lament. Here, we are not so concerned whether the content is ethical or not, but we allow ourselves to be moved by these words that reflect the pain of a people engaging with their God in world-shattering circumstances.

Finally, there are the Psalms of Reorientation. The Psalms of Reorientation are the words of people who have experienced a miracle, against all odds. They are gasps of thankfulness when the impossible breaks through. They are whispers of delight when the unimaginable has happened. God has broken into time and space and done something that they could not have anticipated and certainly could not have created.

“Even in a world demystified and reduced, grace intrudes and God makes all things new,” Spirituality of The Psalms, Walter Brueggemann

These are the Psalms of people who have been to hell and come out the other side. Psalms of amazement, wonder and gratitude.

As I consider the Psalms, I am increasingly convinced that they are necessary for our formation. For we are all too prone to keep God at a distance and to find our prayers stale and irrelevant compared to the evocative range of our human emotion. But the Psalms teach us that God is found at the very core of our human experience. There is no need for editing, stuffing or distancing. God is near and hears our cries of lament as well as our songs of adoration. So whether you find yourself in a time of orientation, disorientation or reorientation, may you be inspired and buoyed by the honest and raw faith in these prayers of our ancestors.

by Jessica Ketola

​Sitting midst the heartbreak and injustice for those who continue to suffer the unthinkable in migrant detention centers, I am sickened. The reports of horror and degradation continue with pictures of children in cages, separated from their parents, hungry and inconsolable; adults and children held for weeks or months in over-crowded cells, sometimes with no access to soap, toothpaste, or places to wash their hands or shower, sleeping on concrete floors or forced to stand due to lack of space. Reports of filth, unsanitary and inhumane conditions, sexual abuse, hunger, extreme cold, illness and even death. What are we to do but to cry out.

"Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless." [Psalm 10:12]

Migrant Detention Centers Conditions - Times Article

As we continue through the Psalms, this week I am struck by the psalms of lament, crying out for justice. As much as we would like to read peacefully through the psalms, there is hardly a page that isn't left smoking by a pungent curse. These outbreaks of hate that smite the enemy can be off-putting. We are used to peaceful prayers, sanitized prayers, detached prayers. There is a rawness and honesty in the psalms that is disruptive and yet necessary.

But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; 
you consider their grief and take it in hand. 
The victims commit themselves to you; 
you are the helper of the fatherless. 
Break the arm of the wicked man; 
call the evildoer to account for his wickedness 
that would not otherwise be found out.
The Lord is King for ever and ever; 
the nations will perish from his land. 
You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; 
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, 
defending the fatherless and the oppressed, 
so that mere earthly mortals 
will never again strike terror. (Psalm 10:14-18)

Eugene Peterson says this in his book Answering God: The Psalms As Tools For Prayer. "But immersed by prayer in this holiness, we see clearly what we never saw before, the utter and terrible sacrilege of enemies who violate a good creation, who brutalize women and men who are made, every one of them in the image of God. There is an enormous amount of suffering epidemic in the world because of evil people. The rape and pillage are so well concealed in polite language and courteous conventions that some people can go years without seeing it. And we ourselves did not see it. But now we see it. And we hate it. We are ejected from our cushioned private religion into solidarity with 'The Silent Servants of the Used, Abused and Utterly Screwed Up'."

So what happens when we no longer distance ourselves and begin to lament? What shifts in our prayers as we begin to cry out on behalf of those seeking refuge from violence at our borders who are only subjected to more violence?

​In the article, Responding to Injustice With Lament, Andy Kim talks about how critical it is for the people of God to learn to lament. Here is an excerpt:

The Lost Discipline of Lament 
The Bible is filled with lament. There is even an entire book devoted to lament (Lamentations, anyone?). Check out Psalms 10, 13, 22, 39, 44, 51, 56, 60, 74, 79, 80, 85, 90, 92, 1 Samuel 30:4, Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 27:46. We see time and time again that when the God's people are faced with evil, injustice, oppression and turmoil, the Biblical response is often lament.

In Reconciling All Things, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice help us to understand what lament is, and what it isn't:

"Lament is not despair. It is not whining. It is not a cry into a void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world's deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace. It is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are... The journey of reconciliation is grounded in the practice of lament." (pp. 78)

In our pursuit of multiethnic ministry and reconciliation, are we engaging in Biblical lament?

Author, pastor and theologian Soong-Chan Rah suggests that as the church in America, the answer is often a resounding no.

The Absence of Lament 
In a 2013 article, Rah notes that while laments constitute 40 percent of the Psalms, they are conspicuously absent from contemporary American worship.

Rah observed that out of the top 100 worship songs from August 2012 according to Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), only five songs fell into the category of lament, while the vast majority were celebratory praise songs..." (Looking at the current CCLI Top 100, not much seems to have changed.)
​
He explains here and in more depth in his book, Prophetic Lament:

"How we worship reveals what we prioritize. The American church avoids lament. Consequently the underlying narrative of suffering that requires lament is lost in lieu of a triumphalistic, victorious narrative. We forget the necessity of lament over suffering and pain. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart forget."

When we lack the discipline of lament, we run the risk of letting our triumphalism, our anger, our hurt, our fear or our apathy fester inside of us and paralyze us. Biblical lament calls us to sit in the pain, to truly see the brokenness in ourselves and in our world, and to cry out to God.

Are we willing?

Practice Lament 
And so I encourage you to practice lament this week. Engage your heart and soul with the prayers of the psalmists. And along with your prayers, engage your bodies for I am reminded of the African proverb, "When you pray move your feet." And I've included below many ways in which you can participate and engage here locally.

PILGRIMAGE 
"Pilgrimage is a posture very different from mission. The goal of a pilgrim is not to solve, but to search, not so much to help as to be present. Pilgrims do not rush to a goal, but slow down to hear the crying."

How do we put ourselves in the way of listening to those who are suffering? I encourage you to do participate in Lights for Liberty on Friday night or other local events.
​
RELOCATION 
"The practice of relocation [means] taking our very bodies to the hard places and tarrying long enough to be disturbed."

It is easy to be undisturbed at a distance but what happens when we put our physical bodies in hard places? This is one of the reasons I will be going to the border and why it is important to show up at our own detention center in Tacoma (there is an event this Saturday).

CONFESSION 
"[It's] a way of unlearning innocence. As we learn to go out of our way to draw near and tarry with the pain of the world... the challenge is to keep naming the truth, keep being disturbed, keep remember the awful depth of brokenness. The prayers of lament in the Psalms were public prayers, intended to be read and inserted into the corporate life of worship... It is critical that we learn to pray like this, bringing these prayers into public worship in a way that helps us tell the truth and confess in explicit relationships to the brokenness of our own contexts."

This is why we it is important that we pray the Psalms throughout the week and the Prayers of the People together at our gatherings. And we encourage you to write your own psalms and laments so that we can pray them together.

This past Sunday I spoke broadly about singing as an act of worship, a topic partially inspired by our sending the Larsons, who have led us beautifully in song, and partially inspired by the Book of Psalms, which we’ll be turning our attention to this summer.

Many of us have experienced powerful moments of intimacy, connection, and worship through singing. It’s no small wonder – a 2013 study on choral singers showed that the singers’ heartbeats actually synched up when they sang together. Our hearts literally and spiritually beat as one when we sing; one wonders if they indeed are beating along in time to God’s heart:

“Our God will take great delight in you;
The God of love will no longer rebuke you,
But will rejoice over you with singing.” [Zechariah 3:17]

Though we don’t often actually sing them, the Psalms are indeed songs. The early Christian monastics referred to the Psalms as “the Bible in miniature” because they were understood to engage every Biblical theme, every emotion, every expression of grief or guilt, praise or rage. The desert abbas and ammas treated the Psalms as the bedrock of all public and private prayer, speaking, singing, and wrestling with the words daily. In this dailiness, they expected the ageless, ancient Spirit that breathed the Psalms to breathe in them anew, over time opening up the relationship between the singer and the song.

I wonder if one way we could think of our engagement with the Psalms would be to think of them as something like the songlines of Australia. The Aboriginal Peoples of Australia are keepers of ancient paths through the land called songlines. These paths trace the journeys of ancestral spirits from long ago and the primary tools for navigation are songs that have been passed down for generations. Songlines tell stories and give information on plants, animals, the nature of the land, cultural values, and wisdom. When a new generation journeys along the songline it is as if the older generations journey with them – memory, family, land, and time are bound together in song.

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Like songlines, the Psalms are songs that have been sung by our ancestors in faith for generations as a way of navigating this life. Through Spirit, they are now passed on to us, the generation of the Church created for such a time as this, to sing anew if we so choose. I wonder if we took up these songs today – particularly those of us who struggle to engage with Scripture – as prayers to read and be read by, if we wouldn’t find our own heartbeats synching up with our ancestors who tried the same thing. I wonder what we’d be surprised by or invited into. And I wonder if, above and under and around it all, we might hear through these ancient words the heart of the God who has been singing all along.

​Something pretty special is happening in and through our community. Last night, we shared a meal with our neighbors as we do every Wednesday and what goodness is found around the table! Our neighborhood meals are poppin' -- with more neighbors joining in and inviting more friends and neighbors. The last couple of weeks, we've been bursting at the seams with a count of 25!

And what a beautiful picture it is. From the tots to the white haired, from the immigrant to the 30-year residents to those just moving in, from engineers and teachers to artists, the one thing we share is this place. We are neighbors.

On Tuesday, I was in the office where we run our nonprofit, Turning Point, that brings neighbors and students together to provide after school tutoring and summer STEM camps to kids who are facing challenges. And as usual, a Turning Point parent came by and we shared heart to heart. Because Turning Point is far more than a program. It is a community. And again and again, we hear from parents, "You are our community." "You are our family." "I don't know what I would do without you."

And we are so privileged to be invited into their lives. I have been invited to Christmas celebrations and coffee ceremonies. Lynn, our director, has been invited for tea, coffee, injera, baby baptisms, and community events. We celebrate the wins together and grieve the losses. Lynn is a pastor at heart and loves on our parents, tutors and students indiscriminately. And just this past month Lynn, on behalf of Turning Point, was awarded Community Partner of the Year at Parkwood Elementary! It is so beautiful to see what God is doing as we continue to be faithful to love our neighbor.

Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our being (heart, mind, soul and strength) and to love our neighbor as ourself. And there was a time in my life when the "love your neighbor" was a bit theoretical for me. Yes, sure, love everyone but what did that look like in my everyday life? Of course, there were occasional opportunities to connect with a neighbor or another parent or someone in need, but most of my relational energy was spent inside my Christian cloister of church friends and my own family.

Today, after investing in the Shoreline community through Turning Point over the past 7 years; after rooting in this community as we moved into the neighborhood 5 years ago; and after living intentionally with others in the neighborhood for the past 3 years, I can tell you this. I don't want to live any other way! And neither would my family. We all shed big, crocodile tears saying goodbye to our housemates, Ryan, Cecelia and Ammie this week. One of my daughters said, "Can't we all just live together forever?"

And our neighbors felt the loss too. We care about one another. We are community. We are family. From the social justice book club, to community story nights, to Turning Point community meals and neighborhood dinners, a fabric of care is being woven here. And "loving our neighbor" is no longer theoretical. It is real. It is gritty, and it is beautiful.

My challenge for The Practicing Church this summer is to LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR. In summer the Seattle freeze thaws a bit and people are out in their yards and in their neighborhoods. So now is the time to practice loving your neighbor. Below, you will find some simple ways to begin and I hope all of you will join in the fun!

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR

WALK YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
Get out of the isolation of your car and walk your neighborhood. You might actually encounter your neighbors! And bonus points if you walk your neighborhood with your dog! People cannot resist a dog! Here's a wonderful article about the practice of walking your 'hood. 
Loving Your Actual Neighbor By Walking Your 'Hood
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SUMMER [PERPETUAL] PARTY
Host a party in your backyard this summer and invite your neighbors. It's easy as 1-2-3. 

NATIONAL NIGHT OUT
August 7th is a night dedicated to getting to know your neighbors. There are parties going on in most neighborhoods and you can even choose to host one on your street. Such an easy way to meet your neighbors! 

CASUAL GET TOGETHER
If a party sounds like too much, invite a few neighbors over for drinks on the deck or a fire pit or game night. Make it casual!

SUMMER COMMUNITY EVENTS
There are always lots of events in summer, so get out there and attend some. Invite a neighbor to go with you! Summer concerts in the park, farmer's markets, festivals - spend time frolicking in your neighborhood!

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​by Jessica Ketola

Last Sunday was so rich as we joined our voices together to celebrate Pentecost and the Spirit now poured out on all flesh.

In the last days, God says, 
I will pour out my Spirit on all people. 
Your sons and daughters will prophesy, 
your young men will see visions, 
your old men will dream dreams. 
Even on my servants, both men and women, 
I will pour out my Spirit in those days, 
and they will prophesy. - Acts 2:17-18

We are the people our ancestors dreamed about. We are the church and a part of the grand sweeping story of God on the earth. All of us, every gender, young and old, privileged and oppressed, we have been given the Spirit.

And so now we dream dreams of renewal for our communities and our neighborhoods. We see visions of shalom in our places of work and school. And we prophesy. We speak the words of life, words of hope, words of divine purpose. Over ourselves. Over our neighbors. Over our community.

For out of our union with our triune God, as we are enfolded in love, immersed in God's presence with us and empowered by the Spirit, we become conduits of divine love and healing in the world around us.

For love is not theory. Transformation is not osmosis. The kingdom of God must root deeply in our lives and be tested and proven in the places that we live, work and play. For our bodies are temples. Our everyday lives are sacramental. Our places are holy. And our land is sacred. These earthen shrines in all of creation are the contexts  in which the Spirit dwells.


by Jessica Ketola