​"For far too long, we as a society have ignored the cries of our neighbors of color, and many of us have been seduced to benefit from the status quo, marred by the sin of white supremacy. This reality has perpetuated the dangerous belief that we can live above place - disembodied and disconnected from the neighborhoods we inhabit, contributing to a disorganized and disempowered Church."

"Is it too late to reorganize the church in the neighborhood for a more equitable future?" -Parish Collective

For the past few years, we have been on a journey to reimagine the church in the neighborhood — to go beyond talking about love to actually embodying love together in real time and space. To reclaim the human and earthiness of our faith as we reconnect to the land and to each other following the command that sums it all up: Love your neighbor as yourself.

You see, we have a dream. To co-create a beautifully diverse and equitable community that reflects the wide and inclusive love of Jesus. This revolutionary love that turns greed and empire on its head, lifts up the poor and the oppressed, and heals all that is broken. A love that sets a table where all have gifts to contribute, difference is celebrated, and "the other" becomes family. Now, this dream is a beautiful dream that appeals to many. Sure to inspire, warm, and tingle. And yet while we all like talking about this dream, few will live it.

I know this too well. I am often misunderstood. My passion for joining God in the neighborhood has been misinterpreted as cute, niche, impractical, perhaps impossible in today's modern, high-tech, mobile world. Reimagining church as a rooted community versus a weekly gathering has proven anything but easy.

We are accustomed to living our individual lives without the burden of the common good. We are steeped in a culture of consuming rather than our God-given vocation of creating. We are used to floating above place, without much regard for the neighborhood in which we live and without truly knowing or loving our neighbors. And yet this pandemic has unveiled that we are all far more connected than we imagine. It has also revealed a pandemic of racism in our country, the wide and gaping cracks of inequity and injustice, and the deep roots of white supremacy at its very foundation. This is not a world we were meant for.

And yet I believe with all my heart, there is another way to live.

There is a new world that the Spirit is birthing in Jesus that frees the oppressed, heals the divides, and restores broken foundations.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter--
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings." [Isaiah 58]

I believe that it is time — in fact, a holy moment in time — to reimagine the church.

We must repent for the ways in which the church has been shaped by western imperialism, systemic racism, colonization, patriarchy, consumerism, and individualism. We need to explore how white supremacy distorts our imagination for how we can reorganize the church together in the dirt and soil of the neighborhood. For this is where heaven meets earth. We must seek to embody the gospel and to co-create a new community of revolutionary love — and I don't think we can do this apart from being rooted in our places.

"As theologian Dr. Willie Jennings says, “race is a matter of geography.”

If the very ground we walk on is home for unjust systems and economies, then we must return to our Genesis vocation to join God's work of renewal and shalom for all people, plants and animals. We must disrupt the soil, root out the weeds that choke, plant seeds of peace and equity,  and cultivate new gardens of love, justice, and beauty.

Dr. Jennings expounds on this thought in a recent article in The Christian Century:

"These days I am trying to understand how to be Christian in the dirt. Which means I am trying to think theologically from dirt and trees, sky and water, ocean and animals—not as background to life but as the reality of connection that prepares us for the living of life together. I believe theology and theological education must be reframed inside a more expansive and invasive ecological awareness, one that magnifies the sinews of our connectivity—to plants, animals, the built environment, and each other—to the level of pedagogy, that is, to the level of guiding our teaching and learning. I have been helped by a number of indigenous thinkers over the years who have marked this path forward...

...I continue to be amazed at the resistance of people—especially Christians, and especially some scholars, Christian or not—to this hard work. Such avoidance is understandable but not acceptable given the constant machinations of a white supremacy that now enjoys the sunlight of its unmasking. Only by remembering the dirt can we challenge this avoidance, with its constellation of mental and emotional stratagems of refusal. This remembering brings us to the work of seeing connections between the places we’ve lived and what those places teach us about race and faith—and between how we need to live on the ground in place now and who we want to be in this world."

This is a beautiful prayer. 

May the Spirit reveal to us how we are to live on the ground in our places now and who we want to be in this world.
​
by Jessica Ketola
Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash

​INHABIT 2020 at Home // JULY 16-17 // 8:30A - 6P
Join us online and at home as we bring our neighborhoods together to discern God's hopeful and equitable future. We’ll leverage our online connectivity to bring us together in unique ways. For the first time in Inhabit history, we’ll engage in learning, stories, art, and connection from the neighborhoods each of us inhabit year around.  REGISTER TODAY!

This week has been a week like none other. We are collectively experiencing great upheaval, grief, and trauma across our nation. As we continue to be in lock down due to a global pandemic with almost 110,000 deaths in the U.S., we are simultaneously watching the whole country ablaze with outrage and protest in the wake of the brutal murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others. It is heavy. These apocalyptic times seem to be unveiling all the deep wounds of racism, violence and white supremacy in our country in a way that seem to have our attention.

And so amidst the grief and the lament, a stubborn hope persists. For right alongside the disturbing images of demagogues, contortions of faith, and military police using excessive force in the face of peaceful protestors, I see so many beautiful displays of repentance and solidarity. Sustained protests in all 50 states, made up of every shade of black, brown and white, coming together to see justice roll like a river in our streets. Profound images of protestors and officers taking a knee, crowds singing in unity, and children chanting in the streets. And while it will take much more than symbols or prayers to disrupt systemic racism and many rightly criticize a false peace, I pray that this movement toward one another continues.

For it is empire that wants to divide and conquer. It is a system of scarcity where violence, greed and fear reign. We fight one another and in turn, we all suffer. And in a time of extreme polarization and division across our country, we are all bearing the brunt of our fragmentation.

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Structured racism MUST be abolished but we can't stop there! A tree has roots and so does the current American dilemma. The root of our problems stem from a warped Western worldview that values hierarchy over the dignity of every voice, binary choices over living in wise compromise or becoming comfortable with tension, and individualism instead of community ethics for the common good..." -Randy Woodley

Saint Paul said it like this, "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." -I Corinthians 12:26

​My prayer of repentance begins with acknowledging that as a white woman of privilege, I have not suffered with my black and brown siblings who are suffering.

Distance is a privilege that we must surrender. -Sunia Gibbs

My prayer is that we will LEAN IN.

Lean into the discomfort. Lean into the learning. Lean into the listening. Lean into the grief and the horror of solidarity. For those of you like me who are white, you may just be waking up to your complicity in these systems of oppression. You may be struggling to know how to join the fight for justice. I too struggle. What I can say is that we must lean in. Repentance looks like giving up the privilege of distance and listening to the black and brown leaders who have been in this work a long time.

Racism is traumatic. Black people are experiencing a collective trauma. Being heard is necessary to our healing. ⁣ -Latasha Morrison

Know that this is a costly and arduous journey that must go beyond toxic tears and social media spurts void of true repentance. As followers of Jesus, we are called to repent, to live another way, and to join in the revolution of love. So let's roll up our sleeves, do our work, and lean in.

Know that The Practicing Church is committed to the long road of repentance, the dismantling of white supremacy, and the co-creation of the beloved community. Though we admit our profound ineptitude and ignorance to do so, we fall upon the leading of the Spirit who alone can bring the transformation needed in our hearts and our communities. And over the coming weeks and months, we will commit ourselves to journey together.

And so as you lean into your own discomfort this week, as you perhaps attend an anti-racist webinar, or dive into your anti-racist book, attend a protest, or have hard conversations, I leave you with this blessing from writer, pastor and author, Dominique Gilliard who contemporized this classic Franciscan prayer for this kairos moment.

May God bless you with holy anger at white supremacy, police brutality, and racial oppression, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-blackness, so that you may sacrificially reach out to them in love, learn how to stand in solidarity with them, and work alongside them to transform broken systems and structures.

May God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we really CAN make a difference in this world, so that we are able, with God's grace, to help the Church do what others claim cannot be done: truly become an interconnected Body, where when one part suffers, every part suffers with it. -Dominique DuBois Gilliard


by Jessica Ketola

I woke up this morning with the word WAIT impressed upon my heart and my mind. Wait. It is a word both comforting and uncomfortable all at the same time.

Wait. Not something we like to do. We are insta-gratification, get-'er-done kind of folk. And yet in a time when we feel much powerlessness and constraint, it is something we all can and must do.
Wait. Wait on God. Wait for the curve to flatten. Wait for a vaccine. Wait for the death toll to stop climbing. Wait for gatherings, community, shared meals, travel and all the previous freedoms we enjoyed in our pre-corona-existence.

Of all the invitations to wait, waiting on God seems to be front and center. The longer this quarantine continues, the greater my need and dependency grows on the presence of God to sustain me. This is hard. There is no way around that. We are all experiencing losses now compounded over time. To be clear, as Coronavirus deaths have reached 100,000 in the U.S. in just over four months, we are experiencing a collective trauma. And so we must be gentle with ourselves. We are exhausted. We are tired. We are spent.

Aside from the overwhelming grief and constraint, we simply are not receiving what we are used to receiving in community. A touch, a smile, a look of understanding, the synergy of a room, a warm embrace, the delight of a shared meal, the feeling that it's gonna be okay because we're all in this together. Instead, we are having to settle for Zoom screens and phone calls and we are giving everything we've got to be present and to stay connected. And it's good and we're trying and doing the best we can. But it's not the same. And so we find ourselves depleted and worn down. All the energy expended bouncing against the walls of our screens and little being transmitted across the digital waves. So in a time of much giving and depletion, we've got the figure out ways in which we can receive.

And this is why we are committed to practices of presence, present to God, our neighbors and ourselves — for we are created for connection and communion. So don't miss out on the gifts of presence available to you right here and right now — look, listen and wait.

This week is Pentecost Sunday and we find Jesus' followers waiting too. Waiting to receive. "While he was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father’s promise." [Acts 1:4] For Jesus knew that as he would no longer be physically present with his disciples, they were receiving a new gift of presence. A presence that now would be poured out on all who would receive, awakening, sustaining and empowering them.

And so in these challenging times, we must wait. We must wait to receive. The life-giving power of the Spirit. The very breath of God. This is what will sustain us, strengthen us, encourage us, and empower us. On Pentecost, the Spirit transformed a motley crew of disciples who were confused, doubting, disillusioned, and hiding into the emboldened and empowered apostles of the early church.

The Spirit ignited a revolutionary fire in the midst of great oppression and persecution. And God's purposes of hope and renewal unfolded in spite of much upheaval and even the demise of their beloved Jerusalem. So in the midst of tumultuous times, we must not despair. We must wait to receive. For surely, the Spirit of God is at work in the world even in our current birth pains.

I pray even in the midst of the hard, the uncomfortable, and the uncertain, that we will be filled, empowered and awakened to the work of the Spirit that is unfolding in us and in our neighborhoods.

May we receive — everything we need and more.


by Jessica Ketola

I find myself tired today. Tired of the madness, the terror, the violence, the greed, and the misuse of power against black and brown bodies, against the poor, against the vulnerable. I join in the lament, "How long, O Lord, how long?" [Psalm 13:1]

I'm tired of living in a world divided and polarized, fragmented and pillaged, ravaged by greed and hostile to human flourishing. I'm tired of the evils of white supremacy and racial violence that are embedded in the very fabric of our country. And if I am tired —as a white woman with privilege—I can't imagine how weary our black and brown siblings are. There are no words. Only tears.

“Black People Are Tired” was anonymously authored and circulated through social media in the wake of Ahmaud Arbery’s death. Yet black souls like Breonna Taylor keep being stolen from us. Red Letter Christians has created this tribute to bring light to these tragic injustices and honor the lives of those lost in a world still infected by white supremacy and violent racism. May they rest in power. May we fight for love and justice so that no one else has to see their loved ones become a hashtag.
​
Please take a few minutes to let the weight of these stories impact you.

Mourn we must. Grieve we must. As my friend Sunia Gibbs, a parish pastor in Portland, has articulated so profoundly, "Distance is a privilege we have to surrender."

We must relinquish the comfort of our denial. We must listen to the stories and perspectives of those who are experiencing what we do not understand. And we must learn, think differently, and repent. I thought this video by actor Sterling K. Brown (This is Us) was moving as you could viscerally feel the weariness and anger of his lament. You can also feel it in a statement put out by our black Vineyard pastors.

I am listening intently to my fellow colleagues who are my teachers. Here is a post by Silas Sham who was a part of our community for a short time before being hired on at Bethany Northeast.

Dear Christians, I speak as a pastor and person of color:

If our numerous cries of lament, injustice, and shock in the wake of Ahmaud Arbery don’t cause us to rework how we live our lives, we will fail to honor Ahmaud.

If our posts don’t translate into unfettered, embodied denunciations of racism, white supremacy and our religion’s role in propagating such ideology (particularly from the pulpit) we can’t pretend to say that our posts this week have been prophetic. Instead, we must own and admit that our witness has been nothing less than pornographic.

Tragedies like this are not isolated occurrences. From condemning micro-aggressions to confronting macro-aggressions, we have the responsibility and response-ability to participate in making God’s Kin_dom on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Fellow Christians, by all means continue to post and share. But don’t let that be the only thing we do. #Irunwithahmaud #morethanaweek #pocreality #propheticnotpornographic

Edit: Put another way - It’s like we’re all at youth camp and everyone’s just gone up for the altar call. Everyone is broken and humbled before God but that experience won’t change most of our actual life patterns because that is the deeper harder work. Commit to whole life transformation - not just drive-by reconciliation. - Silas Sham

As The Practicing Church, we are committed to the long road of repentance and whole life transformation. It is not enough to be outraged.

Grace Lee Boggs said that "You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it; Unless you see yourself as belonging to it and being responsible for changing it."

This is why I am so passionate that we as the church stop living above our places but instead root in our neighborhoods to embody love. I am tired, but I would be completely lost and despairing if not for the hope of love here on the ground. Here in the neighborhood, we have the opportunity to become the beloved community that Dr. King and Saint John imagined.
​
This last week as I participated in a spatially distant happy hour, I reveled in our diversity: Latino, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Nigerian, English and Texan — Muslim, Christian, Agnostic — gay and straight, gray-hairs and babies, single and married, families with bundles of kids and those with the canine variety — construction workers, nurses, counselors and engineers. Where else on earth would we all be coming together to weave a fabric of care? Left to our own devices, we so often choose the comfort of homogeneity — people just like us.

​But this is our block, our neighborhood and we must take responsibility for it, for the land and for one another. Here in the neighborhood, we have the opportunity to practice skills like listening, empathy, compassion, generosity and peacemaking. We can create gardens, connection, and beauty that catalyze the gifts of the community. We have the context to engage the slow and long work of transformation that is so needed today.

So yes, we mourn and grieve. We are outraged. We are tired. We are beyond tired. In fact, in pandemic quarantine, we are almost too tired and overwhelmed to process all the injustice. We cannot keep up with the growing mountain of grief.

And yet there is something we all can do. It is simple yet difficult. It is small yet profound. It seems that Jesus was truly onto something.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Whether it is your neighbor seeking asylum or your neighbor practicing Ramadan. It may be your neighbor experiencing homelessness or your unemployed neighbor who cannot pay their rent. It may be your Asian American neighbor who is facing undeserved harassment and public bullying or your Black neighbor who puts their life in their hands every time they wear a mask.

It is here in the neighborhood that we can begin to stitch a new garment of love and community for all.
I will reiterate the words of Sonya Renee Taylor, "We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. we should not long to return my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”


​by Jessica Ketola

​Last week, we talked about how interior freedom is found in consenting to that which we did not choose. For there is a paradox here that we cannot become truly free unless we accept not always being free. To achieve true interior freedom, we must practice deep acceptance of our lives just as they are. [Interior Freedom by Jacques Philippe]

And tied to this idea, we must fully accept ourselves just as we are. Of course, this is not easy. We are a culture steeped in the "not enough". Most of us struggle with feelings of inadequacy, feeling that we are flawed, lamenting our defects and limitations, and wishing we were more gifted. But as Father Philippe points out, God's grace does not operate on our imaginings, ideals, or dreams. It works on reality, the specific, concrete elements of our lives. For only in the inglorious everyday of our lives can glory be found.

The person that God loves with so much tenderness is not the person that we'd have liked to be or ought to be. It's the person we are. God doesn't love "ideal persons" or "virtual beings." God loves actual, real people. And so all of our deprecating, envying, and lamenting is a sheer waste of time and energy — and it actually impedes the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

"What often blocks the action of God's grace in our lives is less our sins or failings, than it is our failure to accept our own weakness — all those rejections, conscious or not, of what we are really are or of our real situation. To "set grace free" in our lives, and paving the way for deep and spectacular changes, it sometimes would be enough to say simply "yes" — a "yes" inspired by trust in God to aspects of our lives we've been rejecting." - Jacque Philippe, Interior Freedom

Mic drop.

These words came flying off the page this last summer as I spent time in solitude and silence. And I realized that there were parts of my life and even parts of myself that I was rejecting. Of course, there is so much I am longing for in my life, so much that I am hoping to grow into — but the simple truth is this. We can only transform reality if we accept it first. To receive the grace that will transform us, we must "receive" ourselves — and accept ourselves as we really are.

Accepting ourselves is much more difficult than it might seem. We have our pride, our fear of not being loved, our stories of wounding, and our conviction of how little we are worth. We are terrified to be found out, to fall, and to fail. These beliefs are deeply rooted in us, and yet they must be unmasked, not clung to. In consenting to be what we are, we accept ourselves in our poverty but also in our richness.

Only in the loving gaze of God can we fully and truly accept ourselves.

For it is in the mediation of another's eyes that we receive grace. It is here that I have received so much healing in my life as I hear these words that astound me every time, "You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased." [Matthew 3:17] "As a father or mother has compassion on their children, so I have compassion on you. For I know you inside and out. I know your frailty."[Psalm 103:13-14] "No more will anyone call you Rejected, and your life will no more be called Ruined. You'll be called My Delight, the one whom I commit to for a lifetime. [Isaiah 62:4] "You are precious. You are mine. You are honored and I love you." [Isaiah 43:4]

This week, may you hear these words spoken over you as you sit in the loving gaze of God. For it is the purest, truest, most tender, most loving, and hope-filled gaze. May you feel yourself loved so wholly and completely that you will receive the grace of accepting yourself — wholly and completely. And may this pave the way for deep and spectacular changes as you begin to simply say "yes" to the parts of your life and yourself you've been rejecting. And in doing so, may you "set grace free" in your life!

by Jessica Ketola

We are continuing our journey in this season to find Interior Freedom in the midst of Covid Constraint. And as we heard just this week from Governor Jay Inslee that our stay at home orders will be extended, we are acutely feeling the confinement of quarantine and longing for freedoms that we haven't tasted now for two months. And so our discussion this last Sunday was anything but theoretical as we wrestled with the question --

"What is Freedom?"

There is an interesting commentary on Freedom being played out center stage in current events. There are those who feel their "rights" have been infringed upon and they are fighting for their freedom as they protest for stay at home orders to be lifted.

But one must ask freedom for whom?

For the individual or for the entire community? For one or for all?

I do not pretend to know when the right time is for states to reopen, being neither a scientist or an economist. But as a follower of Jesus, I believe that Love is the highest law. I know that we are collectively grieving a lot. People are hurting. People are afraid. And yet I share in Jesus' concern for the poor, the vulnerable, the widow, the refugee, the incarcerated and the outcast.

What does Love dictate in this moment? What does it mean to love our neighbors as ourselves?

​So yes, "What is Freedom?"

The truth is that often what we espouse as our personal freedom is not freedom for all. In fact, many times our privilege and choices are at the cost of the oppressed and vulnerable whether that is the sweatshop worker who stitched our new sweatshirt overseas or the migrant worker who is welcome to pick our fresh fruit but not welcome at our table.
​
The Coronavirus is only revealing the gross injustices that exist in our country in the pursuit of freedom. And while there is truth in our collective experience given that no one is immune to the virus, this pandemic is far from the great "equalizer". Instead, it is exacerbating the inequalities in American society, taking a disproportionate toll on low-income Americans, people of color, and others who were already marginalized before the crisis hit. The news from the nation’s prisons, detention centers, and the Navajo Nation is increasingly heartbreaking. Insult to injury in view of our nation's inhumane and systemic war on black and brown bodies.

So I ask you, "What is freedom?"

For while the human heart is created for freedom, our culture's definition of freedom is in stark contrast to the freedom we see in the gospel.

Jesus said, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free." [Luke 4:18]

The American gospel could be stated like this: The Spirit of greed, individualism, consumerism and imperialism is upon us to procure good news for our own interests that is nothing but bad news for the poor, that continues to profit off of systems of white supremacy, violence and the imprisonment of black and brown bodies, that steals and ravages our land and disregards our responsibility to it and to one another, that turns a blind eye to the plight of the powerless, the needy and our neighbors who are suffering, and continues to pile on burdens to those already bowed down.

I have said this before and I will say it again. I believe that we are being given an opportunity to repent.To go another way.

There is another way to live.

Yes, it will require giving up some of our personal "freedoms" in order to be a part of the richness of a collective wholeness. But I hope we can see where our American gospel has gotten us. We are in need of healing like never before. The whole earth is groaning, heaving and sighing with labors pains, longing for redemption.

So perhaps we give up some of our preferences in order to actually love our neighbor. Perhaps we reorder our precious time so that we can tutor neighborhood kids. Perhaps we cultivate a neighborhood garden instead of one in our own backyard. Perhaps we rally the community to support our favorite local business. Perhaps we give up beef so that plant workers don't die. Perhaps we continue to walk our neighborhoods and ride our bikes and leave our cars at home. Perhaps we pass on our stimulus check to someone who can't pay their rent. Perhaps we humbly follow the directives to stay home so that the most vulnerable don't fall ill.

For most of us, these are very small sacrifices given overwhelming suffering. But we must begin to live into another story.

As our freedoms are currently constrained, it is a good moment to reflect on our privilege and our responsibility to one another and to our places. Is our freedom at the expense of others or is it a freedom for all that heals, restores, and liberates.

This poem by Kitty O'Meara has expressed a collective prayer for healing that is reverberating. It is a prayer of repentance and of healing.

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply.
Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently. And the people healed.
And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

May we begin to live into another way, a way of healing and freedom in harmony with our neighbor and with creation. May we rediscover what it is to be human and what it is to love one another. And may we make new choices and dream new dreams.


by Jessica Ketola


Further Reading
The Fullness Thereof by Randy Woodley
Rethinking Incarceration by Dominique Dubois Gilliard
Church Forsaken by Pastor Jonathan Brooks
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

We are currently stuck in an eerie Groundhog Day kind of existence. For those of you who don't know this iconic 90's comedy, it stars Bill Murray as Phil Connors, a TV weatherman who, during an assignment covering the annual Groundhog Day event, is caught in a time loop, repeatedly reliving the same day. And here in quarantine life, one can't help but feel the striking resemblance of being stuck day after day in the same mundane routine. If you're anything like me, you may wonder what day it is, if you've brushed your teeth yet, how many days in a row you've worn the same sweatpants, and when the last time it was you showered. (Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds!)

But just as in the movie, we can press on our window panes as much as we want. We can protest and selfishly "fight for our freedom". We can bang our head on the same wall over and over again, feeling utterly stuck and impatiently waiting to return to "normal."

OR we can realize that we no longer want to return to what was.

We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was never normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature. -Sonja Renee Taylor

Right now, we have a unique opportunity to rethink our way of life. Turns out, there are lessons to be learned here in these Groundhog Days. Jesus’ message of repentance as he walked this earth was simple.

There is another way to live.

And he proclaimed and demonstrated a Way of Love so stunning that no power of death or evil could conquer. In fact Jesus' death birthed a whole new world and a pathway to the fullness of resurrection life!

Easter means that every dead end becomes a pathway to life.

I want us to see this time of quarantine not as a dead end, a time loop, or a pit — but as a pathway and a journey into faith, hope and love. In the Spiritual journey, whenever one hits a wall, there is always an invitation to go deeper into transformation. When what used to work in our lives no longer works, the Spirit is beckoning us toward growth and towards a deeper and wider experience of God’s love than we have ever known.

For many of us, what was working before no longer works here in the grit of our Groundhog Day existence. The shock is over and the monotony of confounding restrictions, disembodied Zoom calls, and the confines of our walls stretches on ahead of us. Is it just me, or is this "constraint" exposing some of our more ugly or unhealthy ways of coping in life — even in spite of our favorite sweatpants and Netflix subscription!?! (Asking for a friend) Like Phil in Groundhog Day, we find ourselves struggling to live into new rhythms, new practices, and new ways of being.

And so I want to invite you to embark with us on a journey over the next 8 weeks to move from anger to consent, from despair to hope, and from fear to love. Let us move from the dead end to the pathway — to find an interior freedom that no confining circumstance or loss can take away. My prayer is that we would emerge from this season different people. People who reveal just a little bit more the light and life of our resurrected Christ. People who embody a deeper faith and a wider love. We have been given the opportunity to stitch a new garment, a fabric of love right here in our small patch of earth!

The journey starts this week! All the details are included below and if you missed it, here is last week's post with a fuller description. If you haven't yet, RSVP to get your book and be paired with a partner. And be sure to join us this Sunday as we launch our journey into Freedom in Constraint!

Writing to you fondly from quarantine in my most comfy sweatpants, my face pressed longingly against the windowpane until I can see you all again,

Jessica

​Last week, I talked about the "secret" in the suffering of our current global pandemic — the practice of consenting to what we did not choose. For there is a greater freedom found in the acceptance of our reality than in our ability to transform reality. And yet as we consent to what we did not choose, even though the world remains the same, our heart and our postures shift and transform our very experience of reality.

And so as we stare down the next weeks, maybe months, in quarantine, I am inviting each and every one of you to embark on a journey to find freedom in constraint.

For there are gifts to be found here in the wilderness of lock-down that we wouldn't receive in more buoyant times. There are things to be learned here that we wouldn't learn except for our current realities. These are the unique kairos moments of invitation in every moment, every day, and every season. No matter how difficult the circumstances, the Spirit's invitation beckons.

As The Practicing Church, our mission remains the same. We want to join in the renewal of all things through practices that ground us in the love of God and neighbor. Transformation is the goal. We want to practice the Way of Jesus to come home to love and embody love to our neighbor. And so over the next eight weeks, we want to journey together to find an interior freedom that no constraint or circumstance can touch.

Are you ready?

These apocalyptic times are revealing much. About us. About our consolations and desolations. And about what it means to be the church. As a contemplative missional community, we have struggled with how we are to be the church in light of spacial distancing. So much of our ethos of hospitality, embodiment, service and faithful presence now seeming painfully elusive.

We know we don't want to create a product to consume. For church is not an event but a community where every member is responsible for their own spiritual formation with gifts to give and receive. And we are committed now more than ever to being the church and sharing a way of life that forms us in the way of love. Folks everywhere are rediscovering the value of the local and the beauty of the neighborhood in the midst of sheltering in place. It is confirming all we know to be true about living the gospel here on the ground in our everyday lives and participating in the flourishing of our neighborhoods.

And so we are committed to taking this journey with you to move from anger to consent, from despair to hope, and from fear to love. And in a season of intense distancing, we are going to lean into presence however we can. All of the details will be unfolding in the following weeks; but here is a brief outline.

1) WE WILL JOURNEY TOWARD INTERIOR FREEDOM.
We will collectively journey through the book and study guide for Interior Freedom. This is one of my favorite books and Father Jacques has much to teach us about freedom in constraint. We have ordered multiple copies and will be getting them to you upon arrival.

2) WE WILL ENGAGE IN PRACTICES OF FAITHFUL PRESENCE — LOVING GOD, NEIGHBOR AND OURSELVES EVERY WEEK.

• Present to God: We will choose solitude over isolation and engage in practices of communing with God.

 

• Present to our Neighbors: We will look for ways to continue to love our neighbors from checking in on vulnerable neighbors, to giving grocery cards to families in need, and offering our gifts to the community.

 

• Present to Ourselves: We will attend to our own souls and health during this time, being intentional to implement life-giving rhythms.

3) WE WILL JOURNEY TOGETHER.

• Partnering: We will each pair up with a partner to do weekly check-ins with our practices and book reflections - and well, just care for one another.

 

• Spiritual Direction: We love the work of spiritual direction where a spiritual companion accompanies one in the work of discernment in their life. If this is something you are missing or longing for, we can help connect you to a spiritual director.

 

• Weekly Rhythms: We will continue to gather weekly online every Sunday as well as practice a few other life-sustaining rhythms (upon your feedback) to keep us all centered and sane.

An Invitation
The truth is that as much grief as we are all holding in this time, we have a profound opportunity to grow in faith, hope, and love. And as confining as our circumstances might feel, there is an interior freedom we can cultivate that cannot be constrained. In these extraordinary times, I believe there is an extraordinary invitation.

Will you say yes and embark on the journey?

Join us this Sunday as we begin leaning in. The choice is yours.

Freedom awaits you.


​by Jessica Ketola

​I keep waking up with the weight of the world pressing in, inciting my own prayers to heaven. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy on us all. These are difficult times. And while no person’s experience of sheltering in place is the same, it is disruptive for everyone. For some, quarantine is a long vacation from the confines of their homes. For others, they are facing the terror of financial distress. For many, this is a much-needed corrective to slow down. But for those on the front lines, the work load has increased along with the additional burdens of risk, grief, and anxiety.

For parents who are working from home and having to juggle the responsibilities for caring for and homeschooling their children, life is almost unmanageable. Contrast that with those who live alone and haven’t felt human touch now for weeks. Then there are the high school students who won’t have a senior prom or graduation, the college students who have been forced home in isolation from the community of their dorm life, and all the students and teachers now relegated to the confounding and sterile world of online learning. Yes, it is disruptive to say the least.

And all this is overshadowed by those ravaged by the coronavirus – those who are struggling for their very breath, the grieving families forced to be apart from their loved ones, and the healthcare workers who are overwhelmed with anguish as they hold hand after hand of those passing from this life to the next. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy on us. The collective grief is heavy and palpable in the air.

Which seems fitting, because today begins the Triduum of Holy Week where we enter into the grief of Jesus’ passion, crucifixion, and death. Here we find Jesus just hours away from his betrayal that will begin the arduous journey to the cross. And we find Jesus troubled, distressed, and heartbroken. Sometimes, we forget that Jesus was human just like you and me. For we see a Jesus full of grief and wrestling as he tarries and groans in the Garden of Gethsemane. Buckling under the weight of all that is coming – the impending betrayal and abandonment of those closest to him; the agony, humiliation and injustice of the cross; and a magnitude of suffering of which few can fully fathom.

So how in Jesus’ humanity did he endure this? I mean, really. We are hard pressed here in our own versions of COVID misery-and-suffering, but how is this possible?

I believe it is because he knew “the secret”. Far from creating his own reality or self-actualizing, Jesus chose to lay his life down. He didn’t simply endure suffering, but he consented to it. This is the confounding, upside-down gospel that says, “Whoever seeks to gain their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life will preserve it.” [Luke 17:33]

Steeped in a culture that avoids suffering at all cost, we are prone to fight and rail against difficulty in our lives. And yet the mystic saints would say that the path to finding interior freedom regardless of external circumstances is through acceptance and consent. Consenting to that which we did not choose. Trusting that the God who is able to draw good out of whatever befalls us will do so.

Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who died in Auschwitz in 1943 learned this “secret” in the midst of great suffering. She wrote, “I now realize, God, how much You have given me. So much that was beautiful and so much that was hard to bear. Yet whenever I showed myself ready to bear it, the hard was directly transformed into the beautiful.” [An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum]

For the most painful suffering is the suffering we reject — and what really hurts is not so much suffering itself as the fear of suffering. While it seems counterintuitive, when we embrace our suffering, we open ourselves up to the beauty of transformation and new life. Now I get it. Acceptance doesn’t happen overnight, but we can begin to shift our hearts and our minds towards this work of the Spirit. It’s a process — through the resistance, rebellion, and resignation to acceptance and finally consent.

We have been taught that our happiness and freedom is about our ability to seek our own pleasure, choosing what suits us best from a wide variety of possibilities. And yet, we currently are experiencing that there is much in life we do not choose. In fact, we have far less control than we think. We are now experiencing just a taste of what those who experience oppression, illness, poverty and injustice know far too well. As our lives are now being constrained, our freedom narrowed, and our choices limited, there is a deeper truth. True freedom is consenting to what we did not originally choose. It is choosing the humble way of trust and surrender.

Jesus said, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” [John 10:17]

Here is a paradox. His life was certainly taken from him; he was put in chains, condemned, led to Calvary, and crucified. But, as the liturgy says this was a “death he freely accepted.” In his heart was deep acceptance of what His Father wanted. Jesus remained supremely free in his death, because he made it into an offering of love. By his free and loving consent, the life that was taken became a life given. [Jacques Philippe, Interior Freedom]

As we journey through Holy Week facing the difficulties of restraint and quarantine, how can we surrender our grief, loneliness, anger, sadness and fear? How does our life taken become a life given? And what beauty awaits us as we find the deep place of freedom within that no external power can take away?

This is the mystery of the cross, the paradoxical “secret” of the gospel — that nothing can separate us from the love of God. When all else is gone, faith, hope and love remain, and the greatest of these is love. [I Corinthians 13:13] So let us accompany Jesus to the cross, laying down our lives in surrender, knowing that in the end, we are surrendering to love. And love wins every single time.


by Jessica Ketola

***To enter into Holy Week, we are providing you a liturgy for Stations on the Street.