As we begin the season of Lent, we enter into the mystery of God in Jesus and the paradox of the kingdom. Yesterday was no exception. I wanted to feel my mortality, to revel in my humanity. To remember that I am dust, and to dust I will return. I am not God. Nor am I a wonder worker or superhero. I remind myself of this often. Weekly, even daily.
 
As we enter the season of Lent, the 40 days and 6 Sundays before Easter that the church sets aside time for repentance, generosity to the poor, and prayer, we turn our hearts back to God. We considered this last Sunday as we looked at the temptations of Jesus and our core wounds that tempt us to meet our needs for power and control, affirmation and approval, and security outside of God. Mine is glaring me in the face right now. I want to be "okay" or "enough" in the world by performing to gain the approval and esteem of others. In my younger years, I tried to dazzle them with extraordinary feats and breathtaking performances, even if it killed me. To somehow prove to myself and others that I was worthy of love. But as you and I both know, this is a game that cannot be won. It is impossible to please everyone, nor should we try. Especially if we are doing something worth doing, creating beauty and meaning, fighting injustice and pioneering new paths, we can only expect critique, push back, and sabotage. We are mortal. We experience setbacks, illness, and loss. Not only that, but we stumble, we say the wrong thing or make the wrong decision. We fail. And it sucks. Yesterday, I felt my imperfection and my flawed humanity and it stung.
 
This is why I desperately needed the black ashen marks of the cross yesterday. Why I needed a visible sign on my forehead dispelling the myth that I am more than dust. I am limited, human, and fragile. I cannot save anyone. Nor can you. There is a certain kind of relief that comes in this knowledge. We can cease from striving, rest, let the heavy burden to make something of ourselves roll off our shoulders, inhale and exhale. And so I stared at the symbol of the man on the crucifix and knelt in my pew uttering sacred words of repentance. Jesus is the only one who saves, and even he was not a superhero but died a criminal's death. And so I ate of the body of Christ broken for me and drank from the cup, his blood poured out for me, and I died another death to my need to be spectacular.
 
The paradox came as I added my Valentine's celebrations to my ashes. Yes, I couldn't resist. I hung a heart banner with the words BELIEVE IN LOVE, baked some chocolate chip cookies, and gave little chocolates and handwritten notes to my loved ones. And while the origins of St. Valentine's Day are vague and co-opted at best, on this day I choose to celebrate love. Not the romantic love that makes us miserable and excludes most of us, but the true agape love that makes the world go round and includes absolutely everyone. And I found that along with my need for ashes, I needed this too. To know that I am loved, deeply and profoundly. Just as I am. Flawed and insecure, smudged with sacred cinders, I am beloved. I needed to open up my home as I do every Wednesday night to be with the beloved community, to laugh, to eat, to share conversation and life, to remind others that they are beloved too. This is the invitation. To enter into the baptismal waters, where we lay down all our striving, our stinging insecurity and our need for approval only to be raised up out of the waters. And to be filled with the Spirit of Love and to hear the words of the Father. You are my beloved, my daughters and my sons, in whom I am well pleased. This. This is all I need to hear. All I need to know. I am dust and yet the Spirit of God has breathed her very breath into this dust, creating me in the image of the divine to be a beloved child and to be a part of love's healing and redemptive work in the world.  This is the paradox. I am but dust and yet I am loved. 


by Jessica Ketola

Last Sunday, we talked about God's Big, Beautiful Dream at our gathering and the Community Budget Meeting that followed. And the excitement of what could be was palpable in the room. For we are beginning to see that the Spirit of God is out ahead of us, beckoning us.

And I am so thankful to our board and to so many wonderful community members who are committed to investing in this Dream together.

What is the Dream, you ask? Why, I thought you'd never ask!
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We believe that God has a big, beautiful dream for us and our neighborhoods.

And it includes everything and everyone.

We have a conviction that the Creator God is at work to heal and remake the whole world. Our own lives are a part of that renewal project and we are invited to join God in the ongoing work of making all things new. To follow Jesus and join Him in His mission is to become agents of renewal in our neighborhoods, our industries, and our city.

We want to join in God’s Dream by engaging in practices that ground us in the love of God and love of neighbor. For we have this crazy dream. And it is a dream that we as the people of God would no longer be asleep, irrelevant and indifferent to the world, but that we would actually live into what it means to follow Jesus, to embody love, and to be his hands and feet in the earth.

It is a dream of catalyzing ordinary folks like you and me to go into the world (Seattle Metro Area) in the places we live, work and play to announce and demonstrate the good news of Jesus. We believe that it really is good news and that we must reinterpret the gospel through new lenses of love and grace in the particularities of our everyday lives. We dream of groups of sincere followers of Jesus, starting here in Shoreline, but eventually all across the Seattle area, who are joining God in the renewal and flourishing of their neighborhoods -- who are listening, caring, praying, and joining in God's healing work in their everyday lives. And we believe that the Spirit of God is already out ahead of us, in our neighborhoods and workplaces, inviting us to see, to listen and to attend to Her movement.

​Okay -- so this is a nice Dream -- but HOW will we live into it?

​We will live into this dream by engaging in formational, missional, and communal practices.

To hear more about WHY it is good for us to give and to orient all aspects of our lives around the Way of Jesus, you can listen to last Sunday's Talk or read our giving statement online!

And if you would like to see the budget, just email me and I'll send that info along.
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I am so excited to journey with you into all that God has for us as we seek to live into the Dream!

by Jessica Ketola

We talk a lot about how WE are the church. Church is not something we attend but something we are together. And we all have a part. Every single one of us. We each bring something beautiful, something unique, something needed to the community. And when everyone participates and offers their gifts, there is an abundance of riches and no one lacks. This is true for our faith community as well as our neighborhood.
 
The thing is, we have some strong defaults. Often, when we think of church, we are not thinking of a people and a shared life, what the greek word ekklesia refers to as the assembly of God's people. Instead, we think of the institution, a building, a program which is more often than not set up to be attended for our consumption. Church gatherings on Sunday morning can often feel more like a movie theater where we are the audience and merely a collection of individuals rather than the beloved community linked together for a common good.

You see, individualism and consumerism are the enemy of God's Dream.

We must all learn to live together as [sisters and] brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made; this is the way it is structured.  - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
This is God's Dream. And we see this same mutuality and commitment to community expressed in the book of Acts as it describes the early church.
 
That day about three thousand took him at his word, were baptized and were signed up. They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers. Everyone around was in awe - all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved. - Acts 2:41-47 [The Message]

As The Practicing Church, we don't simply want to "do" church. Instead, we are longing to "be" the church, countering the individualism and consumerism of our day by practices of generosity and community. We want to live into God's Dream for this beloved community, devoting ourselves to the teachings of Jesus, to life together, to common meals and to prayer. To offer our gifts so that there is always more than enough for everyone.

What this means is that your presence matters. Your contribution matters. Your perspective, your voice, your passion, your strengths, and your gifts. If it is true that we are the church, then when we gather for Sunday or meals, parties or prayers, it is your presence joined with the presence of all the others in the community that makes it so. And when you are absent, you are missed. When you suffer, we suffer too. And when you celebrate, we do a celebration jig with you!

And if we are to be a part of God's Dream for us and our neighborhoods, then your presence and contribution matters even more. It will take all of us, living in mutuality and love, sharing life together, generously giving of our resources, our time and our money, and joining in God's healing work of renewal in our neighborhoods.

Our defaults of individualism and consumerism are strong and we are all fighting the currents of our culture, swimming in waters of anxiety, isolation, scarcity and futility.

It feels like there is simply not enough.

My encouragement to you is to resist the powers of the day, to show up, be present and experience the gift and the beauty of community -- where there is always more than enough.

For the kingdom of God is one of abundance and not scarcity.

We may feel like we have nothing to give, but when humbly offered, our pitiful sack lunch can be multiplied to feed the multitude and our widow's mite becomes gold. We may find ourselves overwhelmed, but heavy burdens when shared become surprisingly light. We may feel small and insignificant, powerless to affect change when it seems we ourselves are hanging on by a thread; but when we join our small thread with all the others, it becomes a beautiful tapestry.

We were not meant to live life alone, but together. We were not meant to live in scarcity but in the abundance of generosity. We were not meant to eat fast food, frenzied and disconnected, but to practice faithful presence, sharing long meals around the table where everyone in the community has a place, a name, and a voice. And we were not meant to live small, insignificant lives but to join God's big, beautiful Dream of healing and renewal in the world that is far beyond our wildest imaginations.

Those who sign on and depart the system of anxious scarcity become the historymakers in the neighborhood. - Walter Brueggemann
 
Wherever relationships are fragmented, it is by living out shalom that they can be made whole. Individualistic societies cause people to feel lonely and alienated, but shalom will bring authentic relationships and restore a sense of community. Greed and injustice marginalize and destroy people and the earth, but shalom restores dignity to everyone and everything. - Randy Woodley, Shalom and the Community of Creation 
 
 by Jessica Ketola