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.

We invite you this Holy Week to journey with Jesus to the cross and to connect the Easter story right here in the ordinary stuff of your life and your neighborhood. Use the liturgy below to walk meditatively through your neighborhood pondering the depth of Christ's passion. 

Today, I am grieving. And while there is much to grieve in the world. Far too much to grieve I'm afraid. I am grieving losses a little closer to home.

I'm grieving the beauty of faces across the room, the comfort of a touch or a hug, the joy of feasting together over a candlelit table, sharing our lives and our hearts, as our voices fall and rise with stories and songs, our bodies resonating with vibration, letting us know that we are not alone.

I'm grieving the tangible, the ordinary, the up close and personal — of presence.

For the past six years, I have been attempting (admittedly poorly at times) to grow in the practice of presence. What does it mean to slow down, to listen, to pay attention and to be present to those around me? What does it mean to be present to my family, my neighbors, my community, my place, and the very ordinary mundane of my life? This journey to be faithfully present has proven to be both difficult and transformative. I experience a richness in my life that is worth its weight in gold. And this I am grieving.

I miss our neighborhood dinners. Jeff's friendly pat on the back with his, "How's it going?" Matt's hearty laugh and appetite. Masoud's cooking that always comes from the heart. Courtney's wine pouring technique sure to aerate the finest $6 bottle of wine. Fred's treats for dogs and kids alike. Juanita's homemade beans. Carolyn's Trader Joes treats. The sound of Genesis and Malachi playing in the background. Becky and Kathy, my 6am walking buddies, tired like me after a long day. I miss the gift of being present and in person with my neighbors.

I miss our sacred gatherings. Cooking in the kitchen with Jenni and her adorable dog Oliver. Greeting the community with hugs and warm welcome. Scriptures. Prayers. Songs sung in beautiful harmonies. Bill's thoughtful, unhurried reflections. Diane's kind and empathetic presence. David D.'s profound rambling poetic. April's refreshing honesty and exuberant smile. Jocelyn's bravery. Carrie's eloquence. Sharing the heartrending grief of what it means to be human. Sharing the heart-bursting dreams of what it means to be the church as we join in the work of love here in our small patch of earth.

These themes of grief and hope persist. We are currently in a Lenten season that none of us would have chosen. Confined to our living spaces, our only connection to the world is through our screens. We grieve a way of life now suddenly vanquished. The world has shifted beneath our feet. And so yes, grief and hope, death and life are very present on our minds. As we approach Holy Week, the “Stations of the Cross”, Good Friday and Easter now resonate with fresh meaning.

What does it mean to journey with Jesus in the grief, the disorientation, the confusion, and the immense hope of Holy Week?

Embedded in the stories that unveil Holy Week, Jesus says these words that eerily parallel what our world is currently experiencing. He, too, was lamenting a time when they would not be together. For the world was indeed heaving and rumbling with the birth of new creation and would never be the same.

“Behold the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” [John 16:32-33]

Jesus was speaking of the days to come when he would be abandoned by his disciples, distanced and isolated, and he leans into the presence of the Father knowing he is not actually alone. In fact, even death couldn't separate him from Divine Love. And so he encourages his followers, who have "self-isolated" and scattered into their own homes in fear and uncertainty saying, "Don't be afraid." For he knew the grief that they would be feeling. Jesus, in all of his humanity, profoundly felt it too. For the suffering of the cross was before him.

And yet he also knew the joy set before him. "...Jesus...who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." [Hebrews 12:2]

This is what Jesus speaks of when he says, "Take heart, I have overcome the world." Love wins. Death is not the end of the story. This is the greatest reversal the world has ever known. Easter means that we have been liberated from the oppression of fear and death. The evil powers of this age that ravage our world with sickness, violence, racism and greed have been dealt a final blow. And so even now, in the midst of a global pandemic full of disruption, disorientation, grief and loss, we are invited into the birth pains of new creation [Romans 8:18-28].

We are invited to grieve and to hope, to groan and to wait, to dream and to create.

So will you accept the invitation to journey with Jesus perhaps more intimately than ever before? As we move through Holy Week, in the absence of the presence of our communities, let us lean into the Presence of the One who is closer than our very breath. And let us enter fully into both the grief and the hope of our stories.

These themes of death and life, confusion and disruption resonate very closely in these times. And yet there is a place in our souls of deep peace, freedom and contentment that is untouched by any circumstance or hardship — it is a place of Divine Presence. Love. Connection. Communion.
​
As many of our rhythms are now being stripped away, I encourage you to lean into new practices of Presence. Take some time for solitude, silence and reflection. What comfort awaits us as we become more attuned to the Divine Presence who is acquainted with sorrow and suffering like no other? What beauty awaits us as we experience union with a humble, self-sacrificing Love that is more powerful than empire, evil or death? As we join in the birth pains of Holy Week in concert with a world collectively heaving and sighing, let us experience the transformative power of death and life, grief and hope, loss and redemption. This is holy work indeed.

by Jessica Ketola