​In Advent, we sing the haunting words, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, remembering that Christ has come as Love incarnate, in flesh and blood, to liberate all creation that is groaning and longing for redemption. A redemption in which we now participate, and the consummation of which we anticipate.

This is our hope in a world brimming with suffering and turmoil. It is this hope, however faint at times, that God is here with us, our Immanuel. Christ came as Creator to redeem all of creation.

"For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God."

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies."[Romans 8:19-23]

We consider the glory and the scandal of a God who entered into the bodily experience of humanity and the grit and dirt of earth suffering under the tyranny of evil — in order to recreate it!

There is much we can learn as we humbly realize our place in creation not as gods but as creatures and stewards of God's glory, healing, and beauty on the earth.

"Creation is God’s gift to us as a first teacher and she is a teacher for life. Although God may be an abstraction to us, in spite of all our efforts to make God concrete through theology, story, ceremony, and song, creation is the one solid, concretized demonstration where God exists. God embodies the wonders of sunrise to sunset each day. God shows God’s self in the rainbow, the song of the loon, and the dance of the Sage Grouse. God’s presence is there in the birth of every living creature and again in its death. And God is revealed throughout the life of every single cell and every complex system on earth and beyond."

"Each of us, along with all living creatures, encounters creation before we can read or understand ideas about religion. Shared by all, that primordial sense of coming to grips with our earthly context is humanity’s deepest spirituality. The earth is our first, most consistent, and most continuous teacher." - Randy Woodley, Mission and the Cultural Other: A Closer Look.

This Advent, we long to reclaim an earthy and embodied spirituality that takes the incarnation of Christ seriously. Jesus came in flesh and blood, in vulnerability, humility, and weakness. Jesus entered into a particular culture, place, and time — born to a poor family in a backwoods town in an occupied land.

Our Immanuel, is still here, God with us, in bodies and in dirt.


by Jessica Ketola

​I've been writing more about what it means to be a Christian in the dirt — meaning how we live the incarnation, this mystery of glory housed in flesh and bone, embodying love and stubborn hope for new creation in the soil of our everyday lives and the places we inhabit.

Radical Hospitality as the scandalous welcome of God is central to our practices as a faith community. For the kingdom of God is like a big, long banqueting table, full of friends, strangers, neighbors, misfits, and sojourners. I love the invitation of the table. For there is something so earthy, bodily, and yet mystical that happens around the table. When we break bread together, we feel a sense of connection, delight, community, and presence.

So much of how we imagine gathering as the community of God’s people is around the table. Hospitality has been a pillar of Christianity over the millennia as Christians have cared for the sick, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. Far from the modern, Martha-Stewart-influenced notions of hospitality meant to impress, hospitality was the means of grace to care for those in need. “Welcoming the stranger… is the most often repeated commandment in the Hebrew Scriptures, with the exception of the imperative to worship the one and only God" (Theologian Orland Espín).

In the New Testament, Jesus displayed a radical inclusivity and welcome in which he modeled a spirituality that is shown to the least of these — the hungry, the needy, the prisoner, and the sick (Matt 25). Hospitality comes from two Greek words: philos which means “friend” and xenos which means “stranger.”

Hospitality is the love of strangers.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to love our neighbor and the stranger —those who are often excluded and neglected in society. And this is very challenging today. We are so fragmented in our society. We don’t know our neighbor. We have largely outsourced and institutionalized care for the stranger. We are prone to gather in our homogenous groups, and we don’t often bump up against those who are different from us. We are often isolated from the real needs and hunger of the oppressed and the poor. And we are afraid…that we’ll be overwhelmed, that we’ll be pushed to our limits, that we won’t have enough time, money, and resources…

Yet, Jesus invites us into another way — a way of abundance that combats the scarcity we feel. We are invited into radical love and generosity. Jesus modeled a scandalous and highly controversial faith that welcomed and included those in society who were outsiders. This greatly offended the Pharisees and still offends us today.

Jesus befriended those on the margins, those who were invisible, those who were oppressed, and those without power, privilege, and voice. And he was highly criticized by the religious people of the day for hanging out with the wrong people. The wrong race, the wrong religion, the wrong gender, the wrong status. But we must understand this.

This. Is. The Gospel.

Its essence is radical welcome and inclusion. We see this as Jesus welcomed women, Samaritans, crooks, adulterers, and lepers, many of who were considered to be no less than dogs. No one is outside of God’s mercy and grace. This gospel transforms communities. It breaks down all the divides. The kingdom invitation is for everyone. Slave and free. Rich and poor. Educated and uneducated. Jew & Gentile. Christian & Muslim. Indigenous and refugee. Every shade of black, brown, and white. Straight and gay. Conservative and liberal. Everyone is invited to the table of God.

Because of this, I believe that radical hospitality is central to who we are as a church. For it is the essence of the kingdom.

This is the extravagance of the feast of God.


by Jessica Ketola​

We've been talking about our value of Creative Liberation — a value at the heart of God's work on the earth. Yet, so often we have read the scriptures from a location of privilege and have failed to see that this gospel is good news to the poor. We must decolonize our faith and decenter whiteness, for the Biblical narrative is largely written from the perspective of those who are oppressed. I believe we must reclaim a faith where our conversion to God demands our conversion to our neighbor. Theologians like James Cone, Gustavo Gutiérrez, William Jennings, Miroslav Volf, Renita Weems, and many others can help us understand liberation as a central theme of the Biblical narrative. One of the gifts of graduate school is being introduced to many different perspectives, ideologies, and thought leaders, and I've been ruminating on the intersection of gospel and culture.

Does the gospel of Jesus Christ transform culture? Many Christians today believe in a gospel that transforms the soul but not society. This question then lies at the heart of a Christian’s socio-political understanding. For me, it is a resounding “yes.”

For if the arc of scripture begins with the goodness and shalom of Creation and ends with its restoration in New Creation, then it follows that we are to be participants in this work of transformation. “Can the conclusion be avoided that not only is shalom God’s cause in the world but that all who believe in Jesus will, along with him, engage in the works of shalom? Shalom is both God’s cause in the world and our human calling.”[1] Shalom is the underpinning for a socio-political understanding that seeks human flourishing, justice, and right relationships with God, self, neighbor, and creation. This vision of human happiness and wholeness found in the inseparable love of God and neighbor informs my belief in a Christ who transforms culture.

Ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr’s models for Christ and Culture prove helpful here. [2] Two of the most predominant approaches today hold moral weight, Christ Against Culture and Christ Of Culture. The former offers a faith deeply committed to preserving holiness and a counter-cultural life. The latter offers an engagement with culture and an ability to contextualize faith in the language and forms of the day. Yet, one without the other offers a misshapen gospel. I believe that Christ Transforming Culture demonstrates an incarnational model that holds these two together — in love of God and neighbor, piety and justice, love incarnate in the neighborhood for the flourishing of all. We need a "radical evangelicalism [that] offers a tradition and a trajectory that is biblically based, Christ-centered, and socially involved—a gospel that embraces forgiveness and holiness for individuals and redemption and wholeness for the world." [3]

It is a travesty that piety has been separated from justice in the sociopolitical sphere. For politics is nothing more than the interrelationships between people and how power is shared, a realm ripe for the preservation of salt, liberation from oppression, and restoration of communities.[4] This kingdom liberation does not locate itself in the kingdoms and empires of this world – either in confusing God’s kingdom with a political agenda or in hopes of gaining worldly power or dominion. Rather, it is located once again in the justice and shalom of “right relationship” or “righteousness.” It is in the explicit call of scripture to care for the most vulnerable and needy in our communities, “not in rights asserted against one another” [5] but in responsibilities of humanity’s covenantal bond and “inescapable mutuality.”[6] Faith without works is dead, and a religion that has largely failed to address the injustices of our times is an impotent one. “Christians have not done enough in this area of conversion to the neighbor, to social justice, to history. They have not perceived clearly enough yet that to know God is to do justice.” [7]

2020 was an apocalyptic year, a year of revelation. Amidst pandemic and protest, the deep seeds of racism and white supremacy were exposed in ways that captured our attention. The brutal violence white people’s privilege had distanced them from now played over and over on screens. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder that catalyzed demonstrations all across our nation, it was increasingly difficult to believe that racism was a part of our ugly past.[8] Though this was nothing new for black, latinx, or asian american communities, many white folks awakened to the systemic and persistent evil of white supremacy. This was a time of grief, outrage, and protest amidst the tide of police brutality against black and brown bodies. The prophets cried out, “I can’t breathe.” [9]

You can be sure that God heard their cries. For our God is a God on the side of the oppressed — those who are crushed, degraded, humiliated, exploited, impoverished, defrauded, and enslaved. Yet what was the response of God’s people? Did the Church hear their cries?

Many did not. Many chose to stay clear of the “politics” of the day in a Christ Against Culture stance. Others became even more entrenched in the particular ideology of their political party both right and left, unwilling to converse with the “other” in a Christ Of Culture approach. The polarizing divides were profound — splitting apart families, friends, and churches.

Similar to previous times of civil unrest, there was “the appalling silence of the good people” within the white church, who professed their love for all lives, denied their culpability, and proved to be a “great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom.” [10] There was a refusal to see, let alone address, the systemic nature of racism, resorting once again to a gospel that sanctions the personal over the social. The roots of this bifurcation go back to our country’s inception in the doctrine of the "spirituality of the church." This spirituality attempted to extricate the church from addressing the social evils of slavery, promoting a “Christianity [that] could save one’s soul but not break one’s chains.” [11] Yet, this hideous distortion of the gospel repeats in response to the outcries to value black lives. “Where were the saints trying to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves [oppressed communities], but to do away with slavery [the systems that brutalize and oppress communities]?” [12] Who was listening to the black and brown prophets of the day?

Fortunately, there is a remnant of Christians who believe that Christ Transforms Culture in the sociopolitical sphere. Those who were willing to repent of America’s greatest sin, white supremacy, offering more than “thoughts and prayers.” They listened deeply to a perspective that contradicted their own. They learned a hard and grievous history. They stood in solidarity with the oppressed in protests and vigils. They followed the prophetic witness of African American, Native American, Asian American, and Latinx theologians and church leaders, engaging in civil action. They spoke out against white supremacy in their pulpits and among their peers not without cost, insisting that all created in the divine image share in equity and justice. They wrestled profoundly and lamented their complicity, beginning to find ways to take up the cause of the oppressed, amplify marginalized voices, and elevate black lives.

Yet Christians today must commit to the long, hard road of a lived repentance, “for our conversion to the Lord implies this conversion to our neighbor” — a radical transformation where we come to know “Christ present in exploited and oppressed persons.” [13] “We are not to stand around, hands folded, waiting for shalom to arrive. We are workers in God’s cause,” [14] joining the Spirit’s work of peace-making, justice, and liberation on the earth.


by Jessica Ketola


[1] Nicholas Wolterstorff, “For Justice with Shalom”, in Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 72.
[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, “Types of Christian Ethics,” In Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture, Glen H. Stassen, Diane M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 15-29.
[3] Donald W. Dayton, Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 200.
[4] Matthew 5:13, Isaiah 58: 6-7, 12
[5] Karen Lebacqz, “Implications for a Theory of Justice,” in From Christ to the World: Readings in Christian Ethics, eds. Wayne Boulton, Thomas Kennedy, and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 257.
[6] Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” The Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr, 1963, 1.
[7] Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” in Spiritual Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011), 49.
[8] “‘I Can’t Breathe’: The Refrain That Reignited a Movement,” Amnesty International, June 30, 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/i-cant-breathe-refrain-reignited-movement.
[9] Jessica Ketola, “A Time of Reckoning, Revelation, Repentance, and Reformation: The Epiphany of America’s Greatest Sin,” Medium, January 12, 2021, https://medium.com/interfaith-now/a-time-of-reckoning-revelation-repentance-and-reformation-7003c588875b.
[10] King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 4.
[11] Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 38.
[12] Kathleen Jorden, “The Nonviolence of Dorothy Day,” in From Christ to the World: Readings in Christian Ethics, eds. Wayne Boulton, Thomas Kennedy, and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 443.
[13] Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” 48.
[14] Wolterstorff, “For Justice with Shalom,” 72.

Photo: Touching Strangers Series by Richard Renaldi

As a community, we are shaped by our shared values —those things that we fiercely love and hold dear, our "non-negotiables"  — one of which is  is Deep Listening.

DEEP LISTENING
We listen deeply to the Spirit at work within our own stories, the stories of our neighbors, and the stories of our place until we become fully immersed in the mystery of God’s Story of love that heals us and heals the world.

This posture of Deep Listening locates us well in the humility and self-giving love of Christ's example. Jesus Christ, who spoke Creation into existence, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself of all privilege and power to take on our humanity and enter our world, laying down his life for love (Philippians 2). The scandal of the incarnation is profound.

We also are invited into this cruciform practice to enter the world of others for the sake of love. Yet often, we are caught up in our own worlds, occupied with our own self-interests and the demands of our lives. How do we repent, shift, and orient our lives differently in order to live lives of love?

How do we enter the worlds of others?

​How do we give up our privilege, our biases, our comfort, and our preconceived ideas to truly listen — deeply and thoughtfully? How do we pause before rushing in with our own experiences and worldviews? How do we slow down to listen well and let our hearts be impacted by the stories of our neighbors?

This is vital as we seek to incarnate love in our everyday lives. History is full of the atrocities of imperialism, colonization, racism, and gentrification. Often we fail to enter the world of the other, to esteem their interests higher than ourselves, to truly listen and honor the wisdom of their stories. “For our conversion to the Lord implies this conversion to our neighbor” — a radical transformation where we come to know “Christ present in exploited and oppressed persons.”[1] We are called to listen deeply to the stories that contradict our own, allowing them to affect us, shape us, and form us in the radical love of Christ.


[1] Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” in Spiritual Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011), 49.

by Jessica Ketola
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Sometimes it seems overly idealistic or naive to continue talking about the beautiful community God has called us to when the world around is groaning and heaving with tumultuous birth pains. For what good does it do to talk about love and justice in a world of hate, violence, and injustice? Yet, I am reminded that the self-giving, non-violent, enemy love that Jesus preached and embodied has the power to change the world.

Few are those who truly believe this, and fewer still are those who actually live it out. Dorothy Day was one of them. Day was a social activist, journalist, Catholic convert, mother, political radical, pacifist, servant of God, and more. Yet Day embodied what it means to put faith into action for social justice, deeply seated in her conviction to serve the poor and vulnerable. Her prophetic witness continues today.

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, "What else is the world interested in?" What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships. God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship with each other of love. We want with all our hearts to love, to be loved. And not just in the family but to look upon all as our mothers, sisters, brothers, children. It is when we love the most intensely and most humanly, that we can recognize how tepid is our love for others. The keenness and intensity of love brings with it suffering, of course, but joy too because it is a foretaste of heaven.*
​
As you seek to live into a way of love, let this encourage your hearts. It is only within the love of God and neighbor that we see heaven here on earth. This is the way God's kingdom comes.
So we pray for the Spirit of God to infuse our hearts, minds, spirits, and bodies with the power of love. May we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to perceive God's redemptive work all around us. And may we have the courage to take some risks, to put our bodies in the way of grace, to step in and join God there. Enter into the mystery of communion you were created for. Love and be loved.


​by Jessica Ketola

* Excerpt from "On Pilgrimage," The Catholic Worker, April 1948, 1, 2, 11.

More Than Enough
Last Sunday, we talked about the Spirit-empowered community that is activated and graced with spiritual gifts. These rich and varied gifts are meant to function together as a body. The metaphor of the human body in I Corinthians 12 is a provocative critique of the individualism of church life today. Yet, we see that whenever the Spirit is poured out in renewal movements beginning with the first Pentecost and throughout church history, this type of Koinonia community emerges. Koinonia (κοινωνία) is the New Testament Greek word referring to shared community, fellowship, joint participation, and gifts jointly contributed. It is what happens when the Spirit indwells the beloved community.

"There was an intense sense of togetherness among all who believed; they shared all their material possessions in trust. They sold any possessions and goods that did not benefit the community and used the money to help everyone in need. They were unified as they worshiped at the temple day after day. In homes, they broke bread and shared meals with glad and generous hearts." (Acts 2:44-46)

Revival and reform movements throughout church history are accompanied by a return to primitive Christianity, social concern for the poor and the marginalized, generosity, sharing of resources, and egalitarian impulses that catalyze the "ordinary" person to contribute their gifts. When this happens, we know the Spirit is at work!

For this does not happen naturally. You know those people. You know yourself. We tend to be self-absorbed and myopically focused on meeting our own needs. Overwhelmed with the demands of life, we believe the lie that there is not enough. It is only by the Spirit of God that we are graced to live into another reality. When the community comes together to offer their gifts, there is always an abundance of riches. There is always more than enough.

The Story of Stone Soup
The Story of Stone Soup is an old, European folk tale that illuminates the power of community to move us from scarcity to abundance.

Once upon a time, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. (Perhaps they hid their toilet paper too.) One day, a kindly-looking stranger came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

“There’s not a bite to eat in the whole province,” he was told. “Better keep moving on.”

“Oh, I have everything I need,” he said. “In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you.” He pulled an iron cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.

By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. As the stranger sniffed the “broth” and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.

“Ahh,” the stranger said to himself rather loudly, “I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage — that’s hard to beat.”

Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he’d retrieved from its hiding place and added it to the pot.

“Wonderful” cried the stranger. “You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king.”

The village butcher managed to find some salt beef . . . and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all.

This is the power of the Koinonia community and offers a beautiful vision for spiritual gifts. The "magic" of the stone is the unquantifiable Spirit that transforms the ordinary into the sacred, turning a measly two fish and five loaves into a feast for 500. A carrot or onion on its own is a meager bite, but when offered to the collective pot of community, it becomes a delicious meal that nourishes all.

All Things Become Possible
The importance of the neighborhood comes front and center as one of the last vestiges of community today. I see a microcosm of this every week at our neighborhood dinners. Each one brings a bottle of wine, a plate of cookies, a green salad, some warm bread. But when it all comes together, it is a beautiful feast —and feast we do! This Tuesday was especially poignant as we had many new faces and our home overflowed with the abundance of goodness when 28 neighbors came together across different backgrounds, cultures, and stories. Carnitas and barbacoa were piled on warm corn tortillas with guacamole, fresh salsa, Mexican rice, beans, and cornbread. Longtime residents shared stories with new homeowners. Culinary artists delighted while the comics entertained. The young and energetic coddled the babies of tired and worn parents. The toddlers and the pups ran in circles buzzing with excitement. Everyone contributed, and everyone was filled. No one left hungry of stomach or heart.

This economy of the Spirit defies scarcity and breeds daring imagination. All things become possible. Small, motley groups of people become the instigators of big, beautiful dreams. Those on the margins of the neighborhood are pulled into the center. The unspectacular and overlooked become goldmines of hope. The most unlikely characters become creators of goodness and healing.

"Those who sign on and depart the system of anxious scarcity become the historymakers in the neighborhood." -Walter Brueggemann

If we are to live into a new imagination of what it means to be the church today, we desperately need the Spirit of God to move in our midst. We need to be filled again, emboldened, and empowered into radical generosity to offer our gifts to each other and to our neighbors in a world in which all things are now possible!


by Jessica Ketola

We have been exploring the myriad of ways that the Spirit moves and speaks to us. Sometimes God moves in ways that are so far outside our western, rational worldview, and sometimes God moves in the minute, ordinary stuff that is easy to miss. A quick read through Acts reveals that God is far more mysterious, wild, active, and powerful than we know! Visions, encounters, strange languages, healings, conversions, earthquakes, prison escapes, people transported in the Spirit (how is that even a thing?), social revolutions, the birth of churches... And yet God also moved in the very ordinary practices of gathering in a home, breaking bread, and learning to share life together. Though often we like to put God in a box that we can understand and control, God defies the box.

We know this because of Jesus, who was definitely an "out-of-the-box" kind of person, perfectly revealed to us what God is like. Full of grace, love, and mercy — and yet kind of a badass revolutionary. He always did the unexpected, upped the ante, turned the tables, reversed power, and shifted the narrative.

So today, the question I'm sitting with is this:

In what ways is God moving that are unexpected? And do we have eyes to see?

Do we have the eyes of faith? It is hard to have faith in such a cynical world, and yet Jesus said that if we have only a mustard seed of faith, we can move mountains.

Jesus was matter-of-fact: “Embrace this God-life. Really embrace it, and nothing will be too much for you. This mountain, for instance: Just say, ‘Go jump in the lake’—no shuffling or hemming and hawing—and it’s as good as done. That’s why I urge you to pray for absolutely everything, ranging from small to large. Include everything as you embrace this God-life, and you’ll get God’s everything. [Mark 11:22-24 The Message]

The very definition of the unexpected means that it will surprise us. Perhaps it is bigger than we dare to imagine. Perhaps it is right under our noses. Perhaps it is hiding in Jesus disguised as the least of these. God, give us eyes to see what you are doing — the people you see, the humble ways you are at work, and the scandalous invitations of the Spirit. 

So what are the mountains in your life that seem immovable?

What seems impossible? Your unbelief? Your love of comfort? Your fear? What are the dreams that you have buried because they are too big or too daunting to acknowledge? If you really give yourself permission to believe that all things are possible with God, what is the Spirit inviting you to?

As followers of Jesus and people of the Spirit, we know that God can do far beyond what is possible in the natural. While we continue to experience heartbreak, loss, and suffering in this world, we live with great hope for we know that God is at work to redeem and restore. 

Saying yes to the wild and unexpected Spirit will take us out of our comfort zones,. It will lead us beyond what we can manage or control. It will push us to the glorious agony of hope, interdependence, and trust. 

My prayer for you this week is that as you spend time recharging in God's presence and listening for the voice of the Spirit, you will be given the gift of the mustard seed. May love immerse you, and hope revive you. May you be given eyes of faith to see the world anew — both in the ordinary particularities of your everyday lives and in the extraordinary ways that God is at work to do more than you can hope or imagine.

Nothing is Impossible.
​
​“It is certain that we may always live close to God in the light of God’s presence, and that such living is an entirely new life for us; that nothing is then impossible for us, because all things are possible with God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 391

"God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us." [Ephesians 3:20-21 The Message]

As a community, we have been in a process of articulating what we deeply love, what we are passionate about, and what matters most. Through a community process of discernment, we have come up with these collective values:

DEEP LISTENING
 
We listen deeply to the Spirit at work within our own stories, the stories of our neighbors, and the stories of our place until we become fully immersed in the mystery of God’s Story of love that heals us and heals the world.
 
Through deep listening, we embark on the journey inward coming home to the love we were created for. We cultivate sacred rhythms in which we are healed in the loving gaze of God in whom we live and move and have our being. We listen and attend to the Spirit’s deep work within us and through us. We embrace mystery, foster curiosity, hold paradox, and seek to understand the worlds of those who are different from us. We exchange certainty for empathy, resist easy platitudes, and enter into lament as well as celebration. We learn to listen deeply to our own stories, the stories of our neighbors, and the stories of our place in such a way that it provokes us, heals us, and calls us deeper into God’s Story of redemption in the world.
 
 
CREATIVE LIBERATION
 
Made in the divine image, we offer our creativity and gifts joining in God’s work to restore goodness, justice, and peace between us and God, neighbor, ourselves, and all of creation.
 
We are a community of artists, makers, and creators made in the image of God. The ultimate act of creativity is God’s redemption of the world back to its original vision of goodness. We step into our God-given vocation as co-creators to join God’s work of justice and healing in the world. Embarking on the journey outward, we become a launchpad of creative liberation: inspiring and equipping people to become creative activists and peace-making advocates of the Spirit in the contexts in which they live, work, and play. We join in the Jesus movement to bring good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed, healing broken hearts, opening blind eyes, dismantling unjust systems, creating new social economies, and restoring the environment (Isaiah 61).
 
 
RADICAL HOSPITALITY
 
We extend the wide welcome, belonging, and generosity of the table of God — where the lonely become family, strangers become friends, the disgraced are honored, and enemies become allies in beloved community.
 
We extend the wide welcome, inclusive belonging, and lavish generosity of the table of God. Radical hospitality is the remedy for the isolation and shame we feel, infected with society’s message that we are never enough. We tear down the walls of fear and exclusion and move toward one another on the journey together in self-giving love and commitment. We receive with gratitude the gifts and stories of the other, while respectfully and unashamedly offering others our gifts and stories as well. We feast at the table of extravagant grace, entering into deep listening, vulnerable authenticity, mutual care, and a commitment to loving people, especially those left out and underappreciated. We value difference and make room for everyone at the table. We embrace the beloved community in all its beautiful diversity recognizing that our flourishing is bound up together.
 
 
EMBODIED PRACTICE
 
We practice the way of Jesus together embodying love in real time and real space with real people committed to the flourishing of a particular place — making God’s goodness as plain as day.
 
In a culture where church means shopping and consuming community and is often disembodied, incongruent, and largely disconnected from our everyday lives, we dare to imagine a beautiful alternative. 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. We want to follow Jesus in the gritty stuff of our everyday lives where we see the consequences of our actions, where our faith becomes real and more than just mere talk. We are the church called to faithful presence — to embody love in real time and real space with real people committed to the flourishing of a particular place — making God’s goodness as plain as day. We encourage all to find their plot of the garden within the community and the neighborhood they live and get their hands dirty!

Cultivating a vision of hope in a world of despair

Love. It’s the thing that makes the whole world go round. In this time of prolonged societal disruption, grief, and suffering, it is now more important than ever to have practices that ground us in the love of God. God who set the world in motion is at the center of the Cosmos pulling everything and everyone into the divine force of Love.

Love is remaking the whole world.

Love is the most powerful force, nd nothing can separate us from the Love of God. Nothing, no thing, can stop the eternal work of God. No pandemic. No injustice. No natural disasters, politics, illness, losses, or crises. Nothing can separate us from this love.

I know I need to hear this. I need to feel this. I need to know this deep down. As the uncertainty and losses of the pandemic persist, love is what carries me, nourishes me, and sustains me. Whether it is visible or not, I need to know that God is at work right smack dab in the middle of the mess. I need to believe in the goodness of God and the power of Love.

And I don’t think I’m alone. This year, the Apple TV comedy, Ted Lasso, became an instant hit telling a heart-warming tale about an American coach hired to rescue a Premiership football team in the U.K. — despite a total lack of experience. The show’s popularity speaks to how its optimism and hope were tremendous gifts amid the darkness of a pandemic world. One of the things that seemed to resonate deeply is Ted’s Lasso faith in God and humanity. He envisioned a world of goodness and love. The bright yellow sign that he posted in the locker room is now a meme everywhere — BELIEVE!
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This is a message that we need to hear, a vision we need to see. Ignatius of Loyola, who was a Spanish Catholic priest and theologian in the sixteenth century and founder of the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits), offered us a vision of a world held in love. You see, he observed that our vision largely controls our perception and experience of the world and thus is at the heart of our spiritual journey. It’s often said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” But Ignatius Loyola reverses the saying:

“When I believe it, I’ll see it.”

If we think the world is a bleak place, full of evil, greedy, selfish people who have no love for God or each other, that’s what we will see when we look around. If we think that our world is full of goodness and opportunity, a place that God created and sustains and loves, that is what we’ll find.

Ignatius offered this vision in the Spiritual Exercises intended to help people grow in their love for God, beginning with the Principle and Foundation.

God who loves us creates us and wants to share life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service of the God of our life.

All the things in this world are also created because of God’s love and they become a context of gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.

As a result, we show reverence for all the gifts of creation and collaborate with God in using them so that by being good stewards we develop as loving persons in our care of God’s world and its development. But if we abuse any of these gifts of creation or, on the contrary, take them as the center of our lives, we break our relationship with God and hinder our growth as loving persons.

In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some responsibility. We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response to our life forever with God.

Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.

[What Is Ignatian Spirituality? by David L. Fleming, SJ]

What stands out to me is this.

Everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response in our life with God.

This means that EVERYTHING in our lives right now — the joys and the sorrows, the gifts and the losses, the disillusionment and the hope, the beauty and the brokenness, the grace and the struggle…everything has the potential of calling us deeper into the love and life of God. Everything.

Nothing is wasted.

Not the last two years of what sometimes feels like Groundhog Day on repeat — days of uncertainty, anxiety, polarization, grief, protest, boredom, Netflix binging, pajamas, Zoom calls, and quarantine. For our God is a God of redemption, a God of the impossible, a God who brings fruitfulness out of barrenness and life out of death.

We began this year with the Advent invitation to believe, joining in the ancient chorus of saints who like Mary echoed a deep and resounding yes to birth the holy. For nothing is impossible with God.

I believe that we must begin to see through the eyes of faith. For negativity and cynicism dominate the airspace these days. I get it. We are feeling the prolonged effects of collective trauma, isolation, and loss. And yet there is another reality that is greater than any suffering or evil — God’s kingdom of Love is here healing and remaking the whole world.
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So what do you see? What do you believe?

In the literal and spiritual fog of this season, can you put your trust in this Love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things “(I Corinthians 13:7). Love is all that matters. No one, no circumstance, no thing can take love away. When everything else is shaken, only love remains.

So however your battle-worn souls come today, love is here to greet you. Love welcomes you into a space just for you. You can lay all your worries and burdens, your striving and your surviving aside for just a few moments to slow down, breathe, inhale, and exhale. Experience the Spirit here with you, present, now. Sit in the loving gaze of your Creator. Receive deep nourishment as you root down deep into the abundant and eternal love of the Divine. I encourage you even now and through the coming days and weeks to meditate on this love of God and to begin to shift your vision to see the world through eyes of hope, faith, and love.

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:16–21)

May you experience profound grace to believe in a God who is able to accomplish abundantly far more than you can ask or imagine.

For what you believe, you will see.
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So why not join the long history of saints, reformers, and dreamers and follow the seminal message of the hour….BELIEVE!

​by Jessica Ketola

Fall is in the air and the lit wick of my pumpkin harvest candle is signaling the return to all that is warm and cozy. A new season is upon us, though it remains a continuation of what is turning out to be a woefully prolonged season of pandemic.

As Covid-19 surges, the summer of hope has ended in gloom. Or so the headlines read. We were so ready for the new-found freedom of vaccines to liberate us from the tyranny of the virus, but here we are again back to overwhelmed hospitals and alarming death tolls. Lord, in your mercy.

It is disheartening, numbing, maddening. I haven't even wanted to think about it.

And yet, hope persists.

In a world that makes sense less and less — a world that seems hell bent on the decimation, brokenness, and fragmentation of relationship on every level, strata, and sphere — a world that is rife with chaos, violence, upheaval, and turmoil, we stand firmly in a Love that is redeeming all things. Our story is the greatest story ever told. We must not forget that Love is the most powerful force in the world. God, our Creator, Liberator, Restorer, Comforter and Friend is the very essence and embodiment of Love, and Love will win the day. So in the midst of spiritual, political, environmental, social, and economic devastation, we can hold onto fierce and stubborn hope.

In fact, we know from history that it is precisely in these moments of great societal upheaval that the Spirit breaks out in new and powerful ways to forward God's work of renewal and transformation on the earth. The great expansion of the gospel in the first few centuries of the early church was birthed in tumultuous times of oppression, war, persecution, and pandemic. So though the earth is groaning and heaving with birth pains all around us, this is the time in which we as the church are called to embody Love on the earth.

For I believe that the Spirit is indeed birthing a new thing. Our American way is crumbling; and the North American church is flailing. We are desperately in need of reformation. This is why we as The Practicing Church remain committed to reimagining the church in the neighborhood. We must find ways to reconnect to the Real, to incarnate in our places, to embody our faith, and to be restorers of all that is good and holy and sacred in the world. We are called to offer hope in the midst of despair, mercy in the face of judgment, wholeness in the midst of great fragmentation, comfort in grief, vulnerability in shame, and peace in violence. We are called to reinterpret the gospel in our time and in our place as good news and healing for all that is broken.

Last month, we had the gift of attending a cohort through Sustainable Faith with other parish-style communities who are also dreaming, praying, and leaning into more embodied, holistic, and relational ways to be the church. We returned home more certain and encouraged that in fact God is unfolding a beautiful work in us. And so many all around the country and the globe are also responding to the invitation to follow the Spirit into a land unknown and unseen, hearing God's words, Behold, I am doing a new thing. [Isaiah 43:19]

A few months ago, I had the privilege of being interviewed for The Lean-In Podcast to share our story of embodying love and justice in our neighborhood and community. It was just released yesterday and I hope you will listen and share it with your networks, but mostly that your heart will be encouraged as you listen to God's work in and through us.

Earlier this year, we were featured in an article for Duke's Faith & Leadership publication. I continue to be amazed that our small community is being used to encourage and inspire others to repent, to reimagine, and to re-form what it means to be the church today. I am so amazed at God's goodness and faithfulness to us over and over again.

This is why in spite of all the bad news that bombards us, we continue to LEAN IN to the goodness and mercy of God with stubborn hope, faith, and love for what is unseen but being revealed in us. 

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. - Romans 8:18-25


by Jessica Ketola