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

God entered the world on the margins.
Not in Jerusalem but in the obscurity of Bethlehem
God was revealed to the shepherds not the priests
To the outcasts and the ruffians, God announced the good news.

Good news and great tidings of joy to all people.
Not just tax cuts for the rich or more comforts for the privileged.
This is good news for the poor.
To break the chains of oppression.
To set the prisoner free.
To heal the sick.
To comfort those who are brokenhearted.
To announce that God is not displeased with us, nor angry or withholding.
God is on our side. God is here. Present now.
The God of Love, revealed in Christ Jesus, is with us.

This, this is the good news the angels sang.
Filling the sky with their reverberating sounds.
Summons of peace on earth, good will to all people everywhere.
Regardless of culture, race, class, religion, or gender.
Songs shining the light of a midnight star
Into the darkest places of our collective lives.

We must not underestimate the power of the manger
And the hope it holds.
The Christmas song of the angels is not as innocent as it sounds.
It has turned the world upside down before now.
It still can.

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by Jessica Ketola

Cultivating A Daily Practice of Love

In difficult times, how do you stay grounded? The onslaught of 2020 continues with the ferocity of pandemics, protests, and politics. It is challenging to maintain our equilibrium in the midst of so much chaos, change, and loss. And yet we know the harshest seasons push us to grow. During winter, a tree is dormant to the naked eye. But underneath the surface, it is hard at work growing and expanding its root system in search of valuable nutrients. So it goes with our souls. It is precisely in times like these that we are invited to root and ground ourselves in deeper ways.

But how you ask? In the midst of work deadlines, spinning plates, and bleak headlines? How?

Love. Love is the answer.

Love has the power to strengthen, nourish, and ground us in the midst of all the fray. The tumultuous storm that surrounds us is not of our own choosing. And yet, we can choose to surrender to love in the midst of its pounding waves. These are the waters of transformation.

Cultivate a Daily Practice
In order to access the power of love, you will need to cultivate a daily practice to ground yourself. This is easier said than done. So much competes for our time and attention. And yet in the midst of the fray, how are you making time for what is most important? Or do you find yourself scattered and weary from the demands of the urgent? There is plenty of research about the health benefits of prayer and spiritual meditation that make us less anxious and more resilient, present, and hopeful.

Are you finding some minutes of your day for stillness, reflection, prayer, or meditation? Are you sitting in the loving gaze and tender affection of God?

If you are daily immersing yourself in love, most likely you are beginning to experience what it feels like to be grounded in what is most true about your life. Love has a way of ordering and reordering our lives. The unimportant things begin to lose their pull and what is most core to our being increases in its desire.

Curiosity Can Cure Our Cynicism
If a daily practice eludes you, you may be feeling a sense of frustration, guilt, or cynicism. But guilt does us no good. And self-flagellation moves us away from love, not towards it. Here is where curiosity can cure our cynicism.

What do we believe that is keeping us from abiding and resting in love? What are we afraid of?

Often times, it is our subterranean fears and hurts that unconsciously drive us. We are afraid we won’t be productive “enough” if we take moments of stillness out of our busy day. Many of us have distorted images about who God is and what God demands. We are afraid that God cannot be trusted. Or perhaps we are afraid we are unworthy of love.

It is here in the rawness of our wrestling where love comes rushing in. God meets us right where we are, not in the place we want to be. In all our frustration, desire, avoidance, longing, and unbelief — God is near.

So don’t give up. Lean in with curiosity, honesty, and vulnerability.

Love Awaits.
​Love is calling and inviting you. The lovingkindness of God chases after you. This is not a duty, but a gracious invitation to live life in union and communion with Love — to let love heal you and empower you to bring healing to others.

Imagine for a moment that you lived fully, authentically, and vulnerably out of a deep and abiding love. What would be true about your life? Imagine what would be possible if you were free from all the fear and self-doubt that constrains you. Imagine the powerful good of a life given over to Love. Is there any other pursuit more worthwhile?

The Miracle of Practice and of Becoming
So this is the opportune time to cultivate a practice of love. New practices take time to establish, so give yourself plenty of grace (There is so much grace!). Keep on keeping on; and whatever you do, don’t give up!

No one becomes a marathon runner, concert pianist, or “saint” overnight. Over time, as new neural pathways are formed and new “muscles” are developed, consistent practice gives way to proficiency. What once was hard becomes automatic. This is the miracle of practice and of becoming.

They say you become what you practice. So let us practice love, and in turn, become people of love.

Love is the most powerful force in the universe, and there is no storm — no pandemic, politics, racism, quarantine, hurricane, or fire — that can overcome it. Though we will continue to lament, to work for change, and insist on justice, we will rest in Love. For we know that the tumult of this season will do its work if we let it — to secure us, nourish us, and ground us in Love.

by Jessica Ketola

Hope As Resistance In An Election Season

Now is not a time for despair, but for hope. We know all too well the insanity of reasons for anxiety and gloom. But pessimism does us no good. If ever there was a time to hold onto faith, it is now. This election season is one of heightened anxiety, fear, and division. And never before have the stakes felt so high. Whatever your politics may be, it feels like the earth is collapsing underneath our feet. And perhaps it is. Kingdoms rise and fall, but that which is eternal endures forever.

I don’t mean to trivialize your anxiety. I feel it too. Rumors of voter fraud and intimidation, gun stockpiles, conspiracy theories, and civil war have us all unnerved. There are no trite answers sufficient to meet the magnitude of suffering. That would only be unkind, adding insult to injury. No, what I am suggesting is that there are truths that are deeper, wider, longer, and higher than every fear, every abuse, and every lie.

These three things endure forever — hope, faith, and love; and the greatest of these is love. When everything is said and done, love wins.

Love Wins
As a follower of Jesus, I am angry and heartbroken over the suffering and denigration of so many across our country. We are enduring overwhelming grief and loss in this time of pandemic; and it seems to be a piling-on of epic proportions. This election, I find myself sick with the greed, the violence, and the racism of our times. Our country is broken, divided, and reeling. I long for a world that is just, where the vulnerable are cared for, the oppressed are lifted up, and every human is shown dignity. I believe God calls us to stay attentive to the policies and leaders that impact our collective well-being. We must not only vote for ourselves, but for the common good. Love insists that we use our vote to work toward creating God’s beloved community on earth.

But will love win in this election?

We can only hope.

Hope As Resistance
Along with our voting, our mobilizing, our outreach, and our organizing, we must hold onto stubborn hope. Hope is resistance. Faith is protest. Love is defiance. We must resist the powers of violence, hate, and greed. We must not let fear have the last word. If the empire is falling, let it fall. But let us resolve to rebuild and co-create the world that we dream of.

No matter what happens in this election, I can assure you that the deep polarization and fragmentation of our day will persist. There is no magic wand. It will take you and me and everybody coming together across the divides to tear down unjust systems. We must not abdicate our God-given responsibility and creativity to steward a world in which all can flourish. For now is not a time for despair, but for hope.
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​by Jessica Ketola

​The chaos continues this week in the aftermath of a presidential debate that devolved into a debacle of a shouting match. This and a million other issues under the category, “things gone wrong with the planet” threaten to incite ulcers, high blood pressure, anxiety disorders, or worse. We find ourselves living in dystopian times of plague, quarantine, civil unrest, demagogues, hurricanes, and fires. And as the election looms, the madness of divisiveness and power-grabbing escalates.

This disruption is rocking people’s faith. Many are leaving the church as the American Church is largely flailing and failing to step up to this moment — either by our silence, our complicity to white supremacy, our nationality posing as Christianity, or by our politics that seem to be the antithesis of Christ-likeness. I get it. This is madness!

But I urge you, don’t give up on Jesus. Because Jesus’ self-giving love is the antidote for the present-day ills in our society. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, even Gandhi practiced this powerful way of love, meeting injustice and violence with soul force. They believed that you cannot fight hate with hate — only with love. This ideology came from Jesus himself.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing right,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 5:3–10

This is why I implore you — don’t leave faith.
​Because faith, hope, and love are what the world needs more of right now, not less!

And don’t give up on Jesus either.
Because Jesus has shown us the way, defeating the darkest evil with love, forgiveness, humility, and sacrifice.

And please don’t walk away from the church altogether.
There are many followers of Jesus on the ground, living the way of love and peace in very ordinary and yet extraordinary ways. We’re here. You just got to find us. Love cannot exist without community. And we’re going to need each other to work together to create a better world.

For this is not the first time the human race has faced challenges. And as followers of Jesus, we understand that a whole new world is being birthed. In spite of all the suffering and the tumult of these times, our triune God who has set the world in motion is at the center of the universe pulling everything and everyone into Love.

Love is the most powerful force in the cosmos.

This is why now, more than ever, we need to ground ourselves in the love of God. Love is everything.

If this crazy world and compromised church have got you spinning, choose Love.

Love is the lens through which all of the gospel is to be interpreted. Jesus said it himself in his greatest commandment to love God with all of your being and to love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37–40) All of the scripture can be summed up in this.

Love liberates the oppressed, heals the brokenhearted, bestows mercy to the undeserving, welcomes the outcast, embraces the untouchables, reverses power structures, and lifts up the poor. Love is why we signed up to follow Jesus in the first place. And Jesus’ revolutionary love is still as compelling as ever. So how are we to be faithful to love in such a time as this?

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” — Micah 6:8

DO JUSTICE
As the deep roots of racism and white supremacy have been exposed in this hour, the church must not be silent. When our own president refuses, we must unequivocally condemn white supremacy. It is demonic. And as the church, we must repent from our complicity to whiteness, defined here as a “death-dealing, anti-life, anti-God system of dehumanization (Deuteronomy 12:3).” Donelle Wyche [Read Full Article: In Search of White Partners: What BIPOC Need]

“Christ calls us to repentance…for allowing whiteness to exist, to flourish, to victimize, to terrorize, and to oppress. We need to repent of the ways we have remained silent as whiteness has destroyed God’s creation, God’s image-bearers, and God’s vision for humanity.”

It is not enough to merely acknowledge this present evil. The way of love commands that we do justice and act justly.

When there is so much animosity and fear towards the “other” — resulting in hate crimes, children in cages, and horror and violence of all kinds, the Biblical call to love the stranger and the alien is paramount. In this era when so many deny climate change and actively ignore issues of environmental injustice, our faith requires us to care for the earth and advocate for God’s love toward all of creation. When the rich continue to get richer off the backs of the poor in the face of rising poverty, displacement, and unemployment, the upending-powerful love of Jesus calls us to create new communities and economies where all can flourish. Love does not consume; it creates. Love gives up power for the greater good.

Self-giving love conquers evil. Jesus showed us the way.

LOVE KINDNESS & WALK HUMBLY
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (I Corinthians 13:4–8).

As we find ourselves in the midst of the mania of a heated and polarized political election, love is essential. For it is important to stay faithful to love midst the rising tensions. Eugene Cho, who wrote Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide To Engaging Politics encourages us.

“Stay engaged. Remain hopeful. Love anyway. Walk with integrity. Fight for the vulnerable, and bear witness to the love, mercy, and grace of Christ. For it’s not only WHAT we believe, but HOW we engage.”

The end never justifies the means, lest we become the very thing we hate. This is why Jesus called us to the radical act of enemy love. Love is supreme. For we do not put our hope in political parties or empires, but we put our hope in the loving and peaceable kin-dom of God. And we follow Christ’s example to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.

It is time for followers of Jesus to reclaim this revolutionary way of Love, to reimagine a new kind of Christ-follower, and to come together to work toward a new world.


by Jessica Ketola

As we are assailed with bad news day after day, I thought I would take a moment to share some good news. Sure, we are tired of quarantine life (though it's become the new normal). We are tired of the hazardous smoke that has us on complete and total lockdown — the one respite we had of getting outside and moving our bodies now stolen. And now we are worried about the impending darkness and gloom that threatens to descend on us this fall. But here I told you I was going to give you good news!

The pandemic has been disruptive for all of us. As a faith community centered around faithful presence and embodied practices, it has certainly felt like a — WHAT!?! What do we do now? How are we to be when we are not able to be with each other and with our neighbor in the ways that we are accustomed to? At the very least, it's been challenging.

And yet...we know that the Spirit is at work even in, perhaps especially in, these times of difficulty, disorientation, and disruption. And as a community, we have leaned into the discomfort to see how God might be forming us in this time. We have collectively journeyed to find new-found interior freedom in the midst of Covid-constraint. We have had to dig deeper to find peace, hope, and joy. We have leaned into the discomfort of anti-racist work in lament and repentance as we have shown up to protests, listened to black voices, and engaged in hard conversations. And in the midst of it all, God has been at work!

G O O D / / N E W S / /
Here are some highlights over the last six months!

▪WIDER & DEEPER NEIGHBOR CONNECTIONS // Although we are so sad that we can't meet weekly for neighborhood dinners, we have seen more neighbors desiring to connect. The outdoor happy hours have been a hit on the street and it's been a beautiful thing to see more and more neighbors connecting! And as we are all stuck in our neighborhoods, the connections we do have are growing richer and deeper!

▪GENEROSITY TO NEIGHBORS // As our neighbors lost income, jobs, and security due to the pandemic, we stepped up as a community to meet needs as we could. We collectively gave $1200 to Turning Point to families in need and we also gave another $1800 in benevolence funds for rent assistance and small grants for those who were laid off. In addition to this, we met some very practical needs — like a bike and helmet for an 11-year-old who didn't have one, some balls and games for Turning Point students, gas and grocery cards for our unhoused friends, and helping a refugee mom navigate the unemployment system.

▪ANTI-RACIST COMMUNITY WORK // The pandemic of racism demands that we as followers of Jesus lament, repent, and then act to participate in the kingdom work of overturning systems of oppression and dismantling white supremacy. We have shown up at local protests. We have connected with Black Lives Matter Shoreline and other neighbors in the community who are deeply committed to this work. And we have hosted a discussion group around Unraveling Racism, doing the hard work of listening, lamenting, and learning. And this is just the beginning!

▪EQUITY IN EDUCATION // As school resumes online, the gaps for students of color and for those who are living at poverty only widen. Turning Point is strategically poised to ensure that all of our children have the opportunity to thrive. As a faith community, we are thrilled to continue to support this work and to continue to be faithful partners. In addition, we are connecting with others in the community who are actively working on educational equity and collaborating to be a part of the transformation in our community. And we are dreaming and conspiring to find funding for a new Turning Point site right here in the neighborhood!

▪FOUNDERS IN BLACK COFFEE NW! // We are also thrilled to let you know that One Cup Coffee has just been bought by black owners who have a vision for a community hub, youth empowerment, and anti-racist work right here in the neighborhood. Their new business, Black Coffee NW, will open in October and The Practicing Church has given $1,000 to be a Founder. After all the prayers and dreams around One Cup Coffee, we are overjoyed to see this goodness unfold before our very eyes! And we get to be a part of it!

▪COMMITMENT TO BE A BLESSING TO OUR COMMUNITY // What this means is that our small church has given away $4,000 in this season — which is over 20% of our total budget! Way to go! Thank you for your generosity. It takes all of us offering the little or plenty that we have to embody love, kindness, and generosity to our community. We hope all of you get in on the goodness! Generosity in the face of fear and scarcity is a powerful thing.

So although we don't know entirely what the future holds (this is 2020 we're talking about!) we can already see that the Spirit is leading us in this time to be a part of God's work of renewal and justice right here on the ground. Nothing can stop the work of God. Not pandemics. Not white supremacy. Not wild fires or hurricanes, politics or presidents.

NOTHING CAN STOP THE WORK OF GOD!

God's river of justice, grace, liberation, mercy, healing, and peace keeps rolling on.

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! - Amos 5:24

So be encouraged, my friends. The God who set the sun and the moon and the stars in place and yet who knows the number of hairs on your head is here, present, with us.

I hope you will continue this transformational journey with our community in this season. There will be lots of opportunity to connect - through online gatherings, spiritual direction groups, book discussions, neighborhood presence, activism, and service opportunities. 

With much faith, hope, and love,

Jessica

The deep seeds of racism continue to bear hate in our community. We must disrupt, overturn, and till the soil of systems that are perfectly designed for the results we are getting now with gross inequities and racial violence and terror.

People ask — how do we work for change? The answer is that change happens on the ground — in the very soil that has been cultivated and then stolen from our black and indigenous siblings. The battlegrounds are our neighborhoods. And this is being played out in vivid color here in the Ridgecrest neighborhood as a black, middle-school activist is being threatened by numerous racist neighbors. And it seems Shoreline Police are responding as the system is designed to — by favoring imagined threats from white folk and dismissing real threats from black folk. We must decide whose streets these are. Are these streets for the white, the privileged and the power-brokers or are these streets for everyone?

We have been told that we have little power to affect change and have thus given up the gift of what it means to be a citizen, to love our neighbor, and to be responsible to a place and to the flourishing of all the diverse people who live here. We must pick up our God-given vocations to be cultivators, creators, and architects of our own places. The power to create a new foundation of equity lies here on the ground.

Decisions that affect our entire community are being made by a small group of people - in school board rooms and city planning meetings. Decisions that shape and affect our lives together here — decisions about zoning and who owns the land, small businesses, walkability, parks and sidewalks, human services, mental health, and policing. If we do nothing, the powers of greed, white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism will continue to wreak havoc all while singing us a siren song. We must WAKE UP and SHOW UP. We must no longer abdicate our power. We must begin to tear down and dismantle systems that are not working for all. And we must reimagine together a new future. One that I believe Dr. King imagined as God's dream for the Beloved Community and one that The Practicing Church embraces wholeheartedly.

If you live in Shoreline, I urge you to follow Black Lives Matter - Shoreline (or the chapter in your community) and show your support. Get involved, give, write emails, and attend rallies and protests. Use your voice to amplify the voices of black and indigenous leaders already on the ground doing good work in your neighborhood! Support courageous and passionate neighbors like these Shoreline youth who are putting their hearts, souls, and bodies on the line to reimagine a new future!

Together we can lean into the radical way of Jesus to love our neighbor, dismantle oppression, disrupt empire, and fight for justice!
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Won't you join us?
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by Jessica Ketola

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