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

Photo by Benjamin Sow on Unsplash

Last night we gathered for our neighborhood dinner where every week we gather with around twenty of our neighbors to share a meal and our lives. One of our newest attendees is a vivacious 6-year-old girl who loves it so much that she convinced her aunt who was watching her for the evening to bring her! Of course, the big draw are the little friends her age who live in our downstairs apartment. However, I have to believe that this is only a piece of the puzzle — for we are all hard-wired for community.

​You see, there is also Fred, the doting grandpa, who doesn't yet have grandchildren of his own, but who brings treats for the kids every week (and the dogs for that matter) and kindly engages them in play while their parents eat. And we can't go without mentioning Patmon, the sweet golden retriever who serves as a therapy dog by day and the consummate playful companion by night. You add in delicious and plentiful food, raucous conversations, and the warmth and energy of fitting twenty people around the table — and it's no wonder this is becoming a beloved event even for our smallest members.

One thing I know is that when the community comes together, anything is possible. You can feel it palpable in the air. Already, the gifts of the community are being activated. We have gardeners and want-to-be gardeners. We have cooks and those who aspire to. We have tired parents and doting aunts and uncles. We have students who struggle with homework and teachers who offer guidance. We have those with construction skills and those who panic at the sight of a hammer. We have neighborhood activists, marathon runners, cyclists, and beer connoisseurs. We have engineers, therapists, doulas, and business owners. Ours is a diverse community — and one can begin to sense that when we come together, there is nothing we can't solve.

And this is where the dreaming happens. When we begin to grasp that we are not consumers, but citizens, with the power to create a community where everyone can thrive. And I am beginning to hear this around the table these days. For the conversation is subtly changing from what can I do? to what can WE do? And the slightest of shifts brings about an entirely new set of possibilities. For when we move from powerlessness and the overwhelming feeling that there is little we can do — we are filled with a fierce and burgeoning hope that when we offer our gifts in concert with the gifts of the entire community, dreams really do come true.

And so I encourage you this week to let new imaginations stir within you. What are you dreaming about? What good in the world would you like to see that seems currently out of reach? What injustices around you tug at your heart? Like Jesus, what moves you with compassion? What hopes keep stubbornly rising?

And before you censor yourself and give yourself every good reason why this won't work, and quit before you begin — get in a room with your community, some friends, some pilgrims, some neighbors. Share your dreams and see if there might be a collective dream that arises.

Because like my 6-year-old neighbor and her aunt, who taking it all in, told me she was inspired to think about how she could do this in her own neighborhood, you too might begin to appreciate the abundance of riches found in community and realize that anything is possible.

by Jessica Ketola

Last weekend, we celebrated Pentecost as we gathered for our Community Creativity Session to dream together and reimagine what it means to live out the gospel together in our neighborhoods. We took inventory of all the gifts within our faith community and our neighborhoods and we were overwhelmed with the abundance of what is possible. And the Spirit began to breathe on some collective ideas and there was some good energy around continuing to explore where the Spirit is leading us.

And then as we gathered for worship on Sunday, Carrie Cates spoke so eloquently to us about the gift and the wonder of the Spirit -- and how we as followers of Jesus and as part of His body are filled with the Spirit. And one line that keeps reverberating within me is this.

Through the work of the Spirit, we have enough.

We have everything we need to be faithfully present to God and to our neighbors. We have everything we need to live into God's Dream. We have enough. We are enough. We don't have to wait until.... when.... if.... this and that happens... when we get healed or free or trained or we get a different job or our kids grow up or we win the lottery.

The Spirit within us is enough.

And this seemed to coalesce so beautifully with Saturday's Creativity Session. As we did our asset mapping, we experienced an epiphany together.

There is more than enough.

There is an abundance of riches. And anything is possible.

For with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. -Matt 19:26

And what you or me on our own could never accomplish, WE can. What we would never have the bandwidth or skills or energy to do on our own becomes possible with the power of the collective WE.

Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much. -Helen Keller

And not only possible -- FUN! You could feel it palpably in the room! To begin to realize that all the dreams that seem so far out of reach are actually possible! And that there is deep meaning, connection and joy found in the discovery of abundance, creativity and shared gifts.

For me, this is the dream. When we all come together in the community to share our small gifts, a few fish, a couple of loaves, a gift of finance, a gift of cooking, a gift of gardening, a gift of therapy, a gift of wood working to experience the miracle. To bear witness to what happens when the same Spirit that multiplied the fish and the loaves for the multitudes breathes on our humble offerings.

And so I believe that the Spirit is inviting us to dream big.

​This was something that was discerned in our time together. That if we shoot for Mars, we just might end up on the Moon. And so I believe that the Spirit is inviting us to leave behind our worldview of scarcity and all the reasons why we simply cannot live into the dream to turn towards a worldview of the kingdom that says...

There is more than enough.

In fact, there is an abundance. And all thing are possible with God. And it's going to more wild and challenging and joyful and meaningful than we could ever imagine.

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

The Spirit is here. Pouring out dreams and visions and fresh revelation and imagination that are prophetic invitations to us in our day and in our time. And these dreams are for everyone, regardless of gender, class, age and race. This big and beautiful Dream of God is for everyone!

So go ahead.

Dream big.

‘In the last days,’ God says, 
‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. 
Your sons and daughters will prophesy. 
Your young men will see visions, 
and your old men will dream dreams. 
In those days I will pour out my Spirit 
even on my servants–men and women alike– 
and they will prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18; Joel 2:28-29)

​by Jessica Ketola

Four years ago, when I began to explore what it might mean to live life with other followers of Jesus rooted in my neighborhood to join God’s work of renewal there, I wondered. Was this really possible? In our suburban/semi-urban context of Shoreline, Washington. In our church that in many ways looked like a traditional American church. Was this ever going to work?

And I have to admit I had my doubts along with a healthy dose of envy and insecurity. Like any good Enneagram Type 4, this is just to be expected. As I walked “hipper”, “cooler” or perhaps more “needy” neighborhoods with my Leadership in the New Parish cohort, I was in awe of how people were living together with this dream. To share life with others in an intentional way in a particular place. To join God there. To work towards a collective dream so that all would flourish. To be in it for the long haul. It just made sense. And all the things that I found to be incongruent or dissonant about the church started to find their home in the context of the neighborhood. The fragmented, broken pieces being fit together in this beautiful picture of what life in community was meant to be. Not the Utopia. But the stubborn hope of new creation popping up in the midst of the gritty and often difficult realities of everyday life. Where our hearts break as human suffering threatens to overwhelm us. And where our hearts ache with the beauty that persists even still. And it struck a chord in me that continues to reverberate.