Friends,

Last Sunday, I preached about pottery, about the fact that, until it's fired, the clay is infinitely re-shapeable. Our Scripture texts spoke of God as the potter, as Jesus invited people to reshape their stories, to rewrite who they could become. These earliest Christians had to overcome broken stories defined by enslaver/enslaved relationships, as they moved toward healthy stories of respectful friendships. God can do that reshaping work with us and with our stories, if we pause to remember what stories we've been telling ourselves. You can listen to the sermon here.

Money is one thing about which we tell ourselves a lot of—mostly unconscious—stories. And as Grace Episcopal Church looks to discern who God is calling us to be in the coming years, we are going to need to be able to remember and perhaps release some of our stories about money. Read on below to connect with reflections we're inviting everyone to engage this week and next, unearthing the story of your relationship with money.

We will spend the coming weeks engaging in four practices: Remember, Release, Reimagine, and Restore.

This season will be about asking: What stories about money have we learned and told, as individuals and as a congregation? Stories of scarcity, abundance, fear, joy, misuse, regret, shame, anxiety, deserving, grace, service, generosity, freedom? What parts of those stories are we still telling ourselves? If we’re willing to unearth these stories, we could let God heal them.

This is not about telling each other how much more you should be giving or what your money story should be. We hope it will be a season of openness, curiosity and healing, remembering the best of who we are and asking God to restore us into who we are called to be.

As you work through these spiritual practices, there will be opportunities to gather and talk with others. All the details are at the link below, and I hope you’ll join us for some or all of those gatherings.

With love,
Susan+

Tags: Rev Susan, Money, stories, Remember, Healing

Friends,

On Sunday morning, some of you heard an NPR Weekend Edition piece that included interviews with clergy serving near Annunciation. I was honored to be interviewed. You can listen to it here.

Last Sunday's sermon focused on the text from the prophet Isaiah -- and on God's bewilderment, in Isaiah's words: “My people have committed two evils – they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.” I spoke about the ways our culture, like Isaiah's society, has traded in the wild, living God for the small, broken gods. The idol of personal safety and personal wealth instead of God's dream of a society based in equity and care. You can watch the sermon here.

After twenty-five years of school shootings, our country's inability to make progress in mental health care, common-sense gun policy feels not just tragic nor like a mere failure of will. It feels insane. Like a collective choice not to make progress on mass shootings. How long, O Lord?

I feel bewildered. I know so many of you do too. Why have we traded in our sacred spaces - schools and churches and neighborhood streets - for pop-up war zones?

As we send our kids back to schools that regularly have to do lockdown drills, as we metabolize this latest violation, as we try to care for our neighbors, I hope you will be exquisitely gentle with yourselves and each other.

And I hope you will take to heart the words I shared from Bishop Loya on Sunday:
"Now is the time for us to show up looking, sounding, and acting like the real Jesus in the world. Now is the time for us to remember that the stakes of the gospel are high, and that following Jesus asks something big of each of us. Now is the time to remember that the Eucharistic communities we serve are not nice gatherings offering maudlin spiritual comfort, but are in the business of subverting the world’s violence with God’s irresistible love."

Some of you have already shared ways you're showing up for healing and peace. (Members of Grace have gone to the memorial site at Annunciation with peace flags—in the photo at the top of this article—and offered bagpipe music there!)

How are you taking action to show up looking, sounding, and acting like the real Jesus in the world? I'd love to share your responses in my email next week. Your small steps will be courage for someone else to take their own.

With love and bewilderment,
Susan+

Tags: Violence, Healing, Rev Susan