Friends,

Yesterday, I preached about the situation on the ground here in Minneapolis and the ways it connects to Jesus' experience of baptism. This is the story in which a voice from heaven says, This is my child, my beloved. This one gives me great joy.

Lest we get the wrong idea—that this story is a cozy moment between Jesus and John the Baptist and God—I reminded people that John the Baptist was anything but apolitical. Jesus received a baptism into a way of life transformed away from the empire’s violence and toward God’s way of love. That way of life led John the Baptist and Jesus both to be executed by the state.

In our rite of baptism, participants make these promises:

Celebrant: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
People: I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People: I will, with God’s help.

Our baptism calls us to lives led with defiant, embodied, joyful love. Seeing God's image in every person—regardless of immigration status, party, and even regardless of their employment with oppressive organizations. Telling the truth, protecting and serving our neighbors, and proclaiming God's love for all people: That's the way of Jesus.

So: remember your baptism. Wherever those actions are happening, the Holy Spirit is moving, and we’re going to be there with God’s defiant, embodied, joyful love.
You can listen to the sermon here.

In addition to the many ways people are living out their baptismal promises locally here in Minneapolis this week, there are two more ways you can act. Looking further out, stay tuned for ways to put your faith into action with other members of GEC and interfaith groups around the state by caucusing and marching on Palm Sunday to support feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and welcoming the stranger.

With love,
Susan+



Being the Beloved
In my sermon, I promised to share more with you about being God's beloved. Here are a few thoughts.

Some of us have been given a deep sense of trust that we are loved. Maybe we got that from a parent or a grandparent, a partner, a friend, a teacher, a coach. Lots of us never heard from a trusted person that we are loved just for existing. And even those of us who have heard it over and over again, we know how easy it is to forget. The machine of capitalism runs on creating the anxiety that we are not ok, and we hear that message so often that it’s encoded in our bodies and our minds. So just about every morning, before he leaves for school, I turn to Luca and say, Not nobody, not no how, can ever make me stop loving you.

I want him to hear his belovedness loud and clear every day. Because I know, and you know, how easy it is to forget.

If this resonates with you, the Christian writer Henri Nouwen wrote a book called Life of the Beloved that speaks to this very issue. I commend it to you. He says that just as God calls Jesus the Beloved, so God calls you, and every other person, Beloved.

“Though the experience of being the Beloved has never been completely absent from my life, I never claimed it as my core truth. I kept running around it, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. I think you understand what I am talking about. Aren’t you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don’t you often hope, ‘May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country, or relationship fulfill my deepest desire? But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied.”

Nouwen invites his readers to listen to that voice calling you Beloved, and to choose to trust God’s voice calling you Beloved, and to live from that truth.

It is a daily choice, sometimes a moment to moment choice, to go to that well, that spring, in the midst of all the self-doubt and fear that grip each of us all the time.
There’s something extraordinarily courageous and defiant about choosing to believe you are already beloved in a world that tells us that we are nothing. If you can trust that God will never stop loving you, then you can, with God’s help, live out your baptismal promises to honor the dignity of every human being and to strive for justice and peace. You can live out those promises with courage and integrity and gentleness in the face of all kinds of oppression.

Tags: Rev Susan, Belovedness, Baptism

Week of Lent IV, March 30: From Shame to Belovedness

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 “Let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” Jesus’ story of the forgiving father and his two sons challenges our notions of who is worthy of God’s approval. Shame tells us the story that we have done something bad and that therefore we are bad. God tells the story that we will never stop being the Beloved, because God is Love. Where has shame taken root in your life? How might you ask for God’s healing? What does Love look like when real harm or betrayal has occurred? This week, how might you practice loving someone else the way God loves you?

[ Audio version of this meditation ]

Find a comfortable spot in your space. Sit or lie down in a way that allows your body to fully relax. Take your time, making any necessary adjustments. If your body offers you guidance about what it needs to fully soften into this moment, heed its advice.

Once you're feeling supported and settled, gently shine the flashlight of your awareness onto your breath, be curious--- what do you find? Is it smooth and even? Are you craving a deeper inhale or more luxurious exhale? Does it reach to your belly or is it living up and among your collarbones? Invite your breath to soften and lengthen – signaling to your mind and nervous system that it’s ok to drop into this moment, there is no place else to go, nothing else to do.

Release your awareness from your breath and trust it to do what needs to be done to breathe your body.

Now, again using your awareness like a flashlight, bring your awareness to your feet. Check in with the soles of the feet, the tops of the feet, the ankles. Let your noticing gradually pull upwards, checking in with your calves, shins, and knees.

Consider the strong muscles of your upper leg – the hamstrings, quadriceps, all the tendons. Notice any tension still present and gently soften deeper into your seat.

Bring your awareness to the hips, pelvic bowl, seat...imagine the light of your awareness working its way into the intricate workings of your hip sockets, softening whatever tightness you may find.

Let the awareness move up now into the belly bowl, the lower back. Fill the whole lower torso with breath and the light of awareness.

Let it continue up, checking in with the diaphragm, the rib cage, the lungs – take some time to saturate all the vital organs and muscles in your chest cavity with awareness and breath.

Notice now as the flashlight of awareness gently rises to fill in the space around the collarbones, the shoulder blades, and pools along the strong muscles atop your shoulders. Imagine your awareness cascading down each arm – touching your biceps, triceps, elbows, forearms, wrists…hands and fingers. Notice as any tension or tightness drips out the tips of the fingers and returns to the earth.

Train your gentle awareness on your neck and let it fill and move along the muscles on the front of the neck, the sides, the back. Release the root of the tongue, release the jaw. Let the muscles of your face and scalp soften, giving some extra noticing to your temples, the tiny muscles across your forehead, and the deep pockets of the eye sockets.

Good – now notice as your entire human form is full of gentle awareness and breath. Just breathe into the shape of you for another moment.

This human form that is you, that you so gently and mindfully tended to just now, is completely and fully beloved by God.

Completely and fully beloved – from the tips of your toes that sometimes lead you astray to the crown of your head that sometimes surrenders to the earthly whims of the mind. Completely beloved.

What do you experience as you consider this notion of complete belovedness? How does your body receive this good news?

With gentle curiosity and lots of choice, scan your body as you receive this belovedness – what do you find? Where does it land peacefully, soaking in like rain on a spring garden? Are there spaces in your body that contract, tighten, or disappear when you offer them this unconditional positive regard? Consider the idea that tendrils of shame live here – our fear of being bad or unworthy, our hidden shadows that we keep away from the light.

Choose one area that experiences contraction, tension, or blankness at the idea of utter belovedness. Direct your full, soft awareness to that space – maybe placing a hand or a blanket over it to offer some support. And just breathe gently into this tightness, this shame. Let the breath gently find a way in, even if just for the briefest of moments. As you breathe into this constricted shame, invite God in – offer up a prayer. With words or just an open awareness, invite God’s light into this place and ask for softening, for healing, for a drop of belovedness to penetrate and nourish this spot.

Stay with this prayer as you breathe.

Now consider our human experience – that of the highs and lows of relationship, the glories and sorrows of our time here on earth. While God’s love is unwavering and complete, our human relationships often experience the painful yet completely normal human experience of rupture and repair. We hurt or are hurt and real pain and conflict enter the space between us and another. These ruptures can feel so scary and painful that often hide them away, deep in the shadows and fertilize them with shame – beliefs about our own lack of goodness and worthiness or another person’s lack of goodness and worthiness.

And, if we stay connected to the present moment, to our bodies, to God, we can make choices about how we meet these inevitable human moments of rupture. We can choose to repair and heal in the spirit of God’s eternal belovedness.

Bring to mind a rupture that feels manageable in this moment – perhaps it is one in the past or maybe it’s happening in the current scape. Gently feel into the rupture that happened between you and another – search out the constriction and tightness that lives in your body around it. Try to just observe, not judge the sensation or the relationship. And breathe into this space.

What would it be like to intentionally choose to shine the light of God’s love on this rupture – to offer it some energy of repair? Maybe that means asking for or receiving forgiveness, perhaps having an honest and grounded conversation, perhaps simply reaching out and letting the person know that even though there is still hurt, you are thinking of them and care.

Choose an idea that resonates with you as a way to practice God’s love in human relationship because of the painful yet glorious truth of our imperfection, not in spite of it. Commit to one action of repair, of shining light on a shadow of pain and shame.

Now, release any practice and tend fully to three deep breaths. Then return to the room and stretch to come back into the present moment.

Tags: Robin Fischer, Lent, shame, Belovedness