This past Sunday, Maddie preached on the book of Habakkuk, a prophet who asked God why bad things happened, wasn't satisfied with God's answer, and eventually found a way to keep going with God's help anyway.

In her sermon, Maddie brought up a couple of books, a poem, and a prayer:

1. Holy Resilience: The Bible's Traumatic Origins, by David Carr

David Carr is a Hebrew Bible scholar (and he's the PhD advisor of Pastor Emeritus Caroline Park at Union Theological Seminary!) This takes a look at how the writers of the Hebrew Bible responded to the catastrophes and trauma that the Israelites faced by writing about God in ways that made sense to them. This helps explain why, in certain parts of the Hebrew Bible, God comes across as punishing or as not loving— this was how the writers of the Bible made sense of what was happening to them and what had happened to the Israelites throughout history. Similarly, we each go on our own journey where we make sense of how God moves in the world. While we believe that God is a God of love, there might be moments when we face our own catastrophes or trauma and when God might not make sense to us. In those moments, we get to write our story with God, accepting that we won't always understand why bad things happen, but knowing that God is with us always through it. Just like the people who came before us, we can draw on God for the strength to keep going.

2. Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler

Kate Bowler is a scholar of Christian history at Duke Divinity School who learned that she had stage 4 cancer while studying prosperity gospel Christians. She writes in this book about how Christian truisms embraced by prosperity gospel Christians like "Everything Happens for a Reason" were harmful to her as she came to terms with her diagnosis and her own mortality. She considers the ways in which we might as Christians embrace not-knowing or not understanding the ways in which God works or why. And she explores how embracing not knowing might lead us to understand God as loving even in the midst of our own suffering. 

3. The Watchpost (Habakkuk's Mantle), a poem by Walter Brueggemann
​
As you go out into the world this week trying to find God in the midst of grappling with the world as it is, let me leave you with Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann's poem he wrote about Habakkuk that helped him come to terms with the world's unfairness:

The watchpost (Habakkuk’s mantle)
The oracle speaks.
Layers of whispers sound like sand poured through fingers.
Prayer leaves a grit in my mouth.
There is an urge from somewhere, and if I could only separate the grains, line them up on a piece of dark paper,
a clearer picture would emerge: even a mere pause of violence, hatred, destruction, and greed.

How long will I cry out and you will not answer?
I will stand at my watchpost.
Yet wisdom says that the rampart is not high but deep within,
that in the cave of my heart the cliff rises where I can stand and see the work that soothes the struggle,
the work of my own soul, the awareness of your desire and my own resistance.
Someone let loose a lie that life would naturally improve,
that somehow goodness would gather speed like water flowing downhill.
But wholeness is a buried gem, excavated from a heart of stone.
Each blow of the hammer on the rock inspires hope to sing in the veins:
a desire to be free.
The entrance to the cave is locked to all but me,
and the One who dreams me is already within holding the key to open myself.
For there is still a vision.

4. Habakkuk's Prayer

And then the book of Habakkuk closes out with a prayer that the prophet speaks into the world, having come to terms with the fact that he won't ever fully understand why the world is the way it is and vowing to keeping crying out to God anyway. Here's that prayer in case it's helpful for you.

O Lord, I have heard of your renown,
    and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work.
In our own time revive it;
    in our own time make it known;
    in wrath may you remember mercy.
God came from Teman,
    the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah
His glory covered the heavens,
    and the earth was full of his praise.
The brightness was like the sun;
    rays came forth from his hand,
    where his power lay hidden.

Before him went pestilence,
    and plague followed close behind.
He stopped and shook the earth;
    he looked and made the nations tremble.
The eternal mountains were shattered;
    along his ancient pathways
    the everlasting hills sank low.
I saw the tents of Cushan under affliction;
    the tent curtains of the land of Midian trembled.
Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord,
    or your anger against the rivers
    or your rage against the sea,
when you drove your horses,
    your chariots to victory?

You brandished your naked bow;
    Sated were the arrows at your command. Selah
    You split the earth with rivers. 
The mountains saw you and writhed;
    a torrent of water swept by;
the deep gave forth its voice.
    The sun raised high its hands;
the moon stood still in its exalted place,
    at the light of your arrows speeding by,
    at the gleam of your flashing spear.
In fury you marched on the earth;
    in anger you trampled nations.

You came forth to save your people,
    to save your anointed.
You crushed the head of the wicked house,
    laying it bare from foundation to roof. Selah
You pierced with their own arrows the head of his warriors,
    who came like a whirlwind to scatter us,
    gloating as if ready to devour the poor who were in hiding.
You trampled the sea with your horses,
    churning the mighty waters.
I hear, and I tremble within;
    my lips quiver at the sound.

Rottenness enters into my bones,
    and my steps tremble beneath me.
I wait quietly for the day of calamity
    to come upon the people who attack us.
Though the fig tree does not blossom
    and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
    and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
    and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will exult in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer
    and makes me tread upon the heights.
To the leader: with stringed instruments.

This past Sunday, Maddie preached about Paul's Letter to Philemon.

So this week, we're offering a podcast interview with theologian Emerson Powery that dives into some of the nuances of that letter!

This podcast conversation explores just how much complexity is packed into this short, personal text. The discussion unpacks the relationships between Paul (the letter writer), Philemon (the man the letter is addressed to) and Onesimus (the escaped slave who the letter is about), highlighting how the letter—though addressed to an individual— was likely read publicly and carries real social pressure. It wrestles with the central ambiguity of the letter: Paul clearly wants something from Philemon regarding Onesimus, but never states it outright, leaving interpreters to debate whether he is calling for freedom, better treatment, or something more subtle. The conversation also traces how Philemon has been used in American history on boht side of debates over slavery, revealing how context shapes interpretation, and ultimately suggests that while Paul's rhetoric is intentionally indirect, it gestures toward a reimagining of relationships grounded in love & shared identity in Christ.

In her sermon on Sunday, Pastor Alison spoke about "the ache of being human." Aching for something more seems to be hardwired into us as human beings. As a result, one way that we can understand spirituality is as the journey of learning how to direct, or to rightly orient, that ache. Two thinkers who have thought deeply about this topic are Father Ron Rolheiser and Kate Bowler, PhD.

Father Ron Rolheiser is a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He is a lecturer and writer with a weekly column that is carried in more than 50 newspapers worldwide. He is the author of numerous books as well. He has been a priest for 28 years. 

Kate Bowler is an author and professor at Duke Divinity School. One of Bowler’s research topics was the American prosperity gospel — the belief that God guarantees health, wealth, and happiness. After writing a book on this topic, in a sort of tragic, ironic twist, Bowler was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. While she was in treatment and not expected to survive, Bowler wrote two memoirs about how her perspectives on life and faith had been fundamentally changed as a result of her diagnosis. Bowler discovered that “life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone.”

On an episode of Bowler's podcast "Everything Happens," Rolheiser and Bowler discuss their perspectives on the ache of being human. Here's a description of the episode:
​
"There’s an ache at the center of being human. The kind that doesn’t go away with a fresh to-do list or a good night’s sleep. It’s the longing for more. The grief of what wasn’t. The quiet ache of ordinary life—school pickups, grocery runs, scan results, and the slow accumulation of things we didn’t choose. In this tender and deeply wise conversation, Kate Bowler speaks with Father Ron Rolheiser—beloved Roman Catholic priest, theologian, and bestselling author—about the ache that lives in all of us... and why it might be the most holy part of who we are. This episode is for anyone who feels a little restless, a little disappointed, or just plain tired—and is looking for a spirituality big enough to hold the beautiful, unfinished life they’re living. In this conversation, Kate and Ron discuss:

• Why we all have an ache inside of us (and why that’s okay)
• The convalescence you may need from church communities that have hurt you
• How living in six-month intervals can teach us what really matters"

If, after listening to their conversation, you want to read more of their thoughts on this subject, you are invited to explore the links below:

Father Ron Rolheiser

• "Longing Is Our Spiritual Lot"
• ​"St. Augustine's one sentence that explains our restlessness"

Kate Bowler, PhD

• "Living with the ache"
• "The ache is not going away"
• "Naming the ache"

Alison ended her sermon by sharing the same prompt that Bowler offered to her readers: “What is one ache you’ve been minimizing or ignoring? How might it feel to name it without trying to fix it?”

Alison encouraged us to start by naming the ache for ourselves. And, then, if we are feeling a little bit brave, to share it with someone else. That could be a member of the River staff or community, a friend, a therapist, or a trusted family member. As you share, try to remember that to ache is to be human.

​In her sermon this past Sunday, Pastor Alison spoke about the difference between knowing God (experientially and relationally) and knowing about God (intellectually, in the abstract). 

She said this:
"As I’ve been reflecting, it has occurred to me that having just one word for 'know' in the American context both reflects and shapes how we understand faith, spiritual practice, and the Christian tradition. With just one word available to us, we sometimes flatten the concept of knowing, falling into the trap of emphasizing just one type, or certain types, of knowing over others. One way I see this play out is the tendency to equate knowing things about God with knowing God experientially. Both ways of knowing are important — and they help to reinforce each other — but we benefit from being clear about the difference between the two. Now, let me be clear, learning about God — say through studying the Bible, or discussing theology, or listening to sermons like this one, — is wonderful! But it’s often not the same thing as interacting with God relationally."

Alison shared two frameworks that have helped her to know God more deeply:
1) Attention as Prayer
​2) Recognizing the Voice of God

Attention as Prayer
God is everywhere. We can go nowhere apart from God. However, we can be more or less aware of God’s presence and more or less aligned with God’s love and priorities. Because of this reality, throughout history, artists and mystics have spoken about attention as a key component of spiritual practice.

French mystic Simone Weil, who was born in 1909, spoke about attention like this: 
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”

“Prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.”

English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it this way:
"Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes--
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware"

If we want to see the ways that Earth is crammed with heaven, the ways every common bush is afire with God, then we need to practice turning our attention to God.

Alison spoke about the ways that this has been true for her in her own life, as well as the ways that practicing attention can be difficult in our world. She said:
"Over the years I have found that I am most able to feel God’s presence when I give something my whole attention. When I connect to my body and my breath through deep breathing. When I set aside time to pray, meditate, or journal. When I walk through the tree-lined streets in my neighborhood. When I am fully present in conversation with another. When I am immersed in a work of visual art, dance, theatre, or music. When I minimize distractions and give these things my full attention I am much more able to sense God’s presence with me and to be responsive to the ways that God’s Spirit is moving and working within me and around me. But this is not easy to do. Our world and our technology reward short attention spans and multitasking. Cultivating the kind of deep, sustained attention needed to abide in God — requires that we be intentional about how we direct our time, energy, and focus. In the words of the song we sang together earlier — we need to become skilled at 'being where our feet are.' And like any other skill we can only become good at this through regular practice. For me, it has been helpful to plan ahead — picking a specific time or place when I want to practice directing my attention to God."

If you are interested in practicing attention as prayer, we recommend taking a look at the four Daily Practices included in this year's 40 Days of Faith Guide. They are:
​
1) Looking Up and Down:
This practice from Emily P. Freeman helps us to literally pay attention to where our feet are by taking two photos a day as a form of creative prayer.

2) Taking In the Good: 
This practice helps us to overcome our hardwired negativity bias by turning our attention to and internalizing positive experiences.

3) RAIN Feelings Check-In:
This practice is a mindfulness-based technique that can help us to develop emotional awareness, grow in self-compassion, and build our capacity to process emotions (instead of avoiding, suppressing, becoming overwhelmed by, or responding reactively to them). 

4) Embodied Prayers:
This practice, from Dr. Hillary L. McBride, allows us to pray with our bodies, symbolically creating the kind of world that we want to inhabit and letting ourselves be changed into more whole versions of ourselves.

We think these practices are great! But engaging attention as prayer can be even simpler if you’d like. It might look like quieting your mind, connecting to your breath, and praying, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Or, like being intentional about putting phones away at the dinner table. Or, like listening to music without doing anything else. Try some things out and see what works for you!

Recognizing the Voice of God
The second framework Alison spoke about was learning how to recognize the voice of God. Alison shared a personal story about how her life has been changed by learning to recognize God's voice. She also said this:
"I’ve found that a key aspect of cultivating friendship with God has been both sharing my thoughts and feelings with God and, also, growing in my ability to perceive the ways that God is guiding me and speaking to me. Before I say more, I want to acknowledge that the practice of hearing God’s voice can be fraught for many — especially if you have had negative experiences in pentecostal or charismatic spaces. Please know that like with anything else at the River our approach to hearing God’s voice does not involve pressure or manipulation of any kind. And that we don’t think there is one 'right' way to hear from God that is more valuable than others. There are countless ways to hear from God — through journaling, prayer, reflection, meditation, and conversation; through words, images, stories, memories, songs, and scripture passages; by noticing our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and bodily sensations; by seeking God on our own and, also, in collaboration with others. And that’s by no means an exhaustive list! The method we use matters less than our end goal itself — the goal of knowing God more deeply."

A key question that arises for many is: "How do we know something is the voice of God?" Alison shared a helpful essay from Richard Rohr on this topic. You can read it in full here. Some of Rohr's key points were that the voice of God: 

• Comes toward us with grace and passes through us with grace;
• Is supportive, encouraging, urging, and alive;
• Is the positive flow that helps us connect to our best, largest, kindest, and most inclusive selves;
• Sounds simultaneously “like the voice of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of common sense, of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self”;
• Is not shaming, accusing, blaming, too harsh, or diminishing of ourselves or others.

If you are looking for support around learning how to recognize the voice of God, please do not hesitate to reach out to Alison to schedule pastoral counseling meeting. She would love to work with you! 

Additionally, some resources and practices you may want to explore on your own include:

• Seeing Is Believing by Greg Boyd
• Ignatian Contemplation
• The Examen
• Lectio Divina
• Praying in Color​

​We hope these resources are helpful to you and we pray that in the year ahead, each of us, in our own unique ways, would grow in our ability to know and connect with God. 

 This week in our Connection: The Heart and Art of Faith series, Maddie talked about curiosity—what it looks like to really notice another person, to ask one more question, and to move from surface-level interaction into deeper connection.

As we saw in the Song of Songs, love often begins with attention. The lovers in the poem slow down, delight in each other, and linger long enough to truly see one another. And that same posture—of curiosity, presence, and openness—is something we can begin to practice in our everyday relationships.

So this week, instead of just one resource, we wanted to offer a few that can help you put curiosity into practice.

1. Watch: 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation – Celeste Headlee

This week’s sermon referenced a TED Talk by journalist Celeste Headlee, and it’s well worth watching in full.

In this talk, Headlee offers simple but surprisingly challenging practices for better conversations:

• Don’t multitask
• Ask open-ended questions
• Don’t equate your experience with someone else’s
• And most importantly—listen to understand, not just to respond

What’s powerful about this talk is how practical it is. These aren’t abstract ideas—they’re small shifts you can try immediately in your next conversation.

Try this: Before your next conversation, pick just one of her suggestions and focus on practicing it.

2. Read: Curious Minds: The Power of Connection – Dani Bassett & Perry Zurn

In the sermon, Maddie also talked about how curiosity isn’t just a personality trait—it’s something built into us. It’s part of how we move toward one another.

Bassett and Zurn describe curiosity not just as information-seeking, but as a force of connection—something that draws us out of ourselves and toward other people.

They also name different “styles” of curiosity:

• Hunters (focused, problem-solving curiosity)
• Busybodies (broad, exploratory curiosity)
• Dancers (relational, responsive curiosity)

Reading even a short summary of their work can help you notice: What kind of curiosity comes most naturally to me? And how might I grow in other ways of being curious?

3. Practice: Three Questions to Go Deeper

Sometimes the hardest part of curiosity is simply knowing what to ask.

Here are three questions you can try this week—whether with a friend, coworker, or someone at church:

• What’s been taking up most of your mental energy lately?
• What’s something you’ve been thinking about a lot recently?
• What’s been bringing you joy these days?

These kinds of questions open the door to stories, not just updates.

Try this: Choose one person this week and ask one of these questions. Notice what happens.

4. Learn: More about Song of Songs!

If you're interested in going deeper into the biblical text we covered this week, this article offers a more in depth examination of Song of Songs and the ways in which it's been read as a love poem throughout history. The poem invites us to reclaim attentive love as something to be proud of rather than something to be ashamed of.

 

In her sermon this past Sunday, Pastor Alison mentioned a few resources that we want to share with you!

The first was a video from The Bible Project that takes an in-depth look at the first creation narrative in Genesis 1. You can find it here!

The second resource Alison mentioned was the book Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Rightful Place by Danielle Shroyer. We have a copy in the River's Lending Library that you are welcome to check out!

About Original Blessing
Of the worlds major religions, only Christianity holds to a doctrine of original sin. Ideas are powerful, and they shape who we are and who we become. The fact that many Christians believe there is something in human nature that is, and will always be, contrary to God, is not just a problem but a tragedy.

So why do the doctrines assumptions of human nature so infiltrate our pulpits, sermons, and theological bookshelves? How is it so misconstrued in times of grief, pastoral care, and personal shame? How did we fall so far from Gods original blessing in the garden to this pervasive belief in humanitys innate inability to do good?

In this book, Danielle Shroyer takes readers through an overview of the historical development of the doctrine, pointing out important missteps and overcalculations, and providing alternative ways to approach often-used Scriptures. Throughout, she brings the primary claims of original sin to their untenable (and unbiblical) conclusions. In Original Blessing, she shows not only how we got this doctrine wrong, but how we can put sin back in its rightful place: in a broader context of redemption and the blessing of humanitys creation in the image of God.

About Danielle Shroyer
Danielle Shroyer spent over a decade in pastoral leadership and was a founding member of the emerging church movement. She speaks often across the country on issues of theology, faith, culture, and story, and blogs at www.danielleshroyer.com. A graduate of Baylor University and an Princeton Theological Seminary, Danielle is the author of Original Blessing: Putting Sin in its Rightful Place, Where Jesus Prayed: Illuminations on the Lords Prayer in the Holy Land and The Boundary Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise.

This Sunday we wrapped up our sermon series on Jesus' Parables by diving into the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard — a story that unsettles our instincts about fairness, effort, and reward. We named the temptation to begin calculating: Who worked more? Who deserves more? Why did they get that? Why didn’t I?

And we also examined how, underneath that comparison, is often something deeper: shame. The fear that outcomes are a verdict on our worth. The suspicion that if things aren’t working out, maybe we matter less.

If that conversation is still stirring in you this week, here are two ways to keep living into the logic of grace — a logic that refuses score-keeping.

1. The Denari Prayer
This past Sunday, Maddie closed out her sermon with a prayer that some people found really helpful.

If resentment creeps back in this week — if comparison tightens in your chest or shame starts whispering — return to this prayer slowly. You might pray a paragraph each morning. Or pause when you feel yourself “doing the math” and let one line settle into your body.

Here is the full prayer we ended with on Sunday:

God, we come to you today as people who are tired of doing the math.
People who are tired of comparing.
Tired of measuring ourselves.
Tired of trying to prove that we matter.
God, some of us walked in here today feeling resentful.
Some of us walked in here feeling ashamed.
Some of us walked in here feeling afraid that our lives are evidence that we are less loved, less valued, less seen.
And God, you know the places where our hearts tighten.
You know the places where we feel overlooked.
You know the places where we are grieving what we wanted and didn’t receive.
You know the places where life has been unfair.
So God, in your mercy, meet us there.
God, for the person who is carrying resentment that feels justified,
help them name what is underneath it--
the fear of not being enough,
the fear of being forgotten,
the fear that their effort doesn’t matter.
God, for the person who is carrying shame,
who feels embarrassed,
who feels behind,
who feels like they should have figured it out by now--
remind them that your love is not earned.
God, for the person who feels punished,
who is searching their past for the reason you must be angry with them,
who is blaming themselves for their suffering--
God, speak gently and clearly:
“I am not punishing you.
I am with you.
You still matter.”
God, we ask for the grace to receive the denarius.
Not because we did everything right,
not because we were early,
not because we deserve it,
but because you are good.
God, free us from the lie that our worth is determined by our outcomes.
Free us from the lie that we have to compete to be loved.
Free us from the lie that other people’s blessings threaten our own.
And God, where we are facing real unfairness this week--
in our workplaces, in our families, in our bodies, in our systems--
give us courage to tell the truth.
Give us wisdom to advocate for what is right.
And give us a deep, steady grounding in the knowledge that our dignity does not depend on the outcome.
God, teach us to bless the people we envy.
Teach us to rejoice when others rejoice.
Teach us to love our neighbors without keeping score.
And God, make this church a place where the early and the late belong.
Where no one has to earn their seat.
Where no one is made to feel behind.
Where we practice the kingdom of heaven together--
a place of mercy, of dignity, of grace.
We pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ,
the one who came to us not because we deserved it,
but because you love us.
Amen.

2. Michael Sandel on “The Tyranny of Merit”

In a Guardian interview about his book "The Tyranny of Merit," political philosopher Michael Sandel argues that much of our cultural resentment stems from a deep belief that success is earned and failure is deserved. When society teaches that we rise purely by merit, it doesn’t just reward achievement — it quietly humiliates those who struggle.

Meritocracy, he suggests, breeds both pride and shame. If you succeed, you believe you earned it entirely. If you struggle, you assume it must be your fault.

That cultural story seeps into everything — workplaces, dating, parenting, even church. It reinforces the instinct to measure and compare.

Reading this article alongside Sunday’s parable can help us see that the impulse to “do the math” isn’t just personal insecurity. It’s embedded in the air we breathe. And that makes the kingdom of heaven all the more radical.

If God’s love is not earned, then our dignity is not a performance review.

When comparison surfaces this week, pause and ask:
What am I afraid this says about my worth?
What would it feel like to receive the denarius simply because God is generous?
​
The kingdom of heaven does not run on merit. And neither does God’s love.

Two Sundays ago, Caroline invited us into a thoughtful and layered engagement with the book of Deuteronomy. She began with the Shema — “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone” — grounding us in one of the most beloved and formative confessions in Jewish and Christian tradition. From there, she walked us through Deuteronomy’s covenantal framework: loyalty, memory, land, blessing and curse, and the fierce warning against forgetting the God who liberated Israel from slavery.

Caroline then situated Deuteronomy within its historical world. She showed how its structure mirrors ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties — political agreements between an emperor and subject peoples. In that context, language about loving, fearing, and serving God takes on covenantal and political overtones. The text reflects a people struggling to survive in the shadow of empire. Deuteronomy becomes both a theological confession and a survival document.

From there, she explored how Deuteronomy has shaped Christian theology in enduring ways: the image of God as sovereign ruler, the connection between obedience and blessing, and the entanglement of faith and national identity. Her closing invitation was not to discard Scripture, but to appropriate it responsibly — to ask what kind of image of God we are carrying and how that image shapes our lives today.

Two resources she mentioned at the end of her sermon help us press further into those questions: David M. Carr’s Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins and Ada María Isasi-Díaz's Kin-dom of God: A Mujerista Proposal.

Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins (David M. Carr)
David Carr offers a compelling and deeply humane account of how Scripture took shape. He argues that the Bible grew out of collective trauma — conquest, exile, displacement, and the collapse of social and political worlds. Israel’s scriptures emerged as communities wrestled with devastation and sought ways to preserve identity, memory, and hope.

Carr draws on trauma studies to show how:

• Communities encode their pain into story and ritual.
• Repetition, covenant language, and genealogies function as tools of survival.
• Scripture carries the marks of communities rebuilding life after catastrophe.

Deuteronomy, in this light, reflects a people forming fierce covenantal boundaries in the wake of imperial threat. Its urgency, its emphasis on loyalty, its warnings about forgetting — all of this reads as the spiritual architecture of a traumatized yet resilient community.

Carr’s insight changes the way we hear Scripture. The Bible becomes a testimony to endurance. Its authority flows from lived experience with suffering and restoration. When we read texts about covenant, obedience, exile, or blessing, we encounter communities who have known rupture and are fighting for coherence and hope.

For those of us navigating personal or collective upheaval, this perspective opens space to see Scripture as a companion in resilience — a record of communities who found ways to remain in relationship with God and one another amid instability.

Kin-dom of God: A MUJERISTA PROPOSAL (Ada María Isasi-Díaz)
Ada María Isasi-Díaz helps us reimagine how Scripture shapes our understanding of God’s reign.

Isasi-Díaz, a foundational voice in mujerista theology, proposes the phrase “Kin-dom of God” as an alternative metaphor for the reign of God. The shift from Kingdom to Kin-dom reframes divine rule in terms of family, relational belonging, and shared life.

This theological move:

• Centers relationships over hierarchy.
• Emphasizes mutual responsibility and interdependence.
• Highlights God’s work of forming communities of justice and care, especially among marginalized people.

This language reshapes Christian imagination. “Kin-dom” invites us to envision God’s activity as the creation of expansive family networks marked by solidarity and dignity. The metaphor draws attention to everyday acts of survival, generosity, and communal love.

Placed alongside Deuteronomy’s imperial covenant imagery, the Kin-dom framework offers a complementary theological lens. Where Deuteronomy reflects covenant loyalty in the language available within an imperial world, Kin-dom language foregrounds relationality and shared humanity. Together, they expand our imagination of who God is and how God gathers people into life-giving community.

Why These Resources Matter Now
Caroline’s sermon asked us to examine the images of God we carry. Holy Resilience deepens our awareness of how Scripture was formed in crisis and how trauma shapes theology. Kin-dom of God deepens our awareness of how metaphors shape our present imagination of divine life and community.

Both resources encourage mature, responsible engagement with Scripture:

• We read with historical awareness.
• We acknowledge the wounds and hopes embedded in the text.
• We discern how our language for God influences our relationships, politics, and commitments.

​
As you reflect this week, consider:

• How has suffering shaped your understanding of God?
• What metaphors for God feel most formative in your life — ruler, parent, shepherd, friend, kin?
• How might your image of God become more life-giving for you and for those around you?

Last Sunday at the River, we wrestled with how Jesus used stories and shared history to attempt to connect with people who were suspicious of him and who saw him as a threat. Stories shape what feels “obvious” to us, and they can both reveal and reshape how we see ourselves and others. At the end of the sermon, Maddie offered a few book recommendations for folks looking to explore stories as a response to our current political moment. Today we're going to explore two of those books in a little more depth.

This week’s Resources of the Week offer two paths to practice listening and witness in our own lives: one by learning from the faithful stories of Christians in a hard historical moment, and the other by learning how we can share and receive stories courageously today.

For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional
by Hanna Reichel
This devotional draws deeply on the lived stories and reflections of Christians during Nazi Germany, especially those connected to the Confessing Church resistance, whose faith was tested under real threat and ambiguity. It uses those voices as everyday witnesses to help us sit with scripture and our present moment with patience, humility, and grounded attention. Their stories remind us that faith grows through presence in the midst of fear and confusion.

Why it matters this week:
When our conversations feel urgent or polarized, listening to those who lived through incomparable fear with attentive faith can help us slow down, notice assumptions, and ask where God might be at work in our moment.

Try this: Read one reflection each day, journal about what lingers with you, and pray for the courage to notice God’s movement before rushing to conclusions.

I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

by Mónica Guzmán

This book is helpful guide for engaging others' stories and sharing our own with curiosity. Guzmán’s work is a thoughtful guide to navigating deep divides but by cultivating fearlessly curious conversations grounded in wonder, humility, and careful questions. She draws from personal experience, research, and real-life dialogues to show how simple curiosity can bridge seemingly unbridgeable gaps in understanding.

Why it matters this week:
Jesus’ parables are invitations to say, “I never thought of that that way.” Guzmán shows how those moments of insight—when we’re genuinely surprised by another’s view—can happen in our own conversations if we’re willing to ask better questions and listen deeply.

Try this: Notice one person this week with whom you’ve felt divided, and ask a genuinely curious question like, “What shaped your view on that?” Then listen to understand before responding.

Reflection Prompt for the Week
​Where have you been sure you were right—without listening first?
Write that down. Then pick a moment this week to ask one question that opens instead of closes a conversation.

This past Sunday, I (Alison) was excited to kick off a new sermon series called "Jesus's Parables: Meeting God Through Story." Each week during this series we are going to take a look at one — or maybe two — of Jesus’s parables. And we are going to explore how these engaging, provocative, and often ambiguous stories can help us to meet God in new, life-giving ways. 

The first parable we explored is referred to by a variety of names — the Parable of Hearers and Doers, or the Parable of Wise and Foolish Builders, or the Parable of the Two Foundations. It appears in both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke at the very end of Jesus’s most famous recorded sermon — commonly known as The Sermon the Mount (Matthew) or The Sermon on the Plain (Luke). It was as if Jesus ended his sermon by saying something like, “I have shared much wisdom with you today. What you do with it is up to you. Will you act upon what you’ve heard? Or won’t you? The choice is yours.”

Matthew's version of the parable says this:
“Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock. 
“And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!” (Matthew 7:24-27, NRSVUE)

It seems to me that this parable is less about what labels we embrace or what beliefs we hold, and more about our ability to respond to the wisdom that we receive. When we encounter thought-provoking ideas and practices that resonate with us, how able are we to take what we’ve heard and apply it to our lives? Does it come in one ear and go out the other? Or does it stick with us, shaping us, and spurring us to take action? When it comes to Jesus’s teachings, how able are we to not just understand and agree with what Jesus taught but to also do the things he said to do?

What’s really interesting to me is that in this story Jesus did not say that those who fail to act on what they hear are bad people, or that they’re lazy, or that they don’t love God, or that God is disappointed in them, or that they are going to be punished in the afterlife. Instead Jesus appealed to his audience’s self-interest regarding their experiences of life on Earth. To me, this sounds a lot like Jesus saying that following his teachings — especially those laid out in the Sermon on the Mount — can help us to develop the inner strength we need to better weather life’s storms. The storms will still come — that’s just the nature of life — but putting Jesus’s words into action can help us to feel more grounded and resilient.

Dr. Rick Hanson's Research on Inner Strength
Toward the end of my sermon, I briefly mentioned the research of psychologist Dr. Rick Hanson. Much of Hanson’s work is focused on how, in his words, “we can use the power of positive neuroplasticity to change our brain and grow inner strengths so we can be happier, more confident, and more calm — no matter what life throws our way.”

Hanson says that inner strength — which he defines as “the reservoir of psychological and emotional resources within us that allows us to face life’s challenges with resilience, grace, and determination” — is not purely innate. Instead, inner strength is actually something we can cultivate by taking steps to change our brain.

Through his research, Hanson has identified twelve aspects or qualities that contribute to inner strength. The Awake Network summarized them this way:

• Self-Caring: Be on your own side and become more resilient
• Mindfulness: Steady your mind and become more focused
• Learning: Grow beneficial traits and take in the good
• Vitality: Befriend your body and become determined
• Gratitude: Find the beauty and take more pleasure
• Confidence: Let go of shame and satisfy your core needs
• Calm: Learn to cool your anger and become more relaxed
• Motivation: Honor your desires and enjoy the fullness of life
• Intimacy: Get connected and create better relationships
• Courage: Become assertive and rise to challenges
• Aspiration: Deal with fears and realize your dreams
• Service: Resource yourself and become compassionate

As I considered these qualities, I found myself curious to see how much they connected with Jesus’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. I discovered that they actually correlate quite well! As a bit of a thought exercise I connected sections of the Sermon on the Mount to each of the twelve qualities, identifying specific teachings from Jesus that can help us to cultivate the different aspects of inner strength. Below, I've outlined what I came up. Let us know what you think! We are always happy to hear how you are responding to our sermon messages and Resource of the Week Posts.

Self-Caring: Be on your own side and become more resilient

• “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)
• Notes:
  • ​The logic of the Golden Rule only works if we start from a place of loving and treating ourselves well.
  • Thus, learning how to love ourselves well is an aspect of spiritual growth.

Mindfulness: Steady your mind and become more focused

• “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today." (Matthew 6:25-34)
• Notes:
  • ​It’s wise to plan for tomorrow. Please do!
  • At the same time, there is wisdom and freedom in acknowledging and learning how to identify the limits of our control. There are limits to how much worrying can accomplish. ("And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?")
  • The encouragement of this teaching is to ground ourselves in the only time that truly exists (the present) and to not miss the “wow that’s happening now.” (Thanks Daniel Tiger!)
  • Jesus tells us that connecting with God's creation (the birds of the air and the lilies of the field) can help us to lean into mindfulness.

Learning: Grow beneficial traits and take in the good

• “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.” (Matthew 7:15-17)
• Notes:
  • If we want to be intentional about taking in the good, then we need to look at the fruits. Whether it's a teacher, a teaching, a practice, a theology, a habit, a relationships pattern, a coping mechanism, etc., we can evaluate it's usefulness by the fruit that it bears.
  • A "good" tree bears "good" fruit, while a "bad" tree bears "bad" fruit. For example, "good" theology leads to "good" results, while "bad" theology leads to "bad" results; "good" coping mechanisms lead to "good" outcomes, while "bad" coping mechanisms lead to "bad" outcomes; and so on.
  • By “good” results I mean more love, more connection, more life rather than more shame, more disconnection, more death.
  • At the River, we believe that engaging with God should be life-giving and that the spiritual journey is meant to positively engage all aspects of our selves — our hearts, souls, minds, bodies, etc. So, we seek to embrace theology that bears "good" fruit — or living water — for ourselves, for others, and for the world around us. As a result, this means that we try to emphasize things like freedom, joy, and emotional health, and that we are adamant that things like shame, fear, pressure and manipulation are not compatible with the way of Love.
  • This approach — evaluating the fruit — is one that you can apply to so many aspects of your life, not just the ones that are viewed as explicitly spiritual. 
    
    

Vitality: Befriend your body and become determined

• “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23)
• Notes:
  • This may not be exactly what Jesus was getting at here, but these verses make me think about he ways that all the different parts of us are interconnected  — heart, mind, body, soul, etc.
  • Unfortunately, much of Christian tradition has a strange relationship with bodies — fearing them, shaming them, controlling them, punishing them. These impulses are odd for a faith that is centered around embodiment or incarnation — God becoming flesh in the person of Jesus.
  • The stories of Jesus in the gospels are incredibly physical: a mother giving birth, water being turned into wine, a woman bleeding, a person being lifted down through the ceiling, mud being wiped on a man’s eyes, bread being broken and eaten together, feet being washed, wounds being touched, and so on.
  • It seems that matter matters to God. And yet, many of us can testify to the ways that we have been taught to treat our bodies as hindrances to spiritual practice.
  • I wonder, what might it look like to reclaim our bodies as good, sacred, and made in the image of God? To engage our senses as entry points into deeper spiritual practice? Might this be one way of embracing the kind of healthy vision that can fill our bodies with light?
  • I've found the work of Dr. Hillary L. McBride to be a helpful resource in this area.

Gratitude: Find the beauty and take more pleasure

• “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 righteousness, for they will be filled.
• “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive 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 the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:3-11)
• Notes: 
  • The Beatitudes remind me that one of the challenges of faith is to learn how acknowledge and hold both the good and the terrible. To not bury our heads in the sand; or slip into toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing, or be overcome by cynicism, hopelessness, and despair.
  • In my own life, I have experienced incredibly comfort (from God and from friends) in the midst of profound grief. This comfort did not magically make everything okay or fully relieve the pain of mourning, but it did help me to continue to put one foot in front of the other and to know that I was not alone in what I was going through. It was a blessing in the midst of terrible circumstances.
  • My theological understanding of these ideas has been shaped significantly by the work of both Kate Bowler and Thomas Jay Oord. I encourage you to check out their work and below I've included a couple quotes that have been meaningful to me over the years:
    • “Victims needn’t say, ‘thank you, God,’ because evil occurred. It wasn’t God’s will. But they can believe God works in every situation, trying to squeeze good from the bad God didn’t want in the first place. They say, ‘In spite of pain and tragedy, I’m grateful for the good that is in my life, good that has God as its source.’” --Thomas Jay Oord
    • “Life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone.” --Kate Bowler

Confidence: Let go of shame and satisfy your core needs

• “People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:15-16)
• Notes:
  • Shame is such a pervasive force. In the Garden of Eden story, we see how Adam and Eve go from being naked and unashamed to covering up and hiding themselves from God. 
  • Overcoming shame, letting go of our "coverings," learning how to receive the unconditional love of God, and learning how to love and accept ourselves are all crucial aspects of spiritual growth.
  • It can be very scare to let ourselves be seen, to let our light shine before others. It is an inherently vulnerable act because it involves opening ourselves up to potential judgement. It takes courage, but it's important to remember that this is how we let the love in and help to set others free.
  • I am reminded of these quotes from Marianne Williamson, Brené Brown, and Hillary L. McBride.
    • "​We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, Our presence automatically liberates others.” —Marianne Williamson
    • “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” --Brené Brown
    • “Belonging is the innate, human desire to be a part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. True belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world. Our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” —Brené Brown
    • “Seeing and being seen are rehumanizing. Feeling felt inherently connects us back to ourselves and to each other.” --Hillary L. McBride

Calm: Learn to cool your anger and become more relaxed

• “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the Gehenna of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.” (Matthew 5:21-26)
• Notes: 
  • Feelings themselves are neither good nor bad — they are messengers trying to tell us something important. What matters is what we do with our feelings — how we choose to process them, express them, act in response to them, etc.
  • Anger expressed in healthy ways can be healing and constructive. At the same time, it's worth considering the ways that anger expressed destructively can lead to experiences of “Hell” on Earth in our lives now.
  • Interestingly, the second half of this passage seems to be about someone else having something against you — meaning you have done something to harm them and you now need to pursue repentance/restoration/restitution. What does healthy engagement with anger (theirs and yours) look like in this context?

Motivation: Honor your desires and enjoy the fullness of life

• “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone? Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11)
• Notes:
  • Connecting with our desires can feel scary. What if they don’t come true? Sharing them with God can feel vulnerable. What if my prayer isn’t answered (at all or in the way I hope)?
  • These feelings are valid. At the same time, it’s important to remember that there are also natural consequences to not connecting with and pursuing our desires. ("If you don't ask, the answer is always no." "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." And so on.) 
  • Additionally, unacknowledged and unexamined desires can come out sideways. They often make themselves known in the form of things like jealousy, judgment, dismissiveness, a sour grapes attitude, mean-spiritedness, and/or superiority. Getting curious about our envy, instead of shutting it down, can be a path to joy, fulfillment, and better relationships with ourselves and others.
  • I have faith that God cares about our needs, hopes, desires, and dreams, and that God is always, always working for our good. But, there are limits to what God can do in our lives and in the world without our cooperation. (For more on this consider Thomas Jay Oord's concept of “amipotence.”)

Intimacy: Get connected and create better relationships

• “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:1-5)
• Notes:
  • These teaching from Jesus encourages us to lean into self-awareness, to be able to see ourselves more clearly, and also to be more generous in how we engage with others.
  • Drs. John and Julie Gottman are known for their research around what allows relationships to be healthy and long-lasting. In particular, they’ve done a lot of work on marital stability and divorce prediction. While they focus primarily on romantic relationships, their advice can be applicable to many different types of relationships.
  • The Gottmans have found that the four most common relationships killers are Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. Unhealthy judgement (which is different from critiques or complaints offered in constructive ways) and lack of self-awareness add fuel to the fires of these destructive relationship patterns.
  • The good news is that there are antidotes — specific habits we can adopt instead. You can read more about them here and here.
  • I'd also recommend reading here about how boundaries are an essential component for developing a generous spirit.

Courage: Become assertive and rise to challenges

• “Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)
• Notes:
  • Pursuing unconditional love and putting Jesus's words into practice — i.e. entering through the narrow gate — are not easy tasks. They invite us to be reflective and intentional about how we move through the world; to, at times, act counterculturally so that we can live in accordance with our values; to be willing to let go of things like power, status, and wealth for the sake of defending the dignity and worth of all people.
  • The Bible is clear that taking up our crosses daily is an important part of following Jesus. This means reckoning with things like pain, hurt, rejection, disappointment, remorse, failure, loss, and grief. Borrowing language from Brené Brown, it means “putting our vulnerability on the line.”​
  • This is what it means to die to the self, to lose your life for the sake of finding it. And all of this requires courage!
  • If we choose to enter through the narrow gate, let’s not do so because we are glorifying suffering and sacrifice, or out of guilt, fear, shame, or manipulation. Instead, let’s follow the way of love with courage — even through life’s inevitable pain and hardship — with a deep sense of freedom. And let’s do so because we are truly convinced, each of us for ourselves, that this is ultimately the path to life and to mutual flourishing.

Aspiration: Deal with fears and realize your dreams

• “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21)
• Notes:
  • A life of faith asks to us to consider what really matters. What kind of treasures are short-lived (treasures on earth) and what kind of treasures are long-lasting (treasures in heaven)?
  • Fear often drives us to pursue the former. Embracing, sitting with, and moving through fear helps us to set our sights on the latter.
  •  The final line of this teaching is so interesting: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
  • It seems like common sense that if we care about something we will naturally invest in it, and in many cases we do operate this way. But the reverse is true as well! We have a tendency to protect, and to continue to invest in, places where are treasure already is.
  • This instinct to safeguard, to double down on our investments, can be constructive if the target is worthwhile (i.e. treasures in heaven). However, this instinct can also keep us stuck (focusing on treasures on earth) and prevent us from moving toward things that would be more life-giving. (Consider the sunk cost fallacy.)
  • In the capitalist society we live in, we often find ourselves placing greater value on things that we have spent money on (regardless of their value when measured through other lenses) and devaluing things that are "free." It is worth trying to push back against this tendency by being intentional about putting our money into the things that really matter (treasures in heaven). Even a small amount can speak volumes to our hearts and souls!

Service: Resource yourself and become compassionate

• “Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:42-48)
• Notes:
  • It’s very important to take care of ourselves, to take steps to protect ourselves from harm, and to do things like setting healthy boundaries. All of these things are part of loving ourselves well — the foundation of The Greatest Commandment.
  • Some of the challenges of faith are learning how to pursue our own needs while also considering the needs of others; how to honor our own unconditional dignity and worth while simultaneously doing the same for every other person made in the image of God; how to recognize the interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings; and how to build communities rooted compassion, generosity, and mutual care.
  • Love God, love your Self, and love your Neighbor broadly defined is the Christian message, and we are called to do so without hierarchy or conditions. This is no easy task. It is the challenge of a lifetime; a journey with an unreachable destination.
  • As we seek to more fully embody Love, all we can do is continue trying to take the next right step and the next one after that; to continually work toward broadening our circles of care and concern.
  • I find it helpful to remember that we can't pour from an empty cup, that it (often) feels good to do good, and that all God asks of us to try to move in the right direction.