Homecoming

Homecoming is a fall school tradition sporting dances, football, students, and alums. However, Homecoming is more than celebrating this great school and friends. Homecoming rejoices that you belong to this place, to these people, to this community.

Belonging is the deepest desire of our spiritual lives. Our deepest desire to belong to God comes through in our deep desire to belong to one another. We seek to belong to a community, a people, a particular place that anchors us. Belonging attaches the larger purposes of our lives in Christ to people with whom we can laugh, cry, and share.

Belonging is the spiritual connection within all homecoming celebrations. Where do you belong and where do you celebrate? Discover a homecoming to capture your spirit's desire to connect to God and others. Arrive at this homecoming as one who belongs.

Naming what is important

Well known time managament advisors offer the counsel to separate what is important from what is urgent and then focus on what is important. The advice recognizes that we all can get caught up in the crises of the moment and loose focus on the bigger picture. And, we can use the crisis of the moment to distract us from addressing other priorities.

Naming and then focusing on what is important in our relationship with Christ can also be overshadowed by the crisis of the moment. We tend to be outward focused on the needs of the world, our communities, and those we love. The quick prayer for patience with a two year old or wisdom with a teen. The deep breath to get us through the moment, and, then we are onto the next thing. While raising the moments, hurts, and needs of our lives to the compassionate life of Christ is important, we often turn to that side of our spirituality in crisis.

This week try practicing two sides of the spiritual life that are important and inward. The first side is daily intercessions for the needs of the world. Pray for a period of time, perhaps 10 minutes, naming all the people and places you desire to sent Christ's healing love. Do this every day instead of in the moment. Create a time that you offer to the world a 'daily vitamin' of love. The second side is to name the inner feelings of gratitude and connection. Name the people, the relationships, that give you life and love. These are the places that your life and Christ's life meet. These are the places that are not in crisis but are nurturing in the big picture of your life.

Naming what is important goes beyond the crisis and into the deeper places of Christ's love within us.

Common Good

Sunday into Monday takes us into primary elections. Comments overhead are about how tired people are of the repetative ads. The overload might be enough to make some tune out. While it may not seem like the one voice of one vote in the many voices of political ads makes a difference, voting always makes a different for the common good. Yes, we vote to express our opinion. Yes, we vote to register our individual voice but just as importantly we vote because collectively voteing create the good that we call democracy. Christians help create the common good in our congregations, communities, and, through our participation in government.

Sunday into Monday spiritual practice is to appreciate all the ways you participate in a common good that is bigger than you are. You create more than our individualistic perspective by being part of a whole. Do you experience the common good in your household, in your school, in your workplace, or congregation? Where does it touch you in your relationship with Christ when you listen and share your own opinion. Where does it stretch you to build an idea or project based on the collective wisdom of your congregation's leadership instead on the leverage of a few? This week, look for God's presence in the common good.

Labor Day

At St. John's Episcopal Church yesterday, we heard that the skills that create our work do not, in God's eyes, create our worth. The Rev. Nick Szobota, our preacher for the day, pointed out that a diversity of skills, capacities, and, excellence is necessary for our common life. And, as the collect of our tradition reminds us, God 'so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives...'

Our worth in God's eyes is not based on our labor alone. Our worth is based on God embracing us as God's children, children who are inheritently worthy of love, respect, and, recognition for the contributions each of us makes to the common good. Our worth does not come from society's esteem, which will change in each generation, but remains constant throughout the ages because our worth comes from God.

On this Labor Day, remember your worth in God's eye just as we remember the labor we contribute for the goodness of us all.

Speaking of Faith III

Stories hold life and truth. We create stories so that the moments of life and truth we want to remember have a container, a sacred vessel, with which to carry these moments. We tell stories about our children, our parents, the people who shape our lives, and sometimes even about ourselves. Stories about ourselves reveal more that we would usually tell yet we seek to share that life and truth with others.

Listening to so many stories produced for consumption may confuse us. Following this week the news about Hurrican Earl, danger and preparedness were the themes. While the people interviewed were on the scene and in places impact was anticipated, the stories shared did not reveal anything more than what was already known. Its confusing when in the depths of our being we know stories tell us about life and truth and yet so many stories for consumption reveal little.

Tell a story today. Share a story today. Its an act of community to bring another into your story and to listen to another person's story. Its an act of faith to know that stories reveals the life and truth of our lives together. Tell a story that brings forth joy, or passion, or compassion. Listen for a story that will show forth a new, glistening dimension of the life and truth that surrounds us.

Speaking of Faith II

As I reflect on the name change of radio program, from "Speaking of Faith" to "Being," I am reminded of the adage: when is a business not a business? The answer is when it is a church. Communities of faith have the same organization structures of all organizations with the same goverance, financial, and oversight needs. Yet, the dynamics that influence how churches function are supposed to be and ought to be driven by the expression of faith. How we speak of faith in a church organization is different than how we speak of faith in a company or workplace.

For example, volunteers are committed because of values and the "compensation" is living those values more clearly than perhaps they can do in other parts of their lives. Clergy and professional congregational staff are teachers, conveyors, and perservers of those values. They are more than the supervisor or 'boss.' And, emotions, needs, support, understanding, will always we sought and assumed more in the faith community work place than in an employer-employee relationship.

Despite the similarities between business and faith organizations, there will always be a disconnect between how a company runs and how a church runs. So, there is always be a disconnect between how people speak of faith in the at work and how they speak of faith in their communities.

Still, I uphold the public conversation that shapes our lives in both workplace and faith community that expresses what we believe and where our hearts rest.