Dear Friends,
This week the Church failed to be The Church; the place for all people to belong, to find meaning and worth in their God-created identities. This is not the first time that the institutions that house our spiritual and connected lives has failed us, and it will not be the last. We have been caught up in the story of our becoming since time began; since atoms and oxygen, earth and sky, light and dark swirled into being our human-kind. We are not defined by the freedoms we seek to possess and proclaim, nor by the secular or sacred institutions that grant or withhold those freedoms from us. We are only and wholly defined as children of God whose love is unconditional, without prejudice, above and beyond the limitations brought on by the dirt, the skin, and sin of it all.
We are free.
Let us look no further for the source of our being, or of our belonging; we are God's. God, who labored the universe into being, is sitting at the bedside of her beautiful an beloved children "wailing, uncontrollably" on our behalf, suffering with us, holding us as we continue to endure the harm perpetrated each other in the name of "fear."
We have nothing to fear. We are free.
of leaving God
to find God
and some of us
had to leave church
the same way
walking away
from its harms
in order to find others
with whom
we could heal
and call church again
we laid down
the old arguments
and picked up
new banners instead
to unfurl proudly
for all to see
and so I pray
for Methodist sisters
and brothers
beautiful lesbian, gay
bisexual, trans, queer folk
and straight allies
that the path you follow
lead to liberation
and if it is
the way of leaving
then may it also be
the way of finding
home
(Jeremy Rutledge)
Spirit is leading the way,
Pastor Jenny