Trust the Mystery—the Way to God’s Presence” 5-25-14

God of sea and ski, of storm and rainbow, deepen our understanding of your nature of pure love.  Amen

            Jim Dant, an interesting and ecumenical blogger, says this about his experience of God in the Church:  “The moment someone starts explaining God to me, I start to run.”  I think many of us can identify with his feelings.  Why is it, though, that so many people feel compelled to come up with some sort of explanation of who (or what) God is or even isn’t?  Why can’t God just be God?  I think that our Jewish friends got it right, when they refused to write the word for God—“Yahweh” is a word that in its truest sense cannot be spoken.  We will have none of that, so “Yahweh” it is.  The older I get, and sometimes it feels as if I am aging at the speed of light, the easier it is for me to say, “Enough, already”—enough distraction from what it means to live in God and explore mystery from a sense of awe, wonder, reverence and respect. 

At the risk or contradicting myself, I am going to use the word “God”.  We really have no way around it.  I could use a hand signal—something like this…--but all of you would know that I was referring to what you and I think of when we think of God.  So many times we hear people say, “God is A mystery” or “God is THE mystery”.  God is neither.  God is Mystery itself.  This is not taking the easy way out, far from it, in fact.  We know plenty about God—we know that God is the source of all life, in all life, and is the unknowable power behind all life.  But, unfortunately, that has not historically been enough for the Christian Church.  When we speak of church, we often talk about worship, education or spiritual formation and service or mission.  Our work, and I am speaking historically here, has focused on gaining a certain amount of unanimity in these areas—more or less depending on your church tradition.  Homogeneity has mostly been sought; and, folks who didn’t quite fit the mold were encouraged to conform in order to belong.  Church was where you went for answers; and, for the most part, churches complied by attempting to answer some very difficult questions. 

Churches were considered ‘successful’ by the numbers of new folks attending, being baptized, or participating in missions.  Results, often known as ‘fruits of ours and God’s labors, were treasured, tracked and talked about.  When we begin to mature as a church and see God as Mystery (capital M), we can begin to move beyond a results-oriented ministry.  Now, let me be the first to say, “This is hard.  Hard, hard, hard, hard!”  You get my point.  It is hard because we are used to having numbers on which we can count to prove our success.  If we have lots of folks on the path with us, we can assume that we are on the right path.  Yes?  Well, maybe not.  God as Mystery requires the church to think in terms other than numbers and results.  What you can count becomes less important than what you can feel.  We do not have to pretend that we have all the answers.  God, as Mystery so far beyond what we can truly understand simply inspires us to share in the experiencing of Mystery rather than the explaining of God.  Worship takes on new meaning and focuses on reverence, awe, silence.  Education or spiritual formation invites people to explore the Mystery, though never promises easy answers, and service, both inside and outside of the church, begins to lead us into the sharing of the Mystery which includes such things as inclusivity, justice, and compassion.  

This leads us to a very important question:  how does one describe a church community that has walked away from easy answers and has begun to explore God as Mystery?  I believe that, first and foremost, it is a courageous community.  It is courageous in its willingness to break the mold or the shop of easy answers and it is courageous in its support of the members of the community as each, in his or her own way, explores Mystery and finds one’s own experience of God.  It is also a church that can tolerate, embrace, and even celebrate difference.  If God is Mystery, then your experience and mine will not be necessarily the same.  In fact, God as Mystery,  implies that knowing each other’s experience is not a prerequisite for sharng the awe and wonder, also known as worship, together.   This church, then, places its emphasis on inviting all into the circle of wonder  and working together to eradicate the injustice that keeps others from knowing the Mystery of God.  For people, when they are consumed with mere survival, have no way to experience the Mystery of God.    Finally, it is a church whose priorities insure that all will be cared for and counted as equal in and out of the community.  Justice grows naturally from such a priority, as does care for the earth, and love for neighbor. 

God as Mystery enables us to live and move and have our being in God’s very Being.  If we cease our frustrated tries to define, delineate, and elaborate on the exact nature of God, we are free to simply adore.  Awe becomes the predominant feeling in worship and silence takes us directly to the heart of God.  Rather than alienating us from God, God as Mystery invites us directly into that Mystery.  This is the only way to understand the sayings of Jesus when he speaks of himself and the One who sent him as being one.  We know that Jesus was a child of God; and, by watching him, by paying attention to the way he lived his earthly life, we know of the union of Child with God and God with Child.  That same union is ours  when we accept that we, too, are Mystery.  We can describe how the human body works, or why the trees grow, or how the rain makes its ways back into the clouds.  But try as we might, we can never describe the power behind all these processes which taken together mean life.  We miss the boat when we fail to understand that our cells are one with the cells of the green tree frog and that the delicate balance we call life depends on our knowing just that. 

We err dangerously when we believe that we are looking at the world or even the universe from the outside in.  The rain forests and the distant stars are not over there or out there somewhere.  They are one with our very thoughts, feelings, and sensations.  Believing that humans are set-apart, different from other creatures and creation, has led us directly to a precipice from which many fear there is no return.  This is not only a social, economic, or scientific problem.  It is fundamentally a spiritual problem that we view ourselves as separate from the Mystery.  St. Augustine, yes, that St Augustine, is believed to have said, “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”.  Now, if you are like me, you will have to think on that for a moment.  Let’s think together.  If God is a circle whose center is everywhere, than, at any given time, you are at the center of the universe as well.  This is not the egotistical childish belief that all of life rotates around us; it is, rather, the recognition that our relationship in and to God changes the way we interact with the rest of, well, everything.  If, as St. Augustine says, the circumference of the circle is nowhere, then there is no place where the circle is not.  Just think about it for a moment.  It means that we can use every preposition that we know to describe being in, with, through, between, among the Mystery.  God is not in us like a blueberry is in a muffin; God is in us like water in rain.

If we were to become a church who worshipped a God without fences, this God of Mystery, it would change the way we do everything individually and communally.  It would change the way we view conflict because we would see the destruction inherent in conflict between two or many who are all equally in the Mystery.  It would give us a sense of charity for those whose experience is different from ours knowing that the descriptions may vary, but the Mystery is bigger than all our descriptions.  Fundamentally, it would change the way we experience what we now call “the presence of God”.  It would allow us to sing all kinds of songs, hear the sacred in all kinds of readings, experience the holy in the lives of all kinds of people.  It would allow us to stop striving both individually and as a community.  If I no longer have to seek something other than what I already experience within my spirit, I can relax into the Mystery and allow the Mystery to relax into me.  It’s about openness, openness to God, and to each other.  May the fences around God continue to fall as we explore more and more of God’s living energy and power in each of us.  Do not be afraid, the God of Universal Mystery and Love is inviting us to look around and see that we are already within.  Amen and amen and namaste.

 

 

 

 

 

“Know Your Heart—the Path to Authentic Faith” 5-18-14

God of Mystery, lead us into our hearts this day and let us hear your voice.  Amen

                When I say the words, “what’s on your heart this day?” you will more than likely begin to talk to me about feelings.  For centuries, perhaps from the beginning of human time, people have talked about the heart as the center of feelings.  Brain= thoughts; heart= feelings.  Interestingly, these are also the two organs that determine whether or not we are ‘alive’ in the truest medical sense.  Dr.’s talk about lack of brain activity and we know what that means.  When the heart stops beating, if it cannot be restarted and sustained, life, as we know it, ceases.  Except in cases of mental impairment, most of us do not have difficulty accessing our brains, and, therefore, our thoughts.  Our feelings, on the other hand, seem much more elusive.  We, and I’m quoting now, “try to figure out what we are feeling”; or, we work with a therapist so we “know what we are feeling”.  When I was newly married, now 40+ years ago, my now ex-husband and I were in counseling (I know—a clue, right?).  He was a pastor, and a very loving man.  However, as hard as he tried, he could not identify a feeling if it was staring him in the face.  He seemed to be completely cut-off from knowing his heart.  Unfortunately, I took to identifying his feelings for him—not a helpful or, even particularly loving, approach.  The point of this story?  We must know our hearts for ourselves.  And, knowing our hearts and trusting what we know is the beginning of authentic faith.

                Thinking about God with no fences can be scary, particularly if you are a person who finds great comfort in the facts.  Many of us do, about half of us, actually.  The rest of us are much more comfortable in the realm of feelings.  When I was writing training curricula, I knew to be very careful to include activities for the mind—the so-called ‘cognitive domain’, and for the heart—the so called ‘affective domain’.  So, whichever way you operate, never fear, you and about half of the rest of the world operate the same way.  What leads us into authentic faith, however, is our ability to trust what it is that our hearts are telling us.  There are so many things that seek to separate us from knowing our hearts in our current world.  Advertisements convince me that I truly need the newest and greatest whatchamacallit and I linger on the verge of buying it when my heart whispers, ‘simplify—you have no need for one more of these’.  Media tells me that in order to be sexy, men and women must be ripped.  I didn’t even know what ripped meant until lately but I get it now.  My heart tells me that sexuality is linked to what is inside—separate from worldly ideals and fashion.

                My mind may tell me that it is easier to have faith when I have a well-defined set of beliefs and that, in order for me to have a good relationship with God, I need to know and adhere to these beliefs.  My heart whispers that it is not so—that my faith with and in God will change over time as I grow and mature and simply live the complexities of life along the way.  How do we learn, if we want to, to trust the whisperings of our hearts when so much of our history and life experiences causes us to hide behind the fence of certainty?  Those of you who were at the retreat saw a brief video clip of Bishop Yvette Flunder of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries acknowledge that there are many things that she does not know.  Do you have any idea how frightening it is for a pastor to say for all to hear, “I don’t know”?  It took me years to be able to do it—they don’t teach you that in seminary or at least they didn’t ‘back in the day’—that it is ok to be human as a pastor, to have more questions than answers; and, even still when I tell some of you that I don’t know the answer to something, my nerves are a little rattled as I wait for your response.  It’s ok, though, I think it’s important for you to know that I don’t have all the answers, not because I didn’t study very well for this test we call ‘life’; but, because there is no course of study that will give us all the answers; and, if such a course claims to have all the answers, I would suggest that it is not a course about the God of mystery. 

                So, back to our hearts.  I want you, if you are comfortable doing so, to put your hand over your heart.  Some of us are familiar with our heart chakras, the energy center connected to our feelings.  We put our hands to our hearts when we make a pledge.  We ‘cross our hearts and hope to die’ when we promise something to someone.  But, for a minute, just place your hand on your heart and let yourself experience whatever feeling comes up for you.  …  Even if the only feeling you felt was uncomfortable or foolish, that’s ok, you still got in touch with your heart.  I hope that perhaps some of you experienced a feeling of expectancy, or hope, or even excitement.  Our hearts, in the emotional sense, not the organic one, brings to our lives the authenticity that so many of us desire. 

                I will tell you this, you learn to trust your heart, the same way you get to play at Carnegie Hall—practice, practice, practice.  If you are new to trusting your heart, it may bring with it fear.  It will certainly bring with it all the voices in your life who may have told you that you could not possibly know and trust your own heart.  For those of us who are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender and are of a ‘certain age’ it may, or even, more than likely will, bring forth all those voices who told you that you were wrong about your sexuality or gender expression.  And, there were a million reasons you were wrong.  But you knew—remember the certainty, scary though it may have been, when you first knew with no doubts that you were not what others thought you were or desperately wanted you to be—you just knew. 

                So, what does practicing the knowing of our hearts look like?

·         First, it requires you to shut off the voices coming from other places or at least turn down the volume.  I cannot tell you where those voices come from for you, but you know.  This may require a brief withdrawal from people who have a negative impact on your ability to know your own heart.  Much like an alcoholic who separates herself or himself from their friends who tell them that it is ok to drink, it may be necessary to remove yourself from the presence of those who question your ability to express your authentic feelings and faith.

·         Second, it requires that you spend some time with you.  This does not always mean going away to a mountain or a beach.  It can just mean giving yourself permission to be almost constantly in touch with your feelings.  It means to stop for a moment when someone challenges your truth and ask yourself what you are feeling.  Perhaps you will find that you do not need to defend your authenticity at all.  You simply need to touch it and defending it becomes unimportant.

·         Third, find some other people who want to follow the same kind of journey as you do; and by journey I mean “a commitment to knowing your own truth free from the influences of anyone or anything other than your own experience with the Divine Spirit of God”.  Spend some time with them and share your story.

·         Fourth, celebrate the voice of your own experience.  Thank God for speaking to you in ways different from all others.  Rejoice in the uniqueness of your walk with God.  Share what you feel led to share but leave aside all thoughts of garnering agreement from those with whom you share.  Always know that unless what you are experiencing is hurtful towards yourself or others, you are on the right track—your own track.  If it is hurtful, you know that you need to seek help from others. 

·         Finally, rest.  Just as God rested, and Jesus drew away to be in a quiet place, you need rest as well—spiritual and physical rest. 

What does all this say to our communal journey regarding our conversations about a God without fences?  I believe that the beginning of conversations will rely on truly knowing and understanding where each of us is coming from.  Once that has occurred, we will be able to begin talking about living and loving together.  Trust your knowing and offer support to others who are learning to trust their knowing.  Please know and remember—we will not all have, nor should we, the same “knowing”.  For some of us, our knowing will sound very traditional; and, as long as we come to that freely and within our own experience, that is a beautiful thing.  Some of us will sound a little more mysterious or mystical when we describe our experiences—for many that is the way to authentic faith.  Some of us, will be stirred almost immediately to take action—to work for justice with passion or to spend time with others who are in situations that are trying their ability to stay connected.  Don’t you see?  We are each wonderfully, and individually made.  We are made in the image of God—the God beyond knowing, and, yet made known to us in the caves of our hearts where our deepest and truest experiences of God reside.  Together we will know our hearts; and, together we will become more and more a community of authentic and blessed faith.  May it be so.  Amen and amen and Namaste.

“A Shared Responsibility: Nurture the Circle” 5-11-14

Nurturing, Loving God—remind us that we are to be both a channel for your love to others and a channel to receive your love from others.  Teach us how to find the spirit of nurture within our hearts.  Amen 

            I love the passage that we read today from Luke’s Gospel where Jesus gets in trouble—really pretty big trouble—with his parents, particularly his mother.   This passage is often romanticized and focuses on Jesus’ greater knowledge of what God had called him to do.  Poor, not very insightful, Mary and Joseph didn’t understand what Jesus was about.  But the first view we have of Mary is the one I most like.  Imagine yourselves in Mary’s shoes.  The Passover Festival has ended.  More than likely, she was tired and ready to be back home.  They are traveling home in a large group.  It makes sense that it took them some time to realize that Jesus is missing.  After all, there were lots of people in their group and the kids more than likely stayed together.  When Mary and Joseph realize that Jesus is not among them, they are very worried.  They travel back the day that they had already traveled and begin looking for Jesus. 

Now, it doesn’t take much to feel the steam building up in Mary throughout this process.  It seems likely that everyone was supposed to meet at a given place.  They trusted Jesus to be where he was supposed to be.  So, here and there, they look, Mary getting quite worked up along the way.  They find Jesus sitting in the Temple talking to the elders, completely unaware that his parents are beside themselves with worry.  Our modern translation has Mary start by saying, “Young man,”.  Now I would think that, for most of us, that beginning would give us a clue that trouble was brewing.  Jesus, tells her that there was no reason for her to be looking for him as he was doing the business of the One who sent him.  While the scene sort of fades to black at this point to hide the fact that Mary and Joseph did not understand, my suspicion is that Mary was not done talking to Jesus.  What we do have recorded is that Jesus traveled home and was obedient to them.  I’m thinking it was a long trip home for Jesus. 

This passage, when taken as a parable of sorts, is about much more than Jesus’ spiritual precociousness.  It can be taken as a parable regarding the parenting of our Divine Creator, who surely must want to address us on numerous occasions as “young man” or “young woman”.  The Divine Heart heart must surely break during all the times we have been lost.  Taken as a parable, we can imagine the concern that spreads throughout the Sacred when we fail to respect our Holy Parent.  We experiment and learn through all our mistakes, while our Divine Parent walks with us through each step of the chaos we may encounter along the way.  God’s nurture does not necessarily mean that we will never suffer the consequences of poorly-executed decisions.  However, it does mean that God will be walking beside us and allowing the place that we are in to bring us closer to God’s heart.  This not only gives me great comfort in the moment; it also allows me to say with confidence that every place I have been, every detour and every wrong turn has made me into the person that I am today—a child of God open and ready to receive the nurture that God longs to pour out for my having.  I am grateful that God allows me the freedom to learn at my own pace and from my own experiences.  And there is a second aspect to God’s nurturing—one that reminds us of why we are here.

Mothers’ Day celebrates the nurturing roles that we take on as mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, teachers, grandparents and friends.  And, so, it is the perfect day to think again about the nurturing part of God’s or Beauty’s character and the way that nurture is relayed to the rest of the world through us and to us, child of God to child of God.  I am the first to admit that the aspect of God as father or mother can be difficult for some of us.  If we did not have a kind, loving, caring father or mother, it may be difficult to comprehend the nurturing nature of God if we use the same words that may be painful to us for one reason or another.  This is why I am suggesting that we talk about God in terms of a Divine Nurturer—a friend to our souls, a teacher to our hearts, and a lover to our spirits.  When we think of nurture, we often think of how a child was “raised”.   Was he guided in moral principles that benefit the common good or was she allowed to run amuck, laying the groundwork for an irresponsible or self-centered adult?  This, certainly, is a part of nurture; but God’s nurture goes so much deeper and leads us so much further. 

            What is the goal of God’s nurture freely given to us?  It is to grow more and more Godlike.  So, it is more than just knowledge.  It is the receiving of deep insight into the nature and love of God.  And with this receiving, comes the responsibility to care for and nurture others into a deeper relationship (whatever that looks like to them) with the Ground of all Nurture which many of us call “God”.  First, though, we must look at how we allow God to nurture us. 

An old priest tells the story of an elderly farmer who would stop at a little country chapel every night on his way home from his fields.  The priest, having observed the farmer, knew that he was apparently doing nothing during those times in the chapel.  The priest asked him one day, “What are you doing when you just sit there every day?”  The old farmer smiled and said, “I look at the Good God and the Good God looks at me.”  Now, if you were to look at the size of my library, you might conclude that I had missed the wonder of such simplicity along the way.  This story caught my eye precisely because it is so simple.  What this farmer was doing would be called ‘prayer’ by a lot of us.  And, it is through prayer that God’s nurturing presence abounds.  For many of us, it is so much easier to keep running around doing good things for other people, and talking about those things we are doing, than it is to sit quietly and open ourselves up to the ministering of God’s heart to ours.  Here’s the catch, though:  unless we have experienced just that, we will be unable to pass that spirit of nurturing care on to others. 

Prayer, and nurturing prayer in particular, is an activity of the heart.  Heart-to-heart, our heart to God’s and God’s to ours.  Really, that is all that prayer truly is.  But, so often we hide our hearts, or we try to, from the very God who made us.  I have spent a good bit of time this week, wondering about why we do this and how does our doing this relate to the way we interact with those with whom we are walking this earthly life?  I think—now hear me out before you dismiss what I am saying—that it is because we do not feel worthy of God’s undivided attention.  We let God off the hook, just in case our suspicions are right about our unworthiness, and do not give God the chance to show us we are wrong.  This translates directly into why we seem hesitant to allow others to love us and care for us with the same passion for our well-being as God.  We do not think we are worthy of another child of God’s undivided attention.  And so, we build fences between us and God and us and anyone who is radiating the love of God to us.  Not necessarily big fences, but fences, nevertheless. 

If we are to follow our commitment to worshipping a “God without fences”, then we must start here at the place of individual to individual relationship.  And, if, we were to find ourselves able to break through these smaller fences, we might find the larger ones not quite so large.  God’s nurturing heart longs for us to sit quietly and allow the presence of God to enter the core of our very being.  Many people wrongly believe that only “mystics” or “contemplative nuns or monks” follow such a course.  This belief cheats us out of a spiritual relationship with God that spontaneously overflows into our lives with other children of God.  When we allow God to do God’s work in us, we are naturally nurtured in the character of goodness and the heart of God.  When we are nurtured ourselves, we will attract to us those who need the nurturing love that we have to offer through God’s grace.

Today, I wanted to focus on the simplest aspect of nurturing—that of simply being with God and, believe it or not, of being with each other.  In our striving to understand, we make more complex the simple act of loving.  I would suggest to you that as you think today as you think about your mother, grandmother or some other loving mother-figure in your life it will occur to you that, with few exceptions, they did not have to ‘figure out’ how to love you.  They simply did.  They may have fallen short of perfection and stumbled along the way, but the feeling we call love is simply nurture at its simplest.  This is what we are asked to allow God to give to us and what we are called to give to each other.  This Nurturing Day, I invite you to challenge those thoughts in your heart that whisper, “God does not have time for you” or “you are not worthy of God’s attention” and set your intention upon letting God in.  And, in the same way, I invite you to let another in, another child of God who longs to show you they love you.  And we will never be the same.  Amen and amen. 

Open or Closed Circle?: It’s Up to Us 5-4-14

Creator of all life, help us know how to move beyond our insulated humanness and be willing to see what you would have us see.  Welcome us to your divine “safe space” where we are promised hope and joy.  Amen

            First, I want to thank all you who participated in our retreat yesterday.  What a holy, sacred time we had together—the first of many, I hope.  And, for those of you who could not or did not attend, I hope you will ask someone what it was like so that you might be inspired to attend next time.  It was the start of a journey for us in Open Circle and it is the journey that I feel called to speak about today.

            It is a personal journey as well as a communal one.  As your pastor, I spend many hours over the weeks in prayer for you and in discernment regarding where God is leading this church.  It is an awesome responsibility—a responsibility that comes close to getting the better of me some days; however, it is a responsibility that I take up both seriously and joyfully as God allows me to spend my time here with you.  It is not an easy responsibility, and my authenticity requires me to tell you that—to acknowledge that there is often pain, and a great deal of frustration included in this responsibility.

            Let me say to you as well (and I think those of you who have spent the effort to get to know me know this)—I do not think that I am the perfect pastor, not for this church or for any.  If I thought I was perfect, or even close to it, I would have stopped learning and changing years ago.  In other words, I would be useless to you and useless to God.  So, my journey into the will of God for this church has not been without doubts and conflicts.  Let me say this, I believe that every one of you who have struggled with my leadership in private or public have done so because of what you believe.  While some of the associated assumptions have been hurtful at times, I do not doubt for a moment that each of you was being true to your own beliefs, values, and fears.  All that being said, I am undertaking the giving of this sermon with the trust that, above all else, we love each other and want the best for each other as individuals and as a church.  Open Circle is my family and I believe it is also the family of many of you.  And so, we take this journey or choose not to take this journey together

            Let me tell you first why I believe that we are at a crossroads at Open Circle.  We want to have ministries that matter, we want to build a church, we want to make an impact on our community and world.  To do that, we must change.  I could quote statistics to you; you would be bored.  I could talk about the larger trends across the country regarding church growth; you rightly would be unimpressed.  However, I will tell you what I believe to be the truth regarding Open Circle.  Once the excitement of a new church wore off, our attendance has stayed roughly the same.  Let’s face it, people have short attention spans; and, if we do not offer something that will change their lives, we will not stay on their radar for longer than it takes to visit once or twice and then lose interest.  And, that’s just it, I believe that we do have something to offer that will change people’s lives—that is changing our lives—if we will only find the courage to look our fears and doubts in the eye and move into a deeper relationship with the Sacred—with God, the source of all love. 

            Now, of course, this is considerably easier said than done.   For all of us, your pastor included, this takes time, passion, and commitment.  It takes time because we are temporal beings—we exist in time.  We process before we change our thoughts or actions.  And, this is a good thing.  As we move and live and change and have our being in the God who is the ground of our being, we become more and more the people God calls u to be.  This week in another group I said that if I were limited to two words to describe “church”, those two words would be “safe space”.  We all long to be safe, but we do not all describe safety in the same way.  For some, safety may imply that no one will ever ask you to think in ways different than you already think.  This is not what God had in mind.  Listen to David in our Psalm today:  “God taught me how to sing the latest God-song, a praise-song to our God.  More and more people are seeing this:  they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to God”.  I ask you and I ask myself at exactly the same time, “When was the last time you abandoned yourself to God?”  And, if you did abandon yourself to God, where did God take you?  I believe that God yearns to take us deeply into sacred safe space, to teach us of the love that cannot be measured and grace that cannot be outrun.  Seeing this part of the journey as “safe” requires us to look at our fears and trust our dis-ease to God at the same time as we make ourselves available for the journey.

            Most of us grew up believing that there was one way to describe the Holy—that Otherness that we know is beyond us or bigger than us.  We learned formulae put in place by men centuries ago.  We learned about the Trinity, and heaven and, for some of us, hell.  We learned that there was a divine measurement of good and evil in place and that the day would come when we would be judged either worthy of heaven or deserving of hell.  Some of us took great solace in the fact that people who had hurt us would pay a heavy price throughout all eternity.  It was a comfort to have beliefs that could be nicely bound into books and re-packaged when social and artistic trends changed.  The rest of us may have grown up not thinking much about the Holy.  Perhaps our families weren’t religious or spiritual, or our parents thought that we should be free to make our own decisions when we were older.  This also felt safe, putting off any doubt-causing, headache-forming self-awareness until later.

            Back to Open Circle—I know that there is something that can be different about this place.  There is something that can set us apart and allow us to do God’s work in the world in new and exciting ways.  And that is a commitment to making Open Circle the “safest space” that we possibly can.  This means that we can have discussions and even disagreements without asking anyone to give up what is of value to them.  Allowing someone on this side of the room to believe one way while you believe another does not threaten your belief system at all if you endorse the idea of safe space.  You see, allowing one person to believe one thing while you believe another simply makes the world more interesting, more loving, and more God-like.  Someone asked me not to long ago, what Open Circle stood for.  While saying that while I could only respond with what Open Circle’s pastor stood for, I replied with every ounce of passion that is in me, “Open Circle stands as a place where all are accepted—no matter what”.  Now, I am here lovingly to tell you that, to a great extent, we have been saying this more than we mean it.  I mean—it sounds good, right?  Who wouldn’t want to go to a church where everyone is accepted?  Here’s the catch—in order to truly be such a faith community, we have to allow God to send us the everyone’s and not pick and choose as if the choice were ultimately ours.  And, that means we have to change.  And change is work, sometimes, hard work.  Now, I want to tell you in just a few sentences about some of the hard work that I have been doing as your pastor.  As we began to move beyond thinking about openness to really acting upon it, the initial resistance, at least by a few, was quite palpable.  I could taste it, see it; and, even read it.  I began to doubt that God was continuing to call me to be in this place.  I wandered in that wilderness almost alone.  But, there was a small group of you who met faithfully every Wednesday night—a place where “safe space” was beginning to grow—where people were opening themselves up to the hard questions.  Still, I agonized over the fear that was evident in some others of my brothers and sisters.  Nevertheless, I believe that this is God’s call to Open Circle and that, at least for the moment I am the person called to be your leader in this present journey.  And, I believe, that together we can overcome whatever needs to be overcome in God’s name.

            You may be asking yourself why you would bother to engage in any of these conversations that we will be having over the next weeks and months.  And, I’m going to give you an answer that you may not have expected.  It is not for the good of the church or the community.  It is for freedom—freedom in your own spiritual growth that comes from asking and living the difficult questions and being open to answers that may sound very different from those you learned as a child.  It is for freedom—freedom for God to reveal God’s self in ways that you didn’t see coming or expect to receive.  It is for freedom—freedom to open yourself up to the touch of people who are or believe differently from you.  It is for freedom—freedom to become closer to God than you ever thought possible—to live a live full of assurance—to face life’s questions with a calmness that comes from having already gone to a place of complexity and come away with the simplicity of grace.  And then, and then, this safe space for all will begin to be a reality so full of passion that others will find their longing leading them here to this place of love and acceptance—and, at long last, we will be ready to say, ‘welcome home!”  Amen and amen.