Blog

Advent letter from The Consultation

Posted on by livinggodsmission

The Consultation – a consortium of progressive organizations in the Episcopal Church – has offered to the larger church some thoughts about General Convention, both reflecting on last summer’s challenging work and looking forward to the 81st General Convention scheduled for June, 2024.

Partners for Baptismal Living – the group that brings you this blog – participates in The Consultation, and invites you to read what we, along with our partner organizations, are thinking about the work ahead of us.

Find The Consultation’s Advent letter here.

For Christians throughout the earth, may your journey through Advent bring you to a joyous celebration of Christmastide! And for all people, may you know peace and joy as we enter 2023.

Fling wide the door

Posted on by livinggodsmission
Photo by Amina Filkins

by Demi Prentiss

“Fling wide the door, unbar the gate!” The words of this Lutheran hymn (ELW 259) remind us that the essential work of Advent is opening – our gates, our doors, our hearts, our wallets, even our minds! God is doing a new thing, and perceiving it depends on our willingness to see or learn or do something new.

For some of us, flinging wide the door isn’t easy.  In the spirit of the homeowner who feels obliged to tidy up the house before the house cleaners come, we would just as soon keep the door closed until everything is “just right” – for guests, of course. And, if we’re willing to admit it, for Jesus as well. We’ll wait until we have the dust bunnies and the clutter under control before we feel comfortable letting God in to see where we live – including our hearts. It’s hard to admit that putting up a false front is a useless exercise when we’re talking about God: The One who’s nearer than breathing already knows how messy our lives are, behind our brave façade.

God already knows that inviting God – as vulnerable infant or as powerful spirit – into our lives means doing something that forces us to loosen control – stepping out of our comfort zone.  The Advent remembrance of that vulnerable child born in Bethlehem can offer us a glimpse of the power of vulnerability. God’s experience as a human being helps us remember that, as Madeleine L’Engle wrote, “To be alive is to be vulnerable…. When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability” (Walking on Water, 1980).

Brené Brown, self-described as a “storyteller/researcher,” has dedicated much of her life to understanding vulnerability. She is careful to distinguish vulnerability from compliance or weakness and to point out that vulnerability is a demonstration of courage. In her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, she writes, ““Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope empathy, accountability, and authenticity.” Because vulnerability is inescapable, she urges us to practice it intentionally. “If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”

My prayer for all of us choosing to walk this reflective journey of Advent is that we may claim vulnerability – incarnate in the Son of Man – as a source of courage to dare greatly and to invite transformation.  As Brown urges, may we dare to “show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you’re feeling. To have the hard conversations.”  May God open us to receive the gifts of the Incarnation.

“Fling wide the door, unbar the gate!” And the Lord God Incarnate will come in.

Seeking and serving

Posted on by livinggodsmission
Angel Tree at MCAS Cherry Point, NC – Photo by Pfc. Nicholas P. Baird

by Brandon Beck

“To seek and serve all persons” is on my mind this time of year, as it is every year during Advent.

Advent is my favorite liturgical season – with the deep blue hues of the vestments and altar hangings, the lessons and carols of the season, the waiting and anticipation, the hot chocolate and crafts.

I value sharing in the preparation for and service of a community Friendsgiving event for families who receive diapers and parenting support at our local parish church. Turning to hanging the greens with special care for our Angel Tree participation, I am drawn more deeply into the sense of waiting and watching this season – but in an active way – in a seeking and serving way.

How can I fulfill my promise of baptismal living while waiting in anticipation, I wonder?

Perhaps, as in the Advent II lectionary reading from Isaiah, I will actively wait in the Spirit of the Lord:

“He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

or decide by what his ears hear;

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”

May we recognize and respond to every opportunity to meet those, like ourselves, who need a friend today and every day, for in them is Christ.

Editor’s note: PBL welcomes Brandon Beck as the newest writer to join our blog schedule. See our “Who we are” page to learn more.

Grateful Turkey

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Pam Tinsley

Each year, in early November, our daughter-in-law helps our granddaughter, Sienna, make a “Grateful Turkey” out of construction paper. This year Sienna was old enough to cut Turkey’s feathers out, make its eyes, and put socks on its feet. Sienna tells Katie what she’s grateful for, and Katie writes each item on a feather. With the addition of each feather, Sienna’s “Grateful Turkey” grows more and more grateful until it has a full complement of colorful feathers.

So, just what is 3½-year-old Sienna grateful for? “Spending time with my family; Daddy playing with me before he goes to work; Omi and G’Dad babysitting me even when I’m sick; Emma showing me how to use my inhaler; Momma and our coffee/hot cocoa dates.”

Eleven of Grateful Turkey’s twelve feathers involve other people. The lone feather that doesn’t expressly refer to others reads, “the goody bag I got on Halloween.” Yet, in some ways even that feather is expressing gratitude for others. You see, this Halloween Sienna was quite ill and spent the evening at urgent care instead of trick or treating. The thoughtfulness of others helped her have a bit of Halloween after all!

Sienna’s Grateful Turkey is more than a pretty Thanksgiving decoration. It’s a symbol of the quality time that she spends with her mom. It’s a symbol of how she thoughtfully considers and thanks God for blessings. It’s a sign of her openness to God’s love and how God is already transforming this little one.

We are all called to live lives of love, care, generosity, and gratitude. We are called to love what God loves: our neighbor, ourselves, and all of creation. In short, we are called to be God’s Grateful People, sharing our gratitude with a flourish.

Receiving and being

Posted on by livinggodsmission
Pexels.com – Hassan Ouajbir

by Demi Prentiss

For those of us who choose to be partners in baptismal living, we aim to live our lives following Jesus, walking the road he described as The Way. One frame for that style of living is to understand the life we live as abiding in sacrament. I’m not talking about The Sacrament: the Body and Blood of Christ.  Instead, I mean sacrament as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.”

When I examine my life through that lens, I notice that I often move between receiving sacrament and being sacrament.  In life, I’m frequently receiving those signs of grace, those signs of God at work:  a smile, a life-giving word, a gift of time, a token of encouragement, a flood of forgiveness.   What I notice less often – and usually only in after-the-fact reflection – are the times God’s grace allows me to BE sacrament: being the cup of water for a thirsty soul, laying down time or money as a life-giving sacrifice, allowing God to transform my poor offering to anoint another with healing and support. Most of those occasions are less the fruit of my own work, and more of God making the most of my offerings. And I notice that often, the catalyst for moving me from receiving to being is heartfelt gratitude. That seed produces the fruit of generosity.

Our faith communities move along that same continuum between receiving and being. We who gather with our siblings in Christ often come together to receive: washing, feeding, anointing, blessing, and fellowship.  Gratitude and the power of God enable us to become water, food, healing, and forgiveness – blossoming into God’s justice, peace, love, and resurrection in a hurting world. It takes faith to open our eyes to perceive God at work, in and through us, and our communities. Commissioned by our baptism to be co-creators with God, we can learn to recognize that we are receivers of God’s grace, and that we can be bearers of that grace to those around us. That work – observing God at work in the world and joining as God’s partner – is the essence of baptismal living.

Church is just the beginning!

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Pam Tinsley

Fr. Ed Sterling and friend.
Photo courtesy of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Tacoma, WA

“Go in peace, remember the poor, visit the sick, love and forgive one another, and praise the Lord always, Alleluia! Alleluia!” says 101-year-old retired priest Fr. Ed Sterling energetically as he sends the congregation forth at the end of worship. We have been nourished by the Word of God and Eucharistic meal; we have praised God and prayed for the needs of our world, our community, and our church; we have been forgiven; and we may even have renewed our baptismal promises. In fact, church is just beginning!

As our dear departed friend, the Rev. Fletcher Lowe, used to say to us, our time in church with fellow parishioners is like being at a basecamp. Just as a basecamp is integral to supporting and equipping hikers who are headed to the mountaintop, the church equips us for our baptismal pilgrimage in daily life. The church walls cannot be our destination. We are sent forth every Sunday, just as Jesus sent his first-century disciples. We are sent out through our church doors to be the church by serving God in our daily lives. And we serve God in our daily lives by proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ by word and action and by being Christ’s body in the world – by living in peace, remembering the poor, visiting the sick, loving and forgiving one another, and praising the Lord always.

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Letting go

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Demi Prentiss

Odds are you’ve committed to memory – if not intentionally, then by massive culture-wide exposure – Disney’s anthem “Let It Go” from the movie Frozen.  The song captures the emotional turmoil of a young queen, afraid and in hiding, as she struggles to accept her distinctive gifts and overcome her shame.

Let it go, let it go –

I’m one with the wind and sky.

Let it go, let it go –

You’ll never see me cry.

Here I stand and here I stay.

Let the storm rage on.

The song’s message of determined independence and courageous authenticity speaks to the hearts of many women and girls. The song has been claimed as an anthem by marginalized groups across the spectrum – people who identify as LGBTQ+, people with eating disorders and chemical addictions, people in prison, people with a variety of disabilities, and many others. The song’s authors say they created the lyrics to speak especially to those under constant pressure to be perfect.

In some conservative Christian circles, the song is criticized for what some perceive as a purely permissive message of “anything goes.” In this autumn season of letting go and loss, thanks to a post by Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE, I’m seeing a different side of that “Let it go” message:

Let Go

When Jesus looks at you and me, and longs to fill us with his life, what does he see? Does he see someone too full already? It could be too much stuff; we may be overwhelmed by busy-ness; maybe you are filled with anger, or an inability to forgive. Imagine Jesus looking at you and saying gently, “let it go, let it go.” Let it fall away like the autumn leaves.

TheDomesticCurator.com

What might be filling us, consuming all the free space within us – the space that would enable us to be more open, more creative, more generous, more loving? More free to be genuinely who we are created to be?  More free to let God set our agenda?

With God’s help, may we learn to let it go, whatever may be blocking our best, Christ-connected, co-creative selves. May we be liberated to see Christ at work, in ourselves and in others.

Our pets – key to creation

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Pam Tinsley

Blessing the family gerbils – Photo courtesy of Epiphany Parish, Seattle, WA

October 4 is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, and many churches celebrate by blessing pets. In the spirit of St. Francis, we offer God thanks for the animals that share our homes. Our pets teach us to love other creatures through their love for us.

We also offer our prayers for those whose vocations involve caring for our animals. With their gifts of gentleness, wisdom, and healing, veterinarians and veterinarian techs minister to our injured and ill pets. Certainly, too, they help our animals remain healthy. We offer thanksgiving, too, for dogwalkers and pet sitters who care for our pets, while we are at work or away.

Yet, today, the Feast of St. Francis points beyond the love we have for our pets and how that love helps us to learn to better love one another. Our love for God’s creatures also reminds us of the importance of caring for all of God’s creation on “this fragile earth, our island home” (BCP, p. 370). Unprecedented temperatures along with the proliferation of raging wildfires and violent hurricanes with their impact on human life and wildlife underscore how imperative it is for us to heal our relationship to creation.

When we promise at baptism to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being, we must consider all the created world, as well. As baptized Christians, we are called to be faithful stewards of our planet – to strive to heal the damage that we have done to all of God’s sacred creation.

So, on this year’s Feast of St. Francis, I invite you to consider what you might do to honor, protect, and restore the beauty and integrity of God’s creation – with God’s help?

Cycling toward Beloved Community

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Demi Prentiss

Generosity. Thankfulness. Faithfulness. Forgiveness.

Each is an expression of the heart of God. When we choose to embody these words, we re-member God. Not simply recalling who God is and how God has touched us. We also re-present God to the people and places around us. We offer a spark of the Light within us to a broken and hurting world.

At first glance, these actions seem pretty straightforward:

http://www.pexels.com – Photo by Blanca Gasparoto
  • Generosity means giving.
  • Thankfulness flows from receiving.
  • Faithfulness calls for being steadfast.
  • Forgiveness involves opening – mind, hands, and heart.

Looking deeper, as we commit to practicing each of these God-expressions we cycle through all four:

  • Generosity prompts us to go beyond giving, to receiving the relationship that giving creates, being steadfast in our engagement, and opening ourselves to what comes to life through our generosity – sometimes in the most unexpected places.
  • When we operate out of thankfulness, our gratitude in turn becomes a gift. We’re invited to persevere in an attitude of gratitude, and we’re encouraged to open ourselves to perceive how much we can be thankful for.
  • Our steadfast faithfulness reminds us that we are forgiven as we forgive, that in giving we imitate God’s relentless generosity, and that our very lives represent a hymn of thanks to God the giver of all.
  • As we take the risk of forgiveness, being open and vulnerable, we offer a gift not only to “those who trespass against us”; we liberate ourselves, allowing thankfulness and faithfulness to shape our response to God’s love and grace.

We can enter this virtuous cycle at any point.  We can bring any of these gifts – and all of them, if we choose – to any context we encounter. Our expression of these gifts ripples out from our context to touch others.  And allowing this cycle to shape our lives offers us opportunities to express God’s goodness and participate in God’s Beloved Community.

Practice the presence of God, by joining the cycling adventure!

Vocation: God’s relentless invitation

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Demi Prentiss

“We are all one in mission; we are all one in call….”

Yellow and Black Butterfly – Photo by Miriam Fischer from Pexels

Rusty Edwards’ lyrics remind us that, at bottom, all vocations are essentially the same – to be Christ’s ambassadors in, to, and for the world. For many, discerning how to enact that call in their own life can become a challenging, confusing puzzle.

As one way to engage with that puzzle, SSJE brother Geoffrey Tristram extends an invitation to every Christian to “Choose life!” by paying attention to what lies “at the very core of [our] identity”:

If you have been baptized, then you have a vocation!  So what is a vocation?  Some people think it must be something that you suddenly get.  You’re walking along quite happily one day, and God suddenly “zaps” you with a vocation!  I don’t think that’s quite right.  I believe that your vocation is that which lies at the very heart, the very core of your identity.   It is discovering who it is that you most truly are…..

You can say “no” to your vocation. You can choose a life more in keeping with your parents’ wishes, social convention, or simply greater security and wealth. God never forces us to say “yes.” But God, who knows the secrets of our hearts, will never stop calling us, inviting us, enticing us, to live the life for which we have been made.

Such relentless invitation may cause us to tremble. God invites us to lay down our fear and step into engagement. The Lord of Life is here – within us and without us, in every particle of the universe. God invites us to fully become all that we truly are. And accepting that invitation is experienced more as a loving embrace than a command performance, more as a companioned journey than a desperate solo marathon.  More like an invitation to the Eucharist: “Behold who you are.  Become what you receive.”

And the end of all our exploring. Will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.” T.S.Eliot, “Little Gidding”