Of course, it is stories -- not statistics -- that change us and expand our hearts. On Sunday, I shared about an experience that changed my heart resulting from an assignment in seminary. In an ethics class focused on the way the arts shape our theology and moral lens, our final was to create a piece of art that challenged us to compassionately portray a person or group of people we perceive as "the other."
Mother’s Day
Happy May Day!
Today is International Labor Day, and in the US, it commemorates the victory of an 8-hour work day following the Haymarket Affair in 1886. This year, people are taking to the streets not only to commemorate workers' rights but also to lift up the importance of education, healthcare, and immigration.
It's also a day that some - especially in Europe - dance around maypoles with different colored ribbons weaving together a beautiful pattern adorned with baskets of flowers, embracing the start of Spring, earth's flowering season.
No matter your understanding of May Day, perhaps it can be a time to practice spring—a time to notice what is flowering, what is bubbling up, and what needs to come together. Perhaps a practice of prating spring can be setting aside time to talk to our neighbors about what's most important, what you value, and what kind of world you want to spring forth around you.
As we welcome the springtime air and wrestle with the wrongs of our time, let us embrace the Eastertide gift of unexpectedly meeting Jesus on the road of our life's journey. Let us open our hearts to the prophetic imagination that can help us fashion a new kind of world more expansive, colorful, and vibrant than we have yet known.
Throughout this series, Pastor Adrienne is putting together an opportunity for you to talk with your neighbor by equipping you with some deep ways to engage in the imaginative ways of Jesus -- reversing our expectations of the way things have always been.
Join the group to get questions emailed to you every week and to share your experience of talking with your neighbors. Or, just go to the "Talk With Your Neighbor" tab on the website to download the reading and questions for the week.
Let us be transformed in the new ways we can practice spring by engaging with community in deep conversation.
Meditation During Eastertide
Every Thursday we have a ritual of receiving the eBlast. Perhaps, you open it in the morning and peruse it over coffee. Or perhaps, you take a peek later in the day for inspiration and to be reminded of upcoming events. I request that within your ritual eBlast engagement you slow down a wee bit more to meditate on the following Eastertide statements. If you are willing, I challenge you to set a timer for 59 seconds of meditation for each statement.
Statement 1
On Sunday, Pastor Lauren shared, “In the middle of our grief, we need to be reminded of what we know.”[1] Grief ebbs and flows. Hope lives through our cyclical or unexpected or resistant grief. In whatever state of grief you currently occupy, what do you still hope for? Invite God to that space.
Statement 2
Pastor Lauren opened her sermon with the poignant reminder that “You are beautiful. You are the people that God chose to live in, that Jesus is resurrected through.”[2] Hm, Jesus resurrecting through me, you, us. How do you feel Jesus resurrecting through you? Invite God to that space.
Statement 3
Pastor Lauren stated that “Jesus inspires us to love even in the gloomiest circumstances."[3] But what she didn’t say is that love compromises our existence or requires us to ignore or forego our and others’ very real needs. Love tends to all of our very real needs. Where do you need love to show up for you? For a loved one? For a stranger? Invite God to that space.
Statement 4
For our last meditation, we turn to Pastor Lauren’s urging to “Look in the direction of hope." We are the beauty that Jesus resurrects through. What an awe-some connection to wonder and beauty. Even if for a moment, we can venture to the mountaintop of hope to imagine life’s beauty that could be if only we “believe.” I invite you with God to venture to your hopeful mountaintop; pause to witness the beauty you can imagine; and pray “For What You Find on the Mountaintop” by Cole Arthur Riley.
God above,
We thank you for allowing us to journey up. That we would be able to see a place not just from within it but from a distance is a gift we do not readily comprehend. Here, as we look out at what seems as if it can fit in the palm of our hand, remind us of beauty’s vastness. In this moment may we be both large and small…Grow in us wonder that is willing to bow to the beauty of the natural world, [which includes our healthy imagination], that it would be a path to humility and not ego. That we would understand it does not exist for us, but it is our divine fortune that we would be moved by it. And we are moved, God. May this view form us and keep us, as we allow our souls to remain stirred when we return to the ground we’ve known. May it be so.[4]
[1] “Everything [in] Between: Sunday Morning Worship,” livestream, Grief & Hope (St. Louis, Mo: Metropolitan Community Church Greater St. Louis, April 20, 2025), http://www.mccgsl.org/live.
[2] “Everything [in] Between: Sunday Morning Worship.”
[3] “Everything [in] Between: Sunday Morning Worship.”
[4] Cole Arthur Riley, “For What You Find on the Mountaintop,” in Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human (New York: Convergent Books, 2024), 35.