Ruth

Excerpt from 4:04 to 7:09:

I invite you to consider how you in your own feeling of helplessness and vulnerability might live out of the spirit of Ruth, who was faithful in a world over which she had no control and in which she had no power. This is our invitation as those who long to live as the Beloved Community.

I'm going to conclude now with a blessing that is a blessing by Jan Richardson, intended for the Pentecostal event that we celebrated last weekend, recognizes that we are not here—we are here to breathe breath and be set on fire so that we can be co-creators with God.

Here's one thing you must understand about this blessing: it is not for you alone. It is stubborn about this. Do not even try and lay hold of it if you are by yourself thinking it can carry it on your own. To bear this blessing, you must first take yourself to a place where everyone does not look like you or think like you, a place where they do not believe precisely as you believe, where their thoughts and ideas and gestures are not exact echoes of your own. Bring your sorrow, bring your grief, bring your fear, bring your weariness, your pain, your disgust at how broken the world is, how fractured, how fragmented by its fighting, its wars, its racism, its ceaseless repetition of the history it refuses to rise above.

I will not tell you this blessing will fix all that, but in the place where you have gathered, wait, watch, listen. Lay aside your inability to be surprised, your resistance to what you do not understand. See then whether this blessing turns to flame on your tongue, sets you to speaking what you cannot fathom, or opens your ear to a language beyond your imagining, that comes as a knowing in your bones, a clarity in your heart, that tells you this is the reason we were made for: for this ache that finally opens up, for this struggle, this grace that scorches us toward one another and into the blazing day.

Covid Sunday story: For such a time as this, living with curiosity, creativity and courage - full video.