Monday Post for February 15

For Jesus is Our Peace: Walking in Lent Together

The season of Lent, the forty days of preparation for the celebration of Easter, is a gift of time in a world that pulls upon our attention in myriad ways. Lent begins this Wednesday, (the day the faith community calls Ash Wednesday).

 Here is a question to help shape this season: Where have I gotten away from God, and what are the disciplines that will enable me to find my way back to the One who is already turned toward me?

Lent 2021 Focus

For Jesus is Our Peace: Walking in Lent Together

During Lent the focus of our communal worship on Sundays will be:
For Jesus is Our Peace and we will explore the intimacy and expanse of the cross. We invite you to spend time meditating on, marinating in, and even possibly memorizing Ephesians 2.
We are highlighting the devotional The Way of Shalom prepared by Presbyterians Today. and will provide daily readings for you beginning Wednesday.

  For Jesus is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. Ephesians 2:14

The season of Lent, the forty days of preparation for the celebration of Easter, is a gift of TIME in a world that pulls upon our attention in myriad ways. Lent begins this Wednesday, (the day the faith community calls Ash Wednesday). Throughout history followers of Christ have discovered all kinds of way to enter further into the new reality created by Jesus’ death and resurrection such as solitude, prayer, fasting, pilgrimages, singing and many more.

However you spend these next 40 days of Lent (46 counting Sundays), we pray you will take time to walk with open eyes and at a pace of life that gives you space to be with GOD.

Here is a question to help shape this season:

Where have I turned away from God, and what are the disciplines (the letting go and taking on; the changing of focus and priorities) that will enable me to turn to the One who is already turned toward me?

Eco-act 21-02: Abundantly Overflowing

As we heard last week, Eco-Faith is growing in an exciting direction in this next year. And we want you along for the ride! Again, three focuses you can expect from us this year are: (1) occasional ideas of personal action that you can take to move toward climate healing; (2) climate-focused legislative initiatives that Union could actively support/engage in; and (3) Union Gardens, a socially distanced community garden that aims to grow produce to share with others in our wider community.

Today, we’ll be focusing on the possibility and impact of #3, Union Gardens. With the pandemic and all of the physical distancing that has come with it, our community has had to pivot to continue feeding our underserved and at-risk neighbors. We’ve rolled ~300 burritos almost every single Saturday (which get distributed as a hot, nutritious, personally wrapped meal to up to 7 different organizations per week). We’ve channeled tons of produce, canned and pantry goods, Farestart meals, and other items to LUV, Compass House Dexter, and other places. Our community has also cooked ~60 meals per week for Compass House residents and 40 meals for ICS clients weekly. And yet, with the pandemic continuing to increase income loss, poverty, hunger, and the housing crisis, — with a disproportionate impact on BIPOC folks compared to white folks — our community is even more in need of fresh produce and accessible food.

Union Gardens

Growing for our community

This spring and summer, if each of us took some time to pray, prepare, and tend to some dirt (in the backyard, on the porch, on the windowsill, in 415’s garden boxes), imagine what we might be able to create together! We could include more nutrients and greens in our meals and more sweet and abundant fruit for families and individuals in our city. We could save on some production costs while also growing local and offsetting emissions! And, when we are able to deliver fresh produce and burritos with ingredients from our gardens, our tangible care in the form of food says, “We see you and we care” AND “We’ve been thinking of you since the winter…with every weeding, watering, and harvest”.

As you prepare your own gardens now, looking toward spring and summer, would you consider planting a little extra for Union’s food ministry?

Right now, we are working on developing resources for when and what to plant, as well as how much we need. We will have more specifics soon, but we know our ministries currently use/need: red bell peppers, onions, greens of all kinds, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, carrots, and celery.

Again, we’ll have more on quantities and planting/growing tips soon (and we welcome your help and input as you’re interested)! We envision this as a type of victory garden experiment, and as a way to do something together while apart. We look forward to planting and growing with you this year — stay tuned for more!

Friday Reflection: Sound of Justice

The Sound of Justice:  Amos 5 (from last Sunday)

Seek the Lord and live…
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Amos 5:6, 21-24

What do we learn for our time and situation as we spend time with Amos 5 and 8th century BC Israel?

The music God loves to hear is the sound of justice.  It is the sound of a society where people of all sectors of life can come together and know they are welcome, encouraged, supported, championed, embraced. It is the sound of voices praying together, lifting our voices in song that brings healing and restoration where there is pain and division. It is the sound of shared stories that unite us to our Creator and the Maker of heaven and earth. This is  Worship. This is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

God loves to hear the music of justice that, with the Spirit of the Lord seeks out injustice – ensuring medical bills can be paid, food can be shared, children can have access to wifi for education, relationships can be healed, the environment can be enjoyed by anyone.  …  What would you add is the music God longs to hear?

Amos 5 and the image of an ever-flowing torrential river, traveling to the lowest crevices to bring the healing waters of life, bring to mind another river in scripture.

Revelation 22 says:  “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb  through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life … the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No curse will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 

You would think that God’s plan for humanity would be to restore us to God-self and then bring us back to the GARDEN again…

Instead, God does what is beyond our imagination and brings together all of the people of all nations into… a city. Not a city like Babel or Jerusalem or Rome or New York, or Dubai or Seattle. But a city splashed with color, spacious and populated joyfully with people of all nations, from all the earth. Together.

There is no temple in this City, we are told because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb, Jesus, the ONE sacrificed for our sake, are the temple – the gathering place.

It is a city of wholeness and healing, full of beauty and joy, and in the middle of the city —right down the center — is the ever-flowing RIVER of LIFE. It is a river in which all have access to it with the tree of life on both sides bringing healing. IT is the river of justice of Amos. It is the water of LIFE that Jesus offers.

INVITATION

We, who live on this earth, held in the in-between --in the middle— are invited to live as bearers of hope and as people who remember that God hates that which destroys creation, hears the cries of injustice and invites us to seek the Spirit daily that we might participate in the flowing work of justice NOW in our CITY. In our neighborhood.  In our world.

And, Jesus Christ, our Lord,  is at the center.

What the people of Israel missed, what Amos came to proclaim and the good news we share is that REAL WORSHIP combines our gratitude and praise to God that Jesus is Lord WITH our acts of justice and righteousness in our every day lives,  in our families, our neighborhoods, our city. In our world.  

Lets participate in  Jesus’ everflowing stream of water that brings healing – a healing for you, for us and for the nations

A prayer for you today

Dear God on High, thank you that you say there is space in your story for me. Forgive me for not trusting your Word that says I matter and for seeking my identity in false images to puff myself up in the world.  Help me to trust that your Spirit of Life flows through me to bring your healing to this world. Open my eyes to see the places where my gifts, personality, and story can be a blessing to others on this journey of life.

Thank you that in seeking you, I find whole, real life.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Eco-act 21-01: a time to plant

Today we’re excited to begin our second season of eco-faith posts. Thanks for joining us! We’ll get started by planting seeds for three projects we hope to “cultivate” this season. Then we’ll talk a bit more about planting actual seeds to produce tangible crops that we can begin to harvest in the not-too-distant future. First, the projects.

1. Individual actions: Eco-Faith’s first season focused primarily on steps each of us can take on our own to care for the planet: diligent recycling, for example, or responsible disposal of electronic devices, or intentional repair/repurposing/gifting of items we no longer use, or regrowing scallions on windowsills—or even creating worm bins (!) to enhance soil quality. Ideas like these for earth-friendly individual actions will always crop up. So, for 2021 project #1, we will from time to time identify or revisit an individual action for your consideration. For example, last year we introduced Ridwell, a disposal service that handles non-recyclable food packaging and certain other plastics; batteries; clothes/fabric, shoes—and a “rotating” category for things such as strings of Christmas lights. Ten dollars/month provides a discreet outdoor collection bin and regular pick-up. We have now joined those of you who use this service to step up their recycling game conveniently and cost-effectively.

2. Climate change community actions: Even in the darkness overshadowing this post-election period, seeds of hope are being sown with respect to our physical world: the U.S. return to the Paris Climate Accord … General Motors’ decision to move away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles … the U.S.-hosted Earth Day Climate Summit … cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline Project …. In fact, all kinds of climate-friendly actions are being undertaken nationally and at the Washington state and King County levels as well. The future harvests that these actions promise are truly encouraging, but many workers will be needed to bring them in. So, our second project for this season will be looking more closely at various legislative initiatives to try to unearth specific opportunities for some or all of the Union community to actively support. Stay tuned!

3. Union Gardens: With the arrival of February, the gardening season quietly (and damply) begins. Time to clean up the garden beds, loosen and amend the soil, and think about what to grow this year. For serious gardeners, it’s also time to think about indoor starts—and actually to sow peas and spinach outdoors. In fact, before too many more weeks pass, it will be time to transfer starts or directly seed:

• Arugula

• Cabbage

• Cauliflower

• Celery

• Collards

• Kale

• Leeks

• Lettuce

• Onions

• Peas

• Potatoes

• Radishes

• Scallions

• Spinach

Eco-faith 2021 Directions

Individual Acts, Communal Acts, Union Gardens

In a post last October, we wondered …

“…next spring, what if everyone in the Union community who gardens, or who could garden, decided to plant extra tomatoes, or lettuce, or spinach, or onions, peppers, melons, squash, potatoes, …. Could we grow enough food to make a difference for someone else?”

Which leads to this question about a third project: Can Union members plant and manage a “socially-distanced community garden?” The idea would be to plant and grow enough veggies in the back yard, on the deck, in the pea patch, or wherever, for the enjoyment of the gardeners—AND someone else … some Lake Union Village residents, for example, or Union’s burrito-rolling team, ICS sandwich makers, Compass House residents, or ….

So, these are the three project “seeds” we want to plant with respect to Eco-Faith season two: (1) occasionally sharing ideas that Union members can implement on their own to benefit our physical world; (2) climate-focused legislative initiatives that Union could actively support/engage in; and (3) Union Gardens, a socially distanced community garden that aims to grow vegetables to share with others in our wider community.

As we get rolling in the coming weeks, we’ll be on the lookout for purposeful individual actions to share. We’ll be browsing legislative programs for community action opportunities. And we’ll be digging into the possibility of gardening for others as well as ourselves.

We would love to hear what you think about these ideas!

25 Journeys Toward Justice

2020 Advent Series

Learn, reflect, pray, act, and be transformed.  

Exploring issues of injustice—and their toxic effect on our world—can be uncomfortable. But we believe that God Emmanuel, who sends us as his agents into the world, will accompany us with his boundless grace, reminding us that we "belong to God and the Spirit in us is far stronger than anything in the world." (1 John 4:4)

Star of Bethlehem by Banksy at Walled-Off Hotel in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank (AFP via Getty Images)

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations (1985), by Dr. Howard Thurman (1899 - 1981): an influential American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader.

REFLECT

Take a moment to reflect on this series. Talk with someone or write about what parts of this advent journey have left an impression on you. Looking back, what stands out to you? Did anything prompt you to explore or research in more depth? Did you feel moved to get involved in anything or take action in a certain way?

As this year’s 25 Journeys Towards Justice included personal stories from individuals, we received permission to publish the following reflections:

• While We Wait

• Dreaming in the Waiting

• Keep the Faith

• Peace & Climate Health

• Paradigm Shift

• Discovering the Other America

• Faith In Action

• Own It

• A Story of Heart Change

• Justice in the Church: Righteous Leadership & Gospel Inclusion

• Finding My Anything

Thank you so much for participating! Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. (Email truthandjustice.union@gmail.com.)

Friday Reflection: Seek

Seek

Today is 1/29/21.  The last day of 10 days of palindromes.  
Perhaps like me, you are seeking order in any possible place and moment in a time that can feel primarily chaotic and uncertain.

Amid this ongoing pandemic as we face the reality that we’ve been doing this for almost a year, I’ve been struck recently by the feeling of being stuck with myself. I look in the mirror each morning, and think, “Well, here I am again!”  I want to lift my eyes upward and experience God’s presence in each day, but I am overwhelmed by both the mundane and the monotony as well as the chaos and the confusion.  

Do you feel this way?  Wandering around the room, pausing to remember what day it is, trying to decide where to focus --what are your priorities when demands are real and pressing, but the dimension of your world is drastically reduced?  
… Do I send the email before or after I do laundry? Do I do laundry or wear the same outfit again? Set up another zoom call?  (Not another!) Help my child with math or reading or both?  Figure out what I can make with the food in the refrigerator? Review a spreadsheet? Watch the news stream again? The days seem long and also surprisingly short as we reflect back and ask, What did I do today?

It is easy to get lost. And lostness often causes us to freeze. This may sound counter-intuitive but when we are lost the invitation is to SEEK.  It begins by asking what am I seeking? (Besides the pair of shoes you misplaced six months ago). Am I seeking the comfort of the past?  Am I seeking an elusive future? Or am I seeking the presence of God Who is maker of heaven and earth; Who cannot be contained in one building or program or agenda?  Am I seeking the One who calls us Beloved;  who travels a far distance to find us?

This weekend we invite you to a practice of seeking God right where you are. The invitation is to lift your head above the mundane and the monotony, the chaos and the confusion to seek the Lord.   Our triune God seeks hard after us to communicate our worth and God-given identity and longs for us to be seekers who stop, turn and embrace our relational identity that is not a transaction.  

Learning from Amos

The invitation to seek is woven throughout scripture and we see this word is central to Amos.  Meditate on these words from Amos 5. We’ve included in the 5:4-9; 14-15 in the Message because the freshness of the language catches our attention.

God’s Message to the family of Israel:

“Seek me and live.
    Don’t fool around at those shrines of Bethel,
Don’t waste time taking trips to Gilgal,
    and don’t bother going down to Beer-sheba.
Gilgal is here today and gone tomorrow
    and Bethel is all show, no substance.”

 So seek God and live! You don’t want to end up
    with nothing to show for your life
But a pile of ashes, a house burned to the ground.
    For God will send just such a fire,
    and the firefighters will show up too late.

 Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar
and stomp righteousness into the mud.
Do you realize where you are? You’re in a cosmos
    star-flung with constellations by God,
A world God wakes up each morning
    and puts to bed each night.
God dips water from the ocean
    and gives the land a drink.
    God, God-revealed, does all this.
And he can destroy it as easily as make it.
    He can turn this vast wonder into total waste.

 Seek good and not evil—
    and live!
You talk about God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
    being your best friend.
Well, live like it, 

 Hate evil and love good,
    then work it out in the public square.

How does this invitation to seek God, resonate with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:33?

Seek first the Kingdom of God and all its’ righteousness and all these things will be added unto to you? 

 Through Amos we learn that the people of Israel lost their identity, thinking they were so special, and they forgot to seek the God who already had sought them.  Their worship became a ritual empty of their dynamic God. They forgot their connection to the larger community. To live as God’s Beloved is to trust that what God gives to us flows through us to to bless others. The God of Justice brings healing and restoration to the world and all of creation through us.  To seek the Lord and live means to discover that your living is interwoven with the lives of others. To seek the Lord and live is to name that which oppresses and diminishes and destroys others and to pursue the way of peace.

When you seek God and all that God desires to reveal, you help others flourish. Do you trust that? This is the heart of the message of scripture. When you say yes to Jesus as Lord you say yes to the world God loves and yes to being a bearer of love.

We invite you to take time to pause some time in your day and seek God’s healing presence, intimate counsel, and merciful love. God is with you, for you, and longs to work through you.

Prayer

Lord of Creation, thank you for the way you have created me – wonderfully and beautifully made. Thank you for looking upon me and calling me your beloved.

Jesus, Emmanuel, open my eyes this day to the ways I can offer the gifts, resources, personality, PRESENCE, and insight I possess to be used for good. As a blessing.

Spirit of grace and mercy, show me how I can participate in your flowing river of justice to bring healing, hope, and restoration — even here and now in a pandemic.

God of intimacy and love, help me trust that there is space in Your Story for me.

—reflection by Renée Notkin