By Rev. Erik Swanson

I’ve been a pastor for most of my life. I love to promote really good things the church has done through time. I like to celebrate the places where she has lived out the gospel in powerful ways and made healthy contributions to the world. Sometimes, I have gone too far in holding up the good. 

Particularly since the murder of George Floyd, I have become ever more painfully aware that there is another side of the church that often gets glossed over. The Church has an underbelly. It has participated in the shadow side of our world. It has turned a blind eye, and participated, in injustice. 
 
Lately, Spirit has led me to engaging with the local indigenous people of the Muwekma-Ohlone tribe. Their chairwoman is a remarkable woman whose people have been through unimaginable suffering- much of it, at the hands of the Church through the mission system. A system of the Church that was responsible for some of the greatest atrocities that humanity can perpetuate against other human beings. Clearly this flies in the face of what Jesus taught his disciples.  

I am convinced that we cannot be those who turn away any longer. As those who seek to follow in the way of love, justice, compassion and grace, we have a lot of work to do to actually face into what has been done AND work for healing. Yes, this work can feel enormous, heavy and uncertain of where/how to start.

One way we are taking a small step towards healing is having a conversation with the tribe’s Chairwoman. Would you join us to listen and learn more? We’ll hear her story, the story of her tribe, and how their struggle is currently unfolding. Another way we are seeking to engage this work is by partnering with them in a recycling project, as well as, planning a land acknowledgment. Small acts, but don't we have to start somewhere? 

Even if you can't come, would you join me in asking the question: How can I face into injustice beyond my fragility, and wanting to defend or deflect? I am convinced this is holy work. I wonder, for you today, where might you being called to act today?  

If you would like to join me in facing this issue head on, with hearts open to what the Spirit might be leading us into, I look forward to seeing you on the zoom screen Sunday, August 14th at noon.  

By Brooke Maffia Wang

On what would have been her 72nd birthday, we had my mom’s celebration of life service. A one of a kind spectacle with all the different groups of people who seasoned her life. I planned, with detail, the service to include the simplicity she requested— adding a party favor of dental floss for each guest to take with them. She loved a good party, and dental floss about just as much, and something free even more. A dental hygienist by trade, who saw her patients more like friends. People I’ve never met feel like they know me because she would chat them up while her hands were in their mouth cleaning their teeth. 

As I sat in the front row in the long narrow church filled to standing room only, what I was not prepared for, was the palpable wave of sound and energy that washed over me as we sang the traditional and familiar words of the old hymns, It Is Well and Amazing Grace. It felt like being swept up and enfolded in a big hug as all the voices joined in on cue. My eyes filled and it was well with my soul and an amazing grace to be there with this unique group of humans. 

Music has a mystical way of resonating with us. A way of expressing what is going on in our soul that words fall short to capture. Jake Wesley Rodgers sings a song called Weddings and Funerals. It has become one of my companions in my life that has been full of spectacles lately. Less than a month after my moms service, I attended my brothers second wedding. A spectacle that also used music to express a different range of human emotion. (My mom and his first wife frequented the cancer center together for about two years previously.) 

Wesley’s song gorgeously captures the spectacle (his word) we make of both of these life events and others like them— and rightly so. It’s how we mark time. They are undoubtedly important. 

However, what resonates with me in this song (Dare I even call it a prayer?) is what we contemplatives would call being in the present moment. His suggestion that love is made/experienced/lived out in the “everyday miracles” invites me to pay attention. To be fully in each moment. To linger with a “long loving look” at what is right in front of me. It calls me to savor that moment of pure delight in the laughter of my kids down the hall, or when I take in the intoxicating smell of the redwoods on a hot day. It asks me to slow down long enough to feel my feels, embrace the gratitude that I could easily rush past, and to name it as holy.

I’m wondering, for you, today: 
* What are the spectacles that have marked time in your life lately?
* What are some everyday miracles you’ve noticed this week? What might they be inviting you into?
* How will you linger a bit longer in gratitude and presence today?

May you be fully present to all the holy moments and everyday miracles that fall between the spectacles of your life. 

​by Susan Rowland

"Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary.
There are burning bushes all around you.
Every tree is full of angels.
Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb.
Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels,
but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary
by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure."
— A Tree Full of Angels, Macrina Wiedeker


The 50 days of Easter has just finished and Ordinary Time begins. This is the juncture of the Liturgical year that stiches together the two more familiar cycles of the church. The Christmas cycle (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany) and the Easter cycle (Lent, Holy week, Easter, Pentecost). This year Ordinary Time began on June 6 and ends on November 26.

It is somewhat ironic to observe the arrival of Ordinary Time when the world is experiencing such extraordinary events with significant future impact. It can be overwhelming to discern where our energy should focus. Many I know had hoped that 2022 would bring relief from the two years plus of Covid. The dream was 2022 would just be ordinary or normal, whatever that might be.

This liturgical season is ordinary in name only, referring to how the weeks are numbered. But, it is not a time of bland rhythms or lack of inertia. It’s not a spiritual summer break, unless that is your calling. It is active, living hearts attuned to bold callings for change.

Ordinary Time offers an invitation to reflection and action. It is a living out of all we have gathered through the celebrations of the other two cycles. The color of the season is green symbolizing a maturing and ripening within our Spirit as we reflect during these next weeks.

I like to begin with a slow, repeated reading of Acts 2. Here we see the disciples begin to live what they have been taught through parables, the Sermon on the Mount, the bread of life story and so much more. They were surprised by the power that was available, they were just ordinary people now doing extraordinary things. There was no apathy with Jesus’ departure rather an incredible transfer of power to the disciples.

Here are a few other suggestions that might help bring meaning to this season for you: 
* Reading the gospels, watching the Master of the Ordinary transform lives with simple encounters.
* Evaluate your practices that may have been rich in Lent, that now feel stale.
* Engage in a daily examen of gratitude that focuses on the simple parts of your life.

As this season unfolds may you “unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure."

​Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a contemplative, soulful, and non-pathologizing approach to personal healing and spiritual transformation. A contemporary spiritual path, it deepens our connection to a sacred Source of loving energy; it tends, with care, the cacophony of emotions, impulses, and interior self-chatter that so often swirl within us; and it restores us to our true Self, that reservoir of personal power, expansiveness, and compassion that dwells within every human being. This workshop explores how IFS offers a model and process for compassion-centered spiritual direction that deepens connection with the sacred, with others, and with our own spiritual essence.


ABOUT FRANK ROGERS
Frank Rogers is a spiritual director, supervisor, IFS practitioner, retreat leader, writer, and professor of spiritual formation at the ecumenical and inter-faith Claremont School of Theology. He has taught and written in spirituality, contemplative practice, and compassionate social engagement for over 30 years, and is the author of Practicing Compassion and Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus. As the Co-Director for the Center for Engaged Compassion, he offers and teaches compassion-based approaches to spiritual direction and supervision.


EVENT DETAILS
This is an online event and the zoom link will be sent the day before. It will run from 9am to 11:30am PST and is hosted by The Contemplative Center of Silicon Valley. Spiritual directors and those in training to be spiritual directors are welcome to attend. Suggested donation is $20-40.