Our centering song this week is called "Hosea." The words are:
Come back to me with all your heart. Don't let fear keep us apart. Trees do bend, 'though straight and tall; so must we to others' call. Long have I waited for your coming home to me and living deeply our new life.
The wilderness will lead you to your heart where I will speak. Integrity and justice, With tenderness, you shall know. Long have I waited for your coming home to me and living deeply our new life.
You shall sleep secure with peace; faithfulness will be your joy. Long have I waited for your coming home to me and living deeply our new life.
The words all hit home for me this week. The way in which fear keeps us from God and each other. The need to know integrity and justice with tenderness. The joy to be found in faithfully following our God, to be found in "pressing on to know God" (Hosea 3:6).
I'm finding myself weighed down with fear as I read or watch or listen to the news. Afraid of what the world will look like in 6 months or a year or 4 years. Afraid for my siblings and friends who are trans or immigrants or elderly or chronically ill or disabled.
I am trying to hold my fear and grief gently. To not let it separate me from God who is love.
This week, I also came across an old article written by the Rev. Nadia Bolz Weber in Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert. The article prompt is: to write a letter to ourselves from pure, unconditional love. The invitation for Rev. Nadia was "to light a candle and write: Love, what would you have me know? and then document what comes after that even if it’s uncomfortable. Just submit to it, oh, and she said don’t be fussy about the writing."
As Rev. Nadia continues: "This is all pretty vulnerable stuff....What helped a little was when I realized that Pure Love is, for me, just another way to speak of Christ."
So I'm going to invite you to join me in writing a letter to yourself from pure, unconditional love. To light a candle and write "Love, what would you have me know?" and go from there. Let's see what love has to say to each of us in this moment! After all, long has love waited for us to come home and live deeply our new life of love.
