Piloting Faith: Are you in?

A Word for the Day...

I've just spent a week in Chicago speaking at a conference. In one of the more interesting conversations with a conference participant, she mentioned that she was a climate scientist researching the city. Apparently, Chicago is sinking. Given that ocean levels are rising, this doesn't bode well for the city's future.

As we talked, I found myself thinking about something that Old Testament scholar, Dr. Walter Breuggemann, once said:

"Given that the state of legitimate sadness that is kept numb and unvoiced, the prophetic task, I propose, is to encourage, permit and engage the practice of public grief over a world that is gone. This is, what I have shown, what prophets did as they anticipated the coming destruction....The alternative toward health and new life is the shared, out loud, honest work of grief. Such voiced grief is an alternative to violence. Such grief, moreover, turns loss to energy for newness....There is no shortcut. The task requires trust that does not blush and history that does not blink. It is as though, embracing our loss, we offer a requiem for a lost world, willing to let it rest in the embrace of honest words."

We are caretakers of a beautiful world irrevocably changed by our presence and yet still holds hope for our evolution. Our job now is to raise our consciousness, realizing that we are all connected - interdependent - and will write the story of our future together. Let's write a story uncompromising in its bold vision for our shared wholeness. And then let's get to work together to make it so.

You up for it?

PS - That isn't a rhetorical question. I'd like to know. I'm organizing a thing...

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

A contemporary translation of The Lord's Prayer:
Creator in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what's best— as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You're in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You're ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
(Adapted from The Message)