Introducing our Intern: Torie!

We are excited to introduce you to our Intern for Fall 2021- Spring 2022 Torie Pilkington! And what better way than by letting them do it in their own words.

Hello to all the wonderful people of Echoes!

I have met some of you already and look forward to meeting more of you as time goes on, but I’d love to introduce myself in the meantime. I am Torie Pilkington, the new intern. I am agender and use they/them pronouns or my name. I’m also proudly autistic and ADHD. I live on the border between Marysville and Arlington and go to the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. I am in my third year of four working towards a Master of Divinity degree and am blessed to be completing my field experience with you all. If you’re willing, I’d love to explain more about the journey that led me to you all and some of my motivations behind choosing Echoes as a place to learn this year.

I started to look at internship possibilities around April of this year. I was unsure about what exactly I was looking for. I was starting from scratch because the church community that my husband and I were part of since we moved here in February of 2016 had ceased to be a safe place for me. I was immediately overwhelmed. How was I to find a safe place when my experience of church has been an overall negative one? There were many hard conversations with my advisor about church and the negative presence that it has been in my life. I had almost given up hope on a healthy church. I remember questioning whether the church was a redeemable institution. I thought a healthy community might be out there, but I was exhausted and honestly angry that it was so hard to find a space I was welcome in without having to hide who I was.

*A fun little aside – my legal name is Victoria Hope. My parents named all four of their children to mean something specific, praying over what that might be. My name means “conquering hope”. I always tease them and say that they essentially named me “stubborn”.*

Stubbornness characterized my continued search. I started looking at what my advisor called “parachurch organizations”. These are faith-based organizations that gather around a specific need that they wish to meet in a community. None of the organizations that I reached out to replied. I had about three weeks until school started and I was still at square one. I started looking up anything near me and digging through their website. I had almost decided to wait to take the class that requires a field experience. Then, someone posted about Victoria Loorz and wild church on our class Facebook page. I find the church has a tendency to sterilize and tame the beauty and danger of nature, so I went searching for a place that held wild church and I found you. Immediately upon looking at the website, I had a sense that this community was a sacred one. Echoes was a queer affirming church that experimented with what it meant to do church, finding God in things that others might see as mundane or less sacred. Echoes feels like a place that I will be safe in my questioning. I feel invited into experimentation and I appreciate the culture that you all have cultivated.

The timeline in which I established an internship has made it a bit interesting to figure out exactly what this might look like - for you and for me. I’ve never been what people might call “goal-oriented”. I dreaded the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. Even now, people ask me why I am in school. I try to find a professional way to say that I’m here because it felt like I needed to be. I’ve been trying to embrace the answer that sometimes, our bodies, spirits, and souls just know things. It’s how I felt when I started my MDiv journey and it is how I felt when I found Echoes. As I step into the journey that Echoes is already on with each of you, what I most desire to learn is how you hold your stories. What has drawn you to a church like Echoes? Why have you not given up on the idea of church? What are you all building together?

In the same way that I knew Echoes is where I was supposed to be, I know that Echoes has people from which I will learn. There is something sacred about a community in which each person is seen and accepted for who they are. When I say that I want to learn from you, I don’t mean to put responsibility on you. Learning happens in community. When we feel safe with other people, we can be our true selves. We can experiment and grow. It will be impossible not to learn from you as we share our lives with one another. I know that I must prove myself trustworthy. Even the description of intern can be off-putting if the structures of your past have been harmful. However, I ask that you give me a chance to do that work as I come alongside you in these next few months. I look forward to knowing each of you. To me, we find the sacred in other people. I do wish to learn about the practical running of a church – the liturgies, rhythms, and practices that facilitate a positive experience.

In order to form a community, there must be something that draws people in and makes them feel safe and able to grow. I am especially excited to enter into the advent season with you. I grew up non-denominational, so I missed out on some of the beauty that can exist in ritual. I invite each of you to find the sacred all around us with me and the others at Echoes. Blessings to each of you on your journey. I hope that I might be invited alongside for a little while, but blessings all the same.

Torie

Red Road to D.C. Bellingham Totem Pole Blessing

Photo by Charis Weathers

Red Road to D.C. Totem Pole Blessing
May 22, 2021, Bellingham, WA

The Lummi House of Tears Carvers have created another beautiful totem pole. This one emphasizes our collective need to protect sacred spaces. The pole is traveling toward DC, where it will be presented to President Biden, and later installed at the Smithsonian. Along the way the carvers and their team are hosting many (MANY!) blessings, to imbue this pole with hope, healing, a call to action, and a spirit of unity.
Echoes had the honor to participate and coordinate the Bellingham blessing. It was a wonderful interfaith gathering, in which faith leaders came together to offer solidarity of heart, mind, and action. The following are some of the words that were spoken. Can you add your commitment to action, and a blessing to this pole as it travels?

A Call to Action

To the clergy present:

For those of us who are in the lineage of those who used religion to dominate and destroy, we acknowledge the sins of the past and the ongoing sins of complicity when our religions accept and approve of oppression, greed, and self-centeredness. 

We commit to not ignore the past, but to do better, to work for justice, fairness, and to share our power and privilege with others. We commit to protecting sacred spaces and mother earth, to upholding Indigenous sovereignty, treaty rights, and listening, deeply listening, to others. 

Response: I will do this.

To the gathered:

For those of us who are in the lineage of those who have dominated and destroyed, we acknowledge the violence of the past and ongoing complicity when we look the other way and so approve of oppression, greed, and self-centeredness. 

We commit to not ignore the past, but to do better, to work for justice, fairness, and to share our power and privilege with others. We commit to protecting sacred spaces and mother earth, to upholding Indigenous sovereignty, treaty rights, and listening, deeply listening, to others. 

Response: I will do this.

Bellingham Totem Pole Blessing

Great Creator who continues to create and to give: like the copper on this totem pole was a gift in the tradition of giving in the potlatch, may we become more giving people. May we know and understand that the truly wealthy are those who give abundantly. May we not live in a position of scarcity, but instead see the abundance around us that can sustain us all if we all share. Teach us to be people who share extravagantly, with one another and with the land.

Lead us, Great Spirit…...In Our Shared Responsibility (Charis Weathers, Echoes)

Great Connector, we seek your empowering presence amongst us, so that we can go beyond words, into collective action.  We express our gratitude for this powerful totem and the winding journey it has taken so far, being sprinkled with rain from the clouds and water droplets from the rivers throughout the Pacific Northwest.  Bless your sacred winding waters that flow through this land, the life blood of the earth. Help us see each unique river as a pathway, and way finder for us all. We ask wisdom for decision makers to remove the dams that block the life force of these waterways; and allow free movement of the Chinook Salmon. We give you thanks for these beautiful fish, our neighbors that provide us and the orca whales with the food we need to survive. May we always work to ensure that all of your creatures can find their way home.

Lead us, Great Spirit…...In Our Shared Responsibility (Emma Donohew, Echoes)

Eternal Creator, we give thanks for those who have gone before us and always walked on the good path, like the praying grandmother. We acknowledge that the only thing can that be passed on to others is love, and we pray that we can pass on good traditions and love. Let us honor both our elders and our children, as those who are closest to you. Keep us on the good path to honor our ancestors, and provide future generations with healthy land and abundant resources that are shared among all. 

Lead us great spirit.....In our shared responsibility. (Erum Mohiuddin, Muslim)

Great Spirit, Protector, Creator, Illuminator, guide us to deeply listen to the wisdom of the Full Moon, Grandmother Moon, receiving and reflecting her light of truth and her medicine of trust brightly shining on reparation, on transformation, and on justice. We ask you to guide us to witness and emulate the strength and the freedom of Diving Eagle with spreading wings of the Sky father who flies high and lands to impregnate the earth, offering teachings on right use of power. May healing light illuminate this sacred Red Road journey and influence decision makers every step of the way, emboldening them with the courage to follow a clear path of planetary justice and protection, a path of honoring the ancestors and caring for future generations of all beings on this beloved planet earth as we humbly pray

Lead us, Great Spirit……in our shared responsibility. (Jillian Froebe, Interfaith)

Great Healer, we lament the racism and colonialism that continue to harm people and lands today.  May this Totem Pole bear witness to these wounds, and remind us of the worth and dignity of all things. Guide us on a healthy path to build a future where no child is held in a cage.  Many hands of many ages, touched and shaped this Totem Pole.  It grew on this land for hundreds of years, nurtured by this air and these waters; older than our grandparents.  May it carry, wherever it goes, the reminder that we are all connected to one another.  Touch and shape us into a Society of Justice, where all are respected and honored.  Lead us, Great Healer: to speak and hear the truth, to lament, to repair what’s broken, and build a future where all of us thrive.  

Lead us, Great Spirit…...In Our Shared Responsibility (Rachel Weasley, Quaker)

We have offered words from our hearts, imperfect as they are, in hopes that this great offering - this pole carved with such love - will bring healing. Healing to peoples, healing to communities, healing to nations, strong healing that can begin a journey of many generations after so many generations of trauma and suffering. As the moon rises and sets, as the tides ebb and flow, as the chinook at last returns to her home waters, as the wolf hunts and tends his pack, as the bear finds her way downslope foraging with her cubs, as the people pray, as the rivers flow and the rain falls, we pray:

Lead us Great Spirit...in our shared responsibility. (Rev. Nomon Tim Burnett, Zen Buddhist)

Learn more about the journey here: https://www.redroadtodc.org/

Photo by Charis Weathers

Blessing for Walking

A Blessing for Walking
Written by Emma Donohew for the January 2021 Labyrinth Walk

There’s not much you need for walking
Any dog will attempt to tell you so
With a subtle nudge to get you out the door

So gather what little you need
To begin walking

Perhaps this blessing is small enough to take with you
To fit in your pocket
Or next to your keys

This blessing is here to make haste
And help you wander
And along the way, help you wonder

Reminding you that the path is there to guide you
Encouraging you to keep putting one foot in front of the other
Find joy in your footing
Both solid & unsure

You may meet someone on your path
Greet each other silently, slowly
Making space for one another
Ensuring together that neither loses their way

Take pleasure in your steps
The layers below you
Building you up

There isn’t much you need for walking

So Let the ground beneath you
Cradle and embrace you
Step after Step
Amen

Waking Up in the World

Our summer thermostat seems to be given to too hot or too cool this year. It has been lovely for the ripening apples, which are hanging heavy on most branches this year. But this cool, hot weather has been unkind to our tomatoes. To think, my great-grandmother was a dry land wheat farmer in northeastern Montana. As you probably know, this means she relied on the rain and snow to irrigate her wheat fields. She and the fields were entirely at the whim of the weather year to year. A hard life to be sure.

This morning I am thankful that I am less at the whims of the weather than my ancestors. Although we have our own climate challenges to face, my daily life doesn’t involve watching the sky to determine what must happen next.

This past week, I was getting pretty deep into writing poems for my second book. I am always surprised where my curiosity leads me. In the past week, I started wondering what church hymns were “new” or “very popular” in the 1850s.

One hymn that was written in the early 1850s, went through several iterations and became very popular around the 1880s. I even recognized it when I played the song on YouTube. The hymn is “Tarry With Me (Oh My Savior).”

The first chorus begins:

Tarry with me, O my Savior!
For the day is passing by;
See! the shades of evening gather,
And the night is drawing nigh.

The hymn is asking Jesus to be with us in the evening, as the day comes to a close. This is what me might call an evening prayer or even its more formal name of “vespers” or a service of evening prayer offered by churches.

In the Lutheran Book of Worship, the evening prayer begins, “Jesus Christ is the light of the world,” and the people respond the light no darkness can overcome. It continues, “Stay with us Lord, for it is evening,” and the day is almost over. This sounds familiar!

Verse 2 of “Tarry With Me” continues:

Deeper, deeper grow the shadows,
Paler now the glowing west,
Swift the night of death advances;
Shall it be the night of rest?

True night has now descended with the sun’s going down. But also, the hymn is talking about night as a metaphor, evening as the end of our days (our life on earth). The singer is asking Jesus if tonight will be the night of their death, and if so, are they headed to heaven.

{There could be a whole other post about equating darkness with doubt and fear. About shadows and blackness being equated with sin and what is nonspiritual. I wanted to acknowledge this, and the problems of systemic racism and white supremacy in our liturgies. But for now, I acknowledge it, and recognize that it would take several more posts to address this with the sensitivity and depth it deserves.)

The hymn alternates for another three verses between hoping in the goodness of Jesus and also fearing death. This feels very true to me. I know that in the middle of any crisis, I am hoping for deliverance from it and that Loving One will be merciful. (Act quick God!) But also, what if there is no deliverance? What do I need to do to get out of this mess? Am I on my own?

I believe the Holy One and I are always present together in the present moment. But so often, I am not paying attention to it. I compared God’s presence like having the television on in the background, in another room. Something I am not really aware of as I get busy with other things. Just noise.

This is my normal way of moving through the world, and of course I will often rely on myself to figure things out. Because I mostly haven’t been paying attention.

Again and again, this is why spiritual teachers call their prayer lives, their spiritual lives a practice. Because it takes practice! How discouraging. At least I feel like that. I would like to just have faith, or always respond kindly to life’s upsets. But how I do not do that!

Athletes train for hours a day, for years to reach their full potential. As children, some of us may have dreamed about becoming pro athletes or being famous sports stars. But I suspect that many of us, when we saw how much work, how many hours went into things decided, NO THANKS! We became discouraged. We moved on to something else.

So, it shouldn’t surprise us that we don’t have perfect faith, an easy path through the trials of life, or total confidence in God. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been practicing very hard. Oh, the grace of the Merciful One is there in my life in abundance, but I have been doing other things. Easier things. Things that are less difficult.

I am NOT saying all of this to make you feel guilt or shame. I am NOT telling you that you need to spend hours and hours in prayer every day.

What I am saying, is that the hymn feels accurate to me, a movement between hope in God and doubt. Between faith and fear. This is, just as Luther said, because we are sinners and saints all rolled into one.

We are human beings. We are dependent on God’s goodness, daily. Just as my great-grandmother’s fields were dependent on the rain and snow that fell from heaven. We need God’s grace as wheat in the fields needs water to grow. To come into fullness. To be made ready for the harvest at the end of the season.

So too with our earthly lives. Which are, at the same time, our heavenly lives. For the Kingdom of God is both within us and to come.

At its simplest, the spiritual life is really just one thing. Waking up to the presence of the Joyful One in our lives and in the world. Waking up to the truth that Jesus is present in each of us, everywhere. Waking up the fact that we spend most of our days and hours asleep or on autopilot, missing out on the deep truth, that the Holy One is with us at all times.

Let us take some time this week to reflect on the areas of our lives that are asleep. Or maybe where there is some remaining darkness from the night. Or perhaps where we are just coasting by.

Where are we being asked to wake up? To be attentive? To enter into our days?

August and Everything After: Time, Mystery, and Season

August often seems like the longest and shortest month of the year to me. Growing up, I always loved the heat that would come with the final month of summer. It meant more days at the public swimming pool, more days riding my bike through the dusty streets of my small hometown, maybe even the annual trip to pick out new school supplies. What can I say? I am one of those kids who loved school. Loved learning. Loved the surprise of a new teacher and the new possibilities that seemed limitless each year. For some of you school probably felt like a prison or punishment. Let me just take a moment now to honor that. No matter how you felt. 

I never wanted August to end. The long hot days stretched and stretched themselves out like a cat in a patch of warm sun. The days went on and on. August meant the county fair. It meant one more cool dip with my family in the river. It meant that the corn and watermelon were still sweet to the taste.

But even as the days were long, seemingly endless, they passed quickly into September. Into the new school year. Into earlier sunsets and cooler nights. Into the first turning of the leaves and yellowing of the grasses.

And time continues to pass more and more quickly, the older I get. I hear it all the time, “Can you believe it is August ALREADY?!” or “I don’t know WHAT HAPPENED to July!” As if the month has somehow sneaked past us and escaped out the front door when we weren’t looking. Maybe you feel this way too.

It is easy to lose our sense of time. Or our proper sense of time. We live in a culture that is always looking ahead. The internet, our news cycle, advertising seems to speed up year after year. They almost seem to say, “Why worry about the current events of today when you can worry about things that are happening TOMORROW!”

It’s true. It might seem ridiculous, but it is true. Our modern lives are so very fast, that we rarely have time to see things in their proper perspective. Don’t believe me? Just think about Christmas! For all of the cringing you might have just done, stores place Christmas decorations out earlier and earlier each year. Last year Loews had their aisles set up in September. SEPTEMBER!

We have become so used to anticipating the future, that when it comes, we are often done thinking about it. We are over it. We may even find a sense of relief that Christmas or whatever we were celebrating is finally over. We spend so long in anticipation of a thing that when it arrives, we are sick of it. And who can blame us?

Two months of Christmas carols on the radio before Christmas makes a miser out of almost everyone (except maybe my mother who is a Christmas fanatic.) ((Don’t ask.))

So, what does all of this have to do with time? What does it have to do with our lives during the pandemic? How does this have anything to do at all with God? Am I just wasting our time?

Well, August is the time when many of us are traditionally away from our churches on vacation or with our extended families or at a friend’s wedding. It is that lazy or busy time of the year when we spend the least amount of time in a building on Sunday mornings.

September means the start of a new church year, new church programming, the start of Sunday school for kids. Or at least it used to. The pandemic has changed our lives dramatically. Most of us don’t worship face to face. Most of us aren’t going very far at all on vacation. It can be hard to tell one day from the next if all of our days are spent at home.

While we were attending church face to face, maybe we took those Sunday for granted. Maybe they felt boring. We worshiped in roughly the same way each week. We sang. We read scripture. We broke bread. Those were the outward, visible, routine actions we took together.

t underneath all of that, another kind of time was happening, a Divine time. The Holy One was in the mix, working behind the scenes. At the reading of the Word and the breaking of the Bread, the Loving One was breaking through the ordinary, revealing the extraordinary underneath.

When we worship together, it isn’t just about who is in the pews (or on the Zoom screen), it is also about the surprise of the risen Jesus. The son of God who looked and lived just like any of us, who was killed, and who rose from the dead. And who continues to break through all boundaries. Life and Death. Living and Dying. Mundane and Mystery.

As Lutherans, we claim that communion is an act of consubstantiation. This means that symbol becomes fact. This means that Jesus’ presence is present alongside the bread in wine. But how that happens is a mystery.

Just how Jesus comes alongside us in our present lives, often feels mysterious and mystifying. It doesn’t make any rational sense. It is extremely hard to explain. And yet, I know it is true. Maybe it is the same for you.

A new friend was reading an essay I had to write for my seminary application. In it, I talked about what I called “a moment of radical grace” that reshaped the entire course of my life in 2009. She said, “Can you tell me more about that? I would LOVE to know more.”

The truth is, I can’t explain it any better than I did. I just don’t have the words for what happened to me as I was wandering through Grace Cathedral in San Francisco as a tourist. Nothing special was going on. I hadn’t been to church or identified as a Christian in more than ten years.

Nothing was expected, but everything was given.

In a single, ordinary moment, something extraordinary took place, but my life didn’t look much different from the outside. It would take years and years for me to see how that moment unfolded.

Even looking back, I can’t tell you what happened. I know the moment it did, but not how to tell you about it.

But today, I know when I am present enough. When I am still enough. When I think to listen enough in the moment (right now as you are reading this even) I find those same words to be true. The Holy One, who is everything, is waiting there (here). At this moment, and the next (now) and the next (now). Ready to receive me. Ready to impart grace and blessing, if I can only hold still long enough to notice.

So, it is with us and our worship. Even if we are just going through the motions. Even if our lives are so radically changed at present. So, take a moment now. Just a single moment. I promise you there is blessing there. Here. Now. For you.

The Baking and Breaking of Bread-Love Between Us

Summer if finally, and irrevocably here. As the temperatures rise, our gardens are burgeoning. Grocery stores, co-ops, and farmers markets full of fresh produce. We are doing our best to spend more time outside.

With the heat, our previous pandemic hobbies may be slackening. Namely baking. When Washington state’s stay-at-home orders began in March, I suddenly had more time to be at home with my work. I could begin to work on projects and activities that took time. For me, this meant a return to baking. There was just one hitch, I was out of yeast and there wasn’t any available in the stores.

My friend on the Idaho’s Palouse region, has been something of an amateur artisan baker for years. Well, amateur might be too soft a word considering the complex breads he was pulling out of the oven every few days. He had even gone so far in his obsession to buy some locally milled Palouse wheat flour. He wanted keep his bread as local as possible.

Which meant he made his own sourdough starter using local flour and water and the yeasts that formed in his home. You can let the eye-rolling begin. I certainly did. But my friend heard about my yeast predicament. He took some of his own starter, dried it out over several days, and mailed it to me.

I received a card that said “Here you go!” with a baggy of some crusty grey matter in it. Not a hopeful start to sourdough baking.

But my friend coached me via text and soon my sourdough starter was bubbling away. I made sourdough waffles, sourdough pancakes, sourdough muffins, sourdough banana bread and cornbread. I even mastered baking the overnight sourdough breads in my cast iron enamel pot.

Now my starter is resting in my fridge and only comes out to be fed or on a cool summer morning to help me bake.

What, you might be asking yourself, does baking have to do with church?

As it turns out, quite a bit. In the congregation I serve as a worship leader some Sundays, a church member bakes the communion bread each week. It is an act of service and love to the entire community. Before the pandemic, we each consumed the blessed bread as a community, becoming one body in Christ.

Communion, the celebration of the eucharist, the breaking of bread among friends remains the most joyful and intimate part of my “church” experience. Jesus did not celebrate the Last Supper by himself. He was eating with his friends. And in that same spirit, communion is not meant to be practiced alone. We share the bread and the cup together.

Or we did until the pandemic. Now we find ourselves in our homes, alone or with family members. Some of us are watching church on Facebook Live, or YouTube. Some of us are going to church services or virtual coffee hours on Zoom. Or maybe just for a hike and some quite reflection time until we can “get back to church.”

Make no mistake, I want to get back to church too. I want to see all of you, be with all of you, and experience face-to-face worship. Without fear. But for now, we remain cautious. We are all doing our part not to spread the coronavirus in our communities. We worship at a distance, either digitally or from 10 feet away in our churches. In person communion, for now, seems to be off the table. And probably for quite some time.

So, we do the best we can. We live in today’s circumstance and hope for tomorrow. We try to cultivate our patience rather than our hurry or worry or the “I just don’t care anymore” attitude that comes so easily these days. What some people are calling COVID fatigue.

There is quite a theological debate happening right now about whether you can have “virtual” communion or not. This is when a minister or pastor blesses and breaks bread in “real time” at home, while you have your own bread in your home. Some say it doesn’t count. Some say it does. This is debate I will leave to theologians and denominations to have.

The point is, as we find new ways to worship and come together, we may find new ways to break bread with one another as well. New ways to connect, celebrate and care for one another as the body of Christ. And we must. Because we are the church. Right now, in our homes. Right now, in the world.

We have confused worshiping together with a particular group of people as “the church.” We thought that meeting in a special building made us “church.” But it doesn’t. Because we, in the present circumstances of our lives, are the church. Right now. Right here.

And we are still called to care for one another. To love one another. To be the hands and feet and living body of Jesus in the world. Even if we are asked to do so from 6 feet away. Or in masks. Or on our computers and from our phones.

This weekend, my husband and I met another couple for dinner at a park. The weather was glorious. We sanitized the picnic table. We sat 6 feet apart. We brought our own food. But we laughed together. We gossiped. We shared our lives. We fed a squirrel. I truly believe that God was present among us and between us. In the sharing. In the breaking of the bread. In that togetherness.

So to with you. So too with all of us. So long as we are looking for it. So long as we are reaching toward it. So long as we continue to pray for and bless and love one another.

Pentecost, Holy Fire, Meanwhile Our Cities Burn

Photo of the Orthodox Christian feast of The Holy Fire, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, Israel.

Over the past few days, friends and people I know have reached out to me expressing their frustration and anger with me around the events of the past few days. Namely the death of George Floyd, a black man, in the hands of four white police officers. Friends also shared their hope, dismay, and mixed feelings about the peaceful protests in major cities amid the coronavirus pandemic. They shared their sadness as protests turned violent, sometimes their understanding at those riots, and their horror at the police and National Guards response to them.

As our country country contends with police brutality and racism, with anger and violence, with peaceful protests and compassion, with fear and numbness…we wonder where God is in all of it. I know I do, even as a person of faith. Maybe especially as a person of faith. Just because I work for a mainline religious denomination doesn’t give me any more faith or grace than any other of God’s children.

This morning I was spending time with the Old Testament book of Isaiah and 26:5-6 says, 

"For he has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city. He lays it low, lays it low to the ground, casts it to the dust. The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy."

How apt. It is so easy for me to see my own country’s sinful history of oppression, subjugation, and colonialism in those words. The ongoing economic divide. The ongoing racism. The seemingly unending campaign against the poor and marginal.

Also, it causes me to pray, "How long oh Lord? How long?" How long will God allow us our racism, our increasingly violent military and police, our income inequality, and our lack of compassion, love, decency and tenderness to anyone who in not exactly like ourselves. How long!

Sometimes I am asked by people, why I go to church. What is the point they say? Why bother? A church service never seems to have much to do with what is going on in the world. Sometimes I wholeheartedly agree.

But Church is not about me as an individual, about my singular problems, or my personal agenda. No matter how needed or vital those things are in the world as a whole. Church is the opportunity for us to come together and worship God. To remind us and God of  God's goodness and God's love. To thank the Holy One for the blessings in our lives. To remind us that we do indeed have blessings, even as our cities burn. Even amidst a global pandemic.

Also to remind God and ourselves that there is still so much work to be done by us to bring the kin-dom of God to earth. We cannot do the work of the Loving One, which is the work of the church on earth, without the grace, power, and love of God. The Compassionate One must be at the center, or we risk all the work we do becoming our work instead of God's. Indoor church helps keep us centered.

On Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Spirit, we bring ourselves to worship God who is the source of all goodness, power, and mercy. When Jesus had risen from the dead, he told his Apostles that he would not leave them alone. He was sending his Spirit, as a friend, a counselor, a bringer of power to aid them. To let them do the work of Jesus on earth.

So it is with Pentecost. This feast reminds us that even in the middle of our cities on fire with protest, burning with racial injustice, boiling with state violence, that we are not alone. Pentecost reminds us that the Holy One has sent us a bringer of Power, an Advocate on our behalf: the Holy Spirit.

This Spirit gives us the gifts of grace to live out our kin-dom vision: peace, compassion, mercy, equality and humilty for all people in all places. As Jesus taught us to prayer, “On earth as it is in Heaven.”

Blessing for Resurrection

Blessing for Resurrection

written by Emma Donohew for Easter Sunday 2020

This is a blessing on a day when we hoped things might be different
When deadlines were set
Then Moved
When Hopes were lifted
Then submerged

This is a Blessing for all those still trying to find some hope
Some hope in a pandemic, that truly affects ALL people
So receive it
Open yourself too it
Release a tear
Grieve the way things used to be

But don’t ignore all the potential 
In the way things can be

This resurrection stuff
Happens more than we think
But first comes death and emptiness

Like the woman at the empty tomb may we look beyond fear
Into our grief to see the joy creeping in the empty spaces

Empty spaces not representing an ending but a beginning
A new way for our world to be together

May we ask this blessing to bring us something different
And let us not ignore the possibilities hiding in the changes

Because on this day
Things on this day are supposed to be different

Celebrating resurrection is practicing hope
A manifestation of a hoped for reality

Let this blessing lead you into a new reality
Let this blessing lead you to new hope
Let this blessing lead you to Celebration!

Amen.

Submit Your Creations to the Echoes quaranZINE by 4/13!

Echoes is once again creating a zine….only this time its a digital quaran-ZINE (as we all focus on sheltering in place and keeping our communities safe during these COVID-19 times!)

We gladly accept your quaran-ZINE submissions-ONLINE!

Please capture your drawings, poem, scribbles, painting, writing, collage, photos or general musings in a high quality digital format and send it our way! We'd love to get more art in the world during these chaotic times.

Send your submissions to info@echoesbellingham.org to be featured in this all digital quaranZINE BY 4/13!

Isolation Blues

Image From Unsplash by Priscilla Du Preez

BLUES /blooz/

1. melancholic folk music, originating with African Americans in the rural South at the end of the 1800s.

I got the blues, can't be satisfied today.
I got them bad, want to lay down and die. (Seal Baby Blues)

We get the idea. In the Pacific Northwest, I usually reserve my blues for the long gray winters, when me might not have a truly sunny day for over a month. The doldrums. The dumps. Doom and gloom.

We get them. Even the words we use for the blues, for melancholy, for depression use heavy, sluggish, sounds often blunt d’s and b’s. The soft hissing s’s in depression. The seemingly endless sighing oohs in moodiness and gloom.

Mystics can call this a dark night of the soul, when it appears all consolation has vanished.

Many of us may be facing our own set of blues in our new world of virus and illness. The new age of worry and isolation. I have been amazed at how new phrases suddenly become common speech, almost overnight: “shelter in place,” “social distancing,” and “flatten the curve.”

Three weeks ago, these words did not seem to exist.

And just as suddenly, in our efforts to flatten the curve, in our socially conscious for-the-common-good efforts at self-isolation, the blues can come crashing down upon us. For all of us. Single or partnered. Childless or at home with our children. Younger or older. The physically fit and those with pre-existing health conditions.

“I hate platitudes.
They suck.”

Depression and melancholy, loneliness and the longing are no respecter of persons. They come like an unwanted house guest and can turn into the worst of roommates.Distraction doesn’t always work. A dance party on social media may only be a momentary solution.

We are faced with new ways of living as COVID-19 continues to spread. It can get us down. It is normal and it is natural. Some of us may be depressed. Some of us may be experiencing anxiety. Some of us may suffer both, and often. This is natural. It’s okay.

The secret my depression and anxiety try to use once they have me down is to try and convince me that RIGHT NOW has always been like this. The past was always like I fee right now. And worse, the future will never feel better.

This is always the lie. The one I often miss. The one I need reminding against.

I hate platitudes. They suck. And most often when people say them to me, especially when I am suffering, I want to punch them in the throat before they can finish telling me, “God works in mys—-urggggh!!!”

The truth is, no matter where we are at today, we are still in the middle of a new way of doing things.

It takes time to adjust. It takes time. It will take you time.

Be gentle. Remember you are adjusting.

It is often easier for us to be gentle with others. To forgive them their shortness or flipping out because we know they are under stress. They are worried. They are doing the best they can.

But how often do we remember that WE TOO are stressed, worried, and coping?

How often do we forget to forgive ourselves for not being perfect at every moment?

I know, I am often the hardest with myself. Harder with myself even if I am snapping at others. More angry at myself for not “getting it together” than I am when I complain about who is responsible for a lack of test kits or masks at hospitals.

This week, give yourself permission to be exactly where you are at. No polish. No making things pretty for your social media feeds.

Tell yourself, it is OK to not be OK.

In your prayers, ask the Compassionate One, to allow yourself to be compassionate toward yourself.

If you are falling apart, reach out to someone via phone or text or Zoom or Skype.

Reach out to me if you need to. We can fall apart together. We can let the blues in and maybe, just maybe tomorrow, we can show them the door out.