You Are Not Alone

Dear Ones,

As Lent approaches, we are all in a place to be examining our hearts and checking in on our spirits. How are you? Energized? Weary? Hopeful? Worried? All these things live on a spectrum too, so I’m sure some days are great and others are challenging. I want you to know you are not alone.

The liminal space that we inhabit as a congregation can be a tough zone to occupy. We have to keep our energy and our hope up, while doing deep self-examination and while walking through significant changes. It is normal if you’re experiencing a lot of ‘both/and’ when it comes to your moods, your hopes, your desire to get to “there”… to the conclusion… to the end point that is a beginning point again.

When things don’t go the way we hoped or expected, when things take a different shape than the shape our hope had built in our hearts, we have to pivot. And that pivoting does not come without some grief that must be acknowledged and processed. Change is hard. No matter what the situation, change is always hard. And though it’s happening all the time in small ways and large, it doesn’t change the fact that humans (as a species!)  are not fond of the in-between space. We want answers, we want things to be known, we want things to fit into the vision we have built.

Knowing that’s true of us and knowing that it is hard…these are the times it is our singular work to look to the Holy Spirit and invite her in. The Holy Spirit was sent to us as a gift from God to be present to us in each and every moment. She was sent to speak to us each in our own language so we can hear and see. She was sent to accompany us during the challenging in-between. We are not alone. We will never be forsaken.

It can be easy to fall into the patterns of the world: to want, to demand, to see one path as the only clear path. But the Holy Spirit invites us into a broader mindset, one that is flexible, one that sees ALL the possibilities, and one that trusts that God can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. It brings to mind that wonderful prayer by Thomas Merton which can be a boon and a guide in these challenging times:

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.

 But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Amen.

Though we do not see the road ahead of us, we know a few things for certain:

• It is our time to see bigger than what we ever saw before.
• It is our time to make room for the many possible visions that are coming toward us.
• It is our time to trust God.
• It is our time to hope in Jesus.
• It is our time to see that the Holy Spirit IS moving with and for us.
• It is our time to hold one another up as we pivot, walk through the grief of change, and come out the other side ready for God’s new life to bloom here, in and among us.

He will never leave us to face our perils alone. We are in this together.

Holy steady, CCA. We got this.



Faithfully,

Mother Erika

The Rev. Canon Erika von Haaren

Interim Rector

Christ Church of the Ascension