On The Way: Broad Ripple Neighborhood Walk

This week we’ll take a walk through the neighborhood, paying attention to the coexistence of beauty and the not-so-beautiful. What might God be speaking to us about holding tension, about non-dualistic thinking? We’ll start off with shared liturgy, we’ll explore and walk, coming back together to marvel in our findings, whether we’ve collected things on our journey, have a spoken word to share, a prayer to offer, or simply give thanks to God for complete presence with us.  Today, how does paying attention repattern our weeks, our ability to be attuned to where God is moving us? What does it look like for us to intentionally walk our own neighborhoods, engage in relationships, paying attention to the coexistence of beauty and the not-so-beautiful?

Taking a walk through the neighborhood, paying attention to the coexistence of beauty and the not-so-beautiful, let’s consider the following: 

  • The psalmist said “Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—let him rescue the one in whom he delights!” (Psalm 22.8). What weighs on your heart today? Commit these things to the Lord.

  • What might God be speaking to us about holding tension, about non-dualistic thinking? 

  • Today, how does paying attention re-pattern our weeks, our ability to be attuned to where God is moving us? 

  • What does it look like for us to intentionally walk our own neighborhoods, engage in relationships, paying attention to the coexistence of beauty and the not-so-beautiful?

 

Kids/Family Peace Walk Idea:

While our church family participates in a prayer walk, our kids will be invited to interact in a more expressive way. Before the walk, families will be given sidewalk chalk. As we pause for reflection on our walk, kids will have the opportunity to create something to share with the neighborhood. These will not be elaborate illustrations, but simple offerings to our neighbors. For example, short phrases like, "You belong," "You are loved," "Take a deep breath," "We're glad you're our neighbor," or drawings of hearts, flowers, and smileys would all be blessings to our neighbors.

On the Way: Feeling

“Emotions are important messengers but terrible masters,” is a phrase we’ve used often, particularly when we engage in conversations that might be challenging for us because our emotions might be running high. In reality, this phrase can be applied to all centers of intelligence. It’s terrible to be mastered by our thoughts and bodies as well. While we shouldn’t allow our emotions to overtake us, it is necessary for us to lean into them, to try and understand what they’re telling us, especially if we are feelings repressed, because it leads us to wholeness.

Proverbs 3:5 gives us a short reminder to not solely rely on our own preferred intelligence center (and maybe even a challenge to lean into the heart center).

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

    and do not rely on your own insight.

The places we naturally operate from aren’t bad, they aren’t wrong. We need Head and Body center folks. But no single center is going to lead us to shalom on its own. Feelings get a bad wrap a lot of the time, but they are just as important as thought and body experiences. Culturally, this might be the most difficult center to appreciate, so we may have to work harder to integrate.

This week, we hear from Autumn Schulze who engages the feeling center as a way to navigate memory and trauma - deeply connected to our spiritual formation -  as life takes us down the path of emotional awareness in the world.

On the Way: Thinking - Real Talks

While information bombards us every waking moment, we navigate the world by processing our lived experience primarily through either the gut, heart, or head center of intelligence. Even if our thinking (or head) center is not the primary center we employ, we all think about life and use this center of intelligence to function in the world. 

Yet, not all thinking is productive. Sometimes we get stuck in patterns of thinking that keep us from feeling or acting. Integrating all three centers brings wholeness, transformation, and freedom as we find ourselves in Christ. 

As we consider engaging our thinking center, let us receive this exhortation from Philippians 4.8:

…..beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

This week, Anna Billingsley shares her experience of engaging the thinking center as she regularly meets with a community group called Real Talks, participating in complex and difficult conversations.

Open Letter Re: Sale of Trinity's Building

July 9, 2020
Dear friends and neighbors,

We write to you to share some very exciting news. After significant time spent in discernment and prayer, we decided to sell our building, and have partnered with an incredible organization that will allow the space to flourish and support the neighborhood into the future.

Our Trinity family has been through some significant changes over the last several years, and over the last few months, it has become more clear that God is moving among us in new ways. So, rather than continue doing things the way we always had, we listened and observed and let God’s Spirit lead us. This wasn’t always easy. This building has been our home for many years. While it’s not the only physical space Trinity Church has occupied, it is the only one that the majority of our church family has known. Letting go of our ownership of this place comes with grief, but it has become clear that we are being led to embrace the knowledge that the Church is not a building. And while the pandemic has brought us all additional challenges, it also further confirmed what we already knew. The Church is the people that gather, the community that serves, the family that shares the love of Christ. Trinity will continue as such a church, and embrace the path ahead of us while continuing to be open to the new ways we can love our community.

Once the decision to sell the building was made, we had another decision to make, who should we sell the building to? Our hope for the space was to find a buyer that would be able to invest in the property and create something that mirrored the vision we have as members of the Broad Ripple community. This neighborhood is special, and we want to continue to serve it, even though we won’t have ownership of space. Working with a broker that has lived and worked his entire life in this neighborhood, we have sold the property to COhatch, an organization that we believe is exactly what is meant for 6151 Central Avenue. We are also excited that Trinity Church will continue to meet in the building, without ownership.

In the midst of these transitions for our church family, we invite you to join us in our excitement and prayers as we move toward what God is shaping us to be. In the winter of 2018/2019, we published our new mission statement: Trinity is fostering a haven of belonging where wanderers and wonderers gather to discover and embody the love of Jesus in the world. We are truly wandering and wondering together through these changes, but we do so without fear, knowing that Christ is a part of this journey. The changes coming for us only expand our opportunities to experience God and create a space where everyone is known, cared for, loved, and belongs.

The Trinity Leadership Team

On the Way: Doing - Nou Hope

Show me your ways, Lord,

    teach me your paths.

Guide me in your truth and teach me,

    for you are God my Savior,

    and my hope is in you all day long.

These are the words of Psalm 25.4-5 and the words that give shape to the culture of Nou Hope, which partners with rural communities in Haiti where the paths of loving, learning, and working together bring each person to embrace the hope of Christ. 

While this passage can easily be intellectualized in thought and bring about a sense of hope, it also clearly calls for action - being guided, along the path of truth, in order to learn holistically from our experience of God. This seems particularly important as we navigate our world today, including injustice like racial violence committed at Lake Monroe last weekend against Vauhxx Booker. We walk and take action on the path of truth.

There are times in which we - especially those of us who are “doing repressed” - are stretched and guided to take paths of action that God leads us in. We are encouraged to pay special attention to the center we most repress or resist as it is often where the Spirit will do the most transforming work. The integration of our centers of intelligence - gut/doing, mind/thinking, heart/feeling - bring about transformation and freedom in Christ. Together, we embrace hope.

Today, we hear from John Millis who has engaged the intuitive/doing/gut center to process what is thought and felt through shared experience, not only serving on the Nou Hope board of directors, but in spending time with people in Haiti. 

On the Way: Feeling - A Writer's Story

Feeling….Thinking….Intuiting. 

Thinking….Intuiting….Feeling. 

Intuiting….Feeling….Thinking. 

We’ve all utilized these center of intelligence patterns to process our experiences, making sense of our world. We naturally default to one of these patterns because it has proven to “work” for us. The center we use the least is likely our “repressed center”. Within our repressed center our sin/passion (in Enneagram language) takes its strongest hold on our ego. The aim is to recognize how our passion takes over as a driving force within each center so the other two centers can bring balance, freeing us from our ego.

We all need to be freed from our ego - freed from that which keeps us from experiencing true belonging and freedom in Christ. Until we allow every part of ourselves to belong, there will be no true belonging, there will be no freedom. This is important as we remind ourselves of our mission:

Trinity is fostering a haven of belonging where wanderers and wonderers gather to discover and embody the love of Jesus in the world. 

This week, we wonder together. We hold space for a Shared Story and open ourselves to going inward and loving ourselves through our feeling center, allowing us to be present to our whole selves (and return to our humanity). Bringing our feeling center back into belonging (especially for those of us who are feeling repressed!), allows us to experience transformation and ultimately rejoice in the Lord. 

The Lord is my strength and my shield;

    my heart trusts in him, and he helps me.

My heart leaps for joy,

    and with my song I praise him.

(Psalm 28.7)

Sunday, MaryBeth Eiler shares part of her story with us. You can read some of her writing, Results that Changed My Life, on faithstorytellers.com.

As we reflect on the Shared Story, let’s consider a few things this week:

  • Reflect on your experiences through your feeling center. 

  • In what ways does the good news need to take hold in our lives though our feeling center? 

  • Where is the Spirit moving in our lives and calling us to embodied participation in God’s redeeming activity in the world? 

  • What do you need right now to feel empowered to obediently follow God’s prompting and join in the kingdom’s unfolding?

On the Way: Thinking - Justice in Education

When I was coaching teachers with a non-profit organization in the city during my first two years here in Indianapolis, I was a part of a team that was very into “knowing itself.” We took all sorts of assessments (never with the consultation of a professional), and spent countless hours in team meetings analyzing the data about ourselves - trying to find out how our team could work more efficiently and effectively. One such exercise was to take the Strengthsfinder assessment. We looked at our results as a team, having never seen our individual data prior to the meeting. In this meeting, I learned that four of my top five personality themes fall in the “Relationship Building” category. During that meeting, this was laughed off as not surprising. I had a reputation for being the caring person on the team. For not hiding my big feelings - I cried a lot. My performance data with my teachers leaned positive because of my teachers’ indicating that they knew I cared about them and their kids on their surveys. 

There are simply some folks that are easy to read when it comes to their centers of intelligence, or the places that they primarily operate from. My preferred center of intelligence is the heart center. While this particular language is most commonly found in Enneagram literature, it shows up across a variety of disciplines. I have had several descriptors applied to me: feeler, empath, highly sensitive, etc. All of these point to the same thing. I use my feelings as my guide in life. I make decisions based on my feelings, I build relationships based on my feelings. I am often, if not always, conscious of the feelings of others (a lot of times even more than my own).

But this is only one center of intelligence. There are also the head and gut/body center. Sometimes, these folks are just as easy to spot. Thinkers, whose preferred center of intelligence is their head, spend a lot of time there. Logic and analytics can be really important to them and provide much more meaning than emotions. Body centered people use instinct to guide them. They may simply know the right thing to do. They feel it in their gut. 

This doesn’t mean everyone is imbalanced, but that most people prefer one of these centers of intelligence over the others. It also doesn't mean that we don’t use or engage the other centers at all, but that it often takes intentional work to do so. While we have a dominant center of intelligence, we also have a repressed center. Knowing this information doesn’t mean that we get a pass on engaging our repressed centers. In fact, working within and from our repressed centers is an opportunity for us to work toward shalom, or wholeness, within ourselves. Just as we are always working toward the wholeness of the kin-dom of God, here and now, we are invited to work toward wholeness in our own selves. By integrating our repressed centers, we are able to see the fullness of Christ within us. The ways that our gifts and Goodness can meet the world. When we meet the world as whole people, knowing ourselves in the fullness of how we were created by God, then we are best suited to follow the Spirit and embody Christ.

As a heart centered person, my repressed center of intelligence is my head center. I am not a thinker. It doesn't mean that I don’t think. It means I, and other feelings folk, have to be intentional about our thinking. We have to make sure we are making room for our thoughts to join the conversation when we are making decisions and processing things. It means that for me to experience the fullness of God, I need to let my thinking join my feelings. I need to trust my thoughts as a guide just as valuable as my feelings that are so easily harnessed.

(By: Britney Yount)

Questions for Shared Story:

1. What does a week in your life (under regular circumstances) look like? 

2. Do you see your work/what you give time to connecting to the larger story God is rewriting in the world, moving toward shalom/justice in a broad or specific sense? How so?

3. Thinking isn't your specific repressed center, but it's also not your primary intelligence center. As a person that primarily uses your body/gut center of intelligence, how do you utilize thinking to address your work?

On The Way: Trinity Sunday and Reaffirmation of Baptisms

What do you say on days like these? When black people continue to be murdered and oppressed. When voices from the margins continue to be silenced by efforts to maintain power and wield violence to do so. What do you say after restless nights when the words chanted days before - no justice, no peace - ring through your heart and mind? That still, small voice of God continues to work in your soul, urging you to respond. 

Sometimes I have no words and the Spirit intercedes through wordless groans. Tuesday was that day...and then some. Struggling to find the balance between contemplation and action, joining the company of those who are grieving, and talking with a friend, I shared with them that I felt like screaming (not into a pillow, but outside!). They encouraged me to do so. Oof. You know, I’d rather ignore said advice. I mean, how silly?! 

A few minutes later, I found myself outside taking a mental break. While picking up dog poop (yes, I am human and therapeutically clean up crap), I felt the nudge to let...it...out. I could not bring myself to do it! (Insert profanity and an eye roll here.)

Silence. 

I couldn’t even scream! With every ounce of my being I wanted to. The Spirit groaning within me had reached a new level. My own reserved nature held me back. At that moment I could not help but laugh at myself. But truthfully, all alone, I was privileged to not allow the Spirit to burst out of me like a mighty wind. 

Gasp.

Then, while watering the garden my nine-year-old son showed up. “You want to scream with me, buddy?” I asked. Looking at me quite strangely with the response, “what?!”, I repeated myself. Honestly, and with conviction, his next response to the invitation was, “if you go first.” Together we paused and belted out the loudest scream I’ve allowed in my adult years (outside of natural childbirths). 

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Screaming was quite cathartic. We then carried on with our business. Three young neighbor children came outside and poking their heads from behind the trees, they asked, “who was screaming?” My response, “oh, just us.” 

About ten minutes later the four-year-old neighbor walks from his house to the neighbor’s and upon seeing me….he screams, “Ahhhhh!”

Instantly, I felt solidarity. Community. What I imagine might be a tiny fraction of what my black brothers and sisters feel when allies join in standing up to the systems of power that continue to oppress. All is not lost. 

The good news is that we belong to God and one another, intricately woven into the complexities of life in Christ, together. Innately, even my four-year-old neighbor knows deep in his being what many of us have forgotten...or ignored.

…..

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, which marks the beginning of what is considered ordinary time in the Church year. But, this day is far from ordinary. Today, we celebrate the Holy Trinity and are reminded that we are made in the image of God who is in community - Holy, Three in One.

We are bound with God and one another in extraordinary ways. We do NOT exist in Christ all by ourselves, in isolation. This is the good news! And the good news is always good for those who are poor, oppressed, and marginalized.

This first Sunday after Pentecost, we take time to proclaim this good news through the reaffirmation of our baptisms*. This is significant. Baptism is considered a sacrament - an outward sign of an inward and invisible grace. 

A word about sacraments and water. Sacrament is a term used to render the Greek word mysterion, which describes something that touched the center of one’s life and raised one into an experience of the divine. In Latin, sacramentum is a military matter - an act of allegiance and sign of willingness to be humble before judgement. It also refers to being outfitted in garments appropriate for the new society of the sovereign realm. As described in Galatians 3.28, the realm of Christ reinforces equal worth of all persons and abolishes destructive forces of slavery, ethnic discrimination, and gender devaulation. Water was significant in the Old Testament and connected to life, deliverance from chaos, destruction of sin, cleansing and ritual activity. In the New Testament, Jesus declares in his baptism identification with humanity and participation in our sin and guilt, through kinship.

Baptism continues to be a matter of covenant-making. Whether sprinkled or immersed, infant or believer, baptism is a recognition of divine initiative (totally shaped by God) and our response. It is a hearing of the word of God which speaks in the depths of our being, attuned to the Spirit moving among us, revealed in Creation (the “first Bible”), and recounted in the stories of Scripture and the ongoing story God is re-narrating in the world. It is repenting - turning from our old ways - and believing the truth that is revealed in community, just as it is in the Trinity. 

Reaffirmation of our baptism - a seemingly individual only matter - is significant in a world that aims to pit us against one another, to devalue who we are as human beings made in the image of God. In our baptism we affirm belonging to God and one another, intricately woven into the complexities of life in Christ, together. Beautiful. Messy. Kinship. Bound in Oppression. Freed in the Spirit. United as we walk in newness of life.

Romans 6.3-5 says, 

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Baptism is used as a metaphor for being incorporated into the body of Christ, born together - the kindred of God. In baptism, we are summed to live a new kind of life by virtue of participation in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (which is symbolized in baptism). 

Over the next several weeks we journey together, paying attention to the good news - the mystery of God - which touches the center of our lives and brings us into an experience of the divine. We participate with God re-narrating the world, living the Kingdom into existence through faithful presence in everyday spaces, with simplicity, authenticity, and creativity. We allow our own resistances to the Spirit at work to surface and be confronted. 

We don’t need to be experts in the Enneagram, but we will be taking a look at how we engage our “repressed centers” for spiritual transformation. Those centers are: thinking, feeling, doing. We’ll hear from people through shared stories of how they engage one of the centers, and be challenged to respond through contemplative activism as we experience God in the ordinary and the extraordinary of our days. We’ll also experiment with Gathering outside and in-person in very unconventional ways as we remain attentive to the Spirit at work among us, calling us to embody the love of Jesus in the world. 

May what is repressed in us, be enlivened by the Spirit as we are bound with God and one another, in a work that is never done. Trinity family, may we allow the Spirit to well up inside us, overflowing and standing in true solidarity, united with those whose voices are squashed by oppressive silence. 

Yes, the Spirit intercedes with groans...and sometimes moves us to scream. We are a people listening and learning to follow Jesus...on the way...recognizing that we belong to God and one another, intricately woven into the complexities of life in Christ, together. What good news! 

…………...

*If you were baptized as an infant, we affirm your baptism. If you were baptized as an adult, we affirm your baptism. God is and has been at work in your life. You belong to God and to the community of faith (in all its beauty and messiness). If you have never been baptized and would like to be baptized, please let us know. For children, we often encourage commitment to raising children in the ways of Jesus and incorporation into the community of faith through Family Covenants, but will also baptize infants, if that is your preference.  

(by Melissa Millis)

Communitas: The Spirit of Community

We are clearly meeting in a bit different way, leading up to Pentecost - the time in the Church year when we celebrate the imparting of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Jesus. As we gather to discover and embody the love of Jesus, we seek to grow in attunement (a fancy word pointing to prayer) with the Spirit, who brings about community through joining God in mission. Conversationally, we’ll consider key aspects of communitas as the foundation of the smallest units, the base of our church family. 

Communitas: “Latin noun for the spirit of community, typically those groups that form beyond regular institutions and organizations and create a profound sense of equality and togetherness. ...a movement of some sort of spirit in which people discover that solidarity is possible. Some sociologists have noted that communitas has spiritual or sacred dimensions through which people overcome division and achieve a new sense of identity and purpose.”  (Diana Butler Bass, Grounded)

*If you’re wondering, “why the picture of the wild geese?” Well, the wild goose in Celtic spirituality represents the Holy Spirit.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: TRINITY'S GUIDE TO PENTECOST

Week by Week: 

April 19: Communal Joy/Holy Spirit as Joy - 1 Peter 1:3-9  

April 26: Communal Conversation/Holy Spirit as Companion -  Luke 24:13-35

May 3 : Communal Discernment/Holy Spirit as Guide - Acts 2:42-47 

May 10: Communal Intercession/Holy Spirit as Healer -  John 14:1-14

May 17: Communal Healing/Holy Spirit as Inner Healer - Acts 17:22-31  

[May 24th: Memorial Day weekend Brunch] 

May 31 (Pentecost): Communal Truth/Holy Spirit as Truth Whisperer - 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Discussion Prompts:

-When do you most sense God’s presence? Have you considered that as prayer? Lean in and embrace the unique ways that you experience being in attunement with the Holy Spirit.

-What type of prayer might you need to grow in? Experiment. Confide in someone else who might join you. 

-With whom do you experience a profound sense of equality and togetherness? Notice how the Spirit of community overcomes division and what new sense of identity and purpose is being formed.

-Spend some time with a couple of people, engaging in discernment together. Where do you notice the Spirit at work? How might you join in? Notice how this small gathering of people is the church as you come together around the lordship of Christ and participate in God’s activity in the world. 

-What truth is the Spirit revealing to you? How might that truth bring healing? Create a breath prayer to continue the conversation with God in the day to day.

-Read the passage for this week again. What sticks out to you that you’ve not noticed before? Talk about it with others.

Resources:

Books:

Grounded by Diana Butler Bass

In the Company of the Poor by Gutierrez and Farmer

Incarnate by Michael Frost

Base Communities by Margaret Hebblethwaite

Divergent Church by Shapiro/Faris

A Guidebook to Prayer by Morse

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere

Music:

Brother, album by The Brilliance

Communitas: The Spirit of Community - Communal Truth

This week we are celebrating Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit was received on Earth. I didn’t celebrate Pentecost until these last few years. I had never even heard of Pentecost, honestly, until I came to Trinity almost six years ago. Learning about it has been interesting and strangely freeing in these last few years. While the foundation of my faith education included the Trinity, and so a recognition of the Holy Spirit, beyond naming the entity, I received no other instruction on it. I didn’t know the Scriptures associated with it. I had this idea that the Holy Spirit was this kind of aloof element of God that blew this way and that, providing nudges one way or the other in service to God’s will. The idea that the Holy Spirit was a gift and resided in me wasn’t ever communicated. Pentecost, now, feels kind of like coming home to myself. I am reminded that the Holy Spirit dwells in me, a gift I never deserved or could have hoped for, and she is the very force behind my being.

So, for this week, I originally thought, finally, during this global nightmare, I can focus on celebration! I won’t post something sad, but something joyful! Our text is 1 Corinthians 12:3-13, a familiar passage about our gifts, of being one body with many parts, and the explanation that we are all going to do unique and beautiful things, and while they will look so different, they come from the same source, the Holy Spirit. Good news in the midst of bleakness.

But then.

Then I read that we reached more than 100,000 deaths from COVID-19. Then a white woman lied to harm a black man, again. Then George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. 

It felt wrong to put that aside to celebrate, so very wrong. It’s more appropriate to lament, I think. And so that is what I hope we will do. 

The Good news of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is that it isn’t lost in lament. In fact, it seems this compulsion to lament, to cry out in pain and sorrow, instead of celebrating is nothing other than the Holy Spirit moving in us. We grieve the loss of life, the loss of people that were once moved by the same force that moves us to mourn now. 

1 Corinthians 12:3b says, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ but the Holy Spirit.” The truth cannot be proclaimed without her and it is only the truth she will tell.

I am angry and sad and sick. I think I feel this way because the truth-teller in me knows this is all wrong. That the truth is God’s presence in this world in George Floyd and a hundred thousand other people has been extinguished and the only way to feel about that is awful.

And feeling it is essential.

The Spirit may whisper or she may scream inside of us, but she can still be ignored. And it would be so much easier, honestly. If we don’t listen, then we don’t have to do anything. We can continue our lives unbothered. I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but as a white woman, it’s certainly the case for me, and let’s be honest, beloved Trinity family, it’s the case for most of us. But to do so would be to still the force of God that makes us who we are. Without her, any gifts we have to offer, to bring about the kin-dom of God, to be present as Christ, they’re lost.

In moments like this, when everything feels like it’s on fire and our chests are tight and our cheeks are tear-stained and we are afraid of so many things, like a virus and our own racism, we have the choice to listen to the Spirit or not. I hope we are listening. We can do that. We can do that for our brothers and sisters suffering because of these losses.

It may take practice. We may feel out of touch with the Spirit that whispers to us, but we can find her again. Take the moments to listen. What is sparking in us. Where and when are we moved? What do we want? What scratches at our thoughts? 

She is there, urging us toward the kin-dom. We can trust her. She may lead us to hard spaces. To spaces of lament instead of celebration. But that is Good. Those are the spaces we can love, ourselves and one another. The spaces that we can be Christ, to be the church, here and now.

(By: Britney Yount)

Communitas: The Spirit of Community - Communal Healing

The concept of healing has often felt nebulous to me. What does it mean to experience healing? What does healing look like? Over the course of my life, I’ve found that when people speak of healing, they mean returning things to what they once were or what we deem “normal”. As you might imagine, I’ve found this problematic. 

I’ve also wondered, “how are we healed?” Several months back, I was on a quest to dig deeper and so every time I came across the word, my attention was seized. One day I came across the passage on the healing of a boy with a spirit in Mark chapter 9 and Jesus’ words, “This kind can come out only through prayer” struck me. When we pray, we are attuned to the Spirit in ways that transcend our present understanding of reality. And in these moments, healing occurs. Our spirits, our lives, align with the Divine.   

We all want to experience healing, where God meets us in our deepest pains and darkest hours. Our most basic human desire to see or find God might even compel us to fabricate experiences of God by doing or running “God’s errands” as we grope around in the “dark” to find God.

This is a matter of control. And in our controlling efforts, we box-in God - sometimes within the physical walls of the Church - only separated by our own negative choices and distracted by our own ignorance. 

We’ve forgotten where God resides; we’ve lost the way of mysticism or contemplation. G.K. Chesterton said, 

“Your religion is not the church you belong to, but the cosmos you live inside of.” 

In The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr puts it this way: 

“I have never been separated from God, nor can I be, except in my mind.” 

Sit with those two statements for a moment. Take a deep breath. Listen as you inhale … and exhale. 

Now read Acts 17.22-31. I encourage you to take a look at it in the Message.

…….

Communitas is the spirit of community we experience as we find our deepest connections to God through the time and space we have for living - which God has made through human beings and the hospitable earth, so we could seek after God and actually find God! 

The good news is that God is made known to us. 

Our God-created being is intricately intertwined in the Spirit operating as “One” with the world - creation and one another. In her book, Native, on identity, belonging, and rediscovering God as a Potawatomi woman, Kaitlin B. Curtice says,

“When I began to pray in Potawatomi, I understood something different about prayer - That it is a holistic act that involves all of me, and all of the creatures around me, communing with God.”

Yes! In God we live and move and have our being. Prayer is oneness.

…….

We know God. We see God. In John 8.12 Jesus says, “I am the Light of the World.” Richard Rohr reminds us: 

“Light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything.”

And this way of illuminated knowing - life breathed into us - moves us toward repentance or radical life-change. This is a turning from our false selves to our true selves - the part of us “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3.3). Here, our connection to God is illuminated. 

We are in Christ. 

That also means we are in Christ with those around us. When our isolated “I” turns into a connected “we”, we’ve moved from Jesus to Christ (see Rohr, page 37). In community, we experience healing with each and in every breath. Remember, the Greek word for Spirit - pneuma - means wind or breath. Breathing then models our human vocation: incarnation - like Christ - of matter and spirit operating as one. 

“Every time you take in a breath, you are repeating the pattern taking spirit into matter, and thus repeating the first creation of Adam. And every time you breathe out, you are repeating the pattern of returning spirit to the material universe.”  - Rohr

So, what is healing? It is not a pattern of returning things to what they once were or what we deem “normal”. The reading from Acts reminds us that God has given assurance to all by raising Jesus from the dead. Resurrection and renewal are, in fact, the universal and observable pattern of everything. This is healing! 

This week we engage in the practice of breath prayer as we seek to experience the Spirit as Inner Healer, through the pattern of resurrection and renewal. 

So, breath with me. Be healed. We are in Christ.

(By Melissa Millis)

Communitas: The Spirit of Community - Communal Intercession

I have to admit, although I highly doubt this will come as a shock to most people that know me, that intercessory prayer has been a challenging practice for me. Endless conversations and readings and it’s still murky. But I realized that I’m not ready to throw it away.

If you haven’t recently, read John 14:1-14. The familiar story ends with Jesus promising to answer prayers done in his name. When I read it, I felt a little of the heat that comes sometimes with anger rise up in me. A reminder of why I have struggled so much with this type of prayer. I felt angry because Jesus says, “if in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

But I did, I did ask. I asked and you didn’t answer.

There have been so many times that I have called to God with a specific prayer, only for the heartbreak to come that I was trying to ward off. The death, the pain, the sadness, when whatever I begged would or wouldn’t happen doesn’t, or does. So, I felt angry and also sad, when I was reminded of these moments. Hopes and desires and even needs, laid before God, and at the time, felt like they were ignored or forgotten.

When this has been our experience, why might we still engage in prayers of intercession? 

Because it’s what there is left to do. 

Jesus says we will do the work he has done, and even better. Before instructing us on prayer, he reminds us that we have agency. There will be work to do. But when the work is done, or we can’t do it anymore, we can pray. We can invite God into the situation. We can join with the Holy Spirit.

Whether I understand God as able to do something I pray for or not, I know that God desires to do it. I’ve shared before that when presented with the theological question of whether God can be all powerful or all loving, I understand God to be all loving, and so not omnipotent. While God may not be able to do something, God still wants to do it. I don’t know what the limits are. All I know is the Spirit will show up. So when there I’ve done all of the work I can do, this is what I have. So, I still pray for God’s intercession.

Last year, around this time, I was working in a hospital as a chaplain. I had struggled all semester with the amount of intercessory prayer I engaged in for the role. One weekend, when I was the only chaplain on duty in the hospital, I responded to an emergency call for a seven month old being brought in by ambulance. The baby was unresponsive, the paramedics had gotten a heartbeat back on the way to the hospital, but lost it again just as they arrived. I stood there, with nurses and doctors and paramedics, and in a moment when no one was asking me to pray, it’s all I could do. I asked over and over that this baby would live. That when his parents arrived, we could tell them they’re baby would be okay. But he died. When his mom arrived, I had to tell her that he didn’t make it. I held her while she cried. I cried with her.

I asked and asked, in your name.

Not much later, I had another weekend shift where I was alone. I was called to the children’s hospital to be with a mother whose daughter was ill. When I arrived I learned that the little girl was in an induced coma due to some kind of brain injury. The mother was distraught. I asked her if she would like for me to pray with her and her little girl. We each held one of her hands and I prayed that God would heal her. That we know God was with her, that God loved her, God grieved with her. While praying, the little girl moved, then shouted. She woke up. She couldn’t speak because she was intubated, and I ran and got the nurses who immediately came to give her medicine to get her back to sleep. They didn’t know how she woke up. I was shocked. But the mother was not. She was so calm and kept saying God was showing us that her little girl was still there. I went to check on the little girl a couple of days later. Within days of first being with her, she was able to talk and was recovering swiftly. I spoke with her doctor and was told that her injury was such that they were not sure she would survive when she came in. She was transferred to a rehab unit after two weeks, with a full recovery predicted. She asked to pray with me every day I got to see her. This was more than I imagined was possible when I prayed.

I asked and I asked, in your name.

There will be things we ask for in prayer that may not be possible. But even if they aren’t, God still wants to do them, so we still ask. The Spirit moves with the desire of God to do Good, even when there is only the smallest fraction of a possibility. So we pray, even in the mostly unlikely of circumstances, even when everything tells us that something is impossible. We boldly ask God to intervene. Knowing that the Spirit will move toward Goodness, even when conditions don’t allow for what we pray for.

We ask and we ask, in your name.

(By: Britney Yount)

Communitas: The Spirit of Community - Communal Discernment

True friends experience each other as being part of themselves in some profound way.

Spiritual Companions, David Benner 

This aptly describes the way I’ve felt over the last few weeks as I’ve had a deep sense of connection to those who come to mind and remain on my heart...in the most ordinary of moments. 

In feeding the birds. 

In washing my hands. 

In making sourdough bread. 

In listening to our Indy Trinity Worship Spotify playlist. 

In the eating of plain old white rice. 

I believe this is the spirit of community experienced through devotion to Jesus and one another. At various points in life, deep connections have been made with God and those around me as we have devoted ourselves to Jesus and one another, guided by the Spirit to join the mission of God in the world. 

And this is who we are as 

wanderers and wonderers who gather to discover and embody the love of Jesus in the world. 

In spending time together - not just physically, but conversationally - in our contexts, elements of life and faith merge together through love and sharing life. This kind of friendship leads to the experience of being a part of one another in a profound way. 

Luke’s account of believers gathering together after the resurrection in Acts 2.42-27 highlights the importance of friendship.

Take a moment to read Acts 2.42-47.

………

We’ve heard this story many times. It is the iconic image of the early church. While that may be the dominant narrative and a constant challenge to radical discipleship, I’m sure those earliest believers felt this way of being - this way of life together - was quite ordinary. Their attention was steadfast...on the ways of Jesus. They experienced him in what was taught and in their communion with one another, experienced around the table and their shared communion with God in prayer (that attunement to the Spirit). All that they had witnessed - the signs and wonders - caused awe to animate their lives, each and every one of them. The apostles were now undertaking the “wonders and signs” previously brought about through Jesus.  

The Spirit was present, animating their lives. 

Placing confidence in Christ propelled them to share all things in common. They found themselves RELOCATED in Christ, at home with God and one another in their context, participating in the mission of God in the world RECONCILING all things, and through the REDISTRIBUTION of goods and wealth. [If you’re not familiar with Christian Community Development, these 3 R’s are the basics. We catch a glimpse of this in the life of the early church!]  

In their attention to one another - in the ordinary - they occupied sacred space. The temple - where God resided - was no longer confined to a particular building, but wherever they were. The sacred was now in their homes as they took in nourishment with extreme joy and singleness of heart, honoring God and extending grace to all people, not just those they “counted” among them. The Lord was gathering - relocating - people into Christ those who were being saved from the evils which obstruct receptance to Messianic deliverance.

The Kingdom of God reigned among them. It was lived into existence, as the Spirit guided them in ordinary service. 

……

Sometimes we’re oblivious to the sacredness of the ordinary and these ordinary moments with one another. But something about this pandemic brings the work of the Spirit to the forefront of our lives - to the space between us which is sacred - even when we’re physically distant. 

In this sacred space, through devotion to the teachings of Jesus and to one another, we are invited to engage in our practices, part of which state:

The Spirit of God has inspired a story of hope and redemption, declaring what God has already done, is now doing, and God’s promise for the reconciliation of all creation. In that story we learn both who we are and what we are called to do as followers of Jesus. We hold space for varying expressions of faith, including a diversity of practice and thought, for all people in our church family. We embody the love of Jesus in the world, SERVING in ways aligned with our gifts and passions, PARTICIPATING in God re-narrating the world, living the Kingdom into existence through faithful presence in everyday spaces, with simplicity, authenticity, and creativity.

The elements of life and faith merge together through love and sharing, giving way to participation. Many times, we stay attuned to the way the Spirit is guiding us and animating our lives - especially in space between - through the practice of discernment. 

Discernment means making a discriminating choice between two or more good options, seeking the best for this moment...Discernment does not bring us to absolute certainty, but rather operates in a climate of faith. Seeking to follow God’s call [or the “bigger story,” the “greater good”] moves us toward that which is better for us individually and for our world, and assures us that God will accompany us into the unknown.

The Way of Discernment, Elizabeth Liebert

Have you ever wondered which direction to go in joining the bigger story? 

If you’re like me, more often than not, when asked what my prayer has looked like about such matters, I think, “what prayer? Oh, um...what a novel idea.” And other times, I recognize that in devotion to the teachings of Jesus and to one another, the Spirit has been at work in the space between us as 

You enflesh God for me. 

What good news! What a beautiful picture of community. The practice of discernment becomes a way of life as we allow the Spirit to be our guide in community, in the sacred space between us.

This week’s practice is for individual discernment matters, to experience the Spirit as Guide. While all discernment matters are really communal in nature, there is another process of discernment for matters communities hold particularly in common. Trinity’s Leadership Team uses the discernment process as we allow the Spirit to guide and animate our lives, communally. This week’s practice is simply an introduction to walking through discernment prayer.

May the Spirit be our Guide.

(By Melissa Millis)

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