Every day of your life joy is waiting for you, hidden at the heart of the significant things which happen to you or secretly around the corner of quieter things. If your heart loves delight, you will always be able to discover the quiet joy that awaits to shine forth in many situations. Prayer should help us develop the habit of delight. We weight the notion of prayer with burdens of duty, holiness and the struggle for perfection. Prayer should have the freedom of delight. It should arise from and bring us to humour, laughter, and joy. —John Odonohue

After looking at the way things are on this earth, here’s what I’ve decided is the best way to live: Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life. And that’s about it. That’s the human lot. Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work. It’s God’s gift! God deals out joy in the present, the now. It’s useless to brood over how long we might live.—Ecclesiastes 5:18-20

In our third week in our series on Practicing Resurrection, we are unpacking “Joy” as a virtue in the life after giving up the ghost.  Come contribute to a discussion on practices of joy.  We’ll meet at Anne and Mike’s house from 5-7pm at 563 Manford Rd. SW 30310.

Through my history’s despite
and ruin, I have come
to it’s remainder, and here
have made the beginning
of a farm intended to become
my art of being here.
By it I would instruct
my wants:  they should belong
to one another and to this place.
Until my song comes here
to learn its words, my art
is but the hope of song.

—Wendell Berry

This week we will pause our series on the fruit of the spirit to have a discussion on our art of being here.  Our vision, practices, and physical property are an actual way of being, an intentional decision! We know that not everyone can be there so if you would like a copy of the proposal on Sunday via email, please let us know. We will also be writing thank you notes to the various folks who have supported us over the years.

The Abbey is entering our third summer and we are excited to be turning the corner into our next iteration by preparing to lease property.  Our own building will give us the chance to welcome others more fully into our practices.  Houses can be intimidating and can make it awkward to welcome people on behalf of the faith community.  The building will give us the chance to nurture the Abbey’s kids as well as the kids we serve at Sylvan Hills Middle school through SWAN.  It will give us a place to host local artists and engender more conversations and dialogue than are practical in a sunday night worship gathering. And tending after a local space will, in Berry’s words, “Instruct our wants to belong to one another and to this place”. Like God’s habit of fleshing out the good news, our space will help us prioritize our time and energy in the community and as a developing congregation.

We learned in the past couple months of strategic planning that meeting in houses for this long has unintentionally bred a contentment with being a small group.  As this subconscious contentment became conscious, we realized how it contradicts our other values that we be changed through our encounters with other people, and to serve others by sharing the good news and compassionate community that nurtures us. So this is the beginning of an intentional new step.

Prepare for this evening by doing a little dreaming.  Think of what you value in good life-giving community, think of how you like to develop in your relationship to your neighbor and in the Way of Jesus.  Picture a place and some habits that organize around that (some from the Abbey, some yet to be used by the Abbey).  Now move ahead 12 months and imagine a diverse group of 50 other people also investing in that space and engaging in the formation of practices.  Come with that image and we’ll discuss the proposed plan with those visions in mind.

We’re meeting at Carrie’s house 409 Deckner Ave SW from 5-7pm.  Come contribute to prayer, scripture reading, conversation and potluck.

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“As you have sent me into the world, so I send them into the world” —Jesus’ prayer from John 17.18

“When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning. ”
— John O’Donohue (Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom)

If you can forgive that another person cannot give you what only God can give, then you can celebrate that person’s gift. Then you can see the love that person is giving you as a reflection of God’s great unconditional love. “Love one another because I have loved you first.” When we have known that first love, we can see the love that comes to us from people as the reflection of that. We can celebrate that and say, “Wow, that’s beautiful!”
—Henri Nouwen

The first in the list of practices of resurrection that Paul offers to the people in churches spread across Galatia is Love.  Love is a common word used and thrown around carelessly in our modern world.  How does love operate as a physical thing in our world?  How is love an intentional practice more than an accident or feeling under which we fall victim?  And how does that kind of love awaken our lives, the way that O’Donohue writes?

Come Sunday and contribute to a discussion on love’s role in our life on this side of giving up the ghost, on this side of resurrection.  We’ll meet at Perkerson Park from 5-7pm.  Bring a blanket and picnicky food to share.  We’ll do the same routine, but this will give us a chance to enjoy the excellent weather on Mothers Day.

If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear. -from 1John 3