“Cultivating Relationship”

I think it would be fair to say that the mission of our church to put it succinctly is to: cultivate relationship. There many layers to this simple statement. There is cultivating relationship with ourselves, cultivating relationship with our loved ones/family members, cultivating relationship with friends, cultivating relationship with our neighbors, cultivating relationship with the stranger, cultivating relationship with God, Mystery, that which moves us to seek relationship. It would be impossible to name all the relationships we cultivate in awareness or out of awareness of any given day. And I think that is the special thing about a church like ours. We get a chance to enter in relationship with awareness, intention, and purpose. We allow ourselves to choose and in turn be chosen by the relationships we choose to enter.

In many ways this is the most important and fertile time to begin the process of choosing to enter into relationship – with the earth, with all species, with life itself. This time seems to be calling many toward a kind of reorientation, a reorientation borne of disorientation. Through the experience of having daily habits interrupted, complicated, and reinvented, we in a sense are forced to reevaluate our relationship to reality, and what it means to be a human being. This may sound lofty, but it’s actually very mundane and every day. It’s noticing that there is more than one way to live any given life and realizing that we do get choices that not just impact our personal life, but the lives of others. In that recognition, a new awareness is borne. Over time this awareness can be broadened, nourished, and expand us. Or this new awareness can be a stumbling block to our deeply personal plans and preferences. For most of us, including myself, it is a mix of both.

Relationships complicate our life. Having a family, friends, even living alone – this is to live a complicated life. We can spend energy chafing against these complications, wishing for simplicity, or we can embrace it. It is complicated to relate to anyone or anything with any amount of intent and attention. It can be exhausting, unsettling, and yes, wonderful. When we truly pay attention to anything or anyone long enough, including ourselves, we will notice aspects that reinforce our plans and agendas for our life, and we will experience complications. Entering into these complications with gratitude and intention, is at the heart of the transformation we speak about at this church. Choosing to enter into relationships, and allowing those relationships to transform our understanding, so that we might be a blessing: this is deep and true transformation. In my experience, I believe this transformation is without end, boundless. We can choose to live into this process of ongoing transformation our whole lives.

Recovering from a bad relationship can be tough. I think most of us have experienced this. But even those can be grist for the mill, a part of our path and ongoing development. But this kind of recovery, for most of us, takes intention. We have to want to recover, and then we have to seek a suitable environment/community that can support and ground us in that endeavor.

I feel supported and grounded by all of you in the endeavor of becoming more truly human, being willing to transform and be transformed by the world. In this month of harvest before the cool settles on our roofs and in our bodies, I am warmed by the compassion and bright offerings of this community. In these times, cultivating relationship is more than an attractive option, it is a necessity. Let us in the quiet hours and in the busyness of our daily lives

keep the intention: to cultivate relationship, to enter complications with gratitude and intention, to be willing to transform and be transformed.