Instead of focusing on our “production” – our doing – we affirm our place in God’s fold, and we love one another.  We nurture dispositions of compassion and generosity.  We cultivate graciousness and mercy.  And when we love well, that love – God’s love of us, and our love of one another – it’s that love that will inspire our service and collective action: we cannot reorder this process and fulfill God’s hopes for the world!

For only kindness can win the world for kindness, only generosity can win the world for generosity, and only love like lightning can win the world for love.

See what the eldest son fails to recognize: we always tend the fatted calf for our brother’s return. We receive strengths of spirit and nurture them in order that they might benefit all people.

By Jesus’ model, when the world turns to selfishness and judgment, we do not overcome those trials by returning aggression for aggression; we do not give cruelty for cruelty.

To continue the growth of these last years, we must now accompany the widening of our congregation, with a deepening of the same …

Whatever their social or emotional or partisan track, I recognize these postcards from the edge of a new political season will not be entirely untrue. Yet, I also know those posts will not tell the whole story…

Sharing in the eternity of the Eucharistic table, we stand and kneel with all those who have done the same before us and alongside us – we ‘actualize’ the past in a way that opens new possibilities in our present.