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A Few Words from Pastor Bryan...
…and Kate Bowler
Happy New Year everyone. I’m writing this on January 1st, 2025, even though you won’t receive it until the 3rd.
Does this year feel different to you? It does to me. Sure, some of it is the upcoming presidential transition and the awareness that some very significant changes are heading our way. So many important and substantive things feel tentative, targeted, and up for grabs. I’ve got some serious “big picture” concerns, and I know many of you do as well. The new role of tech billionaires directing policy and AI (artificial intelligence) in the political process and where we’re heading with our technology is giving me serious pause. I’m not getting paranoid—but topics and persons I discuss out loud and haven’t searched for online keep showing up on my social media newsfeed. I’m starting to turn my phone off when I’m not using it. That feels weird. In a number of ways that are new, I don’t quite know how to be where we are at this moment in human history. Do any of you feel that?
We are obviously on the verge of some extremely consequential transitions, and 2025 somehow feels like “the year.” I’m not going to address the potential negative sides of all this here, and it’s not all negative—there are many things that need to be changed--but I’m just naming the feeling. I’m doing my best to stay as grounded and positive as I can. I’ll help you with that if you’ll help me. And God will give us all the grace to deal with whatever we’ve got to face. That’s one of my favorite mantras as most of you know, and I really do believe it and trust it.
In the aftermath of the presidential election and in the shadow of the New Year, my friend Brian McLaren drew beautifully from Valerie Kaur’s powerful reframing metaphor—he said, in essence—“Something is coming into being at this point in history. We are in labor. In transition. It’s painful and beyond our control in many ways, but something is trying to be born.” As Valerie Kaur put it—“This is the darkness not of the tomb, but of the womb.” I like that. I like thinking and trusting that God is going to use even the hardest and most painful experiences to bring about something new and beautiful. I’m not in any way minimizing the cost of some of these changes to some of the most vulnerable people among us. Part of our calling and task as followers of Jesus will be to do our best to be courageous “midwives for Justice and Love’ in this season of change.
This “feeling of transitioning” was expressed even more poetically for me recently in a paragraph from Chelan Harkin’s book, The Prophetess in her chapter called, “Awakening.”
“It’s okay if you’re scared when you’re opening. The seed, she was scared too. Do you think the coal wanted to become a diamond? She was scared out of her wits of change—it took her 10 thousand years to even be able to pray for it. The acorn was so closed in by the hard walls of his staunch beliefs. Oh, how he protested becoming the regal, generous oak. Have you heard the caterpillar’s shrieks of resistance as some bigger force unwelcomely impels it to eat its own form while disclosing nothing of those secret wings?”
I’m not saying that all of the changes we’re facing are somehow “God’s plan.” In fact I think a lot of it is in direct opposition to God’s intentions and will be tragic misuses of human free will. But I’m saying that God will keep “using it all for good” in and through those of us who are called to help that be--or become-- the case (Rom. 8:28).
And leads finally to Kate Bowler.
My daughter Emma just sent me this New Year’s blessing for 2025 by the amazing Kate Bowler. How blessed am I to have an adult daughter who constantly feeds my soul with encouraging and inspiring material?
The blessing is vintage Kate Bowler—honest, vulnerable, and real. And faithful. There’s something about how she ends this that feels like bread for the journey. What if our deepest resolution for 2025, no matter what happens, is to become more brave, more true, and more loving?
That, with God’s help, is worth embracing. It’s doable. It’s hopeful. It’s becomable. (yes spell check I realize that’s not a word). And it’s what I’m committing myself to on this January 1st, 2025.
Let’s become together.
See you in church,
Pastor B
Kate Bowler—Becoming In The New Year
I carry around this
incompleteness,
this drive for fulfillment
that always seems
just out of reach.
If only I could get it together
and find my true calling.
my real passion,
or the right plan.
If only I stuck to my resolutions.
I’ve worked so hard
and for what?
What am
I missing?
Blessed are we
who strive earnestly
to change ourselves
and the world
around us.
but feel the
drag and pull
of what
won’t budge.
the weight of
all our limited
and frail humanity.
We carry it with us.
Blessed are we,
the hungry, in lives
that are both
too much
and not enough.
May this new year
be one of becoming.
Becoming brave.
Becoming true.
Becoming love.
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