Organic Faith

Organic Faith Spring Retreat

Organic Faith Friends!

I want to announce to one and all the Organic Faith Spring Retreat at LCLC from Friday night March 26th until March 28th (ending around noon).  

Retreats are a great way for a community to spend time together, to grow together and to delve into bigger, deeper conversations than what we might talk about at one of our weekly gatherings.  They also are a heck of a lot of fun. 

So, mark your calendars and start inviting your friends (retreats are a great place to invite new people in!) for the Organic Faith Spring Retreat at LCLC. 

Stay tuned for more information about the retreat schedule and theme!

Grace

Pslam 46:10 “Cease Striving and know that I am God.” (NASB)

Having just spent a solid week entrenched in learning at Wartburg Theological Seminary I feel more than compelled to share what I’m learning with the community.  Wartburg, bring a Lutheran institution, did an excellent job of nailing home the cornerstone of Lutheran faith and theology during my classes: Grace.

Grace is great!  We sing about it, we talk about it, people write sermons with this word in it.  What could be better?! 

Before you answer that question, answer this one: have you ever had a professor from Guyana explain to you for hours at a time the big implications of this idea? Have you?
Of course not! Because it makes you crazy!

Okay, not really crazy, just punchie or as my professor said, “Cheeky”.  But the thing about grace is its hug implications for the things in our life that are actually completely out of our hands.
Grace means that in everyway God comes to us. God alone is the source of life, healing, and forgiveness.

But more than that, its only by the grace of  God that we can possibly come to understand and believe these things.  It is not even our own merits that lead us to believe, rather it is God that provides us with the life-giving ability to even believe in God in the first place.

Crazy.  And I’m sure some are thinking just that right now: Crazy.  It kind of sucks to not be able to claim credit or even take things into our own hands.  But then again how much sense does this idea make?  The very best thing in my entire life, my faith, is all because of how the Holy Spirit has worked through me and others to bring me to my belief in the first place. 

This Grace idea is incredible.  It doesn’t compel me to sit back and do nothing but it does give me immense hope.  Its not what I do, it’s what God does through me and others.  Even believing this good news isn’t up to me.  And that's good news.

Everything is Spiritual

We have a saying at our Pub Church gatherings that seems to come up over and over again despite the topic of the week.  It's just a simple three word phrase and yet it seems to sum up one of Organic Faith's core theological convictions:  Everything is Spiritual.  We have arrive at this conviction via different routes and reasons; some of us thanks to Rob Bell's lecture of the same name, some of us thanks to conversation and discussion, some of thanks to a retreat back in February.  Regardless, we all are getting at the same idea -- you don't need to put yourself in a certain time or place or space; you don't need to go looking for God because God is present in and around everything; everything in this life has a spiritual component.  

Some people might call our convictions overly optimistic, but personally I'll take the overly optimistic viewpoint any day.  To me, life becomes infinitely more beautiful when you're compelled to find God's fingerprints on every event, every person, everything you encounter. 

As Organic Faith community journeys onward we hold this conviction close to our hearts and we strive to open our eyes to God's workings all around us, making ourselves and each other more conscious of the subtle and big ways that God meets us.

Experiencing The Resurrection

I think my favorite moment of the last month came on April 18th at about 11:30am.  Myself and four other members of Organic were on our way back from the Buffalo River Clean-up that we had participated in earlier that morning. 

The five of us along with three other Organic Faith members spent the morning cleaning up the paths and the riverbank of Ellicot Creek.  We had all worked really hard and gotten more than a little dirty in the process.  We properly disposed of bottles, papers, cans, tires, car batteries, candy wrappers, and everything in between.   We were tired.

Due to our exhaustion and the temperature that beautiful spring day we drove the entire way home with the windows open.  Sunlight poured in from all angles, the breeze cascaded into the car and on my car’s CD player the music of Nickel Creek played as the five of us exited the parking lot of Amherst Veterans Canal Park.   I don’t know who said first it, but at some point during the ride home we all came into agreement that at that moment life was very good.

In light of the Easter event that we celebrated over the past month I can’t help but reflect on the ways that I experience the resurrection today.   Ever Easter we talk about the resurrection of Jesus Christ – his victory of death and subsequently our victory over the death of our sins.  This is certainly a powerful and exciting message, but what about the ways that we continue to experience the ways that our God can bring life from death. 

Despite all the death in this world, despite all the fear, doubt and worry we are still blind-sided by moments when, quite simply, “Life is Good”.  These are the moments when the power of life overcomes the many-faced powers of death and we experience the power of the resurrection here today.

I went to church on Easter Sunday, twice.  However, I experienced Easter so much more fully a week later when as a community Organic Faith brought new life to Amherst Veteran’s Park.   And even more fully when the jumbled soup of good music, sour muscles, spring sunshine, and a job well done all worked together against all deaths in the world to declare life is good.