As I sit down to write this, the sun is shining, and the air has that unmistakable softness of early Spring. With temperatures climbing into the high 50s, it truly feels as though the earth is beginning to wake again.
This Sunday is our monthly potluck, and we’ll also be holding a Community Meeting — a spring check‑in where we’ll hear from you, share what’s emerging, and look ahead to projects such as the garden and the labyrinth.
I also want to extend a heartfelt invitation to join our Creating the Beloved Community online group. This gathering offers a beautiful space to explore what it means to grow together in spiritual depth, compassion, and intentional community. If you’re feeling called into deeper connection and shared practice, I warmly encourage you to join us.
This Sunday’s message, “The Jesus Who Refuses Easy Answers,” invited us into one of the most honest and transformative spaces of our spiritual journey. There comes a moment for each of us when the ground beneath our feet feels a little less steady — not unsafe, but unfamiliar. It’s the moment when the certainties we once relied on soften, and life asks us not for tidy answers but for presence, courage, and trust.
That is precisely the landscape Jesus so often led people into. He didn’t rush clarity or offer quick conclusions. He invited us to live inside the questions, to follow the unfolding, and to trust that spiritual growth comes not through control but through openness.
This theme became very real for me this week when I had a dream that felt like a parable. In the dream, I had lost both my pocketbook (the place where I carry identity and “essentials”) and my luggage (the stories and responsibilities I’ve carried for so long). I searched frantically from room to room, trying to gather back what felt familiar.
Later, in my quiet time, the meaning rose gently: something old in me is dissolving, and something new is preparing to emerge. My guides reminded me that the pocketbook represented an identity I no longer need to hold onto, and the luggage symbolized the emotional and spiritual weight I am ready to release.
This dream wove seamlessly into the message for Sunday. It reminded me, and I hope it reminds you, that Lent is not a season of heaviness, but a season of inner honesty, where we are invited to soften our grip on what was, so Spirit can reveal what will be. Sometimes the most faithful step we can take is to allow the old to fall away without yet knowing what the new will look like.
Like Jesus, who calls us past certainty and into depth, we are being asked to trust the unfolding. To let the old identity loosen. To stop searching frantically for what has already fulfilled its purpose. To open to a new way of being that is forming in us even now.
May we each have the courage to walk through our own threshold moments with presence, openness, and faith in the Love that guides us.
And may this Lenten season be one where we let go of what no longer defines us and step gently toward who we are becoming.
Coming Up Sunday: The Jesus Who Disrupts Our Stories
What if the discomfort you’re feeling is a spiritual invitation? This Sunday, we meet the Jesus who challenges the stories that limit us and opens the door to a larger, freer, more authentic life. You won’t want to miss this one.
May this year invite us into deeper awareness, expanded possibility, and the joyful knowing that as we live our light, we bless the world. Together, we affirm there is always more good seeking expression through us, and it begins right here.
You are a blessing in my life,
Rev. Patricia Bessey
