I’ve been in some serious conversation with myself lately. These chats with myself have been prompted, I’m sure, by the re-opening of life as the pandemic ebbs. With each return to what used to be normal…the first hug with someone outside my family, the first time NOT wearing a mask in public, the first handshake…with each incident of return it feels like so many assumptions need to be tested.

I’m sure my own internal questioning is heightened by the chance to lead worship for us in Pioneer Square this weekend. What am I sure enough about…after these last 15 months…to preach?

Perhaps you have similar questions as well. I have said for many months that returning from Covid will be more difficult than the move into isolation when Covid began.

Part of the difficulty in the return is that all of those old assumptions need to be tested and evaluated. Do they still feel true? After the experience of the pandemic, do I need to recalibrate how trusting or how careful I need to be of those I encounter?

This is a time that calls for reflection. A time that calls for centering down and centering in on what is important. That means it is also, for some of us, a time of letting go.

But in order to even decide what, if anything, we need to let go of, we need to decide what is important to keep.

I’ve been going to this poem by Rev. Sean Parker Dennison this week. It is about what is important, about what we need to keep…but it is also a reminder of what is possible. It is therefore a reminder of hope and a reminder to hope.

I hope it speaks to you as it did to me.

“To Invoke Love” by Sean Parker Dennison 

To invoke love is to ask for a hug from a thunderstorm,  
spill tea in the lap of the infinite trickster,  
to make the biggest, most embarrassing mistake of our life 
in front of everyone who matters. 
To invoke love is to never know if it will come softly,  
with the nuzzle of a beloved dog,  
or pounce right on your chest with the strength of a lioness protecting her cub, her pride, her homeland. 
To invoke love is to take the risk of inviting chaos to visit the spaces you spent so much time making tidy,  
and watch as the breath of life scatters everything you have only just folded and put away. 
To invoke love is to allow for the possibility that your words and actions might become so empowered 
you can no longer believe in apathy, or the self-righteous idea that nothing can change.  
To invoke love is to give up self-deprecation, false humility, pride, 
to consider yourself worthy to be made whole,  
willing to encounter Love that will never let us let each other go.  
To invoke love is to guard against assumptions,  
take care with our words and practice forgiveness  
not as ethereal ideal, but right here,  
in the messy midst of our imperfect lives.  
To invoke Love  
is to approach each day and every person with wonder,  
anticipating Love’s arrival: “Is this the moment?” 
Is this Love’s grand entrance? 
Is this person the embodiment of Love? Am I the one? 
To invoke Love,  
is to play the fool, the one more concerned with loving than with appearance or reputation,  
the one ready and willing to be vulnerable,  
abandoning anything that gets in Love’s way. 
To invoke love is to be ready to become Love.  
Here. Now. In everything we do.  
Are you ready? 

Hoping to see many of you in Pioneer Square on Sunday!

Blessings,

Bill