We Must Change

God is always bigger than you imagined or expected or even hoped. When you see people going to church and becoming smaller instead of larger, you have every reason to question whether the practices or sermons or sacraments or liturgies are opening them to an authentic God experience.

                     ~ Fr. Richard Rohr – Quoted by Roger Wolsey

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this world needs people with big souls

 

or rather this world needs people who have become less

who have emptied out their souls

and then have allowed the wind of the Spirit to blow

and the fire of the Spirit to burn

 

and fill them with Sacred

 

this world needs people with souls that stretch

like new wine skins

souls that can grow big with Love

souls that can hold God’s new thing

 

the world needs people who

have been “born from above”

who, because they have been touched by God

have become new creations

 

no longer who or what they were

transformed

 

and the church should be one place where that happens

where followers gather

and where the wind rushes in

and the people glow with Sacred fire

 

and yet the church is often that place

where people huddle in the dark

for fear

 

fear of change

fear of loss

fear of “others”

 

it is often the place where the faithless huddle

and hang on desperately to the old

protective

reclusive

 

windows closed

breath of God extinguished

air fetid

wrapped up in a stale and false reality

                                                                                         

Pentecost denied

 

the world looks on, not in amazement

but with bewilderment

as those who claim the Risen One

side with domination and retribution

guns and greed

and tolerate racism

 

the world turns its back

and walks away

not touched by the miracle of inclusion

the wonder of grace

 

but appalled

and confused

 

help us Lord

help us to have large souls

help us to be open to your presence

and allow you to stretch us like new wineskins

 

transform us

do not allow us the comfort of the old

do not let us rot in the pews

suffocated by the stale air of fear and resentment

 

remind us that when you come as Spirit

we cannot remain the same

we must throw open the widows and open wide the doors

 

we must let the wind blow and the fire rage

we must change

we must become new

 

and we must take to the streets

singing songs of love

and welcome