I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that’s becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism. bell hooks

Meditation: We are facing the bankruptcy of love in the US today. Today when Mexican children are being ripped out of the arms of their parents who try to find safety in the US. When children are being thrown into jail and separated from their parents, not love, but xenophobia, torture and hatred reign. Today when Neo-Nazis and KKK members are being called “good people” by the president, racism and hate filled supremacist ideas are publicly endorsed. Not love but hatred and fear reign. Today when fundamentalist Christians are confused and make their fear based political interests equal with their religion, Christianity is being sold out. Not love, but fear and hatred reign. In US politics, love has lost its power. Fear and hatred reign. Love is bankrupt: in our policies and in our ways of treating those perceived as “others”, in our politicians and in many of our churches. At the same time the economy of the US is doing well. Love as an ethical value in American politics and has been replaced with Money. The rich and privileged are creating policies that make them even richer. They fear to lose their status, their riches and their power and will do anything to defend those. They are filled with fear of losing. They are afraid that their immoral ways will be revealed to the world. And so they choose to hate: Hate those on whose backs they have made their fortunes: namely those minorities who are getting poorer every day, those who are being tortured and oppressed, and those who are treated inhumanely. There is no fear in love, but there is much fear in hate.

Prayer: God of Love, from a country blinded and bound in hatred, we cry out to You. We mourn for those imprisoned migrant children who are being tortured by being separated from their parents without notice or explanation. We mourn for the death of Christianity in many of our churches. We mourn the rise once again of supremacist and nationalist movements in this country. God of Love, God of Mercy and God of Justice, it seems that You have left America to its own devices, as those in power have chosen to replace You with the Idol of Money, the Idol of Fear and the Idol of Hatred. Hear our mourning and have mercy on all those who are suffering from the current conditions in their mind, body and spirit. God, have mercy on America. Amen

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. 1. John 4: 18-19

Nun war es endlich soweit! Am letzten Sonntag haben unsere sieben Erstkommunionskinder zum ersten Mal die Eucharistie empfangen. Als katholisch und evangelisch gemischte “Deutsche Kirchengemeinde in Atlanta” hatten wir die Freude einen jungen Priester aus Deutschland einzufliegen der die Messe mit uns feierte und auch das Sakrament der Beichte den Eltern und Kindern am Vortag anbot. Wir sind so dankbar, dass unser Church Council, unsere Eltern, die Kinder und beide Pastoren so wunderbar mitgemacht haben. Ein Dankeschoen auch an die Redeemer Gemeinde fuer die Bereitstellung der “grossen Kirche”. Mehrere Grosseltern, Familienmitglieder und Paten waren eingeflogen um an dem grossen Tag dabeizusein. Gelebte Oekumene! Machmal hat eine sogenannte “Diasporagemeinde” (Eine vereinzelte Immigrantengemeinde wie unsere) auch grosse Vorteile. Oekumene ist bei uns nicht Theorie. Bei uns ist Oekumene eine taegliche Erfahrung von gemeinsam gelebten Glauben und gemeinsamen Gottesdiensten. Unsere katholisch-evangelische Mischung laesst uns kreativ werden. Gott sei Dank!

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style. Maya Angelou

Meditation: Thriving and not merely surviving is a powerful mission in life. A beautiful image of thriving is captured in the prophetic image of a tree being planted on the river that flows from the sanctuary. Its fruits are plentiful and steadily replaced, filled with nourishment and healing. What does it take to move from a lifestyle of survival to an experience of thriving? Oftentimes traumatic events and experiences of neglect or scarcity and wounding by other people and by life itself throw us into survival mode. The healing of those traumatic and neglectful experiences takes time. However, God’s goal for us is to be made whole again and to thrive. We can see this embodied in Jesus whose mission was to heal and restore people who were merely surviving before they met him. When we rediscover our passion for life, when we feel compassion for ourselves and for others, when her reclaim our humor and when we feel we have some “extra” to express ourselves with style, then we will know that our trauma is being overcome and our wounding is being healed. We are being made whole again, and we are beginning to thrive, and not just survive.

Prayer: Gracious God, when we settle for mere survival, fill us with yearning for a life where we are planted deeply in Your healing presence. Fill us with Your vision of how an abundant life can look like. You want us to thrive and not merely survive. We wait for Your Spirit to lead us out of the desert and onto green pastures. We wait for Your Spirit of recovery to lead us from a life of struggle to a life of serenity. Help us to make good choices that ground us deeper in You. Amen

And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing. Ezekiel 47:12

 

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent. Barbara Bush

Meditation: Our time with each other is very precious. We can exchange times spent at jobs, owning certain possessions or having certain successes and reaching certain dream destinations. However, we cannot exchange the time we spend with those who we love and cherish. Today I regret not traveling with my Dad who wanted to show me the village where he grew up in. Back then I was in my early thirties, busy with building my career and my life. My Dad was coming towards the end of his life, in remission in between battling cancer. I was foolish not to accept his invitation. He had taken both my brothers, and now he wanted to take my sister and me. And I missed the moment. Somehow I felt that I had all the time in the world, not realizing that my father’s life time was bending towards its end. I think I was in denial. I think I was young and too preoccupied to notice the preciousness of that moment in time. Today I wish I could go back and spend time with him. Wherever he would want to take me, I would go. Today I am twenty years older – and maybe a little wiser. I am aware that I have only three more years with my teenage girls living under one roof with me. If they still want to spend time with me, I will take them up on it. I cherish every moment. I have learned my lesson with my Dad. Certain moments only come once in a lifetime. I don’t want to miss them.

Prayer: God, forgive us where we have taken time for granted. Forgive our thoughtless ways of wasting time, missing time, forgetting time or packing time so full that we miss those moments with our loved ones. Fill us with a new humility that does not take time for granted. Nor loved ones. Nor friends. Nor parents, nor partners and nor children. And if it is Your will, let us spend time with each other today, tomorrow and the day after. Amen

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the LORD’s will, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:13

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. Carl Jung

Meditation: A year ago I noticed how our German immigrant church needed to find a new way of bringing more German families into our community. We had just offered a Protestant confirmation classes for two years in a row, yet the past year only one confirmand of three had remained until the confirmation, as two moved away. When I received a phone call from a German Catholic mother who was looking for a First Communion class for her daughter and who mentioned that there were several of her friends who might join, images began playing in my mind. What if our church could find a way to offer what these families were seeking? I loved the idea of including our German Catholic families more than before. And so the Church Council and I started playing with the idea. I am happy to report that last Sunday, our German church offered a First Communion Mess to seven catholic children ages 6-9. We flew in an open minded Catholic priest from Germany who offered the sacrament of first confession and first communion to our Catholic Families. For the past months I had offered nine month of weekly teachings to the children while following Catholic teaching materials in German. A new thing! Refreshing, playful, joyfully lived ecumenism!

Prayer: God, I am amazed how a simple dream has come to full fruition as things have aligned. Thank You for showing us what was needed. Thank You for Your playful Spirit who knew how to bridge the ocean and the denomination divide. Pentecost is real. The Trinity is a powerful community of creative energy and transcending possibilities. And the Church is invited to mirror this reality. And we are grateful! Amen

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:19

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. Abraham Lincoln

Meditation:  Just as democracy in German more than eighty years ago, the democratic system in the US today experiences the perversion of basic ethical values as for example “decency”, “order” or “assumed values of right and wrong”. As we are watching the manipulation of facts and the perversion of ethical values we ask ourselves: What is my responsibility as a Christian at this time in history? What ethical values are immune from perversion? Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about responsibility in his book “Ethics”. At a time where most assumed values were perverted by Hitler’s authoritarian nationalist regime, he writes: “Reason,” “fanaticism,” “conscience,” “duty,” “freedom,” and “private virtuousness” all fail as tools for locating a true ethic…Christian ethics are not formed by a set of abstract principles but by the concrete test of each situation—“Are my actions helping others to be truly human before God?” “Is Christ being formed in them in the world?” How can Bonhoeffer’s words lead us to a deeper and new ethic as Christians?

Prayer: God of history, as we experience the systematic perversion of basic ethical values we feel lost and threatened. Basic human values and basic facts are being changed, manipulated and abused. Many public values that were true a few months ago, no longer seem to hold. We want and need to ground ourselves deeper than ever before. Fill us individually and as Your church worldwide with your Spirit. Help us learn from history. Help us Christians to be the prophetic voices that shout in the wilderness! Come Spirit of truth! Amen

But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. John 16:

Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma. Robin Williams

Meditation: Mental Illness is still something our society does have difficulty talking about. Many have to hide their depression or other mental health diagnosis and pretend all is well. One way of coping is through humor and through acting or playing “the clown”. Being “funny” can serve as a way to remain part of community, as nothing is worse than struggling with mental health and then becoming additionally isolated. Building a relationship with a therapist can be a way to stop hiding. It can be a place to grieve and talk about the traumatic experiences that have happened and the consequent emotional challenges. Finding a relationship that is caring can feel like the image of the eagle hovering over its young. When we reveal our vulnerabilities without being judged, healing can happen. We discover more effective ways of coping than just pretending, using humor or acting. God uses people to emotionally and spiritually care for us. I wonder where we need to be found and attended to? What is our “barren and howling waste or desert”?

Prayer: Gracious God, You are seeking us. We pray for all who are in need for a safe place to heal from trauma – be it abuse, neglect, assault or tragedy. We pray that our society becomes less superficial and sees beyond role playing. Let us all become more aware of our own and others’ mental/soul health needs. Thank you for providing shelter in the presence of those who are trained to be with people who went through trauma. Let us all find healing and relief in our emotional struggles. Amen

In a desert land God found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; God guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them aloft. Deuteronomy 32: 10-11

Caring for your inner child has a powerful and surprisingly quick result: Do it and the child heals. Martha Beck

Meditation: When we start listening to our anxious and distraught feelings as feelings of our inner child, we can get in touch with those younger parts of ourselves that have often experienced neglect and a lack of love. As we discover those hurting and anxious younger parts of us, we develop compassion for ourselves. We grieve for our inner child  that yearned for love but instead experienced abuse and abandonment. Often those memories of our childhood injuries not only show up in our particular ways of coping in life, but they are also stored in our bodies. Sometimes our body shows us where our past injuries still pain us. When we seek healing for those childhood injuries, we begin caring for our inner child. The first step is to distinguish between the adult voice and the child voice inside of us. After we learn to distinguish who it is that is feeling and talking (our inner child or our adult) we become intentional about having our adult self learn to care for our distraught inner child. This care can be physical in nature by us providing extra safety and nurture to ourselves in a loving and caring way. And it is often also an exercise of compassion. We learn to have our caring adult parts talk gently to those younger parts of us that easily get anxious when triggered. We in some ways “re-parent” ourselves. While we want to learn to care for our inner child, we at the same time refuse to let our inner child be the dominating and leading force in our life. We put our adult in charge. That caring adult part of us will want to listen to our inner child’s emotions and voice, however, we will not abdicate our adult role and responsibility. As we take responsibility to care for our inner child, we begin to heal. And as we put our caring adult in charge, the inner child will begin to calm down and feel less afraid. We stop over-functioning out of fear. We stop neglecting ourselves. We stop following our negative predictions. Caring for our inner child is the door to freedom and the door to healing.

Prayer: God, for all of us who still need healing for our inner child, be our guide, be our role model of how to love ourselves unconditionally. Restore our inner child’s trust. Strengthen our caring adult parts so we learn patiently and abundantly how to care for our younger wounded self. With Your grace reaching out to us, we will heal our inner suffering child. Amen

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1. Peter 5:10

A child’s mental health is just as important as their physical health and deserves the same quality of support. Kate Middleton

Meditation: This month of May is mental health month. It has been filled for families and children with homecoming events and graduations. Exciting and very stressful. My teenage girls have felt overwhelmed and exhausted, even confused. Last night, after I let them first share their feelings of imbalance and stress, I wondered how to support their “mental health” in these days. (I suggest to playfully rename mental health as “M-EART health” = “mind and heart health” as the term “mental” is usually used equivalent with “illness” or even worse with “insanity”.) The heart on the other hand symbolizes our emotions. Heart and mind are normal parts of all of us. And our hearts and minds can become stressed. Stress will take a toll on our hearts and minds and eventually make us sick, if we don’t provide preventative care. I have learned that one of the best mental health support for myself and for my teenagers is to talk with somebody about what is going on in our hearts and in our minds. The second most important response to stress is getting enough sleep. And because teenagers usually go to bed later than they should, they do not get enough sleep for sure. Recently, after I let my girls process their feelings, I assessed my girls’ “m-eart health”. I then decided to let them sleep in, two hours longer than usual. As mother I have never done this before. But as counselor I knew for my teenagers to cope with all the stressors coming their way, sleep – besides expressing their emotions- will be the best foundation no matter what will be thrown at them. Letting their brain rest, while having an available adult for concrete support will give our teenagers the strength to make it through the challenges of this stressful month. On the letter of excuse for school I listed “health related reasons”. I did not want to say “mental health related reasons”, as that would raise red flags… It is sad that our society has not accepted our mental health, our children’s “m-eart health”, to deserve just the same care as our bodies do.

Prayer: God, you deeply care about our body, mind and emotions. You want our hearts and minds to be at peace. Our society focuses on caring for our bodies. However, it is often ignoring and dismissing the health of our mind and of our emotions. Help us teach the next generation that the health of our emotions and our minds are just as important as our bodies. You want our whole personhood to receive daily care. You want us to receive abundant support and peace that surpasses what the world gives us. And we are grateful. Amen

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. John 14:27

I know that we will be judged in history by not only how we disrupt terrorism but how we protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of all Americans, even Americans who don’t wish us well. We must do all these things exceptionally well. Robert Mueller

Meditation: I find myself these days pausing several times during the day saying a prayer for Robert Mueller and his team. In these days as we witness independent legal agencies under attack by this current president and as we observe important legal procedures and practices undermined, we need to do what is in our power to strengthen the spirit of those who seek the truth, who defend our liberties and who protect our constitutional rights. We watch speechlessly how the president abuses the power of his office to create false stories and to interfere with an investigation that reaches too close to home for him. We witness unprecedented dynamics here in the US. And the congress remains silent. As Germans we are highly sensitive and attentive as we have witnessed the tragic overthrowing of democracy before. We have seen the bending of the law and the loss of boundaries between the legislative and executive powers. We witnessed before the demonic manipulation of the masses through nationalistic extremism and fear. We are keenly and painfully aware of how our current president and certain nationalistic forces are trying to undermine the principles of our American democracy.

Prayer: God, we pray that the constitutional law and the division of the government branches will be upheld at all cost. We pray that Robert Mueller has the time and the means to complete his investigation. We pray for the congress to wake up from its perverted self-preserving silence and instead uphold the basic principles of our law and defend the division of our governmental branches. God hear our prayers and have mercy on this country. Amen

Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. Hebrews 13:18