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Dear members and friends of Redeemer,

Earlier this week, at Sacred Space for Grace, we finished our final session together as a group focused on grieving the loss of a loved one. The tension in the room was palpable when we first gathered six weeks ago, anticipating what was to come: unfamiliar faces and an invitation to share stories of love and loss with total strangers. I would be nervous too. In fact, I was.

What we discovered together, however, was a safe space and a shared language for grief. Galatians 6:2 reminds us that, as Christians, we are called to “carry each other’s burdens.” While the rituals surrounding grief often look different today, we no longer sit in formal mourning or wear mourning clothes as visible signs of our loss. It is even more important that we intentionally create spaces for communal sharing. In a world that can feel increasingly isolated, opportunities to speak honestly about grief and to be heard with compassion are a gift.

One night during these six weeks, I dreamt about a walnut. Strange as that may sound, the image stayed with me. Looking at the cross-section of a walnut, you notice its intricate folds, chambers, and contours. No two sections appear exactly alike. Our grief is similar. While we all know the experience of loss, each person’s grief takes its own shape, marked by a unique story of love, memory, and longing. Some carry fresh wounds; others carry losses from many years ago. Some experience sadness, anger, gratitude, confusion, or all of these at once.

Over the course of our time together, I was reminded that while grief may be deeply personal, it was never meant to be carried alone. As stories were shared, strangers became companions. Conversations that once felt impossible began to flow naturally, and participants lingered long after our sessions ended, talking with one another on the way to their cars. Moments of silence gave way to understanding. What began with uncertainty ended with trust, courage, and grace.

I am grateful to everyone who participated in Sacred Space for Grace. Their willingness to be vulnerable created a holy space where burdens were shared and where God’s presence could be felt among us. The journey of grief does not end after six weeks, but neither does the promise that we walk it together.

Blessings,

Keith+

At the Center for Wellbeing, we return to the sacred work of living whole and integrated lives. We honor the stories that shaped us and hold quiet hope for what is still unfolding. Yet many of us carry soft, persistent weight—concerns for those we love, for our health, our nation, our work, our aging, our relationships. These tender worries can slip us out of the present before we notice, dimming the grace unfolding right here. The “what ifs,” “could haves,” and “should haves” become gentle thieves, stealing both life’s deep joys and its small, shimmering gifts.

Being in the now invites us to return our awareness to this breath, this step, this moment—rather than to the stories of the past or the fears of the future. It’s choosing presence over rumination, experience over imagination.

As I prepare for my Camino pilgrimage from Porto, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, I have been learning this truth in a very embodied way. I have packed, unpacked, and then unpacked again, each time choosing to carry a little less. With every decision, I find myself wrestling with familiar companions: “just in case,” “maybe” and “what if.”

What I am discovering is that my pilgrimage began long before I ever step onto the path in Porto. This rhythm of packing and releasing has become a mirror for the inner shedding I am being invited into. And while not all of us are walking the Camino, each of us is on an everyday journey that can just as easily pull us away from the present moment. The burdens we carry—responsibilities, uncertainties, griefs, hopes—can grow so heavy that they obscure the beauty of the now. To set down even a portion of that weight is an act of trust. I am learning that the lightest pack is the one filled not with gear, but with faith—a quiet confidence that all shall be well, and that we shall be well.

Though this walk will be solitary, it is not a journey of isolation. It is an invitation to listen more deeply. By setting down what is unnecessary, I’m making space for a quieter awareness—room to sense the wisdom and presence that meets us in the moment. In that stillness, I’m reminded that the Sacred is not only alongside us, but alive within every step we take.

I believe this is part of a larger transformation we are all invited into—learning to travel lightly, to inhabit the present more fully, and to move with and in the Light of Christ. When we return our attention to this breath, this step, this moment, we find the Holy One already here, meeting us with quiet and sustaining grace.

Love,

Thomasina

Dear Folks,

I made a new friend this week whose name means “radiance.” “Tell me about the journey you are on,” he asked me in his first question, which may be the best opening line I’ve ever heard. He was born in the Middle East to Sufi parents, has lived in the United States for almost six decades, and develops software for journalists. The network that employs him largely does not reflect his own personal views, but that does not seem to matter. The people are good, and there is common ground to discover, he said. Perhaps they bear light for each other. “Our differences teach me something,” he offered. And more: the way opens for him through the challenges he encounters. The Sufi poet Rumi writes, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

My new friend reminded me of a series of conversations from Bible study. We’ve been reading the book of Exodus and talking about the pharaohs we know and suffer under, and the ones we sometimes embody. “It no longer serves me to only locate the enemy out there,” one participant said. “I have to admit that I have held others and myself in bondage.” Quoting Shakespeare’s The Tempest, another person said, “This thing of darkness I claim as my own.” And going further, a third participant confessed to letting her friend off the hook. “She definitely wields power like the pharaoh, but I realize now that that’s a sign of weakness, not strength. I think she is scared, and that helps me love her.”

More from the poet Rumi:

“Love isn’t the work of the tender and the gentle; Love is the work of wrestlers.
The one who becomes a servant of lovers is really a fortunate sovereign.
Don’t ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love. Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.”

“If I love myself, I love you. If I love you, I love myself.”

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”

The gift of Redeemer is that we are a people committed to learning how to love. Like the table that gathers us every week, we are a place that has a place for everybody. Maybe the only requirement is to come with your heart broken, open to how your light and the light of others can finally shine.

Love,
David

On my patio this spring, a young squirrel has been busy with her quiet, determined work of stashing nuts in the most curious of places. Not tucked safely underground, but set in plain sight: in the corners of the windowsill, on the edge of the concrete, even inside my mailbox and atop the hanging basket of geraniums. My neighbor and I have delighted in these tiny round offerings we have both received. Are they misplaced? Remembered? Perhaps intentionally left where we cannot miss them? God knows.

They remind me of Julian of Norwich, a medieval mystic whom the Church commemorates this Friday, and her vision of the hazelnut recounted in Revelations of Divine Love:

“God showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. I looked upon it and wondered, ‘What might this be?’ And I was answered, ‘It is all Creation.’ I marveled how it could last, for I thought it might suddenly fall to nothing, it was so small. And I was answered, ‘It lasts and ever shall last, for God loves it. In this little hazel nut, I saw three truths: the first is that God made it; the second is that God loves it; and the third is that God keeps it.’”

Julian also reminds us that the act of seeking is itself holy work: “Seeking with faith, hope and love pleases our Lord… for as long as God allows us to struggle on this earth, seeking is as good as seeing.”

Like my little squirrel neighbor, we gather and scatter, we forget and rediscover, we see and seek without knowing what we might find. And over time, these small, daily acts ripple outward. Squirrels, by hiding their nuts, plant the seeds of future forests. What is forgotten becomes growth. What seems small carries a world of possibility. There is a quiet wisdom here about being curious, engaging creation, and persistently seeking and acting with faith, hope, and love.

Remember our Voices speaker, Heidi Schreiber-Pan? A recent article in The Banner references her work and explores how spending time in green spaces can help lift what weighs on us and reconnect us with a sense of wholeness. Even brief, intentional encounters with the natural world can restore something in us that feels worn thin.

Perhaps the squirrel’s scattered nuts, Julian’s visions and wisdom, and a Spirit-timed article are invitations to get outside, notice what is small but enduring, participate in something larger than ourselves, and remember that Divine Love holds it all.

• What is something small in the natural world that has caught your attention recently?
• What might it be revealing to you?
• How might God be present in what seems ordinary or easily overlooked?

Love,

Anna