August 30, 2026 - Pastoral Ponderings

Dear Friends

Last Sunday we explored how belonging can teach us to see differently, to notice what we might otherwise miss, and perhaps to see beyond some of the either-or ways our world encourages us to think.

This week we take the next step. What does it mean to follow?

Contemplative practice has taught me that following often begins with paying attention. In the story we will hear from Exodus, Moses is going about an ordinary day when something catches his eye: a bush burning in the wilderness. Moses turns aside to see. Only then does he hear God calling his name.

Perhaps following begins there for us too, not with certainty about where we are going, but with a willingness to turn aside and notice.

I have come to trust that the Holy is encountered within the depth of life itself, and not somewhere beyond it. We find God in silence and relationship, in beauty and suffering, in nature and in the stranger,  and in those moments when love asks something of us. This is why you'll hear me reach for many names for God: Creator, Spirit, Wisdom, Mother, Living Word, Love itself. No single word holds the mystery.

But expansive language doesn't mean leaving older language behind. Father and Son can speak of the intimacy of Jesus' relationship with God and of the hope that, in the community of Christ, we too are drawn into that intimacy. And when we call Jesus Lord or speak of God's kingdom, these ancient words can still challenge us: no nation, ideology, leader, or earthly power deserves our ultimate loyalty. To call Jesus Lord is to say something has already claimed us more deeply than anything else can.

And so to follow Jesus means walking his way of love, service, and self-giving. Not admiring it from a distance but letting it reshape what we do with our attention, our time, our lives.

We won't all understand God in the same way, and we don't need to settle every question before we belong, or before we begin to follow.

Perhaps our life together is less about finding the right words for God and more about learning to notice and follow the Presence to which all our words are trying to point.

Peace and grace

Rev. William Brook