Seekers. Called to move, to grow. We are not static or standing still; we certainly donët have all the answers.

This journey is a daily dying and rising again. It changes us.

The spiritual journey is about both coming home and leaving home . . . .

This matters because there are many aspects of our society that block our journey of transformation and growth. The church should not be one of them.

Are we encouraging one another to grow and mature or are we helping one another remain stuck?

Are we welcoming one another where ever we may be on the journey or are we expecting everyone to be in the same place?

Open to new insights and other religious traditions.

There is great danger in unthinking religion. There is oppression in a simplistic, literalistic interpretation of our tradition.

Questions are more important than answers. No dogma or creedal conformity required.

Intellectual honesty is encouraged/required.

This matters because dogmas and rigid, narrow-minded thinking prevent us from doing the work we need to do. They make faith irrelevant to the modern world.

We need each other to awaken and grow. We need to encourage each other to do the best thinking we can.

Called to practice hospitality. The art of sharing and of welcoming the other so that a stranger may become a guest may become a friend. This includes celebrating our diversity. Honoring the vision Jesus had of an inclusive community.

This means honoring the gifts each person brings and the gift each person is.

A rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell that the night had ended and the day begun, for that is time they were to recite certain holy prayers.

This matters because we have all experienced the damage done by religious communities that were espousing a universal vision while maintaining a deeply exclusive, limited and segregated reality. The wisdom of transcendence must always be balanced with the wisdom of immanence.

This matters because all communities are in danger of being limited by their own demographics.

Birth, marriage, death, etc.

Partaking of life's sacraments. Moving towards a sacramental view of all of life.

This matters because we do not live, move and have our being in isolation. We are connected and the connections we have with one another and with life itself matter.

We don't wait until we have it all together to do ministry.

We participate in a mutual ministry with one another, and we embrace our humanity as we strive to be a more loving, more compassionate, more inclusive community.

We are more than our wounds. We are more than the damage that has been done to us.

There is an awakening and a healing that we offer each other as we do our own work and bring our struggles and our successes to the community. All that is required is that we recognize and honor the goodness, beauty, and love that is our true nature. As we do this we remind one another of who we really are.

This matters because the expectation that we have it all together or that we have achieved some kind of spiritual perfection is both oppressive and absurd.

This is being the body of Christ.

The love of God is not our exclusive possession. Our incarnation of it is finite and flawed.

There is a mutual recognition and affirmation of the divine goodness and love within ourselves and that within others as well here.

We too easily forget that we are all expressions of love and goodness. Sometimes it is difficult to recognize this. But the reality persists in spite of the drama and distress we pile on top of it.

This Love that we incarnate and call forth leads us into service of one another, our community and the wider world.

This matters because it gets to the heart of why we are here on this planet.

The prophet Micah asks;