It isn’t alive, the old church.
Instead, silenced, and you are not happy.
We forget Samuel and the voice he heard.

Is church about green tea or coffee?
Or doughnuts, or potlucks?

Love your friends.
Love your enemies.

Because the way to heal them
is to get them drunk on love.

Just write, like your life depended on it.
Just speak, like nobody is listening.

Whoever fixed anything by complaining or judging?
Whoever repaired a house with a broken hammer?

We have buildings in our childhoods.
They are crumbling ruins.
We need reminders of the world, broken that it is.

We can’t escape from this world.
It is our calling.
We were made for this brokenness.
We were made for this joy.

You have to let a little bit of the brokenness, the disease of the world
get under your skin.
This is how the antibody works.

I think the way home is now.
It isn’t in the future.
Every moment is a choice
to be here, to be present
to the beauty and pain that is our world.

Every moment is a choice to love and serve God
with gladness, and singleness of heart,
rejoicing, even down to the grave.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.