Our Lenten theme this year is Inhabiting Love, based on the book by Ed Bacon, The 8 Habits of Love. When I proposed this idea at the Council of Ministries, people enthusiastically signed on to going deeper into love.

Perhaps one of the most important questions I can ask myself is, “To what extent is my life loving?” For me, that is a measure of success more than anything else. A couple of months ago I was reading the book With or Without God by Gretta Vosper, a minister in the United Church of Canada who has challenged the church’s notions of God. She has taken a lot of heat for her views.

Whatever she believes about God, she has captured what is at the heart of our faith tradition: What the world needs in order to survive and thrive is the radical simplicity that lies at the core of Christianity and so many other faiths and systems of thought—an abiding trust in the way of love as expressed in just and compassionate living. Out of the multitude of understandings of religion, spirituality, and faith; out of the varying views of the origins, nature, and purpose of life; out of the countless individual experiences of what might be called divine; out of it all may be distilled a core that, very simply put, is love….  The church the future needs is one of people gathering to share and recommit themselves to loving relationships with themselves, their families, the wider community, and the planet.

So come join together during Lent—beginning with Ash Wednesday on March 6 and culminating with Easter on April 21—to inhabit love.

Peace,

Penny