00:00:10.000 - 00:00:26.760

Friends this morning. Our minds have been nourished. Um the spaces for our imagination have been opened and we are about to bring this time of reflection to a closure by listening once again to dr timothy Bill

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, who I invite to this lectern to deliver the third and final current lecture of our 2023 midwinter series , creating a space for hope in the anthropocene. Thank you. I need this. Do I need

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to leave this open this laptop? Probably do just it's okay to close it. Okay, great. So I have a little space. Great. Thank you. Uh talking about different ways of convening people

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and um and and getting their attention when I used to direct our Humanity Center. Oh, do you want to grab that? It's got a lot of plugs in it. So it's like the Matrix.

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Um when I used to direct our our Humanity Center at Case Western Reserve. Uh the thing that worked best was to do the dimming the lights thing because so many of them were, you know, theatergoers

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. And so they were used to the intermission and when the delights in the lobby would dim and they didn't know why it worked. They kind of had some vague recollection that this happens in some other context

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. But it was always funny watching people kind of look around and then go and sit down wondering why they knew that they were supposed to do that in that moment. Anyway, thank you for coming back

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. And thanks again to to Patrick and Grace and Natalie. I just feel like my own vocabulary is being enriched, My own kind of pool of imagination is being enriched and if we were to do an

00:02:14.710 - 00:02:30.650

extra day, I imagine what would be really kind of cool would be to reflect on how we would do what we did differently after learning what we have learned from you all and from each other. So

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I'm really grateful to be part of this. In the first talk, I talked about reality grief and hope, reality against ideology, grief against denial and hope against despair as the sort of prophetic arc of

00:02:47.150 - 00:03:02.680

the conversation that I think we need to be having on the horizon of what may be a finite human future, on the horizon of some kind of collapse that we can see is coming. And the second

00:03:02.680 - 00:03:20.070

one talked a little bit about composting Christianity, composting our theology sort of digging into it and turning it and seeing what might grow from it and maybe sometimes needing to cremate instead of compost. But those are

00:03:20.070 - 00:03:38.190

our options. And I offered a translation of genesis , one that first creation story that several of you asked for copies of and mona says that she will include that in a follow up email that to attendees

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. So you'll get it that way. And I think she also printed out a few copies that are over at the registration table too. So, um , I'd love to hear from any of you about

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that as you have a chance to read it and look at it as well. Um now in this third one I want to move and we can think of religion as beliefs practices and institutions. I sort

00:03:59.750 - 00:04:15.000

of take that from Michelle Fuko and last time we were talking about beliefs theology this time I want to talk about practices and if we had one more it would be about institutions and our addiction to perpetuity um

00:04:15.010 - 00:04:32.080

in our institution and some stuff like that. But we're going to talk about, you know, beliefs about practices about the work of creating space for moving through and between reality grief and hope. I think

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reality of grief and hope on the one hand is a kind of an arc and a path, but also it's a kind of, you all know this term from trinity arian theology, perico Racists, a

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kind of interaction and dynamic between them. Um and and I think that this work of reality grief and hope is not about problem solving but about imagining possibilities . And I think we have a context for that

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given um you know, our our our religious communities have some experience and some resources for thinking about possibilities as opposed to problem solving. And Patrick, you were giving me some some great additional resources in the

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last, in your last two lectures around that as well. Grace these amazing four words that you've brought into my imagination are opening up all kinds of ways of thinking about that. So that's what I want

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to think about with you this late morning, how we can create space, what kinds of principles, what kinds of resources, what do we already have at hand To do that work? This is very

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raw for me. I was working on it up till about, I don't know, 11 last night . Thanks by the way to whoever left a nice bottle of wine in my basket in my room.

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Um That made it a little more uh pleasurable, pleasant. Um I have to admit that that this kind of work thinking about this sort of communal work of creating spaces is kind of hard for me.

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It's not my disposition. I am an I. N. T. P. And Myers Briggs language , I'm a five on the angiogram shout out to the fives. So I'm a big time introvert,

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I am a kind of D I. Y sort of person. My impulse on this horizon that we're talking about today is to go Alex supertramp chris mccandles , you know the story into the wild Jon Krakauer's

00:06:43.490 - 00:06:59.860

book to go into the wild off the grid with maybe my immediate family and a few close friends and some survival gear and a bow and some seeds and canned goods and maybe some weed. Um So bear

00:06:59.860 - 00:07:15.550

with me in in this in this work around around the kind of communal work that I'm from Denver, so I can say that. Um And so what I'd like to share are some design cues for for

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that might I think be suggestive for us for thinking about creating this kind of space and I have three different people and two different ideas from each of these three people. So three people times two ideas each

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the first and I'll just go through each of these and this will help me stay on my time. I think if I can stick to like a little less than 10 minutes each, the first is Adrian

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Marie Brown and indirectly Octavia Butler, who Patrick mentioned because parable of the sower is a big influence on her work around emergent strategies and science fictional imagination. So those are the two ideas I want to draw

00:08:00.310 - 00:08:20.990

from her. The second is peter block on structures of belonging and possibility versus problem solving. And then the third is bio coma laugh and his ideas around fugitivity and sanctuary on the one hand and his image

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of rupture as classroom. So those are the three times to that I'm going to say a little bit about and I don't pretend to have a kind of integrated, putting them all together into a model here

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. This is again, like I said, raw , I want to sort of put them all out here and trust that we can have some conversation and um you know, see what emerges as you know

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from yesterday, I'm a I'm a believer in the generative power of chaos of the deep of to home . And so this is a little too who've about who I'm going to just sort of flood you with

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a bunch of ideas and create some space for us to sort of think about these images, mold them and see what kinds of connections might emerge. Okay , so first Adrian Marie Brown on emergent strategies and

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on the science fictional imagination. Adrian Marie Brown describes herself as a writer, facilitator, coach, mentor , mediator, pleasure activist, sci fi scholar, doula healer, tarot reader, which cheerleader singer,

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philosopher Clear black, multiracial lover of life, living in Detroit. That's how she describes herself in her book, emergent strategies. She is a phenomena all kinds of ways. She is an architect of this

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, of what she calls emergent strategies, which is a model of communal work around transformative justice and emergent strategies. This book is very much inspired by one of the grandmothers of afrofuturism, Octavia Butler, the

00:10:13.980 - 00:10:26.740

science fiction writer and especially her book Parable of the sower, which if you haven't read, Um I really strongly encourage you to go and read that um or reread it, even if you've read it before

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. Um it's this dystopian story that in fact starts around 2024. Um it focuses on a young black woman living in this gated community in a world of fire and pandemic and um you know shortage and all

00:10:46.560 - 00:11:07.920

kinds of dystopian nightmare reality. And it's about her Working within these broken systems in ways that can move toward transformational justice and part of what Lauren is doing in this story. And this was written in like

00:11:07.930 - 00:11:18.990

I think it's 1993, it might have been 1994 , but it's set in 2024. So it's quite chilling. Um she is the daughter of a baptist minister and she is sort of writing her own scripture

00:11:18.990 - 00:11:31.230

that draws from uh Christianity, but that's something very different from it. If you know process theology and you read it you'll think wow that sounds a lot like process theology but it's called earth seed. And

00:11:31.230 - 00:11:50.620

she has these little passages and one of the most important passages goes something like all that you touch, you change all that you change changes you. God has changed and this is very core I think for

00:11:50.630 - 00:12:07.690

Adrian Marie brown and her thinking about emergent strategy. So emergent strategy is a adaptive relational leadership model that is distilled in many ways from parable of the sower earth seed and other work from Octavia Butler. Uh

00:12:07.700 - 00:12:24.220

it draws on some different scientific discourses and models for its own kind of generative ideas. One of those is the science of biomimicry which is about the imitation of patterns and systems and elements of non human biology

00:12:24.220 - 00:12:43.120

of the nonhuman biological world and using those as models and design principles for human organization for human relationships for adaptive change, working within systems again toward transformational justice and liberation. So bio mimicry is one and then

00:12:43.120 - 00:13:03.230

another that she draws on as the science of chaos and complexity. Um which is a multidisciplinary field that is thinking about the ways new complex systems emerge on the edge of chaos, on the edge between too

00:13:03.230 - 00:13:16.020

much order and too much chaos, you might say . But the generative itty of chaos, I think that's a really core idea for her. Um and so overall, I'm going to quote her a little

00:13:16.020 - 00:13:35.210

bit emergent strategy is a model of organization of community , of leadership that elevates as she puts it relatively simple interactions and networked interactions, not top down hierarchical interactions to create complex path modern systems and transformations including

00:13:35.210 - 00:13:58.660

adaptation, interdependence and decentralization, fractal awareness, resilience and transformational justice, non linear and iterative change, thereby she continues creating more possibilities. Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity

00:13:58.670 - 00:14:13.370

to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for . Very similar to in my mind what Patrick was talking about this morning. Um So that's emergent strategy . Second idea from Adrian Marie Brown that I'd like

00:14:13.370 - 00:14:28.040

to draw out is um this idea of a science fictional imagination, she sees her work as science fiction work, whether she's writing a science fiction novel or not, it's science fiction work. She says that

00:14:28.040 - 00:14:41.470

we are and I really believe this, that we are in an imagination battle we are in an imagination battle and she says science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. That's what we were

00:14:41.470 - 00:15:01.230

doing this morning, I suspect that is is what many of you are up to practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories, it is our right and responsibility to create a new world

00:15:01.000 - 00:15:16.810

. So this science fiction imagination, the science fiction imagination that that she's talking about is especially attuned, which is helpful in what we're trying to think about here to the dual crisis, the crisis of demo

00:15:16.830 - 00:15:33.280

democracy and the crisis of climate. They're completely interconnected and intertwined. We can't address one without the other . And she says, on that horizon, we need to have a level of dystopian consideration. Certain

00:15:33.280 - 00:15:48.720

climate realities are no longer wild imaginings. They are happening and they are coming. And here are some questions that are that that that is shaped that are shaping her thinking around that, quoting her What is

00:15:48.720 - 00:16:02.910

a just transition economy? What is an economy for the phase of transition from this way of relating to earth and resources to the way we might relate to a watered earth or a frozen earth? How do

00:16:02.910 - 00:16:18.220

we prepare? Not just for suffering but for sharing and innovation? How do we resource the local and still honor our nomadic tendency? Our natural migration patterns which we deny by trying to stay in only one

00:16:18.220 - 00:16:33.850

place, our global interconnectedness. How do we prepare the Children in our lives to be visionary and to love nature, even when the changes are frightening and incomprehensible to be abundant, when what we consider valuable

00:16:33.850 - 00:16:49.910

is shifting from gold to collard greens, How do we articulate a compelling economic vision to sustain us through the unimaginable to unite us as things fall apart? How do we experience our beauty and humanity in every

00:16:49.910 - 00:17:04.080

condition? And I really invite you to be thinking about what are the questions that we as churches and religious communities and as the church might add to those questions. So that's Adrian Marie Brown, the first

00:17:04.080 - 00:17:22.750

person in the first two ideas. Second person next to ideas, Peter Block, Peter Block on structures of belonging and possibility versus problem solving. So Peter Block is a community organizer and a coach and executive

00:17:22.750 - 00:17:42.880

coach leadership coach. He offers a model for emergent grassroots community gathering, focused on empowering people to engage one another in imagining alternative futures for democracy on the horizon of climate crisis. And so the first idea

00:17:42.890 - 00:18:00.980

quite simple structures of belonging, and this is from a book he wrote called community, the structure of belonging. Um and and there he talks about leadership as first and foremost about convening, thinking about that

00:18:00.980 - 00:18:14.140

story of deciding to go to Yellowstone and not really knowing what was gonna happen, but what you did was you created a structure for belonging and you trusted that that was enough and then that what people bring

00:18:14.140 - 00:18:26.780

to it is what's important. So leadership is convening , not about, like a content and a lot of agenda, but rather a kind of creating of a structure of belonging that needs to be intentionally diverse

00:18:26.780 - 00:18:42.960

and and intersectional within which members can realize their agency . He talks about leadership as confronting others with their own freedom, confronting people with their own freedom, sorting out what kinds of things we have control over

00:18:42.960 - 00:18:55.320

and what kinds of things we don't have control over and leaning into those. So that's the structure of belonging. Quite a simple concept, but it's very generative for me and and important for me to be

00:18:55.320 - 00:19:08.030

thinking about, I feel. Um and then this possibility work shifting the the need to break away to orient ourselves away from problem solving. And I don't mean to diss on problem solving. I mean,

00:19:08.040 - 00:19:30.370

it's been good for us humans in so many ways , but to shift away from problem solving and toward imagining creating and creating new possibilities, alternative futures. Thinking about a community as a collection of gifts and

00:19:30.380 - 00:19:45.670

assets rather than a set of problems to be addressed , right? Um and and a possibility is simply a future condition that is not yet available to us , but that we can nonetheless begin to imagine.

00:19:45.680 - 00:19:59.310

So, meeting to identify and solve problems, you know, that's that's great for what it does, but it can never get us to a new possibility right? It problem, the problem solving mode,

00:19:59.310 - 00:20:07.930

you solve one problem like matt like matt Damon's character in the martian and then you get to the next problem and you solve that and you solve that and then, you know heaven when I'm done, I

00:20:07.930 - 00:20:21.290

guess or something, but it's just this, it's a linear path that you cannot get off of so long as you're in problem solving mode, possibility thinking is about trying to do something nonlinear, trying to

00:20:21.290 - 00:20:36.470

sort of jump the tracks of that path of problem solving in some way. So central questions when we think about possibility thinking are what do we want to make together? What kind of future do we want

00:20:36.470 - 00:20:51.930

to create together, given the reality that we are facing? Right? So, um I find this just incredibly uh suggestive and rich when I put this in relation to Adrian Marie Brown thinking about what do

00:20:51.930 - 00:21:03.280

we have at hand? We as religious communities, I think that we get that there are other modes than problem solving. I don't think that's mostly what we do in our religious communities. We do a

00:21:03.280 - 00:21:22.070

lot of imagination work hopefully um we are oriented toward imagining possibility. I think at best our prophetic and pastoral roles are in many ways about trying to imagine alternative futures that that uh as walter Brueggemann talks about

00:21:22.080 - 00:21:36.730

, you know, an alternative world that that is an alternative to the world that is offered as the only available world by the empire, which he describes as what techno military, industrial, global capitalism or

00:21:36.730 - 00:21:47.300

something like that. Um and so we we've got the resources to do that. We have the kind of disposition in many ways, I think in religious communities to do that, we've got the rituals,

00:21:47.300 - 00:22:00.080

we've got the liturgies, we've got the scriptures, the myths, the poetry, um to create these kinds of spaces and to use them to create new structures of belonging for reality, grief and hope.

00:22:00.080 - 00:22:18.730

So that's number two peter block structures of belonging and possibility versus problem solving. The final one is bio comma laugh on fugitivity and sanctuary and then also on rupture as classroom and bio. Camelot is a Nigerian

00:22:18.730 - 00:22:33.060

philosopher, he's now living in India, he was raised evangelical christian, he's he like Adrian Marie Brown describes himself as a recovering christian, but both of them have a lot of influence from christian theology.

00:22:33.070 - 00:22:48.930

He reads Katherine Keller um and Philip Yancey, things like this, which is interesting um for for someone like this, he's an academic with a PhD but he left academia, he's brilliant. I have to

00:22:48.930 - 00:23:03.100

admit him a bit of a Fanboy about bio these days is incredibly provocative, really poetic writer and mostly what I'm going to do is read some paragraphs from him because I think they're just so incredible and suggestive

00:23:03.150 - 00:23:18.010

and go from there. But so first idea fugitivity and sanctuary how we doing on time, pretty good , Okay, fugitivity and sanctuary, fugitivity, right , is what it sounds like being on the run

00:23:18.020 - 00:23:34.250

, being chased not being able to stay put being a homed, right? And what he's arguing what he's saying is this is the new state of us . This is us as humanity at this point on

00:23:34.250 - 00:23:52.130

the horizon of the anthropocene that and that this fugitivity that is our new new the new way the new state of the human is both literal and figurative, so it's literal in that amidst the twin crises of

00:23:52.130 - 00:24:08.110

democracy and climate that we've been talking about, we're seeing more and more migration, more and more fleeing , we will certainly see increasing a fugitivity in this literal respect with global warming, with extreme weather events

00:24:08.110 - 00:24:25.740

, with water and food shortages with conflicts and wars and other forms of violence that will inevitably occur as a result of these kinds of global climate changes. But fugitivity is also figurative for him. He's a

00:24:25.740 - 00:24:42.490

philosopher. And so he is also saying that we are all, in some sense, fugitives of a modern Eurocentric worldview, at least those of us who are modern and Eurocentric fugitives of a But you know

00:24:42.490 - 00:25:02.740

, in many ways as many argue this, this narrative of modernity is global is imperial is total izing uh as well. But the fugitives of this narrative of progress whose end is being announced by the dawning

00:25:02.740 - 00:25:19.870

of the anthropocene that we are no longer at home , in that we are now fugitives from this, this this modernity, That is all we know. In many ways it's anthropocene centric de sac realized world

00:25:19.880 - 00:25:34.040

no longer makes sense to us. And we are talking about the D. Sacral ization of water. And this is this is this is a symptom of the modern West where everything is turned into resources to

00:25:34.040 - 00:25:52.170

be monetized and extracted in the service of this anthropocene centric narrative of progress and infinite growth through extraction. So we run home from that. It's not making sense anymore. The anthropocene tells us that we're not

00:25:52.170 - 00:26:07.750

in control now. We may have created the the circumstances that will lead to, you know, our own our own end. But we're not. We don't need to save the planet, right? It's

00:26:07.750 - 00:26:22.500

going to go on without us. We've just created the conditions that make it um problematic for us to survive. And so I'm going to read a couple of bio quotes here. The anthropocene means we are

00:26:22.500 - 00:26:38.290

all fugitives or at least those of us gestating in modern worlds who have been touched by the material yearnings for stability and progress. We are being chased, the relentless curdling of the edges, the splashing of

00:26:38.290 - 00:26:56.400

threatening ocean waves, the dimming of the sun by the dust in the air and the disappearance of bees all conspired to remove the post ice age refuge. We have long known as home. The ground has

00:26:56.400 - 00:27:14.010

withdrawn her endorsement. We are no longer at ease . But this crisis. This rupture in the known and the familiar. This prick carrot e that it generates this fugitivity that it generates also for bio opens

00:27:14.010 - 00:27:25.040

up, opens us up to the sacred in new ways. And some of you may be I know you are Jose the that that that german word on Heimlich, which means unholy, but it's also what

00:27:25.040 - 00:27:38.350

Freud used for the uncanny. And it's also what Rudolph Otto, the early 20th century religion is talked about for religious experience and encounter with the mysterious um That is both terrifying and fascinating and I think that's

00:27:38.350 - 00:27:52.380

what bio is talking about here. So it opens us up to the sacred and even God. And he's putting God in scare quotes, I guess you could say because he thinks it's an insufficient concept of

00:27:52.380 - 00:28:06.200

the sacred. But I'm going to read a little more from him about that we are confronted with a crack in the wall of the familiar, a longing with no traceable lineage, a homesickness with neither medicine

00:28:06.240 - 00:28:22.750

nor map, a memory of a place. We do not know how to name a feeling that God is captivating lee close by. Indeed, the ineffable quality we rudely call God may not be disconnected from

00:28:22.750 - 00:28:42.520

those evolutionary moments and opportune Kairos events when something traversal that is crosswise or interrupted, interruptive, pierced through the membranes of the habitual pierced through the membranes of the habitual and undid reality as it had been experienced

00:28:42.530 - 00:29:02.290

. God must be the way reality overwhelms itself, tears open new dimensions of the ordinary kind of amazing , right? I'm gonna read a little bit more . One might say fugitivity is the theology of incalculable

00:29:02.290 - 00:29:18.520

. Itty and hopelessness. The fugitive rejects the promise of repair and refuses the hope of the established order problem solving mode. Right? By clinging to outlawed desires, barely perceptible imaginations, alien gestures. The

00:29:18.520 - 00:29:36.610

fugitive inhabits the moving wilds. She or he lives in open spaces with rogue planets and stars astride a curious sky in the tense between this of things God , not in quotes this time, surprisingly in the

00:29:36.610 - 00:29:49.750

love, surprisingly in love with the fugitive God often meets the fugitive in that space between stories to break him open to show him a burning bush. I love that he knows the biblical fugitive stories, although

00:29:49.750 - 00:30:07.130

he needs her one to to show him a burning bush to rename him to gobble him up with mouth as wide as a whales and then perhaps to spit him out again. So that's moses, that's Jacob

00:30:07.140 - 00:30:25.820

being renamed Israel and that's Jonah. In the whale , he should've had Hagar just saying right. Fugitivity is the site of hopelessness of so called defeat of modest bearings and whispered songs for citizens of the anthropocene

00:30:25.820 - 00:30:40.670

, who must meet the incomprehensibility of the moment. That's what we're trying to do. The fugitive's path glows in the dark. There were the path in the call to defeat leads. We might come face

00:30:40.670 - 00:30:55.770

to face with something deeper than solutions. Something too sacred for words to embrace. So sanctuary. Then that's fugitivity Sanctuary. The other side of this idea , Sanctuary is not refuge, It's not shelter,

00:30:55.780 - 00:31:08.990

it's not return to home and it's not a new home. It's not permitted. Permanent Sanctuary is temporary . And he talks about sanctuary as the invitation of Sanctuary is not to regain mastery over the elements,

00:31:08.990 - 00:31:25.390

not to assert our dominance, not to propose control , not to defeat oppressive systems by launching critique and resistance, not to become holier and goods, or citizens not to become enlightened and not to attach itself

00:31:25.400 - 00:31:37.080

to tightly to any climate solution. There is a not knowing that stirs at the heart of this proposed enterprise, one which is echoed in paul's letter to the romans. We do not know what we ought

00:31:37.080 - 00:31:55.010

to pray for, but the spirit himself intercedes herself . I'm going to say intercedes for us through we wordless groans, this intercessory inter carnation, all groaning of sanctuary is a site of fragile inquiry, of

00:31:55.010 - 00:32:10.420

festive celebration, of rigorous study and of keen attention to what wants to be known. The invitation is instead a modest coming down to earth, a taking care of our kin, a departed departed and lingering

00:32:10.420 - 00:32:30.700

kin, a learning how to become good ancestors. A cultivating of regimes of visual itty that acknowledged the invisible. Whoa! My predecessor lecturers today. A cultivating of a sensitivity to the cacophony of the wild

00:32:30.700 - 00:32:45.870

that presses itself against the harmonies of the city and so on. The invitation to make sanctuary today is to acknowledge that we are fugitives, that home is no longer welcoming and that maybe the ways we often

00:32:45.870 - 00:33:05.200

seek to fix our problems are the problem itself. So that's that's bio on fugitivity and sanctuary. The other idea, which I'll explain very briefly is this idea of the rupture as classroom. And this was

00:33:05.200 - 00:33:15.940

something he said at the end of a podcast and it felt like a benediction and charge. So I feel like it's a nice place for us to sort of start winding up here. He said the times

00:33:15.940 - 00:33:29.530

are urgent. Let us slow down. And then he said that three times. But I'm aware of my time, ironically, I know not talking, he said, I'm not talking about taking a vacation

00:33:29.530 - 00:33:47.320

or yoga in the office. I'm talking about slowing down to listen to notice the other temporal realities that are cross intersecting and intersecting the temporal reality of progress . Moving forward. They're blocking our path. And

00:33:47.320 - 00:34:01.800

the place where the obstacle is is where the treasure is. So let us sit around the treasure, the obstacle, the treasure. Let us sit around the obstacle. Let us treat the rupture in the

00:34:01.800 - 00:34:19.090

ground as a classroom and maybe by being there, we might become different. I just absolutely love this notion of letting ourselves be interrupted of letting the rupture be the classroom, paying attention to it. Not

00:34:19.090 - 00:34:30.540

as a problem, but as a gift. And maybe that's something that we have some, some aptitude for. I think in our religious communities and back to back to Patrick, I see a gift in

00:34:30.540 - 00:34:45.040

you for that, right? That's what I want to invite and call us to. I was reminded this morning of a line from it's a him, but it's also Alfred Lord Tennyson poem that walter Brueggemann

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sent to me when he had read my book, he said, and this is what it says are Little systems have their day, they have their day and ceased to be. They are but broken lights

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of thee and thou o Lord art more than they . I think I think bio could sort of use that could translate that. You know, he put quotes around Lord and stuff like that, but I

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was thinking about little kingdoms. I know Grace had to catch and catch an airplane, but the little kingdoms in her story with the Professor very similar. So, this idea of the rupture as the classroom

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. The rupture in the ground is a classroom. What about the rupture in the ground as church? What would it look like? To imagine church as a space of rupture and opening to a place for

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opening two new, somewhat terrifying and also fascinating possibilities to create space. Sacred space set apart space. To notice these other temporal realities that are interrupting and interrogating our familiar narratives of Salvation history, our lessons

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and carols of progress, our little systems to recognize the treasure that is this interruption. This obstacle which may open us to the precarious wonder of our earth creature leanness. The Church has a place and community

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that gathers around the rupture in the ground, the Church as a kind of ground zero to face reality , to grieve and to find deep hope in community on the horizon that is dawning before us. Thank

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you. Thank you. Thank you. We will