Above All, Trust in the Slow Work of God

By God’s amazing, slow, and steady grace, the community of New College Berkeley celebrates our 40th anniversary this year! In April 1977, David Gill and Ginny Hearn drove to Sacramento and filed the incorporating documents for this new school in Berkeley, the culmination of years of visionary and strategic work by David, Earl Palmer, and others. For forty years this ministry has been fostered and fortified by a large community of faculty, staff, trustees, and program participants as it’s navigated the changes of history and culture.

As our fall programs begin in Berkeley and around the Greater Bay Area, we rejoice and we remember.

Film Helps

  By some reckonings, only eleven countries in the world are currently “conflict-free.” Everywhere else civil war, rampant gang killings, foreign invasions, or oppressive police states threaten citizens’ lives. In many war zones, most of the victims are children (half of the 100,000 civilian casualties in the recent battle for Mosul, for instance); they die not just of the violence perpetrated around them, but of diseases caused by contamination where water and sewage systems have been destroyed, or by political sanctions that make medication and emergency services widely unavailable. We hear the word “war” so often, it is hard to sustain either the moral outrage or the lively compassion it ought to awaken in us.

God's Light of Hope and Love

"The light in your home has changed so much since we first got together last fall,” observed one of the graduate students at our final gathering for group spiritual direction. The living room was flooded with a soft evening light, which lingered in the space. I was surprised that this engineering graduate student would notice such a thing, and yet it seemed to reflect the increasing attentiveness to God’s presence each of the students had experienced over the months of our gatherings. Within the complexity of their studies, issues on campus, issues amongst the Christian student groups, and issues in the greater world, there was a growing sense of abiding in Jesus’ love over the months. Yes, it was the light in a home’s living room, but—more importantly—the Light of the Loving God in our midst was aglow.

Community

A few weeks ago about a dozen of us were sitting around a large wooden table in Susie Lipps’s welcoming home in the wine country. Sharon Gallagher and Susie were leading us in a Wine Country Memoir-Writing Retreat, prompting us to reflect on different topics. For example, the vineyards are like communities, the particular members sharing soil, sunshine, and flourishing. They wondered how we have experienced community in our lives.  

  Not surprisingly at a New College Berkeley retreat, my mind went to that community. These days the staff and trustees of the ministry are meeting frequently as we plan the 40th anniversary celebration on September 30th, at which our longtime friend Mark Labberton will speak.

Finding God in All Things

Almost everyone who participates in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius has a conversion experience. For the past 3 years New College Berkeley has been offering this 30-week “retreat,” based on the “19th annotation” to Ignatius’ record of his own conversion experience, and I’ve been privileged to direct this retreat at Byron United Methodist Church where I serve as pastor.

Room at the Table

When they arrive, they leave their phones in a basket by the door and grab a bite to eat. We light a candle that's in the center of the table within our circle, a reminder of God in our midst. We pray for God to enlighten us.

 "How are you, and what's true for you right now?" This is the question we start with, and one evening I had them illustrate their answer by choosing an item to place on the table. The person who chose a photo of a compass said she felt a growing certainty about the road ahead. Our "camel" felt burdened. Our "lone wolf" was worried about the future—would leaving Berkeley after graduation mean unwelcome solitude?

Continuing to Grow and Dare

It's hard not to pay attention to Brené Brown, whose most recent book is Daring Greatly (NY: Avery, 2012). She has several TED talks that are among the most popular ever. She's also done those PBS special series that usually go to the pre-eminent psychology person of an era (years ago it was John Bradshaw).

What Brown is most known for is her research on vulnerability; in fact the subtitle of this current best seller is How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. I was preparing a project that included the subject of vulnerability, so I decided to give it a read. The popularity of the book hit me when I went to two bookstores and found it sold out.

Listening to God in Circles of Prayer

The new year has begun in a deluge of rain in the Bay Area—with even a few minutes of hail and snow in Berkeley on January 23!—and a new administration in Washington.Spring programs are beginning at New College Berkeley, and some are continuing into the second half of the academic year.

Our spiritual direction groups and the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises groups are mid-way through their nine-month journey. So far in these groups we’ve witnessed new life coming, the passing of loved ones and loved identities, the healing of relationships and health, responses to a new president elected and inaugurated, and a host of challenges and blessings held before God in a covenanted circle of praying friends.

The Call to Remember

Give Praise to the Lord, O my soul; let not all His blessings go from your memory. ~ Psalm 103:2

This January as we anticipate the new year, we also reflect on the past year. Remembering what God has done for us in the past can shape how we face the future. The people of God seem to need constant reminders. Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly called the Israelites to remember God’s faithfulness and commands:

What is the Kingdom of God Like?

 

Jesus said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it?It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”~Luke 13:18-19

   The parable of the mustard seed evokes thanksgiving and a sense of advent. What was small and humble has grown and is useful! Even so, it remains a humble plant that people might not notice among the cultivated plants of the garden. Jesus tells us the Kingdom of God is like this.