I’m looking forward to being with you online on Sunday and I’m very grateful for the way livestreaming keeps us connected, especially with those that are far away,  but I can also honestly say that this week I have a fresh ache in my spirit about how long it’s been since we’ve been in a shared space with one another. This is hard. We can do it, and we will…but sometimes it feels like a tough hill to climb. If you can think of a simple way to connect even voice-to-voice with someone this week, do it. Right now we still need physical distance for safety, but we need relational connection to be well.

This week, a whole bunch of different things happened that sent me in the direction of considering what it might mean for me to decolonize my thinking, my acting, my beliefs. It’s early going, but I’m already intrigued, challenged…and sometimes feeling just a bit overwhelmed by how deeply embedded many of my assumptions and concepts truly are. I do understand that my journey is just that – my journey. It’s not yours. I don’t want to foist my stuff on you. That said, I suspect we’ve all got things either built into what we believe or underpinning the systems that we take for granted that could use some house-cleaning. We won’t really get into that part of it this week, but we will start into a bit of an exploration of decolonizing what we believe that overlaps with the general exploration of seeking the common good that we have been digging around in for the past few weeks. And I can tell you, sometimes the water gets deep pretty fast on this one, so have your coffee first.