"You don't have to opt into being loved, and you can't screw it up. It's just something that's true about you. Zero requirements.Now look around at your world. This is also true about every other person you see. Literally every single person you know, every person you are thinking of right now is passionately loved by and essentially belonging to God. Are they being treated as if that is true? Does this culture value them the way it values you? Does our legal system protect them and serve them the way it protects and serves you? Do they have the same protection from COVID-19 that you do?"

"The violent anguish of our country right now is nothing less than a full-throated indictment of the chasm between our words and our deeds. We, who love freedom, have the largest prison population in the world. African Americans, who make up a little over 12% of our country, comprise 38% of all incarcerated Americans. We, who trumpet equality, participate in a system in which the median Black household has a mere 1/10th of the wealth of the median White household. Even the distribution of devastation from the corona virus pandemic reveals our society's inequity - as 33% of all COVID related hospitalizations are African American.

Our words do not match our deeds. Our ways are not like God's ways. God's breath gives life, but our way of life takes away the breath of our Black siblings. We can't keep on like this. So says the Lord."

God commanded Israel to build rest into their lives, to cherish rest, and honor it even in the midst of crisis. And the change God had wrought in their life created a crisis. Of course, it was a good change, of course it was a liberating, life-giving change, but it was still a crisis. It still had a catastrophic feeling about it. And it very much required something from them. No, not something: Everything. This change required everything. Not one aspect of their lives was left unaffected. Even though change was freeing, even though it led to their salvation, it was scary and inconvenient. They had to have faith, not just as an idea or a concept, but faith was how they had to live. And they had to work - to constantly be on the move, constantly respond to God, constantly seek a way forward.

"Paul's letters to churches are particularly helpful in trying to understand how the first Christians believed they were meant to walk the Way of Love. They are helpful because Paul is so single minded. His approach shifts, sometimes wooing sometimes rebuking. His mood swings, from jubilant to exasperated, from smitten to smiting. But he is always about the same thing: how a community lives in response to the truth of Jesus in their lives. The only obedient response to Jesus is love for one another. The only freedom we have is in serving one other."

You are a blessing. Your very being in this world is a blessing that helps make the world more of what it is meant to be.

This is not true only sometimes, when you are at your best, or when you are living the "right" way. This is not only true when you are believing the right thing, or acting the way you're supposed to. It's especially not only true when you are being productive, useful, or competent. Your being a blessing is not based on something you are doing or have done. How can I say this with such confidence? Because the fact of your blessedness is about who God is and how God sees you.

God looks upon you with love. This is the Gospel. This is why church exists, why you and I even know each other - so that we can remember the basic reality that God is looking upon you, upon me, upon us, with love. To be looked upon with love is to be blessed. So our foundation, our genesis, the beginning of our self-understanding must be that we are in our very being blessed by God.

Communion is so personal. You may be standing in a line with a bunch of people, then kneeling next to a bunch of people, then sitting back down in your seat surrounded by a bunch of people, but when it comes your time to receive the sacrament, it's you. Your time. You and Jesus. In that moment, you are the person who is experiencing communion with God, you are the one receiving grace, you are the one being fed spiritual food for your journey, your faith, your life. It is the height of intimacy.

Communion is also so corporate. You stand in line with a bunch of people. You kneel next to a bunch of people, you sit back down surrounded by a bunch of people. Even as you're preparing for your moment to receive the sacrament, you can't help but notice how very not alone you are.

Throughout Easter, my blogs and our podcast, Interrupting Grace, are exploring The Way of Love - a Jesus centered rule of life composed of a set of practices that help to define the Episcopal approach to faith. The 7 practices meant for daily use are Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, Rest. This week we are focusing on Pray. I have written to you about prayer before, and I always feel like I'm trying to convince you something about why prayer matters, or why you should do it, or how Episcopalians pray. It always feels forced to me. So today, instead of talking to you about prayer, I decided just to pray to God and let you see it. What follows is my prayer.

Isn't this what we all want? To be remarkable: To avoid the commonplace. To excel in everything we do and in all that we touch. [...]

But how does one excel at quarantine? How can I remarkably stay home? How can I eschew mediocrity while sheltering in place?

The eschewing of mediocrity has done a lot for us as a people, but it has not prepared us to be alone with ourselves. It has not prepared us to accept who we currently are, and right now, sheltering in place, who we currently are is one of the most real things we are experiencing. Living with who I actually am right now - not who I want to be or who I will become - but who I am in this moment is perhaps one of the most tangible aspects of this quarantine. How will I love myself and receive the love I need right now if I am not remarkable, if I am often quite mediocre, if I cannot achieve or perform, if I cannot eschew the norm, but would - given the chance - run with reckless abandon to wildly embrace something resembling normal?

"Right now, in this moment, you are loved, magnificently loved, extravagantly loved by the God who made you. You are of great value to the Creator of the world. Your heart and your life are precious. And right now, in this moment, you have the capacity to forget that. Just as sure as you're tempted to make everything about right now "significant", you're also tempted to think that you're inessential or useless - that you're forgotten, that you're insignificant. For you, for us, repentance is turning towards the truth of your belovedness, your utter belonging to God in Jesus Christ."

"If you ask me if I believe in the Resurrection, I say, 'I don't believe in the Resurrection when I don't love my enemies. I don't believe in the Resurrection when I don't pray for those who persecute me. I don't believe in the Resurrection when I disregard the poor and the marginalized.'" - Christian philosopher, Peter Rollins.

Rollins' words changed me. They shifted my understanding of belief away from simply stating things I thought were true to a more bodily experienced reality. They forced upon me the question, "What does it look like to actually believe in the Resurrection?" Rollins insisted that loving your enemies is what it looks like to believe in the Resurrection. Belief can't just be something we think. Belief is shown forth in how we live. Belief cannot live alone and isolated in the life of our minds. That is not belief. That is ideology. We breathe into and out of our beliefs as we walk in this world. Our actions are the embodiment of what we really believe.