Love.Always.Hopes.

[Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.-1 Corinthians 13:7

As many times as Corinthians 13 has been used for weddings, I'm still unsure that the text is speaking about the Eros Love. But this year the first Sunday in Lent is Valentine's Day. So let's assume, at least for the next couple of days, that God cares about our love lives. 

As an extremely single clergy person, I am not ashamed to admit that I have more questions than answers when it comes to the intersection of God and Eros Love. 

BUT during my Lenten fast from doubt, this text provides much hope. The idea that love "always hopes" is powerful. It is particularly hopeful for those of us who are seeking Eros Love and may be losing hope. The idea that love itself never loses hope is amazingly hopeful. 

And a doubt-free way of seeking love must begin with remembering that there is a manifestation of this hope-filled love that already lives within you. So the goal after that becomes connecting with the same hope-filled love within someone else. 

In this doubt-free hope-filled season, let us live into the hope that God is with us, even in our desires to love. And let us spend the remainder of Lent seeking love not out of fear or anxiety or doubt based on past experiences. But let us seek love with the knowledge that love ALWAYS HOPES

40 Days of Belief

We all have dreams. We all have heart's desires. And I'm wondering what would happen if for 40 days we let go of the concept of "too good to be true" and just believed. What if we prayed in a way that wasn't begging God but instead prayed with a peace-filled belief that God was on our side and God was the one who gave us the dreams and desires in the first place. What are some of the dreams you have? Can you see God's purpose in those dreams? How can you go about asserting your belief for 40 day? 

Giving up Doubt for Lent

Sacred Conversations on Race

How to Lead a Sacred Conversation on Race

Facilitated by Rev. Dominique C. Atchison (Aka Purple Rev.)

How do you hold a conversation about race from a faith base? The United Church of Christ has has developed the "Sacred Conversation on Race". For the past three years I have been working to develop curriculum that helps ordained and lay leaders find the best way to lead their congregations in these conversations. I am available to consult and facilitate a conversation and/or help church leadership develop a conversation that would best serve your faith community. I'm available to work with churches of all denominations.

Please contact me at dominique.chantell@gmail.com for more information. 

Some clips from a previous training New York School of Ministry "A Sacred Conversation on Race:

Decoding Our Racialized Language

Ground Rule: Keep the Conversation on the Topic of Race

Realms of Racism: Thinking Beyond the Interpersonal

Live into the Discomfort for the Sake of the Process

#StandwithBWG Vigil Litany

This weekend we had a prayer vigil at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in collaboration with the #StandwithBWG campaign:

#StandwithBWG Litany

written by Rev. Dominique C. Atchison 

Leader: God of all, we have come together today celebrating the life and ministry of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We gather honoring his legacy and the work he did to build your Beloved Community. We gather today specifically to honor Black Women and Girls, a segment of that Beloved Community whose struggles are often met with inaction and silence. Today we commit to giving voice and taking action on behalf of black women and girls.

All: We Stand with Black Women and Girls.

Leader: Creator God, as the world wakes up to the truth that Black Lives Matter, let us remember to be as intentional and active in our affirmation of the lives of black women and girls as we are about the lives of black men and boys.

All: We Stand with Black Women and Girls

Leader: God of our ancestors and elders, we come today standing on the shoulders of the mothers, grandmothers great grandmothers, aunties, women who were not related but who cared for us, warrior women, Civil Rights leaders, women of faith, women of hope, women who spirits and DNA we carry with us wherever we go.

All: We Stand with Black Women and Girls

Leader: God of our future we come today not shaming or judging but loving and affirming, our young women and girls, remembering that they are our present and our future. We also commit to leave this world a better place for the ones who are to come.

All: We Stand with Black Women and Girls. 

PurpleRev. Speaks (...on other people's blogs)

In addition to her personal blog The Purple Rev speaks for larger blogs and website including The Huffington Post Blog, For Harriet, Young Clergy Women's Project and the African American Lectionary. Samples can be found below.

PurpleRev Speaks on the Huffington Post (Click Here)

PurpleRev Speaks and Blogs (Click Here)

Blest Assurance

"...Though trials should come, let this blest assurance control..."

I have begun a practice of asking my Facebook friends if they have prayer requests and being really intentional about praying for each person. While praying this second time, the above words came into my spirit. These words come from a well-known and often very comforting hymn called, "It is Well with My Soul."

This song begins with the words: "When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll." These are two opposite concepts, "peace" and "sorrows". But they are both in the same space in the same song. But the conclusion is somehow still "it is well".

The words that got stuck in my head and spirit when praying were "blest assurance". And the notion of saying "it is well", feeling the same level of 'wellness', in the face of both overwhelming peace and overwhelming sorrow takes a high level of faith.

While I was praying God showed me that the people that were asking for prayer were also people who in positions of leadership in their churches, who had dedicated their lives to ministry, lay leaders and ordained clergy alike, mostly women. God show me that the people who have dedicated their lives to serving God's people and helping other people find peace, faith and wellness often find themselves having their "wellness" challenged on a regular basis. They often find that they are able to care for others much better than they know how to care for themselves. They are about to bring peace to the personal struggles of others. But it's harder to take care of their own. It's a hard thing to face taking care of others knowing that when you go home you are facing something about yourself that you have no clue how to care for. Yet somehow we keep doing what we do.

But somehow that's where the "blest assurance" comes in. It's where that "it is well" comes in. Being able to say "it is well" in peace and sorrow in one of the gifts we have as ordained and lay faith leaders. The struggle is bring that "wellness", that "blessed assurance" we've mastered in our vocational lives into our personal lives. The hope and prayer is that we can be intentional about bringing that "peace that passes all understanding" from our sermon or our Bible study lesson or counseling session or whatever we do into our own lives lives.

My prayer is that we as faith leaders (lay and ordained) can find ways to bring that blessed assurance and wellness we have when you come before God's people into the our own lives and proclaim that it "it is well".

Love,

PurpleRev.