Letting Radical Love In

Hello my fellow friends, members, and family here at Trinity Episcopal.

Before I jump in, a bit of housekeeping:

• This next week we will also be hosting our monthly TSN Vendor Lunch, so if you’re interested in having a great time with cool people and even better food, please sign up here as well.
• Finally, our first GUPPS (Grown-Ups of Pre-Schoolers) meeting will be Monday April 24th from 10am-12pm, if you have any questions email me at george@trinitytoledo.org.

If you are like me, and you’ve been reading/watching the news, things are depressing. It seems like racism, violence, and fascism is on the rise, and that there is nothing we can do about it. At times I find myself yelling or staring into the void about how these horrific acts can continue, but as I was reading and listening this week I am reminded that all of those things are driven out of fear. They are driven, as Priest Lisa put it in her sermon this weekend, a place void of “radical love.”

In November of 2022, my family and I became members of Trinity. That service was our first time participating in Trinity outside of Trinity@Home, and Lisa had preached on the idea of “letting love in.” Racism, violence, and fascism is the natural course of action when we refuse to let love in. All three of those are about control, and love, especially radical love, is about letting go and being open to the possibility of yes. Yes, love may hurt us. Yes, love may leave. But also yes, love will find a home with us in ways that we never imagined.

In his book Falling Upward, Fr. Richard Rohr writes about how heaven is something we can create around us, and it can be as big or small as we wish it to be and it is a concept that has stuck with me because we can do the same thing with the idea of hell. When we engage with our neighbors, friends, church members, we are saying yes to the possibility of letting love in, yes to the possibility of growing our concept of heaven, and we are saying no to everything that is based in fear.

As the weather changes, and we live into this new season of life, I hope you’ll join me in taking a stand against fear, and say yes to letting radical love in. One way we can do that together is on April 24th from 5:30-7:30pm in My Brother’s Place, we will be hosting Equality Toledo’s Make Noise Monday where we will be learning about what is going on legislatively with our LGBTQ+ siblings, making protest signs, and other activities.

“A person who has found his or her True Self has learned how to live in the big picture, as part of a deep time and all of history. This change of frame and venue is called living in “the kingdom of God” by Jesus, and it is indeed a major about-face. This necessitates, of course, that we let go of our own smaller kingdoms, which we normally do not care to do. Life is all about practicing for heaven. We practice by choosing union freely-ahead of time-and now. Heaven is the state of union both here and later. As now, so will it be then. No one is in heaven unless he or she wants to be, and all are in heaven as soon as they live in union. Everyone is in heaven when he or she has plenty of room of communion and no need for exclusion. The more room you have to include, the bigger your heaven will be.” – Falling Upward, pg. 101