Friends, in these crazy, difficult days of trying to absorb so many changes coming so fast, Coracle is leaning into our mission, our vision, and our values.  You know–you’re a part of–our Mission, “to inspire and enable people to be the presence of God in the brokenness of the world through Spiritual Formation for Kingdom Action.”  We’re doubling down on our mission in these days.

Our Vision is “for people to come fully alive through Christ for the sake of the world.”  We’re doubling down on our vision in these days.  Everything we do is about that.  As we continue to develop our ministry center in Arlington into “a center for formation, healing, and action”, it’s all about whoever shows up there to come fully alive because of Jesus, and then be empowered by the Spirit of Jesus to confront and engage the brokenness of the world with the redemptive love of the Father (catch the Trinitarian echoes there?).   If you’ve been around Coracle much at all, you know this.

But do you know we as Coracle also have Values?   “Inspired by and wanting to be like Jesus, as a ministry and as individuals, we value a Contemplative Life, a Community Life, a Transformed Life, and an Engaged Life”.  We want to invite you into this, so to learn what we mean by these things, inspired by and wanting to be like Jesus, as a ministry and as individuals,

Coracle values:

A Contemplative Life – living in touch with God and with the day-to-day realities of our worlds; praying together and listening for God’s voice and responding.

This is the increasing capacity to “find God in all things” (St. Ignatius).  It’s the increasing capacity to be able to encounter God in the most magnificent, mundane, difficult and beautiful things.  It’s to live differently because we are aware that God is as close to us as our breath, and that there’s not one thing going on in and around us that doesn’t contain the love of God.  Are you a contemplative?  Feel like you’re becoming one?  Want to become one?  Check this out.

A Community Life – living connected, authentic and meaningful lives with each other; offering hospitality and sharing life with others, especially those whom God leads to Coracle.

There’s a shortage of places where people can show up with who they actually are–their glory and their shit, their offerings and their problems–and be welcomed, seen, valued, loved, and safe.  Coracle is that kind of place, we want to be that kind of place for more people, and whoever God leads to us, we want to go on the journey together.  If a person has got it all put together and has everything figured out, we’re probably not a great fit. Rather, we show up with our “I don’t know’s” and our “I’m not there yet’s”, and we encounter the Risen, Living Christ in our midst.

A Transformed Life – living as new persons in Jesus Christ, as our true selves in God and in the world.

The Risen, Living Jesus offers an entry into a whole new way of living–living in the Kingdom of God–this is the good news, this is the Gospel.  None of us are where we want to be, all of us are on the journey there, all of us _want_ to be different sorts of people: freer of our false selves, freer of our sins, freer of our fears, empowered to love, empowered to faith, motivated by hope.   We are a people committed to the transformational journey of the deeper life through Christ, first for ourselves and offering that to others by the Spirit.

An Engaged Life – living in and bringing Shalom more fully into the world for the sake of others and all creation, pursuing beauty, diversity, and justice as hallmarks of the Kingdom of God.

We are surrounded by brokenness, pain, division, and injustice…in the world, in our families, in our communities, in our nation/s, in our selves.  This is not God’s heart, or God’s dream, or what God is committed to or what Jesus wants to see or what Jesus came to fix.  So we are keenly aware of injustices, racism, systems that perpetuate inequities, the abuse of power, inhospitalities, personal sufferings, idolatries, broken relationships, trauma, and more sad things that ought not be.  We know Jesus offers different alternatives.  We know that there is such a thing as the Kingdom of God here and coming.   So Coracle is about an engaged life for Kingdom action, confronting brokenness in whatever form it comes to us with the redemptive power of the love of God.

In this time, we are doubling down on these values in these days.  We’d like to go deeper with the friends we have and we’d like to have more friends on this journey.  The world needs more people who are aflame with faith and love, and we need each other to keep those fires burning brightly in a cold, darkening world.   To offer again a recent animating insight, “The world is cold.  Someone must be on fire so that people can come and put their cold hands and feet against that fire…The English word ‘zeal’ usually means intensity of action.  But real zeal is standing still and letting God be a bonfire in you.” Catherine Doherty, Poustinia.

“Spiritual Formation FOR Kingdom Action.”  Yes, let’s do that.  Let’s do that together.

On the journey,