Dear saints,
Greetings from sunny California. I am spending the week here with fellow clergy on a CREDO retreat, which is a program offered by the Church Pension Group every dozen years or so in the life of ordained ministry. I am here with around thirty priests from across the country as far apart from one another as Hawaii to Maine. I have to say that the talent and insight present here is humbling and exciting all at the same time. It feels like there are people here whose wisdom is of a quality I can only wonder at. There's nothing like getting outside your own bubble to realize how small it is.
That said, the questions we are asking among one another revolve around something each of us has at our fingertips: the core values that govern our lives. No special expertise is needed to tap into those treasures, just a curiosity for the life we are already living. I wonder if you have had an opportunity lately to ask what your core values are? Are you as aware as you wish to be of what shapes and fashions your life?
One of the things that I have become aware of this week is how my own core values have evolved over time, just as I have. Sometimes I think we talk about core values as something immutable, and that it would somehow be a sign of crisis if those values were to change. Yet, the truth is that our view of the world and our navigation of it does change over time. For my own part, there was a whole bunch of stuff that I was plain wrong about earlier in my life, and I imagine that in another chunk of time I will look back and shake my head about the values that are guiding my life today. If we were meant to stay the same, God would have never given us curiosity.
One thing, however, does remain constant: the truth that we all should declare in word and deed to one another at every given opportunity—that we are loved of God. God's faithfulness to us in unchanging. Perhaps that seems like a small thing to you as you read this, but I wonder if you would feel the same way as you stare down a serious illness or lose something in your life or someone that you have truly valued. In my experience of such things, the utter changelessness of God is the one true anchor.
Wherever it is you find yourself in all this, I hope you will find some encouragement to stop a moment amid the busyness of life and ask what values are alive in you. As you do, I pray that you will also see the God whose love is behind you and before you, the beginning and the end of all things. In the final analysis, what else do we need?
Peace,
