As we enter into a new season in our Diocese, we have an opportunity to be purposeful about what we intend to carry onward—the places the Holy Spirit has guided us into transformed relationships, courageous justice, meaningful growth, and more.  There’s much that God is affirming and calls us to continue.  Making space for our gratitude to God is worthy of our time.

We are also coming to an opening where God might guide us to change courses, to turn around, to speak our truth, to ask for apology, and to open to healing.  These places of wounds and harms are where we believe Jesus companions us.  Making space for our honesty and pain is worthy of our time.

These movements of grace in our midst call for listening and trusting.  This year’s Clergy Retreat offers us time and resources to cultivate trust with one another through listening to what has been, and still is, moving in us.

Bishop Austin is eager to listen to all of it.  He is inviting us to listen to one another.  Together, he’s hoping to develop a collaborative trust.  Together, he invites us to practice trustworthiness, listening into speech the ways we’ve been moved by the Spirit and the ways we’re being called to move toward repentance and reconciliation.  Together as clergy, let’s spend these days listening, praying, and spending time together to see what the Spirit is doing among us now.