Church is for seeking as well as speaking the truth in love. Church is for the increase of stature, the enlargement of spirit, and the greater freedom of the self. Church is for encouraging us to actualize our most creative possibilities. It is also the critic of our limitations and our pretensions. Church is for understanding and for being understood.
Church is for confession, for repentance and for the compassion of forgiveness.
Church is for reminding us that we are all members of the web of life, that no one is an island, and that no person is an individual outside this context of the web. Church is an important agency by which great traditions become living presences within the community. Church is the communal celebration of our elemental joys and sorrows, of our gains and losses, of great meanings. The church is for taking these elemental qualities and values of everyday life and weaving them into the very liturgy of the community. I am grateful for this kind of church.