Ken Hagan offered this witness on October 9:
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Hello, Most of you see me here as a greeter one Sunday a month on Team Tom Jones and, more often, the person anxiously hovering over and wrangling Isabel and Audrey. I was asked today to speak about why I feel connected to Central...
For me, Central is an important tether to a family of people who accept, care, and give. Coming here to Central and participating reconnects me with the spiritual... that part of life that isn't lost in the shuffle of the today things: work, kids going here, work, kids going there, work, and all the other things we get lost in every day. Central grounds me. The people, the church, the familiar pattern of the service each week. That routine and the people are reassuring and recharge my spiritual batteries more than I ever knew I needed. One thing that makes Central unique for me is the high percentage of people here who make the fundamentally hard decisions to work for what's right. There are shining examples of people who've given significant chunks of their life's work for social justice, fairness, peace and reconciliation, and just plain making the world better.I feel inspired by them, connected to their movements, and a little guilted to do more and be better. The People at Central make me feel a sense of connectedness to doing the right thing. They make me feel like the giving I do matters. On one level it helps me rationalize not DOing as much myself but... then when I am surrounded by this group I always wish I DID more and gave more. The wildly inclusive love here at Central has ensnared me for five years. I've always rejected churches that demand statements and affirmations of me. I've always eschewed churches that focused on dogma or absolute faith and downplayed or overlooked the mystery. Here, I feel constantly connected to the mystery and not challenged to put my worldview into any sort of box or else walk out the front door. That's important to me as a place for my spiritual journey as well as the place for my daughters to grow up spiritually. The metaphor the stewardship committee are using is of a colorful quilt made of all of the families and households here at Central. The Hagan ladies and I are a square on this quilt. We’re not asked to be anything we don’t want to be. We’re welcomed and accepted as we are. We’re all exceptionally proud to have found a perfect fit. |
