Dear Friends and Family in Faith,

Summer is suddenly upon us.
Kids are out of school and dispatched to various camps and activities. Vacations have begun...or at least been scheduled. Vacation Bible School is revving up in the corner, and all the Church camps are yawning wide, ready to accept the teeming hordes of young from around California and Nevada.

That's right. It's summer. And for all of us it has a host of different meanings and memories. But here in San Francisco, whether you're a kid out of school or someone who has to just slog through and wait for your vacation, summer means fog. Cool, damp, swirling, covering fog. I sat this morning at the beach, shrouded in it, peering into its cotton depths at the surf.

It was a strange feeling.

I could hear the water crashing rhythmically onto the beach. I could smell its pungent, primal odors. Occasionally I could even feel it.

But I could not see it.

What I could see was that cotton great fog, hugging me like my great aunt used to hug me in her parlor in Schenectady, NY.

I know I should have been a bit more relaxed about it and simply enjoyed the scene that God had arranged. But I wanted to see some ocean, dang it! It didn't matter that I could smell it, hear it, feel it, sense it.......I wanted to see it! And I began to grow agitated, sitting there on the sand. So much so that I decided to get up and get to the office. So I pulled on my shoes, stood up and brushed the sand from my slacks, and turned to leave. So much for seeing the glorious Pacific before work.

And then it hit me.

I had come to the beach, not to experience what it was.....but to experience what I wanted it to be...I was so caught up in what I wanted, stuck in what I expected, that the marvel and beauty of what was all around me was lost to me.

It seems to me that sometimes we deal with one another....even with Church...in the same way.

We expect people to be what we want or need them to be. And too often, we need them to be whatever way we want them to be...not for them...but for us. Perhaps you've experienced it yourelf? It's the veneer deep culture of being accepted on the basis of how well you meet other peoples' expectations.

Sound familiar? Our expectations are so often inwardly focused that it's hard for us to - not only allow someone to be who they are, but to celebrate that person and to let their uniqueness touch us, and perhaps even change us in a new and pehraps wonderful way.

How often do we place people in our lives at distances from us that relate to how much we like them...or God forbid...how much they do for us? how often do we treat people as though they were a consumer product that we use up and put down when we're done?

I think that we are called to embrace each other, not according to needs and expectations, but according who we really are......God loves us that way...just like we are.....and calls you and me to do the same. It's like going to the beach and loving what you find there.

Hmmmm. Something to think about while we gaze into the fog.

And the Church? What of the Church in all this?
How many of us approach church....or don't approach...it according to how well it gives us what we want? How often are we like consumers? Like customers who want to get what we pay for? How many times have pastors been told to do something a certain way or the teller will take his (or her) pledge and go elsewhere? Worse yet, sometimes we don't even pay and still want what we want.

It's not difficult to understand. After all, we live in a culture of consumerism and commidifcation. Everyone is a commodity and our job is to consume.

All these consumers looking for a spiritual pay off when all along the idea of Christian community is completely different. In fact, it's precisely the opposite of what the culture around us assumes for us.

God calls us into community, not to have our expectations met, but to have our hearts changed. God yearns for us, reaches out for us....not so that we can come and taylor the church according to our tastes...but rather so that God can change us from the inside out and name us as new Creations in Christ.

All this, of course, requires a willingness to go to the beach and embrace what you find there. Fog or no fog. It means that we are to open wide our arms and our hearts to one another and to dare to love each other, not in spite of our differences, but in, through, and even because of them.

And finally, it means that we are called into Christian community in order to let go of all the things we think are important so that we can fully embrace the new life that God has in mind for us.

Tall order, you say?
Maybe.

But I have to say that the Spirit of openness and new beginnings is moving here at Temple United Methodist Church. The Spirit of hope is blossoming. And the Spirit of love ranges wide and far as we discover together the new life that God has found for us in Christ.

So how about it?
Wanna go to the beach with me sometime? I could use the company.
And I could use a reminder to go there with a willingness to embrace as it is....


Grace, peace, and the courage to embrace both!

Pastor Schuyler