Family Values, According to Whom?
Have you ever noticed that Jesus and American culture have very different ideas about family values? About what families are even for? About what Jesus himself is doing here on earth at all? Sit with that one for a second before you answer it.

Now sit with this one too: why is Jesus (seemingly) picking this fight? Why families, of all things? Why is the nonviolent guy claiming that he's here for division, with a sword in hand?

Take a guess before I tell you what I think. What would need to break open inside a household, a family, for the realm of God to get any closer to happening?


My guess circles back to the same place: hoarding. Resources kept. Power concentrated. Worth assigned arbitrarily and unevenly, generation after generation. And, here's the thing: if Jesus is for nonviolence, and if Jesus is for equity outside of the domineering, controlling systems that treat people like objects and assign their value from the outside, then of course he ends up here, at family, with something that looks like a sword in his hand. Where else would he go? This is the easiest place to start, it's the place closest to each and every one of us, that we most easily would overlook.

The Household Is Never Neutral
Even though the text says "sword" and "family division": Jesus isn't attacking families so much as exposing a pattern that's been sitting in plain view, right under our noses. Ancient households were systems of hierarchy, inheritance, loyalty, property, power. Resources flowed inward and stayed there. Worth and value are assigned (unevenly, arbitrarily based on things like birth order, gender...etc), generation to generation. Nothing like today, right?

And in Jesus' world, the household wasn't some private, sealed-off unit. A family household mirrored the larger systems of domination and accumulation running the whole show socially. Again: nothing like today, right? (I'll let you sit with that one too.)


But Jesus is here for the realm of God, come near. And in his telling, that realm arrives with a sword. Not to start a war, but to dismantle the violent, hoarding architecture built into both the household and the empire architecture it was modeled on. So, he starts by leveling the field (telling us it is enough for students to be like teachers, for slaves to be like lords/masters). And then he shows us exactly how unlevel that field already is— starting with the one place we'd expect to be safest: family. I imagine he starts with family because a significant chunk of his whole point is that you have been taught to measure your worth by systems that were never built to assign it in the first place, and those systems are...creepily sneaky and tough to pick out. Evils masquerading as good, as Bonhoeffer might say. And I don't mean that family is evil- but I do mean that some of the things family might attempt to do in the name of family can be real evil, and I think Jesus was saying the very same thing. Keep reading, you'll get what I mean with examples.

Slave Like Lord, Student Like Teacher
When Jesus says it's enough for the student to become like the teacher, the slave like the lord, he is not handing out a consolation prize. He's making an announcement: the way of Jesus, the way that opens the realm of God, doesn't assign worth by status, productivity, usefulness, or output. Whoever currently gets ranked "below" simply gets brought level with whoever's been ranked "above." And that's it. That's enough. Parallel. Equal footing. Everyone standing on the same ground, equally valuable, in the way of Jesus.

In modern terms, I like to think Jesus might put it like this: it's not a problem that billionaires and trillionaires exist! In fact, EVERYONE gets to be a billionaire and trillionaire!

Lutherans of old in the room might recognize what I'm saying here as something close to Luther's critique, called incurvatus in se — or being "curved in on onself." The problem being, the self, and the systems we build, curving inward on themselves keeping resources, status, and worth contained, protecting the status quo in the process. That's exactly the orientation Jesus is trying to get us to notice, and then move away from.

So, Jesus opens the circle way, way wider. Everyone is inherently worthy. Everyone has dignity. Everyone is valuable and that value holds even in the middle of conflict. In fact, in Jesus' telling, conflict can be (though not always, and not automatically) a sign that you're walking deep in the way of Jesus.

To refuse to be defined by family, by bad theology, or by any other system of control and dominance  is to walk in the way of Jesus. Or, to put it even more plainly: to refuse any system that denies the God-given dignity of yourself or of someone else is to walk in the way of Jesus.

What Happens When You Stop Being Afraid
So — guess what happens once you fully realize your own worth? Once you actually believe that your dignity has existed, and always has existed, entirely outside of all the fancy and mundane hierarchies we've built for measurement?

You start refusing those systems and their violence. Because you finally realize you have nothing left to fear.
When you discover that your dignity and worth are inherent, not assigned by cultural norms nor handed down by whoever's in charge in a given moment, the systems built on unequal worth begin to crack. They crack because those systems govern you by getting you to locate your worth inside them: good kid, good employee, good student, good whatever-they-need-you-to-be.

Think of the kid who leaves home because their family can't accept their queerness. Or the person who walks out of an abusive relationship because they have realized in some way finally, that they were never meant to be treated that way, under any circumstances. These are people walking in the way of Jesus.

And families, institutions, economies, and cultures organized around possession and ranking experience that kind of leveling as a threat. Of course they do. And what comes with the experience of threat?

Conflict. Suddenly parents are against children, children against parents, exactly like the text says.
"Wait — we can't ALL be billionaires and trillionaires!" ...Well. That's true, according to any system that needs us to keep competing and vying for value and status. But it's only true inside those kinds of systems. Because a machine that depends on keeping us hungry, afraid, and constantly competing for more cannot keep running once we realize we don't have to define ourselves by any of it. Because, in reality, that machine never could define us in the first place. There is in fact plenty for ALL of creation. The only place there isn't is inside a system built on violence and a scarcity it manufactured on purpose to keep itself alive and keep everyone in that system under-resourced and hurting for more.

Difficult to Manage
And here's where the next issue comes in: once you really believe you are beloved, that you are inherently worthy, that you were never meant to endure the abuses of systems that had you chasing someone else's version of your own soul or your own life, you are no longer finding so many reasons to be afraid and you become difficult to control.

Because you've discovered the only kind of freedom that's actually available: the freedom that comes from knowing, believing, and living in the truth of your own belovedness, and everyone else's, across all of existence.


People who've discovered they're free are very hard to manage inside violent systems (all those pernicious systems that exert control by assigning your value and treating you like a tool, or a product, built for extraction). You can probably see, now, why there's so much invested in making sure you never get here. Because people who know their worth stop needing to prop up those systems, stop being afraid of losing those systems, stop even participating in them. And it gets worse for the systems than that: once you know your own worth, and the worth of everyone and everything else in creation, you do a full 180 and start insisting that there is plenty to go around, and that none of us need to live this way.
Uh-oh....

Taking Up the Cross
I imagine you can guess this generates some waves.

When Jesus says " unless you take up your cross," he's naming exactly how hard it is to live this kind of life— partly because we are already complicit in these systems, and partly because the world responds to this kind of nonviolent insistence on dignity the way it always has: badly. With anger. With every stunt available to pressure you back into the role you were assigned, back into chasing the value and worth that was never yours to chase in the first place. He is also naming that, if you're not doing this work, you can't expect to be of equal worth to Jesus and Jesus' way. It's a simple equation, really (and no, it's not works righteousness, it's just the basics of following through and being a Christian): following in the way of Jesus means a different values system and that is going to generate conflict...and that sure is carrying your own cross.


It is genuinely hard to be in the middle of this kind of conflict. People take it personally. People will tell you that you're the one generating chaos, making problems. And fair enough, you are making problems. You are breaking every problematic ideal those systems rely on. But it's good trouble, in Jesus' own telling. It's actually what he came here to do.

Still, even when it's good trouble, even when we're told we're worth more than the sparrows, it hurts to be in this kind of conflict. It's frustrating to want out and discover you can't fully extract yourself, because the harsh reality is that we still have to eat, house ourselves, get ourselves from place to place. We can't wipe our hands clean of all our complicity, no matter how much we want to.


It is painful to see inherent worth clearly (really know it, in yourself and in everyone) and then watch so much of the world keep devaluing it, harming it, refusing to let creation have what it actually needs.


And yet. Following in the way of Jesus, heading toward the realm of God, means stepping away from the systems that keep inducing us to do violence in order to maintain violent control over one another. So, to stay close to Jesus, to remain among those who walk his way, we take up our cross, and we keep going.

Losing Your Soul to Find It
And when Jesus says "lose your soul/life to find it, for my sake," he means letting go of a life organized around possession, hoarding, extraction, ranking, and control of other people.

He does not mean losing your soul to uphold the very norms and dogmas that harm you or harm someone else. Remember where this whole text started: Jesus levels the field. Slaves like lords. Disciples like teachers. Everyone brought up into a dignified, abundant life—not flattened back down into someone else's hierarchy.

The promise here, tangled up in all of Jesus' hard wisdom about the conflict that different values systems and change will inevitably bring, is not that freedom is easy, or that the way of Jesus is easy. (You'll hear in a couple of weeks about Jesus' yoke being easy and his burden being light — LOLZ. We'll get there.)

Instead, the promise—the actual good news—is that abundant life is what you find on the other side of freeing yourself from systems of dominance and control. Jesus came to give you abundant life. And abundant life begins the moment you receive what has been true about you, since before you were born: that you are worthy. That you are loved. That you are of infinite value.

So the work, now, is to stop trying to fit ourselves into, or assign, or even possess, whatever this backwards world is trying to convince us could or should belong to us alone.

with joy,
Pr Sam

Next Sunday I'll be out of town, seeing a seminary friend get married. Max Del Bosque will be in the pulpit at UniLu in my place. Can't wait to hear Max's (invariably thoughtful, most often downright brilliant) perspectives. 

The Car Full of the Wrong Things
When I moved to LA, I packed my little Chevy Cavalier  (a 1993 RS, manual transmission) with everything I thought I'd need. I remember the clothing. Most of it turned out to be completely wrong for SoCal. I remember a whole arsenal of bath and beauty products — also wrong. The California climate apparently does not care about your carefully curated New York hair and makeup situation.

I remember accessories, a couple pieces of bedding, my favorite pillow. The bedding ended up being too heavy for about ten months of the year. Thank God for the pillow. Thank God for the car itself. Those were the things that actually kept me alive on the other side of that drive.

But looking back at how packed that little Cavalier was? It's kind of impressive, actually. Impressive that I thought I needed all of it. Impressive that I thought it would help. Because in a lot of ways, all of it became a hindrance as I tried to figure out how to actually live out here.

When I finally got stable housing, I had very little to operate with — what I'd driven out to LA with (much of which was not helpful) and what I picked up along the way. One pot. One fork. One knife. One spoon. One cup. Mattress on the floor. No table — I ate off a microwave box for at least a year and a half. And there are days where I genuinely  long for that simplicity once again. No real opportunity for dishes to pile up, in a situation like that, you know?

Now, every reasonable guide to preparing for a big move would have called what I did dangerous. Reckless. Unprepared. And, it probably was, to some degree.

But here is what I couldn't have known as an early twenty-something, pulling onto route 17 headed west with a car full of the wrong things: The packing to be prepared wasn't the problem. It was a symptom. Because in the end, being prepared just isn't the same thing as being ready.


And Then He Just... Sends Them
This week, Jesus gives it all away. He's been moving through towns and villages, teaching, healing, proclaiming good news of the realm of God being close by. And somewhere in all that movement, Matthew says he looks up. He sees the crowd. And he has compassion for them. Why? Because they are harassed and helpless, he says. Living in the midst of oppressive systems that are harming them severely.... They are "like sheep without a shepherd."

And then he says to his disciples: the harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. Pray for more workers.
And then — before they can process that statement (before we can even process that statement) Jesus turns and sends them.
You besties. You are the "more" workers. You are the answer to the prayer I just told you to pray.

That is a wild move. He doesn't ask if they feel prepared. He doesn't wait for their confidence and supply levels to be optimal. He just sends them with a delightfully, alarmingly light packing list.


What You're Actually Carrying
No gold. No silver. No copper. No bag. No extra tunic. Just... go.

It's easy to read this as Jesus being severe. Maybe even recklessly sending people out with nothing into a world that can be dangerous, inhospitable, and violent. But I don't think that is what is happening here.
Because what I've learned about packing the wrong things is that the things were never really the problem, but they did generate and maintain more than a few problems.

Here's what I mean. When I was cramming that Cavalier full of New York Sam's New York things  (the right outfits for the right occasions, the particular products, the accessories that communicated something specific about who I was) I wasn't packing for California and who Sam was becoming. I was trying to transport a static identity across the country in a 1993 Chevy Cavalier.

Note how I still have to tell you what kind of car it was. It's surprising I haven't also told you what color and whether it was a coupe or sedan.

At any rate: those things I had with me were, theoretically, doing something for me. Not necessarily helpful things. They were providing cover. A way to hide behind a version of myself I already knew. A particular kind of comfort that kept me from actually engaging with where I was, who was around me, what and who God was asking me become. When you're carrying that much stuff (literal, or proverbial), you can't really see where you're going. You're too busy making an attempt at maintaining what you've already got.

So when Jesus looks at his group of besties and says take nothing, I don't think he's being harsh. I think he is being mercifully intelligent and setting them up to succeed.  I think he knows the things will become a stumbling block  preventing them from seeing the baggage that can (and will, most likely) prevent them from participating in God's mission in the world. The packed things, the preparedness becomes... the need for control. The need to look competent. These things can support narratives they've already written about what this is "supposed" to look like and how it is "supposed" to be. The security of having enough and having packed and being fully prepared becomes an issue, the issue being that they won't need to depend on anyone they meet along the way, and can just bring people what they already know. IE "Dont worry, sit down and listen to me, I have things to tell YOU"... pretty colonizer-ish, in terms of behavior, no?

But Jesus gets right in the way of all of those issues before they get a chance to take root, and tells the twelve: put it all down and do not bring it.

Because the participation in God's mission begins not when we are fully prepared — but when we are willing to discover that we never were, never are, never will be...and maybe most importantly, that we never needed to be.

A Word About Sodom, Gomorrah (And Who Actually Gets It Right)
Now — I want to sit with one more thing in this text. And it's a bit painful. Jesus, at the end of this passage, invokes Sodom and Gomorrah. And if you are queer (or if you love someone who is) your stomach probably turned a bit. Those two cities have been weaponized against queer people for so long. Wielded alongside Paul's letter to the Romans (Chapter 1, especially) to justify violence, exclusion, and all kinds of sexuality-based hatred. The wound from that is real. It is deep. I am not sure it will fully heal in this age of the world.

But hear and notice this, too:
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with sexuality. And if it wasn't clear enough in the Hebrew Bible where Jesus got the reference, Jesus makes it even more explicit here in this telling from Matthew. He is not invoking these cities to condemn any particular kind of person or love. He invokes them because what brought them down was the utter refusal of hospitality. The abuse of strangers. Violence toward the vulnerable. As the prophet Ezekiel names it plainly: Sodom had pride, excess food, prosperous ease, and did not aid the poor and needy.

That's it. That's the sin. That's what Jesus is naming at the end of this passage: people's failure to be hospitable, to embrace strangers, to reject violence will result in their own destruction.

And then he is saying to his disciples: when you are met with violence, rejection, the withholding of basic human welcome, don't stay there and put up with the abuse. Get out. Shake the dust from your feet. That kind of inhospitality carries its own consequences. You don't need to take responsibility for any of it.

And I'd also like to point this out: think about who in this world has learned extraordinary hospitality because they've known extraordinary rejection. Who has built chosen family, often out of nothing. Who has learned to really see one another, to really hold one another — especially when everyone in the group is massively lacking what's needed to be prepared, and everyone has to stick together just to get by.

Queer folk. That's who.*

And these are exactly the people God sends. "These" being the folks who weren't prepared, whether through their own choices, or through the choices the world made for them. These are exactly the people through whom God builds something that lasts. That is not a coincidence.

God doesn't seem to call on people who are or feel fully prepared. Moses had a stutter. Jeremiah was a child. Mary was an unmarried girl in an occupied country. The disciples were fishermen and tax collectors and people who repeatedly didn't seem to understand. Nonetheless, they were all called. 

It seems God calls and sends the ones who say yes, with empty, open hands.

The Question For Us This Week
So the question Jesus is pressing with this peculiar, sparse, slightly aggravating packing list is not: Am I adequately prepared? Am I educated enough? Am I resourced enough? Do I have the right equipment?

The question for us this week is: What are we carrying around and coveting that is preventing us from doing the healing and loving and building God is already inviting us into?

Is it a need for achievement? Expertise? Respectability? Productivity? A need to know how everything will turn out, right, and that we'll maintain our image? Any of that sound... creepily familiar?

Here is the terrible and liberating news: we don't actually have control over how these things work out anyway. Kind of like how we think death is the end, but Jesus goes and proves otherwise with Easter, so we don't need to be afraid? Well, this time it's like this:

We don't ever have the control we think we have. We will never maintain our image anyway. Things will not go the way we plan them. And God incarnate — the one who could have arrived with every resource imaginable — chose instead a gal named Mary, a ton of tables (hardly any of which were his own) set with bread and wine, a borrowed tomb, and not much else.

He ended up on a cross because he was more committed to people than to image and success strategy. 

We are the disciples, friends. We have always been the disciples. And this mission God invites us into does not need us to be fully prepared. We just need to be ready to say yes.

So what might it do if we choose to set a few things down, in favor of being ready with a yes over trying to hang on to things for preparedness?  We could set down attachment to outcome. Appearing to have it figured out (fake it till you make it- oh I detest that line). Or maybe even just letting go of one of the many fears that manifest/whisper in your head when you're trying to go to sleep at night: you're not ready, you're not enough, you're not the right person for this, you're not prepared for what's to come...

Scripture is full of the unprepared. I think that is a huge chunk of the wisdom so many people across time are attempting to communicate to us via the Bible. Being well-resourced and fully packed was never required, nor was it ever the point. The point is participation. Right now. With the people who are all around us. Being in and with the circumstances that are actually here. Choosing the moment that is actually happening now.
Building trust. Offering hospitality. Caring for one another. The simplest way to say this is: Loving one another the way Jesus loved us.

We are called across two thousand years, through time and space, by the same Jesus who sent those twelve out into the dust and heat with nothing but authority and the instruction to go.

And the going? That is how hope gets made. That is where love takes root. That is where growth happens — not in the planning, not in the preparedness, but in the being ready to just show up.

Things will get hard. For many of us, they already are tough. Shaking the dust from your feet when you're met with violence or refusal is real, and real painful. Jesus named it. Discipleship has always included it.
But let's remember that we do not do this work alone. We do it together, with one another, and with the God who does not need us to be prepared, only to be ready and willing to say yes.

with joy,
Pr Sam

*Please to note: Queer folk are not a perfect communion of folk (other than perfect in our colorful and sparkly imperfections!). And, many other folk who have experienced the pain of rejection, who build chosen family and have had to learn to really care for one another despite the world's behaviors also build and maintain beautiful hospitality and care at the core of their communal lives. It just so happens it's Pride, and that means I'm highlighting the queers!

based on John 14:15–21 for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A

A few of you have asked me about my thing with the bees. Bee jewelry makes it onto my jacket every weekend, and there are a handful of reasons for that, but one of the biggest comes from the Easter Vigil liturgy, the Exsultet.
There's this line about the Paschal candle being produced through the work of the bees and human hands together. And I love that image because the production of the very first that comes into our darkened sanctuary after Good Friday is presented not as ressurection magic, but as collaborative effort betwen us, and the bees. Tiny creatures. Human labor. Repetitive work that, brought together, creates the first light in the room otherwise left like a tomb.
Bees do incredibly small work. Almost invisible work. Tiny flights and movements. Tiny acts of pollination.
And yet? Lose the bees, and entire ecosystems begin collapsing.
We so often buy into this myth that meaningful change happens in one giant dramatic moment. But most meaningful change does not work like a lightning strike. It works like mycelial networks underground. Like roots cracking concrete. Like the work of the bees. Even the movements we think of as rather sudden — Civil Rights. Stonewall. BLM in 2020 — those were visible peaks of much longer accumulated labor. Deep community organizing. Conversation. Protest. Feeding people. Acts of art. Presence. Refusing disappearance or silencing.
Tiny, repeated acts that eventually changed entire landscapes. Sometimes with a hallmark moment we all name and remember, like Stonewall. Sometimes without one — which is its own kind of reckoning, like the slow-built pathways of Christian Nationalism that we're watching now. Those were also built one tiny act at a time.
We are in this passage again — a continuation of what came last week, all of it building toward Jesus' official taking of leave. Ascension is coming. Pentecost is coming.
The disciples seem anxious as hell. Those exact words are not written down — but come on. You can hear it in the text. Jesus keeps saying things like do not let your hearts be troubled and I will not leave you orphaned. Nobody says those things when everyone's feeling great. These are the things we say when fear and anxiety are already filling the room.
And it makes sense that the disciples would be fearful. These were people hoping for something clearer. Stronger. Faster. They were living under empire — violence, occupation, exploitation. Their expectations had been wrapped up in a militaristic response to a militaristic regime, and what they received instead was a guy on a cross who then seemed to come back to life. Awesome party trick — but not exactly the thing that feels like it's going to bring down the soldier with the threatening sword when he's demanding more supplies, more money, more compliance from your family.
Any of us would want certainty. Okay, Jesus, sure — God in all of us and in you, but… when do we win?
They wanted specific dates. A clear plan. An underdog victory story. They wanted something to cling to that might make them stop being afraid.
Jesus does not give them a single one of those things.
Instead, he gives them commandments. And if you want to get really technical, he gives them a commandment: love one another as I have loved you. Which honestly sounds deeply unsexy compared to the underdogs taking over and coming out on top. But the wisdom someone thought worth writing down for us to receive is: keep my commandments. Love one another.
The disciples want a conquering system. Jesus responds with an ecology.
They want domination. Jesus responds with pathways for relationship.
They want certainty. Jesus responds by giving them practices. Tiny, repeated acts of love — just the minuscule daily work of the bees.
I think this excerpt from John is easily distorted because we hear if you love me, you will keep my commandments as moral pressure. Like Jesus is standing there with a clipboard. But in John's gospel, commandments are not a list of rules to follow. And in fact, commandments aren't even a list of rules to follow in the Hebrew Bible — they are suggestions for how we live better together, and with God. The commandment here is: love one another as I have loved you. That's it.
Which means Jesus is not saying: prove yourself spiritually impressive. Be some kind of saint. In fact, it's quite the opposite — Jesus is saying: when you participate in love, you participate in God. If you are loving, you know me and you are doing the thing required of you.
This whole chapter is soaked in mutual indwelling language. I am in God. God is in me. I am in you. You are in me. This is ecosystem language. Relational language. Love circulates. Care circulates. Courage circulates. God is not the distant emperor somewhere above the clouds. This is not far from what Luke is writing in Acts: in God we live and move and have our being. God with us via connection, truth, nourishment, courage, protest, mercy, song, bread — through showing up for one another again and again and again.
Zero words about perfection. Lots of words pointing toward participation and collaboration. Like the work of the bees, and human hands.
I also think we can easily distort this passage when we hear I will not leave you orphaned and interpret it as just a line of comfort. In fact, I think this might be the central line of the whole excerpt — but maybe not for the reasons we were first taught.
Because notice: Jesus does not promise the disciples will stop feeling afraid. He does not promise that empire and its overbearing problems disappear tomorrow. There is no promise that the hurts and frustrations and pains will go away. He does not promise certainty beyond this: certainly they will continue to see him and experience him — God — via loving one another.
Maybe I will not leave you orphaned is way less about comfort — and in fact, making it primarily about comfort might be what makes it lose its teeth. Maybe I will not leave you orphaned is more an instructive reminder: you are not orphaned when you remain bound together in love. You are not orphaned when the work continues. You are not orphaned when people keep feeding each other, protecting each other, telling the truth, tending wounds, making art, singing songs, blessing what is breaking, refusing to disappear or silence one another — faithfully continuing on, even when we don't feel like we're getting it quite right.
The world teaches us that power comes through domination.
Jesus skips all of that and insists that abundant life comes through stubborn, ordinary, repeated acts of love. The basic, everyday work of the bees.
And honestly? Bees themselves are not perfect little symbols. Bee colonies operate with hierarchy. They've got their own disagreements, chaos, and problems. They are strange little creatures — just like we are. But they keep participating in the work that sustains life beyond themselves.
Maybe that is the core of discipleship too. Because a lot of us — whether we'll admit it or not — believe that the best way to live well and abundantly is primarily to get things correct, to ensure we entirely dismantle the problems as we go. But that doesn't really work out. All we end up doing is either avoiding the simple everyday work, or reifying the very systems of destruction we claim we're trying to dismantle.
No human is perfect. We are all horribly inconsistent. There is no moral purity among us — and honestly, the more certain someone is, the more suspicious I become.
So maybe that's the invitation and reminder this week. Not perfection. Not moral purity. Not certainty. None of these are necessary.
Just: keep practicing love anyway. Keep participating in courage anyway. Keep telling the truth anyway. Keep blessing what is breaking anyway. Keep on keeping on in the way of Jesus.
Tiny acts. Tiny mercies. Tiny bits of courage.
Because the kingdom of God doesn't come in like a military coup. It comes in more like tree roots cracking up a cement sidewalk. It's the little in-and-out, every-day work of the bees — that eventually becomes that collaborative first light, in a world filled with fear and anxiety, but aching for hope.

​with joy,
Pr. Sam