Affirmation #1
We believe that our spiritual invitation is to follow the example of Jewish teacher, Palestinian refugee, and poor person, Jesus: to live in community; to share our resources; to centralize the stories of poor people, children, and people of marginalized genders; to turn power structures on their heads. We honor all teachers who show us how to defy abusive structures and how to co-create expansive ways of living.
We believe in rooting out the holds that the systemic sins of white supremacy, cisheterosexism, misogyny, ableism, fatphobia, and Christian supremacy have on our hearts, our behaviors, and our patterns of thinking.
We believe that liberation is experienced through our bodies and that our liberation is bound up with one another’s. We believe in access to healthcare, to freetime, to safety, to a home, to nourishing food, and to clean water for all people and creatures. We believe in joy, play, rest, dance, pleasure, creativity, tenderness, and shared abundance.
We believe that God — Faithful Advocate, Lure Towards Compassion, Blessed Interdependence, Great Mystery, Holy Becoming, Sacred Undoing — is with us, is in us, and moves between us. We believe that resurrection is both a gritty spiritual practice and happens without our effort, as a gift, as the seasons change. We believe that all beings are worthy of flourishing.
Affirmation #2
As a gathered community of disciples,
created by the hands of the Holy,
born with Divine purpose,
and bound together by the Spirit
that breaths life into all things,
we affirm our commitment to the way of Jesus Christ,
who is The Liberator of the Oppressed,
The Bread of Heaven,
God enfleshed.
With faith, we aim to live as Christ taught us,
laboring towards liberation,
and seeking a world free of domination and control.
We believe in God’s promise to uplift the lowly
and bring the powerful down from their thrones.
We believe the resurrecting power of Christ
cannot be overcome by evil,
but persists in all collective efforts
to make life flourish in the midst of destruction,
to birth beauty in places of death,
and to tend gently to the aches of this world.
We profess the transforming power of love.
We profess that justice is a form of love.
We profess that we are still growing into the mystery of love.
In the company of the saints who go before us,
we journey together by grace,
seeking always to unlearn all that obstructs authentic relationship,
listening for the guidance of Sacred Wisdom,
And praying earnestly for the day
the Kindom of God is born anew.
Until it is so, we live in hope,
for God is with us.
Rev. M Jade Kaiser, enfleshed
Affirmation #3
We believe God is Love
And from Love, all things are born.
No creature or creation
Falls outside of God’s eternal embrace.
We believe forces of
domination and destruction,
control and greed,
prejudice and violence,
pervade our lives,
seeking to turn us against one another,
against the earth,
and against the Spirit of the Liberating Christ.
We believe we depend on God,
the remembrance of our ancestors,
the courage of the prophets,
and the wisdom that can only flow from the margins,
in order to grow in Love.
We believe in the power of God,
to make what seems impossible possible.
We believe in the Good News
that sets the captives free.
We believe in proclaiming the truths
that unsettle unjust power
and encourage collective liberation.
We proclaim
that Black Lives Matter and that white supremacy is sin.
that queer love is divine.
that trans bodies are beautiful.
that immigrants must be welcomed.
that women must be granted full bodily autonomy.
that the earth must be protected.
that the rich “shall be sent away empty.”
that all bodies are good bodies.
And we celebrate our siblings of other faiths and spiritualities.
We proclaim these truths in aspiration that we might learn to live them in full.
We recognize, still, other truths remain hidden,
and we pray we may continue to grow in understanding,
in love for all our neighbors,
in hunger for justice,
and in the steadfast practice of our faith.
Rev. M Jade Kaiser, enfleshed