The Heritage Work 2017 Year End Letter
I'm now in my 16th year of my chosen life work--actually, it chose me. I'm available as a friend and pastor to my neighbors and local community, based out of my home. I enjoy mentoring the souls of men, families and marriages, regardless of church affiliation, and especially those who feel they are 'outsiders' to God. This work emerged from the compelling news that God chose to descend, to become human form in Jesus and walk among us. The Message bible puts it this way... The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood . (John 1:14)
I believe God's strategy of “incarnation”--- or tangible, visible embodiment---can’t be improved upon. It authentically and most personally demonstrates one's identity and intentions, and earns trust--- showing love, compassion and suffering right where people live. (I John 1:1-5)
As one of my neighbors told me when I told him what I do..."everyone needs a pastor...they just might not call it that".
The uncommon strategy of the incarnation:
God, who created the universe in all its splendor, decided to reveal to us the mystery of the divine life by becoming flesh in a young woman living in a humble village on one of the small planets of God’s own creation.
Jesus’ life is marked by an always deeper choice of what is small, humble, poor, rejected and despised. --Henri Nouwen
We celebrate Jesus' first coming, and use that sense of fulfillment to fuel our hope for his second coming and to strengthen us to work for signs of that kingdom in our own day. We live between the first Advent and the second. That is one way of saying what it means to be a follower of Jesus... people of light in a dark world, people of hope in times and places of despair.
People who follow Jesus. --NT Wright
[The incarnation is...] relational, but I think we’re afraid of the incarnation. And part of it, the fear that drives us is that we have to have our 'sacred' in a certain way: It has to be gold-plated, cost of millions and cast of thousands or something, I don’t know. And so we’ve wrestled the cup out of Jesus’s hand, and we’ve replaced it with a chalice, because who doesn’t know that a chalice is more sacred than a cup, never mind that Jesus didn’t use a chalice? --Fr. Greg Boyle
From Dr. Mike Keirns, HeritageWork board member (& fellow baseball nut):
Greetings. I wanted to take a minute to highlight Pat's work mentoring so many souls in Heritage Village, and beyond. I have been honored to be one of those HV hearts that has been kept on fire for the Lord through his influence. Pat has facilitated my growth as an educator and health care practitioner while making me realize my purpose here on earth is to serve others. I'm a witness to his model of following Christ and showing us all how we should live.
Please consider this year partnering monthly or annually with The HeritageWork. Even small monthly gifts are highly valued and allow Pat to serve in this unconventional way among us.
This Fall, I have been on sabbatical--- restoring, renewing vocational direction, reading, resting, writing, and trying to listen afresh to the voice of my Father, the first and primary love to my soul. Big Idea I've heard? "Just enjoy Me..."
Thomas Merton on solitude...[and sabbaticals...]
We do not go into the desert [or on sabbatical] to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good.
Contemplative living is engaged living in the present, an engaged expectancy that the next moment and the next person we meet can be sacred, and can be Jesus.
St. Francis de Sales: from Practicing the Presence: Several times during the day, ask yourself for a moment if you have your soul in your hands, or if some passion or fit of anxiety has robbed you of it. Quietly bring your soul back to the presence of God, subjecting all your affections and desires to the obedience and direction of his divine will.
Israel’s Sabbath was one day in the week; our Sabbath is 24/7: Every day, all day we rest in what Jesus has done and is doing for us (Hebrews 4:10). Our Sabbath is like–forever!
