By April Yamasaki

For the last few years, I’ve chosen a key word or phrase to help give focus to my year. I don’t think of these words and phrases as goals to achieve, or as new year’s resolutions to feel guilty about when I don’t measure up. Instead, my key word or phrase often represents what I hope for the coming year.

By Ajung Sojwal

There’s a certain assumption of purity, maybe even holiness, around the notion of simplicity.  But, the other day, it dawned on me that the state of being simple, uncomplicated, with freedom from guile, which the dictionary calls simplicity can be a dangerous allure. Dangerous, because such an imagination devoid of subtlety, complexity or diversity has no capacity for transformation. 

By Angela Ryo

Ever since reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster as a teenager, I have tried to practice simplicity as part of my spiritual life. And over the years, I have discovered that living a life of simplicity helps me to recognize and nurture the richness and complexity of my soul. I think that’s the paradox of simplicity: the lesser I own on the outside, the fuller I feel on the inside.

By Casey Iwanaga

God’s love is simple
Everything else is tough
He just loves, its not forced upon or mandatory
Whether we want His love and acceptance, its there
When life gets challenging its there
When life is joyous its there
Its simply there
Always
Waiting for us to accept it

Casey Iwanaga is a senior at the University of California in Merced. Her father is a retired pastor currently serving as Chairman of the OMS Holiness Churches.

By Diana Shing

I have heard it said that God is not concerned so much with what you are doing for him, but more concerned with the person that you are becoming.  After all, we are not human “doings” but human “beings” created in God’s image.  I believe the call to simplicity is the call to “just be” the person God has uniquely created us to be.  To live in the truth of who we are and to rest in God’s love, enjoying His companionship and intimate friendship.  To be fully at peace with God, others and ourselves. It is the picture I get when I read Psalm 23.  To be like a sheep resting in green meadows, beside quiet waters.  Not lacking anything.  Having everything that I need.  It all sounds so wonderful.  

By Diana Kim

As I drive around, I notice more and more bumper stickers and car ornaments that have me cringe: flags that say “F*$& Biden” or have a blue stripe on an American flag representing “Blue Lives Matter,” ”Trump 2024” bumper stickers, and window decorations that spell out in caricatures “My Right to Bear Arms.” For a split second I think, “What if I tore up that flag?” or “What if I ripped off or scratched out that sticker?” But then I remember that it is our American right to post and say whatever we think or believe – freedom of speech constituted by the First Amendment. 

By Wendy Choy-Chan

I have had someone claiming they wanted to “speak the truth in love” to me. Yet, their “truth” was some rules that they demanded me to follow, and their “love” was conditioned on me submitting to them and their rules. I experienced no truth or love from them. 

By Emi Iwanaga

“From the time you were very little,

you’ve had people who have smiled you into smiling,

people who have talked you into talking,

sung you into singing,

loved you into loving.”

—Mr. Rogers

By Tina Teng-Henson

To be honest, I sometimes find it difficult to speak my mind, truthfully, honestly, living where I do in northern California. When we moved here about 10 years ago, I wondered, are people just more superficially “nice” or more concerned with being politically correct – that they seem never to disagree with me? Or I hypothesized to myself that the region seemed to be so shaped by a counseling-informed culture of active listening that people I interacted with seemed to only reflect back what they first heard me say. Everyone basically agreed with me, everywhere I went. 

This was strange, coming from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I had gone to Harvard College and stayed on for several more years on staff with InterVarsity. Opinions, perspectives, viewpoints varied – widely, constantly – and it was perfectly fine to have one’s own opinion. In fact, to disagree with others was so normative, it was expected! To think critically was how we all operated. It was how we came up with the best solutions to the common problems we all faced. It was how we problem-solved our ways into accord and into common cause. How did I end up in this very non-judgmental, almost uncomfortably civil context? And how would I survive? 

Ten years later, I’m glad for all that I’ve learned here in northern California about how to get along with other people. My husband would probably say that some of my rough edges coming out of growing up in New York needed some polishing after getting sharpened over a decade in Cambridge. But it’s funny. I met a friend at a park in my city a few weeks ago – and after a brief conversation, we realized: we’re both from the northeast. No wonder we get each other. There’s common ground we share in our straightforwardness, willingness to be vulnerable and desire to simply say what we think! 

How refreshing it is to have someone tell you what they really think – even when it isn’t what you might expect! “An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips!” as it says in Proverbs 24:26.  It’s refreshing; it’s intimate. It awakens greater freedom to speak my mind and share my heart. 

This makes me think of an Advent lectionary passage I wove into a sermon a few years back in which, “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10). I would love to see both those actions enacted more in daily life. 

I’ll confess that my favorite movie genre, which my husband rarely seems up for (it’s okay, I still love him), is a fun romantic comedy. Some of my favorite moments as a pastor have been watching two people fall in love over the course of time and helping them get married! I just officiated a post-Covid in-person wedding celebration this past weekend of two friends who met through us. Honestly, God matchmade them – but we were so privileged to watch it unfold. 

All that said, why is it that sometimes in our closest relationships, we get away with being the most uncivil? I would never hang up the phone on a friend or colleague… but I will confess to hanging up on my dear husband in a fit of rage. 

Yet, much as I hate to admit that I do have my fits of rage, God in his graciousness allows my anger to surface my true feelings, my most honest thoughts – and John in his graciousness, hears me. He pays attention. He draws near. And he honestly answers me with his deepest thoughts, his reflections. An honest answer becomes a kiss on the lips. Love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss. 

In closing, I leave you with a closing thought from the Apostle Paul:

23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. 24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25 Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. 

2 Timothy 2:23-26

This seems to be quite a direct way to tell us how to be civil, how to be gentle even when instructing others, and how to resist the enemy, who frankly loves to exploit every difference between us. These past few years have been exceedingly difficult and trying on families, churches, and communities all over this country and our world. In so many ways, I call us to look to the Lord, our God of grace and truth, to be the first and final word. Oh, how he loves us. How much he desires to guide and direct us. How much he forgives us. May we do the same, speaking truth to others, honestly, lovingly, bravely. 

Tina Teng-Henson is a wife and a mother, a minister and a friend. She is beginning spiritual direction training this fall and hopes to work on a DMin in a year’s time to process the last decade of church ministry in the Bay Area. She welcomes one-on-one conversations and opportunities to be in the word of God and to pray.

By Jerrica KF Ching

Until recently, I would never consider myself someone who liked being outdoors.  For the majority of my life, despite being born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and living there until I was twenty-two, I loved being indoors.  I moved to Oregon in 2014 and continued my appreciation for staying inside, give or take a few drives out to the coastline to spend time on beaches that were vastly different than the ones in Hawaii.  Occasionally there would be a hike or two I’d go on with my friends.  But if you asked me if I wanted to do something indoors or outdoors, I would almost undoubtedly choose something inside away from the elements.