Dear Friends,

As we enter into a holiday season, those who grew up in Christian homes sense a longing—not just to accomplish checking all the boxes the holiday season demands of us, but to inhabit our days with greater meaning, depth, and clarity.

You may find yourself asking: How do I slow down and reclaim a sense of sanity and savor the sacredness of this season, when everything around me feels so chaotic? I believe that living in alignment with God’s deepest desire for us isn’t about checking all the boxes. Rather, it’s about returning again and again to the “true north star” guiding us towards the Christ child.

The sacred season beckons us to slow things down, make space in our busy lives, and prepare our hearts, minds, and souls for the birthing of Christ to take place in us.

Meister Eckhart, the 14th-century German mystic and theologian, wrote:
“What does it avail me that Mary birthed Christ long ago if I don’t also birth Him in my soul? What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and if I am not also full of grace?”

“Advent” comes from the Latin “adventus” for arrival. It has been in the Christian spiritual tradition dating back at least to the 4th century CE. Traditions throughout the world acknowledge this time of year as the powerful time to connect with our inner light in the midst of the darkness. In this season of Advent, the 24 days before Christmas, we enter the darkest days of winter. We watch and wait expectantly, anticipating the birth of Christ. We light candles, we sing carols, and we prepare to receive the Light of the World. 

Let us worship together as we explore the themes of Advent/Christmas as we prepare to receive the birthing of God child, Emmanuel, God with us.

With pregnant joy,   
John

Advent/Christmas Services @ 10 am 

November 30                 First Sunday of Advent:       Lighting the First Advent Candle
Hanging of the Greens & Singing Medley of Carols
(All children & youth will receive Advent Calendars)

December 7     Second Sunday of Advent:  Lighting the Second Advent Candle

December 14    Third Sunday of Advent:     Lighting the Third Advent Candle

December 21    Christmas Celebration:       Lighting the Fourth Advent Candle

Dec. 24, 5:00 pm Christmas Eve Candlelight Service:  Lighting the Christ Candle

Pajaronian Column for Oct. 31, 2025
by Rev. John Song of Watsonville First United Methodist Church

 Unwelcomed visitor at our Dia de los Muertos Service on Oct. 26th
 

Halloween is upon us. So is the celebration of Día de los Muertos / The Day of the Dead in our community with Mexican descent by gathering around the gravesite to honor and remember the dead. They acquaint themselves with the reality of death as part of the fabric of life. It is a time when the veils between the worlds are porous. In this meeting place of “between” the world, the living and the dead meet to celebrate the mysterious and magical meeting place of the living and the dead. The Christian belief in the “Communion of Saints” is an acknowledgment of the reality of the living communing with the ancestors.

The Hebrew scripture reminds us in Ecclesiastes 7:2, “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.”

When you think about death, is it with reflection, curiosity, and ease? Or is it with trepidation and fear? Do you even contemplate this most significant passage of your life? 

Facing death is our last important life initiation in earthly life. Although our culture associates death with fear, tragedy, and loss, and sees it as something to dread, we can choose to view it differently. We can explore our relationship with death as something that might even feel like some kind of wonder.

What if death were approached as a joyful transition of the soul’s journey of how birth, life, and death are all parts of our soul’s experience of being human.

One of the enduring characters in the West that people associate with Halloween is the Grim Reaper—usually a skeletal figure, who is often shrouded in a dark, hooded robe and carrying a scythe to “reap” human souls. People dread the Grim Reaper because when he shows up, he is to collect that person’s soul.

I see the Grim Reaper as a figure who reminds us that our lives are finite. The 19th century Chief Crowfoot who died during the Blackfoot Crossing in Canada, shared these words of wisdom: “What is life?  It is a flash of firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” Plato’s famous final lesson to his disciples, given just before his own death was “Practice dying.”

It’s human to feel invincible to time.  We think death only happens to others. We constantly over estimate how much time we have in life. Yet in the end, we’re all dead. This is a shared human reality: death and taxes.  

If our lives are finite, here is a question everyone should be asking: “What have I not done that I know I must before I depart?” That might be making your Living Trust, making amends with people you have wronged, making that trip you always wanted, making that phone call to a person you have put off, or writing a letter.  The list goes on. 

Someone once said, “Show me your calendar, and I can tell you what you most value in life.” Is there any reshuffling of priorities that you need to make with the limited time you have here on earth? What if you live each day as if it’s your last? That would mean not putting off what matters until all other boxes are checked. I’ll get to it when… I’ll make time for that after…   I’ll be happy when… These are reasonings that regrets are made of.  

And one would do well to accept, grieve and use this reality as fuel for living a deeply, meaningful and satisfying existence. Mary Oliver says in her exquisite poem, “The Summer Day”, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Take a Risk
Have that tough conversation
Ask for what you want
Start that project (you know the one)
Do something kind
Make something delicious and share it
Spend time with people who matter to you
Learn something new
Walk in nature (without the AirPods)
Meditate, pray, dance your emotions
Rest from ceaseless striving
Love yourself, accept yourself, if you dare!

What have you come here to DO? What have you come here to BE? Create what you came to create, before it’s too late.

    John

Dear Friends,

What happens when we die?

Celebration of Día de los Muertos / The Day of the Dead and the All Saints Sunday are intrinsically tied together. I thought I’ll take this opportunity explore the question, “What happens when we die?” What I attempt to write is my take on what I believe up to now from all my learning and reflecting on this subject.

In the Gospel of John 14:1-3, Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God and trust in me. ² In my Father’s mansion there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again to take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” 

I think when we die, first of all, we’ll be surprised by the love that’s waiting for us. The unqualified acceptance of our being, the depth of love that’s waiting for us, and the intelligence that we are being returned to. Basically, I see death is a time of homecoming, a time of expansion, a time of remembering things that we forgot. It will be a time of remembering the deeper identity of who we are, our original identity, our soul identity created in the “image of God.”

I like to think that when we die, we are escorted into this soul territory of God’s kingdom. It’s a process in which people are at different stages of their own spiritual and evolutionary development. Some people need more remedial work than others. People who have given themselves over to violence and anger, injuring of other people and violating the fundamental oneness of life, often have to be carefully and gradually go through a process of repairing their injured souls.

And then there are people whose lives have been given over to compassion, generosity, and service, who lived in alignment with God, move through this transitional period more smoothly and rapidly.

This is the process of digesting your life, digesting everything that happened to you, everything that you have done and not done. This is what near-death experiences of people live tell as “life review” they saw at the cusp of death. Eventually that entire digesting of your most recent life ends and you return to your deeper identity. Your egoic identity gives way to your soul, which is a much, much larger, expansive identity.

On the All Saints Sunday, we talk about “the communion of saints.” This is a community of beings when we die is not a community of simply dead human beings. They are, rather, community of souls. And souls are a hundred thousand-year-old beings, not a hundred-year-old beings. And the community of beings in the afterlife is basically this community of souls, community of beings with deeper knowledge of the truth. Here, older souls assist younger souls, more evolved souls help less evolved souls. We dwell together.

How do I know all that? I don’t. It’s the best I have come up with for now.

“Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.”  “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.  Long before we first heard of Christ, He had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”  (Ephesians 1:4, 11-12)

Yours in Christ,

    John

Dear Friends,

Hope for the Future: Building on Rock, Not Sand

I want to share with you our bishop’s words and my reflection as we think about doing ministry in the 21^st century.

Nearly 60 clergy and lay leaders gathered and online at the Sacramento headquarter on September 6. Our Conference Bishop Sandy Olewine framed our shared ministry and mission ahead as “a new way of living into our shared vision.” She pointed to the Conference’s vision—Following Jesus, Thriving in Community, Healing the World—and urged leaders to always keep the phrase so that at the center: “Whatever we do, we do so that our vision becomes real, increases our chances of fruitfulness, and our mission is fulfilled.”

Building on Rock, Not Sand

Quoting Jesus’ teaching from Matthew 7, Bishop Olewine reminded leaders that strategy must be built on a firm foundation: “When we are grounded in God’s claim on our lives and the gospel of Jesus Christ, we need not fear the storms. That doesn’t mean there won’t be pain or mistakes, but God will partner with us to bring new life.”

“In times when foolishness abounds and anxiety overwhelms, the church is called to be different. Often when we start a new thing, we’re tempted to say, ‘yes, but’ or ‘we’ve done that already’ or ‘this won’t work,’” she said. “I invite us instead into a space of curiosity and wonder. We don’t need quick judgments. We need to ask questions that open doors for God to create something new.”

Hope for the Future

Bishop Olewine concluded, “Thriving in community means we work for the thriving of all God’s people. There are no asterisks in God’s grace.” As one participant shared in reflection, “It feels like we’re turning a page—moving from maintenance to mission.”

I’ve been giving some thoughts on the challenge of doing ministry in the 21^st century when increasingly people are moving away from churches, even though statistics from various researches found a very high percentage of the U.S. population believe in the existence of God and spirituality to be important in their lives.

The universal truth is that humans are meaning seeking beings who want vitality and aliveness in their lives whether they are religious or not. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Upon my reflection, I came up with “5 Keys to Church Revitalization”: Authenticity, Vitality, Spiritual Growth that leads to deep and meaningful transformation, Community that offers opportunities for authentic connections, and engagement in Social Justice & Service in their community.

I plan to use the pulpit in the near future to unpackage the list of “5 Keys to Church Revitalization.” I invite you to give some thoughts on this topic and share it with me and with the congregation. I am heartened to see many of you showing up every Sunday to be faithful to Jesus Christ. I see how much you love your church and care for one another. That’s a good foundation to build our ministry together that is built on a rock and not sand.

Yours in Christ,
John

Dear Friends,

Deathless Beauty in the Fleetingness of Time

We are living in an unprecedented, turbulent time of chaos and change that seem relentless. We’ve never been here before. We wonder whether the center will hold. I want to use this opportunity to introduce Jesus’ mystical reality that can anchor us to remain sane in our maddening world. There is a saying, “Still water runs deep.” I hope we can go deeper under the churning surface of the sea and find our grounding in Christ who offers a much more expansive view of reality in the fleetingness of time.

1 Corinthians 13:12-13 (The Message)

¹² “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”

When Jesus roamed the earth to set people free from ignorance and suffering, he encountered a myriad of sick people. I can’t walk. I can’t see. I have leprosy. I’m demon possessed. I’m a prostitute. I’m an outcast. I’m lost. And so on with the litany of human sorrows. And we can put ourselves there. We come to Jesus asking for healing and to end our suffering. I’m scared about myself, my loved ones, and for all of us living in this dark, chaotic, uncertain time.

And what Jesus does in each of these healing stories is he first responds to their suffering.

Mark 10: 46-52
The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus

⁴⁶ They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. ⁴⁷ When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁸ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁹ Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” ⁵⁰ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. ⁵¹ Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” ⁵² Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

And he does so in a miraculous way that’s beyond our power. As Jesus says in Luke 18:27: “What is impossible for man, it is not impossible for God. For God can do what man cannot.” The lame walks, the blind sees, the lost finds, and so on. We don’t know what happened to these people, but we do know they all died after living their day by day lives.

But then he says, “I do this for you as a sign that you might believe.” Here, the true miracle is shown to demonstrate that these outward miracles are signs of interior miracles. So how can we participate in the interior miracle from these outward signs?

Here is the distilled essence of our Christian faith. Jesus stands with people who come to him in their suffering. And you are standing before Jesus in your own suffering. And Jesus says to you, “I know you. Because God the Father has eternally contemplated you in me before the origins of the universe. I see you, the unborn you.

Ephesians 1:4, 11-12 (The Message)

“Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.”  “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ,… he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”

For God is never, never, never, not known you eternally in me since the beginning of time. God forever knows this unborn you that will never die in God. Because God will never, never, never, not know who you are in person eternally in God. You are created in the image of God (imago dei), the likeness of God whom God blew his breath, his Spirit, his essence, in you to make you who you are. 

Jesus says this to set us free from all that separate us in sweet Union with him, with God. Jesus says this to set us free from the tyranny of fears that separate us from life of love and freedom in God. What’s devastating about our fears is not that we can’t walk, we can’t see, we have leprosy, our lives are in shambles. What’s devastating about our fears is that we think we are what’s wrong with us. We tend to think that the conditions in which we find ourselves have the authority to name who we are. Jesus knows that the conditions in which we find ourselves do not have the authority to name who we are. Jesus sees that only the deathless love of God has the sole authority to name who we are, forever. Because the deathless love of God is life’s subsisting flame that sustains us.

This is the enriched depth dimension of God’s eternal time as we live day by day in the passage to time. Therefore, as we pass, as all things pass away, God remains. Here is St. Teresa of Ávila’s famous prayer “Nada te turbe”:

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing frightens me,
All things are passing,
God alone remains.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

God eternally remains as this beginning-less, endless, boundaryless, oceanic presence. It is true that we all pass away in this mystery of death. Moment by moment as we sit here, we are all passing away like burning candles in the presence of God who never passes away.

And so we are standing there in the presence of Jesus. We experience first-hand our own salvation through what is reflected in his eyes who we were before we were born. In that moment of recognition of “I was once blind but now I see,” we are set free from the tyranny of fears that separate us from life of love and freedom in God. And in that moment, a deep, deep healing from suffering takes place.

So tell me? What kind of life do you live after being liberated this way deep within your heart and soul, when your fleeting life goes through the passage of time?

First of all, we are to do what Jesus did in these healing stories in the gospel. Respond first to the reality of the traumatizing suffering that we are going through. Ask yourself, “What is within your power to protect yourself, your loved ones, and others in the community?”

There is a saying, “Act locally, think globally.” We are to locally engage in social activism, and like prophets, we are to speak the truth to power in the presence of living God. We are to remind ourselves that we are doing God’s love work grounded in the “Peace of Christ” that Christ gives to us that is not dependent upon the outcome of our efforts, that is not contingent upon external result.

John 14:27
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.
I do not give to you as the world gives.
Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

This is what we pray for to be grounded in the deathless love of God in the fleetingness of time. Jesus prayed fervently all through the night in the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. There, he surrenders himself over to the reality of eternal oneness with the Father that was his very identity as God’s presence on this earth. He said, “Father and I are One.”

We trust in the expansive view of God’s work. We put our trust in the eternal resolution of God’s work in Christ.

“Everything will be all right in the end.
If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.”
~ Richard Rohr from The Universal Christ

John