To Love Without Agenda

For most of my adult life, the Christian church wasn’t just my vocation—it was my heartbeat. It shaped my days, cradled my family, and taught me the language of devotion. My children grew up wrapped in its rhythms—Sunday hymns rising like incense, Wednesday night potlucks where laughter and prayer mingled, youth group retreats where faith felt alive and messy and real. We gave ourselves to it, wholly and willingly.

After college, I followed the call to divinity school, then ordination, and over the years, I stepped into many roles: youth minister, associate pastor, chaplain to the grieving and the searching. In each place, well-meaning conversations circled around numbers, strategies, growth—how to fill pews, how to keep the institution thriving. And yes, some of that mattered. But over time, a quiet ache grew in me—a sense that we were missing the sacred forest for the well-pruned trees.

Because here’s the truth I couldn’t unsee: The Divine doesn’t wait for perfect sermons or packed sanctuaries. It meets us in the stillness between breaths, in the pulse of our own unguarded hearts. It’s there in the hospital room where no one quotes scripture but everyone holds silence like a prayer. It’s there in the backyard where sunlight falls through leaves like a blessing no doctrine could contain.

And so, I found myself torn—grateful for the tradition that raised me, yet restless for something deeper than its structures. I longed to point people past the rituals to the Radiance behind them—the love that whispers beneath creeds and committees, the presence that doesn’t need labels to be felt.

Jesus didn’t come to start a religion. The Buddha didn’t either. They came to wake us up—to a love that dissolves borders, a spirit that won’t be boxed. Yet here we are, still building walls with our theologies, still confusing the map for the territory.

What if faith isn’t about defending a tradition but surrendering to wonder? Not about belonging to the right group but becoming a vessel for loving-kindness?

Now, I’m drawn to spaces where hearts are soft and doors are wide—where a shared silence or a cup of tea can be as holy as any hymn. Because Spirit doesn’t need a stained-glass window to shine through. It only asks for our attention. Our courage to be still. Our willingness to love without agenda.

That’s the invitation, always:
Just breathe.
Just open.
Just love.
The rest was never the point.