Minister’s Message for June 2026

Theme: Higher Deeper Love

Rev Abigail Schairer

Dear Beloved Community,

This month, we’re exploring the theme Higher Deeper Love, and I have to tell you… this theme feels personal to me.

Not because I think I’ve mastered love. Quite the opposite. I have plenty of growing to do when it comes to the full embodiment and expression of Love.

So many of us were taught versions of love that were conditional. Love as performance. Love as agreement. Love as self-sacrifice. Love as staying quiet to keep the peace. Love as perfection. Love as proving our worthiness.

I remember questioning my Sunday School teacher at my Methodist church: “If God is love, why would God condemn people to hell for eternity?” The teacher proceeded to explain the “rules” and why Hell was justified by a loving God. But even as a child, something in me resisted that idea. It didn’t make sense to my heart.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand Love very differently.

I’ve come to experience Love as nonjudgmental, radically inclusive, and completely unconditional. To me, Love is the truest expression of God. It does not condemn. It doesn’t even need to forgive, because forgiveness itself can imply that Love was ever withheld in the first place. And when I really tune into it, Love feels like the most powerful and compassionate force in the Universe.

What I’m discovering, again and again, is that Love is far more spacious than we imagine.

Love is not just the feeling we have when life is easy and everyone is getting along. Love is also what helps us stay present when life breaks open. It’s what allows us to remain tender in a world that often rewards numbness. It’s what calls us to keep our hearts open even after disappointment, grief, conflict, or fear.

I think many of us are hungry for that kind of love right now.

We are living in a time of enormous division and uncertainty. People are exhausted. Lonely. Guarded. Angry. Afraid. We are watching systems crack open while many of us are also carrying personal heartbreaks that nobody else can fully see.

And yet… I still believe Love is the deepest truth of who we are.

Not sentimental love. Not passive love. Not “good vibes only” love.

To me, Higher Deeper Love means allowing Love to expand within us.

It means moving beyond the small, transactional versions of love we inherited and awakening to Love as a spiritual force. A creative force. A healing force. A force capable of transforming not only our individual lives, but our communities and our world.

And maybe part of the invitation this month is to gently question the versions of love we were handed. The versions built on fear, exclusion, shame, or the threat of punishment. The versions that told us we were worthy only if we got it right.

Because the deeper I go into Love, the less I believe in a God who condemns, and the more I believe in a Love that never stops calling us home to ourselves and one another.

This month, I hope we can explore together what it means to embody love, not just talk about it. Because I don’t believe Love asks us to become less human. I think Love asks us to become more fully human.

Thank you for walking this path with me. Thank you for being a community willing to ask deeper questions, hold complexity, and continue growing together.

With love,
Rev. Abigail