Re-connecting, and Renewing our Congregational Community
I am so glad and grateful to have returned from vacation and Study Leave. I have had time with my family and in the mountains of Colorado to rest and renew my spirit. Already in the past week, I have visited with several of you and we have begun to renew our connections. As we do, we find new hope for the coming year, and I’m able to start planning for the Fall. I am hopeful for re-connection and renewal in the year to come. Thus, I hope to hear from YOU about Small Group ministries, classes, pastoral needs, and interests you have.
Thank you to the folks who have already been in contact and let me strongly hope for more connection! We need one another in these times especially!
For many of us, this past year was hard, stressful, or difficult. It may be that it was even just different in unexpected ways. And that those differences strained our souls and made relationships more difficult. Throughout my time away, I was reminded of the ways that our networks ground us, and our sense of place in a community or in nature can help us to understand ourselves in the world more deeply.
Rest in the Grace of the World
Today, I am thinking of Wendell Berry‘s deliberate choice in despairing and fearful times, if only for a moment, to “rest in the grace of the world, and [be] free.”
When despair for the world grows in me
– “The Peace of Wild Things”by Wendell Berry
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
This year, in addition to forming our usual monthly Soul Matters groups, we will offer a reflection group for those who are struggling. We hope, perhaps, to sit with the question of what it looks like to find equilibrium. We ask how we find balance in a world that continues to be turbulent around us. Here, we won’t focus on the practical aspects of what to DO next, but provide a space to re-learn to simply be together. We will offer space to rest and to find our center. If this intrigues you, I encourage you to attend this class when we start in September.
