Associate Pastor's Note
I’ve had more time this year to ponder the
snow, and listen in the quiet while the flakes fall, and the streets are empty, and the animals hunker down, and my own heart slows. What a blessing it is to live in a place that gives us the hibernating time of winter, when all of nature turns inward and rests. How wise the grasses that sleep, the trees that release
outer layers and come down to bare essential,
the birds that sing and chatter as the snow falls
and the wind pushes against their gentle flight.
The world around us is calling us to so many
urgent matters – and we will need to show up, each of us according to our gifts. But we also must prepare ourselves, learn about the matters we want to fight for and fill up the well from which we will draw. As we enter the period of Lent, the next season of church life, can we use this time to listen deeply? To let go of non-essentials and consider core values? Can we slow our pace and gaze within? Can we allow our stocks to be replenished so that new life may unfurl when it is time? Theologian Howard Thurman wrote, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
The Worship Team has chosen “Listen” as our theme for Lent, and we will use the deep tools of worship, prayer, music, scripture, art, visual, touch and more to help us all move through this time reflectively. May we use it to hear each other more, the voices of others who have struggles we don’t have perhaps, the cries of the Earth and the web of life in need, and especially the voices of those we disagree with so we may hear their heart underneath their words. May we use it to hear the still small voice that expresses both our own aching need and our own wise knowing, and beyond those, the calling of our God.
Whatever place in our lives we find ourselves this Lent, consider the birds who still sing and chatter despite the driving snow. Howard Thurman also said, “There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful.” For surely from that place, together we can do amazing acts of love in our world!
This is my prayer for you and me this February,
—Pastor Marisa
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