July/Aug Chimes
Dear siblings in Christ,
I’ve always enjoyed the change of pace that comes with summer. I’m sure it must be different for everyone, and I know those with school-aged children may not find summer relaxing at all! But around the church, summer moves a little slower. There are fewer emails, fewer phone calls.
What we call the “Program Year”—the months with most of our activities happening--concludes with Vacation Bible School in June and doesn’t start again until Rally Day in September. In our liturgical life, the “Festival Half” of the year runs from Advent in late November through the seasons of Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, and finishes up on Pentecost, sometime in late May or early June. Then we begin our long journey through the green season of summer.
If I’m making it seem boring, I don’t mean to. As I said, I enjoy this change of pace. It’s a good reminder that we’re not meant to always be doing, always be going from one thing to next, always be busy. It’s okay—in fact, it’s needed—to take it slow sometimes. To simply be.
In our confirmation curriculum, we learn about the “gift” of Sabbath. God’s instructions to the people to rest for one day a week weren’t meant to be legalistic, difficult to deal with demands. They were meant as a gift, a reminder that we need rest. That we don’t have to earn it, and yet we deserve it anyway. That time for renewal and rejuvenation is part of being fully human.
Our culture doesn’t honor this need the way it should, and rest has unfortunately become both a privilege unattainable by many and a commodity to be bought and sold. Sabbath doesn’t have to come as part of a wellness trend, but it can be hard to find for many, especially those working paycheck to paycheck, those without adequate childcare, those caring for aging parents or partners. Rest is often not easy.
But however rest comes in our lives—in long vacations, or short quiet moments in the midst of busy days, or in slow summers—may we welcome it as a gift from our Creator, who modeled Sabbath for us.
Perhaps, if you have a few moments now to rest, you’ll join me in contemplating one of my favorite poems, “The Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
+ Mary Oliver
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Laura