Pentecost 2009

On this day of Pentecost I’ve enclosed a few reflections to go with today’s readings in the format of a Sunday service. You provide the hymns … :>

The following Litany is from a 1935 hymnal:

Oh God, our true life, in whom and by whom all things live, who by thy Spirit doest command us to see thee, and art ever ready to be found; to know thee is life, to serve thee is freedom, to praise thee is the joy and happiness of the soul.

We praise and bless thee, and give thanks for thy great glory.

For seasons of bounty and of beauty, for nights of quiet sleep, for days of health, for the glory of earth and its ministry to our need;

We bless thy name, O Lord.

For all the generations before us who through effort and pain have wrought so that we might be heirs of liberty and truth and peace;

We thank thee, and pray that we may enter into this heritage.

For new hopes of fairer life and nobler freedoms that stir the hearts of many peoples today;

We praise thee, O God.

For the discipline that enriches, for the burden that strengthens, for the failure that is true success, and for the sorry that enlarges the heart;

We give thee thanks, O Lord.

For the soul and its powers, for strong desires to fashion ourselves after the likeness of Christ, and all our world into new orders of beauty and right;

For these also we rejoice and give thee thanks.

Keep us, we pray thee, in thy love; and in and through the quickening of our spirits make us worthy of sonship [and daughtership] with thee.

And to thee by the honor and glory, world without end. Amen.

Offertory Prayer for May 31, 2009

Spirit of the Living God,

Embolden us to announce "Grace for all!" --

especially in those places that most hunger for Your gifts of life.

Through this offering time, we symbolically offer ourselves --

without reservation or fears of insufficiency --

to Your work of satisfying a hungry world.

In Your name we pray, Amen.

            ~ Tanya Barnett & Tom Wilson Radical Gratitude 5/25/09

 

Readings:

Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24- 34, 35; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

 Reflections & Writings:

            Today marks the closing of the Easter season (although each Sunday is always a mini-Easter a celebration of Resurrection) and marks the birthday of the church. Today celebrates when all the church becomes filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to boldly proclaim and share the great love and grace that God invites all creation to participate within. I am reminded of how with Jesus’ birth we have entered a new world – a new Kingdom/Kin-dom while still living in an old world order. We are living between the times. Perhaps that’s why Nouwen’s quote struck me this week.

“You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.”

~ Henri Nouwen - Circles of Love

Where are you continuing to find gifts of Resurrection? Where are you finding gifts of grace? How are you finding yourself following the Spirit?

Living Humbly

"Humility and a sense of entitlement are bad bedfellows. If it is true that the meek shall inherit the earth, the entitled shall certainly contest their inheritance!

How did life become this way for so many of us? What happened to gratefulness, appreciation of the simple things in life, and a clear recognition that in the end all is gift? When did artificial needs become so powerfully consuming? Suggest to someone today that they can be happy with less and they think you are being absurd. …

Ever sense the so called self-actualization movement of the 1960’s, people have been taught that what they really must do to be truly happy is to step forward and get what is rightfully theirs. They must be willing to take the necessary risks to get what they deserve out of life. I think this is the wrong risk for most people to take much of the time. To do so means that we spend most of our waking time constantly chasing and claiming rather than enjoying the life set before us. I believe that a more appropriate and powerful question that we should ask ourselves today is, ‘Am I taking enough risks to fully enjoy what I already have?’

Of course, the question is counter-cultural. It is tied more to a spirit of humility than a sense of entitlement. The consumer society we live in tries to keep us off balance. It urges us to be continuously in search of those things and people that are rightfully ours, and to believe that they will in the end, make us whole" (Robert J. Wicks. Crossing the Desert: Learning to let go see clearly and live simply. Norte Dame: Sorin Books, 2007. 65ff).

What a question! “Am I taking enough risks to fully enjoy what I already have?”

Believe it or not, but that is one of the themes that have come up in conversations lately. How do I live humbly with others? the environment? myself? And am I willing to risk to live well now? Life is not fragile, but it is unpredictable. A school superintendent goes home for lunch a month before retirement, to not come back to the office. It turns out he had a heart attack over his lunch break. A month into retirement, a new retiree has a stroke. Cancer strikes a community member and plans are changed.

It seems to me that most of us out living on our boats have thought about these sorts of things. And there is a strong sense of wanting to have lived a life well lived: a life lived with dignity, grace and humility. By living in such a way we encounter God's gifts anew in sunrises and sunsets, in the mewing of gulls and screeches of terns. And we are thankful and humbled to have received these gifts of Grace.

How to Teach Respect for Nature?

Sorry it has been a bit sense I last logged on, it's been busy around here.

I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day Weekend.

There have been a number of themes in conversations that I want to touch upon, but first I want to reflect a bit about what we experienced around Semiahmoo this past weekend. 

With a minus 3 foot tide during daylight hours, and with warm sunny weather lots of people were out and about. We couldn't believe where people choose to park and drive. Along much of the spit, there is county park while there is also some semi-developed land. By this I mean that they have put in the sewer, water, and streets, but haven't built yet. Some of this land has dune type structure above the beach, yet cars were parking all long the top of the dunes endangering to erode the hill. 

In addition, while the spit has many oysters and other clams, it is closed to clamming/oystering. This is in part due to the fear of a water treatment facility (read sewage) malfunction, but also due to the fact that there is a large community effort to create a strong oyster ecosystem once again. When clamming one of the rules is to back fill any holes that you have dug. Any hole, the tides love to deepen, lengthen, etc. Yet, tons of people were leaving the beach with five gallon buckets full of oysters/clams, having not filled in their holes.

Finally, what really got to us is the following. The Semiahmoo Marina has a dock type of breakwater rather than the rock wall type. With the minus tide, that meant the one end of the dock is accessible by the now exposed shore. There are signs all over the beach saying to say away from seals. In addition, the breakwater has a large sign saying "stay off" "dangerous" "no." Yet six adults walked out onto the breakwater and scared the seals back into the water. Yesterday evening, by the way, we saw the first seal pup of the season. The breakwater acts like a nursery to the seal colony. 

I was struck by the plain ignorance and non-thinking of humans in a natural environment. Rather than watching the animals for any sign of disturbance, and once seen, backing off a bit to allow proper room, complete lack of respect was shown instead. I was reminded once again that we humans are now officially an urban species. For the past roughly 5 years, there are now more humans living in urban environments than in rural ones. One of the draw backs to urban living is a cutting off a chance to participate in an more wild habitat, one that is outside human control.

This really hit home for me, as I had spent some time at the Padilla Bay Interpretive Center in Bay View, WA earlier this week on a field trip. The Center takes time to educate the children about proper beach protocol before allowing the children to explore. Then there is again time to not only look at what they have collected but talk about why this ecosystem is important to human and other species health.

I was also struck by our own children's response to their own actions regarding nature. Sunday morning as we were getting ready to leave for church, the kids found two spiders on the dock. They thought it would be great to put them together. I was never sure as to what the reason behind this motivation was. When put together, however, the larger spider pounced upon the small one, and ate it. Our first realization as to what had happened was the sobbing coming from the end of the dock. The concern wasn't over the fact that one had eaten the other, the sadness came because "I interfered with nature." 

The last two stories do give me hope for the children of the world in terms of their response to ecosystems around themselves. First, because there are adults who are concerned with sharing with our children the passion of learning, experiencing and treating with respect the world around us. Second, because children do have so much compassion toward others and life in general. 

Encouraging compassion can help us learn to tread a little more lightly and respectfully upon  this God gifted earth.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day.

At church this morning we heard the choir sing this lovely song, a capela (ok, so it was accompanied by a rhythm "shaker"). Lovely song. Here it is.

We Are ...

For each child that's born, 

a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are.

For each child that's born, 

a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are.

We are our grandmother's prayers and 

we are our grandfather's dreamings, 

We are the breath of our ancestors, 

we are the spirit of God.

We are the mothers of courage and 

fathers of time,

We are daughters of dust and 

the sons of great vision,

We're sisters of mercy and 

brothers of love,

We are lovers of life and 

the builders of nations,

We're seekers of truth and 

keepers of faith,

We are makers of peace and 

wisdom of ages.

We are our grandmother's prayers and 

we are our grandfather's dreams,

We are the breath of our ancestors, 

we are the spirit of God.

For each child that's born, 

a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are.

For each child that's born, 

a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are.

For each child that's born, 

a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are.

For each child that's born, 

a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are.

~ Words and Music: Ysaye M. Barnwell