March 2020

Lenten Greetings,
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During this season I invite you to join me on a sabbath journey. Could you use a little less frantic and a little more peace? Could you use a little less noise and a little more harmony? Could you use a little less busy and a little more savoring? This lent, my soul is craving sabbath. Pick up a copy of our Lent devotional and Wendell Berry’s This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems and rediscover the gift of Sabbath. Enjoy this sneak peek poem:
 
-Pastor Megan


​“What if, in the high, restful sanctuary
That keeps the memory of Paradise,
We’re followed by the drone of history
And greed’s poisonous fumes still burn our eyes?
 
Disharmony recalls us to our work.
From Heavenly work of light and wind and leaf
We must turn back into the peopled dark
Of our unraveling century, the grief
 
Of waste, the agony of haste and noise.
It is a hard return from Sabbath rest
To lifework of the field, yet we rejoice,
Returning, less condemned in being blessed
 
By vision of what work can make:
A harmony between forest and field,
The world as it was given for love’s sake,
The world by love and loving work revealed
 
As given to our children and our Maker.
In that healed harmony the world is used
But not destroyed, the Giver and the taker
Joined, the taker blessed, in the unabused
 
Gift that nurtures and protects. Then workday
And Sabbath live together in one place.
Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony
Is our one possibility of peace.
 
When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme
That Stirs in distant memory the whole
First Sabbath’s song that no largess of time
Or hope or sorrow wholly can recall.
 
But Harmony of earth is Heaven-made,
Heaven-making, is promise and is prayer,
A little song to keep us unafraid,
An earthly music magnified in air.”

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