July 21, 2026
Beloved, It’s time to give my basil plants a deep pruning and make some pesto before they bolt much more. I’ll get another crop or two before I let it go for the season. Tomatoes are on the vine but none are even close to ripe. I’ll pick jalapeños soon, and my zinnias are gorgeous. Gardening and sewing are the two things quieting my mind this summer. Only as I leave that quiet zone do I realize how busy my brain stays nearly all the time, even when I’m sleeping. I regularly wake up from dreams in which I’m trying madly to finish a project or meet some people’s expectations. I don’t like waking up relieved to be relieved of the busyness of sleep. I like working too, writing, reading, meetings, corresponding, planning, and my visitation rounds. I just don’t like how much mental space and energy even joyful work consumes. Which I suppose is why touching dirt and growing things, or stitching hundreds of tiny pieces of fabric together is so restorative. What’s happening at my fingertips requires my concentration but the stakes are very low; starvation doesn’t drive my gardening and no one dies because my quilt blocks are crooked. I’m in it for the process and the gifts therein. If only I brought this nugget in from the garden and out of my sewing room. If only I imagined myself, in this time and place, here for the process and for the gifts therein, less than the expected, hoped-for outcomes I attach to all this labor. If only I was as willing to work as methodically and patiently at everything as I am in the garden and the sewing room. What is it about being in a hurry that suggests to me I’m working harder or doing a better job, especially when that pace exhausts me so and leaves me dodging the work rather than returning to it joyfully? Who is whispering such nonsense in my ear, so persistently that it takes root in my thoughts? Habit, I suppose, a long habit of believing work always comes before fun, before joy, that the two are naturally antonymous. A hard lesson to unlearn for sure, but in the practice I feel it softening. For that I am grateful. It smells like a put-out campfire inside my house this morning.* I hope you & yours are safe & well. ~peace and prayers, pastor annette *Canadian campfires, I assume, as nothing in my neighborhood is burning.
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July 14, 2026
“Whose grandma are you?” demanded the tiny barefoot girl the moment I waited for my grandgirl to be ready. Twice more by other kids, “Who are you here to pick up?” Not a smile among them. It felt more like a security checkpoint than the preschool classroom I’ve been in and out of since 1994. Turns out these kids had just joined this class from another as the school rearranges age groups. They’d interrogated adults all day, matching us to their playmates. Amazing, I thought. All this time I assumed that a room full of 3, 4 and 5 year-olds were ignoring me, when in fact they were silently keeping track of who belonged to whom. What else are they tracking, I wonder, what other data is being organized and filed in those tiny brains when all we see are kids painting and playing dress-up? They feel safer knowing who that mama, daddy, grandma, grandpa is and to which friend they belong. I feel safer when I know who is in my space and why. I also love how their enquiry designates the classroom as their domain, not mine. I am a guest, my presence there conditional on whose grandma I am.* Community is everything to us, isn’t it, from the time we begin realizing we share the world with other humans. The members of a strong community, like a preschool classroom, protect each other and their bond of belonging. They have a healthy suspicion of outsiders and practice the clear boundary-setting we adults pay therapists to teach us. They are welcoming once connection is established. I can learn so much from them for my own grown-up life, where I can be so hesitant – so afraid, that is – to tell the truth when it comes to belonging for me. Simply, the tribe I want to be part of is a tribe of people chasing the ways of Jesus, in study and in practice, enjoying this life and working together, grateful for the preciousness of being alive for such tender moments as when a 4-year-old Chinese girl asks me for some identification. I pray you have time with your people today and are strengthened by it. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette * I thought it hilarious and not a bit startling that I was immediately recognized as a grandma. I am working on embracing this identity. Beloved, I’ve been thinking about my grout, the concrete stuff that holds tile in place and gets dirtier the more it’s mopped. I’ve owned three different houses over the past thirty years, all of which had tile, and not once have I cleaned grout. The house I now own is more than 30 years old and I can say with some confidence the grout has never been cleaned as it’s black throughout the kitchen save the pantry floor where it’s a nice creamy beige. When we decide to clean something really dirty we say we are going to tackle it, which is how I spent a good part of my holiday weekend, tackling my grout. Like Brother Lawrence peeling his potatoes, the tedium of running my $10 electric scrubber back and forth in that narrow road between each tile became almost meditative, allowing me to think about absolutely nothing. Rarely can I think about nothing. Of course I am nothing like Brother Lawrence. I complain and procrastinate and am so easily distracted by all the projects I have going in this house. I do my best to forgive myself, to tell myself the mess is all my own, that it bothers no one else. Besides, I finish things all the time, just not as fast as I start new things. My simple point is this, framing our daily existence as trying to catch up cannot possibly be the life God intends for us, can it? Two baskets of laundry and stacks of dishes to be put away do not fit my idea of abundant life. But somehow mindlessly soaping, scrubbing and wiping away thirty-plus years of homemade alluvium is next level happiness for me. I fully expect to die with projects still spread out on my desk and sewing table, with unfinished books all over my house and dirty window sills I’ve been meaning to clean since last fall, or maybe the fall before that. And hopefully my grout will have turned black all over again. Because I was busy NOT fretting about what wasn’t done but enjoying what each day offered. Of course it’s far easier to write about than to practice, which is why it is called practice. Like Brother Lawrence said. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette 
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I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
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October 2026
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