Pastor Annette's Blog
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"OF ALL THE THINGS GOD HAS SHOWN ME, I CAN SPEAK BUT A LITTLE WORD NOT MORE THAN A HONEYBEE CAN CARRY AWAY ON ITS FOOT FROM AN OVERFLOWING JAR."
~ MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, 13TH CENTURY MYSTIC |
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August 28, 2018 Beloved: The light and air are changing from summer to September. It’s still hot as blazes everywhere but I see my daisies and tomatoes passing from their prime. The sedum won’t peak for a few more weeks, nor the Purple Beautyberry (calicarpa americana) shrub. They are the stars of their own show. The racket in the woods sounds like elephants but is actually just squirrels. They drag enormous dead leaf bundles up the trees to refurbish winter nests.  Mornings on the porch are precious time to me. Connecting with my neighborhood of trees and birds and dogs, the squirrels who rob my garden. I like imagining they don’t know this is my house, that I’m the one making mortgage payments. That to them it’s just another part of home, a nice gutter for a nest, a rest stop for some nectar, a pipe to store this winter’s nuts. A good housekeeper drives them away. A good neighbor shares the space. My hope is to split the middle. The nuts stored in my drainage tile never go away and cause all kinds of water problems, so I blast that with a power hose. The next can stay until the babies fly away or it falls into the downspout - whichever one comes first. Spider webs can stay forever because of the way dew beads hang there like diamonds in the morning.
Eyes to see, Jesus said over and over, eyes to see. Eyes to see the riches money can never buy. Knowing even still that time to sit and watch the morning is the privilege of a few. A chair, a porch, coffee in the quiet . . . . . eyes to see the privilege I enjoy. Would that seeing would become believing that this privilege is so much more than blessing. It’s an arsenal, a deep, deep reservoir of power and advantage with which to bend this world’s ways in the direction of justice, decency, goodness, kindness and grace. For all of us with time for early morning prayers, may the strength we draw be strength we spend on the work to which God has called us. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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August 7, 2018 Beloved: This morning’s prayer book wanted me to reflect on vulnerability, and the resistance in me was deep and wide. I kept wanting to modify the topic to humility, as though humility is a virtue while vulnerability is a condition to be borne. Deep in me lies the assumption that vulnerability is a word that I apply to the poor and weak who are systematically vulnerable to many dangers, toils and snares that more privileged people like me easily avoid. Wide is my preference to use the word humility when thinking and speaking of the choice to be smaller rather than larger, quieter rather than louder, to take less instead of more, to give more instead of less.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. ~ Philippians 2:5-8 [NRSV] Paul’s hymn, just like my Scottish prayer book, reads as if humble and vulnerable are far closer than my embedded definitions. Vulnerability may be chosen by anyone who calls herself Christ’s own.
~peace & prayers, pastor annette |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
Everything on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license, which gives you permission to copy freely, provided that you attribute the work to me, that you use the work for non-commercial purposes, and that you do not produce derivative works. Archives
December 2024
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