Sitting Lightly, Back at Work

Beloved:
          First day back from a delightful time away from email and all things church.  I slept a lot, sewed a lot, spent a lot of time with grandkids, took a little trip with my sister, gardened and did some house projects.  I enjoyed it all and am grateful for the time to rest my brain, body and spirit.
          My garden plot is really coming on.  I’ve put up a dozen jars of pesto and picked bowls of cherry tomatoes two mornings in a row.  I have bouquets worth of zinnias on the stem and two bell peppers on the vine.  My herbs are exploding, so let me know if you want some oregano, chives or thyme.
          The squirrel just showed up to check the feeders he already emptied a few nights ago, so instead he’s chewing a nub of tree branch.  Behind him, workers are laying straw wattles (I had to look up the proper term) in my neighbor’s and my backyards.  They’re planting grass seed over the area they dug up two weeks ago to lay drainage tile.  I’m more hopeful than optimistic that they’ll be back to water what they’ve planted, else we will have our own muddy river every time it rains.  Alas, not everything is mine to fret over.
          Ever am I startled that the world can be so calm in one spot and so chaotic in another.  People the world over can only fantasize about a neighborhood so peaceful and quiet, where it’s safe to sit outside and gardens are a memory.  And not just oceans away, of course, sometimes merely streets.  In cities big and small, including our own.  Why should I be so fortunate while others know only hardship and struggle?  It doesn’t always come down to choices and hard work.  I don’t work half as hard as the single mom who works at Walmart and also drives for Grub-Hub.  No one chooses where they’re born:  suburban North America or Gaza.  I go months at a time not worrying that a hellcat missile will hit my children’s houses or my church, yet grandmothers and pastors in Palestine think about it every day.
          Which is to say that while I am indeed and ever so grateful for this safe and peaceful life, I also try to sit lightly with it, knowing it is so very, very fragile.  We are all susceptible to the disasters, storms and tragedies that fall upon a person or a community in the twinkling of an eye.  Life itself is unfragile – unsusceptible, that is – to the disasters that befall us.  According to the faith within us and we share.  Given freely by the Christ to us all without respect to our fortunes in this world.  This is my comfort and my courage every day, most especially on the hard ones.
          Summer is not quite winding down, but I can feel it coming.  I pray your hearts and hands and mind are well occupied this day.
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~peace & prayers, 
pastor annette