to the tables, everybody - and feast yourselves!

Come to The Little Feast: a springtime celebration of creation, creativity, and the Creator

What is happening is a celebration! A celebration of creation, creativity, and the Creator - a Little Feast (just a day after the Ascension) ... beginning in the big old living room of Rosewood Manor, with an evening of ‘the round’ - a collaboration of improvisatory musical, visual, and culinary artists... and continuing with a blessing and gathering prayer at St Alban's the next morning, followed by four thought- and conversation- stimulating presentations – by resource folk from inside and outside our own communities – along with workshops led by artists, musicians and prayerful folk from Beloved and St Alban's.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime. – Martin Luther

The Little Feast: a springtime celebration of creation, creativity, and the Creator,
with the Church of the Beloved and St. Alban's Church, in Edmonds, Washington, featuring Tara Ward, Tom Sine, Christine Sine, Eric Hanson, and other members of our communities

• Friday evening May 14th, 7-9pm at Church of the Beloved, Rosewood Manor,
8104 220th St SW, Edmonds, WA 98026 (http://belovedschurch.org/)
• Saturday May 15th, 9.30am-3pm at St. Alban's Episcopal Church,
21405 82nd Place West, Edmonds, WA 98026 (http://stalbansedmonds.org/)



We will need to chip in twelve bucks each for food and toward our other costs. Additional donations gratefullly received. We will be welcoming all who attend.

Register online (http://littlefeast.eventbrite.com) or snail-mail a check for twelve bucks to St Alban's Church (Memo: Little Feast)

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beyond the black stump

An Invitation to Enter The Sacred Garden

There is an Australian phrase, "beyond the black stump", meaning "far away". I learned it from Christine Sine: she and her husband Tom were presenters at the Black Stump Festival last October in the Sydney area. The festival is part of the 'emerging church' movement. (It seeks to foster a celebratory, participatory, interactive, inclusive, safe, creative, ethical, grace-filled experience of the Kingdom of God.)

They were invited to give their global-view insights into what is moving and changing in the church and Christian community throughout the world.

Here in the parish we've invited everyone in the congregation to imagine what lies "beyond the black stump" (far away in future time). Imagine coming back to this spot at Easter 2022. Who do you see? What are they doing? Where is the church in all this?

And we have begun to see people sketch their visions. Among the common themes that are emerging - a gathering, a Eucharist, a table of sharing - there is the recurring image of the garden, real and metaphorical.

Both physical and spiritual, appropriately enough: for the church may be a sacred garden, a 'thin place' where the membrane between this world (material) and the next (spiritual) may be especially permeable - or where the truth of the barrier's non-existence might become real to us.

Donald Nicholl (author of "A Testing of Hearts") used to say that he would build his ideal scholarly community, of friends seeking truth, around three common elements: a pilgrimage to the site where they would work together, a bell which would draw them together by its sound, and a garden in which they could get in touch with the earth.

As we began envisioning 'the future of social anticipation' at St Albans, Christine Sine encouraged us to think of more than just another community garden - for the church the garden should have a spiritual element, as sometimes a monastic garden has a tree at its center, an apple tree, as a focal point.

(The apples here are just beginning budding, following a late frost.)

What I would like to do now is invite you to look at the church as a sacred garden.

Here, at St Albans, beyond the corner of our current property, where indeed there is a black stump, the sawyer-hewn, springboard-notched, fire-tempered remnant of the first growth, the old forest...

Imagine: a garden. In the garden are many people digging, loitering, enjoying the sun, awaiting the fruits of their common labors.

In the garden are people praying, as well as people spreading manure, double-digging raised beds, spreading seeds, tending crops, pulling (or hoeing) weeds...

Are there children laughing? Are there people singing? Are their hands in the soil? Are they gathered by the sound that rings them round the table, gathered in fellowship and faith, delighting in the joy of God?

Are there hands reaching out, giving and receiving from the town and people around them, spreading the word and tasting the fruit of faith?

Is there a mission outward, seeking in all persons the face of Christ, and serving him there in the face of the stranger as well as in each other?

And in the garden in the cool of the day walks our Lord, as he walked of old, seeking out the new (renewed) humankind he has brought into being, called by his Word.


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The Little Feast (May 14-15, 2010)

Come to The Little Feast: a springtime celebration of creation, creativity, and the Creator, a collaborative adventure with the Church of the Beloved. Register online (http://littlefeast.eventbrite.com/) or send a check to the church ($12). The evening of May 14th we begin the celebration in the living room of Rosewood Manor; on Saturday morning May 15 we gather under the big brown roof of the church of Saint Alban.

"I worship and adore the true and living God, who created all things." --Alban

May we live by faith, walk in hope and be renewed in love, until the world reflects your glory and you are all in all. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, Church of Ireland, 2004)


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For the Gospel Grapevine (May 2010) the parish newsletter of St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Washington.


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The Sacred Garden

For the Gospel Grapevine (May 2010) the parish newsletter of St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Washington.

There is an Australian phrase, "beyond the black stump", meaning "far away". I learned it from Christine Sine: she and her husband Tom were presenters at the Black Stump Festival last October in the Sydney area. The festival is part of the 'emerging church' movement. They were able to give their global-view insights into what is moving and changing in the church and Christian community throughout the world. Here in the parish we've invited everyone in the congregation to imagine what lies "beyond the black stump". Imagine coming back to this spot at Easter 2022. Who do you see? What are they doing? Where is the church in all this?

And we have begun to see people sketch their visions. Surprisingly enough among the common themes that are emerging - a gathering, a eucharist, a table of sharing - there is the image of the garden, both real and metaphorical, physical and spiritual. Appropriately enough: for the garden may be a 'thin place' where the membrane between this world (material) and the next (spiritual) may be especially permeable - or where the truth of the barrier's non-existence might become real to us.

In his classes as well as perhaps in his books, Donald Nicholl used to say that he would build his ideal community of friends seeking truth around three common elements: a pilgrimage to the site where they would work together, a bell which would draw them together by its sound, and a garden in which they could get in touch with the earth.

As we began envisioning 'the future of social anticipation' at St Albans, Christine Sine encouraged us to think of more than just another community garden - for the church the garden should have a spiritual element, as sometimes a monastic garden has a tree at its center, an apple tree, as a focal point.

(The apples here are just beginning budding, following a late frost.)

What I would like to do now is invite you to look at the church as a sacred garden.

Image: garden.

In the garden are many people digging, loitering, enjoying the sun, awaiting the fruits of their common labors.

In the garden are people praying, as well as people spreading manure, double-digging raised beds, spreading seeds, tending crops, pulling (or hoeing) weeds, ...

And in the garden in the cool of the day walks our Lord, as he walked of old, seeking out the new (renewed) humankind he has brought into being, called by his Word.

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Be thou, triune God...

Be Thou, triune God, in the midst of us as we give thanks for those who have gone from the sight of earthly eyes. They, in Thy nearer presence, still worship with us in the mystery of the one family in heaven and on earth.

We remember those whom Thou didst call to high office, as the world counts high. They bore the agony of great decisions and laboured to fashion the Ark of the Covenant nearer to Thy design.

We remember those who, little recognised in the sight of men, bore the heat and the burden of the unrecorded day. They served serene because they knew Thou hadst made them priests and kings, and now shine as the stars for ever.

If it be Thy holy will, tell them how we love them, and how we miss them, and how we long for the day when we shall meet with them again.

God of all comfort, we lift into Thine immediate care those recently bereaved, who sometimes in the night time cry ‘Would God it were morning,’ and in the morning cry ‘Would God it were night.’ Bereft of their dear one, too often they are bereft also of the familiar scenes where happiness once reigned.

Lift from their eyes the too distant vision of the resurrection at the last day. Alert them to hear the voice of Jesus saying ‘I AM Resurrection and I AM Life’: that they may believe this.

Strengthen them to go on in loving service of all Thy children. Thus shall they have communion with Thee and, in Thee, with their beloved. Thus shall they come to know, in themselves, that there is no death and that only a veil divides, thin as gossamer.

AMEN.

--George MacLeod, quoted in Neil Paynter, ed., This is the Day: Readings and Meditations from the Iona Community (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2002). Prayer for Month 1 Day 31.

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Go forth, good people...

Good people, this celebration has ended.

Therefore, I bid you:

Go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good cheer.
Hold fast to that which is good.

Love and serve the Lord with gladness and singleness of heart, rejoicing in the power of the spirit.

And may the blessings of
God the Father, who created us;
God the Son, who gave his life for us; and
God the Holy Spirit, who enlivens and makes us whole,
be upon all of us this day and forever. Amen.


Father Jesse Vaughan, pastoral blessing and dismissal


2006 04 10 (alt. 4/10/2010 JRL)

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Two Prayers for The Church

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

(Ephesians 3:16-21)

The Lord be with you.
People And also with you.

Let us pray.

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look
favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred
mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry
out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world
see and know that things which were cast down are being
raised up, and things which had grown old are being made
new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection
by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus
Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity
of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer (The Episcopal Church, 1979), 515.

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The Highway and the Future

Herbert O'Driscoll sent me a couple of email messages last winter that are very relevant to this Easter Season:

THE HIGHWAY OF CHRISTIAN TIME

We Christians of the late 20th and early 21st century have not only begun to go on many pilgrimages. We have also begun to travel a great deal in time. Past chapters of Christian spirituality fascinate us. One of these chapters - or ways - of Christian experience is what we have come to call Celtic Christianity.

It is always important to ask why a period of the past begins to haunt us in the present. To ask that question is to realize that it is because in some sense, unrealized until now, that past period speaks to our present experience.

Frederick Turner on the Faculty of the University of Texas said something I believe to be deeply true. "Sometimes", he said, "the present can free us from the shackles of the past and help us to build the future. But it is equally true that sometimes the past can free us from the shackles of the present and help us to form the future".

This is the reason for us spending some time together exploring the past, but doing so to open for ourselves some gates to the future. To stand at any point on the great highway of Christian experience is to see it emerge from the mists of the past and to disappear into the mists of the future. The point at which we ourselves stand on this highway is the place of our vocation.
(4 DEC 2009)

TWO WORDS FOR THE FUTURE

Jurgen Moltmann once wrote something I never forgot. He said that we have almost forgotten that in Latin there are two words for the future. One is Futurum. Futurum, he said, is the future we see stretching out in front us by our brainstorming, trend spotting, number crunching etc. It comes from OUR wrestling, He calls this the FUTURE OF SOCIAL CALCULATION.

But, he says, there's another future that comes towards us from beyond us, over which we have no control. We can't fashion its outline or calculate it. We grapple with this future by asking a question. "What kind of X (parish...diocese...state...country...family etc etc) would we like to have in (fill in a date). In other words we in a sense "dream" this future.

Moltmann says that this dreaming can be very powerful. When a society starts dreaming of a different future to what it now has, it can produce tremendous energy. Sometimes all the tanks in the world can't stop it. Walls can tumble. He calls this future THE FUTURE OF ETHICAL ANTICIPATION.

He then says that each is incomplete with out the other. Both are needed for future planning.
Cheers
H.
(23 NOV 2009)

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While it was still dark

In silence she stood near the cross, with the other women, and watched, as the one who had made her whole was broken, as the one who gave her life himself began to die. She heard his last words and saw him close his eyes, and breathe at last his last lonely breath. And then -

While it was still dark,
on the first day of the week,
she went to the tomb.
It had not dawned on her yet
what had changed -

What happened on Easter morning is hard to explain - but it changed absolutely everything.

What we do with what happened - how we change our minds and let our lives be turned around in a new direction - more profoundly tells the meaning of the resurrection than any formula.

From that day forward - from that day forward to this one - life is changed. Not ended.

As we say of the hour of death life is changed, not ended: meaning that death has not the final word, the finality, any more - for Christ is raised, from the dead, and in him, in his raising, all are raised.

With him we are living into a new future - the new possibility that life can have meaning beyond itself, beyond the grave, beyond our circumstances, beyond our individuality; we have life in Christ and in Christ's life we find life.

Nobody fully knows what this means. We only know of it because of the witness to the resurrection by the women and the men who beheld the empty tomb, the risen Lord, and the Ascension - and the coming of the holy Spirit down upon them.

We too wish for the descent of the dove, the power of the Spirit; knowing full well it has meaning beyond our dreams, holds out hope beyond our accomplishment, and fills us with love beyond our capacity for self doubt or remorse, anguish or uncertainty.

Claims on life as we lived it once before are gone; as we live into the resurrection we let go of life - and truly grasp it at last.

In the light of the cross, the alternative - to life as we have known it - is anything but hopelessness. On the contrary! There is every scriptural indication that we are called to change who we are into the kingdom of God.

(Ann Weems, Kneeling in Jerusalem)

Because Christ is risen, we live in a world made new.

Because he is risen, we can live in hope.

Because he is risen, life is not a futile struggle; our efforts have meaning.

Because he is risen, we know that God is with us; he listens to us.

Because he is risen, there can be peace. Those who were enemies can live peaceably together.

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;

(Isaiah 65:25a)

They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

(Isaiah 11:9)

Because Christ is risen, we know that God reigns.

That is what Jesus came to bring us: the peaceable reign of God. SHALOM: peace, joy, wholeness, beauty. Satisfaction in the completion of the task, the fruits of his labors, the work he has done, come together in this moment: the moment of the kingdom of peace, the reign of God in your land, in your voice, in your heart, in your life, in you:

In every movement of the heart, every struggle of the mind, for integrity, justice, creativity, life, love, and beauty, the day has dawned: the new day, the day of the Lord.

This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)

Praise the Lord, who has broken the power of death. Alleluia!
Praise the Lord, who has defeated the depths of darkness. Alleluia!
Praise the Lord, who has triumphed over evil. Alleluia!
Praise the Lord, who has won for us life eternal. Alleluia!
In love we give ourselves to you, holy Lord. Amen!

In joy we worship you,
In hope we find you, O Christ our God.

May we rejoice in your victory, proclaim the good news, and reflect your glory. Amen!


May you know in your life the presence of the risen Lord, the peace of Christ the eternal Word, and the power of his resurrection. May the blessing of God almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you today and remain with you always.

(adapted from David Adam, Glimpses of Glory)

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