Dear Beloved Community,
As you’ve heard me name in worship, this fall, we’re sharing our weeks in worship focusing on the practices of the Christian faith: that is, the things that we do over and over again, often together, that enact or bring faith to life. I hope you’ll find ways to explore these twelve practices together with our congregation this fall, for we have much to learn from each other!
But you might wonder, why are we spending the fall talking about practicing our faith? These are obvious! Don’t we all know what we’re doing here? That’s why this conversation about Christian practice matters deeply right now. As theologian Craig Dykstra once said, there’s a growing, widespread sense that “daily life is losing its coherence and grounding.” You feel it too, I know. Anxiety about how much it costs to live becomes every third or fourth thought you have all day, every day. Anger at corruption and inhumanity at the highest levels of leadership stirs in your belly like a poison. Fear infects your outlook for what tomorrow will hold, what the midterm elections will bring, what we’ll experience next year, what happens as the world warms and wars and pulls apart at the seams. We doomscroll and disengage and despair, paralyzed in our despondency about where to even begin in charting a different way. Now as it has throughout all human history, practice pulls us from the reverie of daze or despair. Practice aligns body, heart, and mind with the hope of God for this world. Practice, when done together, reminds us of what’s possible that we just can’t see or know or experience alone.
After Sunday’s meaningful worship about the practice of honoring the body, I shared in this week’s Midweek Meditation on our social media feeds that I had a wonderful opportunity to practice honoring the body this week in my time away with my pastor friends. We spent our days together in enchanting Valle Crucis, where you’d probably be charged with a crime if you didn’t go find a trail to hike or a waterfall to discover! It awoke all of my senses – seeing the beautiful surroundings, hearing notes of birdsong and cicadas, placing my feet in the waterfall’s cold water and tasting it too, and inhaling deeply the earthy mountain air. As we sat at the waterfall, I realized that I was practicing my faith by honoring all my body’s senses. I hadn’t pulled this to the forefront of my mind or decided, “it’s time to honor my body now!” But that’s what happened for me: a beating heart, sweat on my brow, feet in cold water, friends an arm’s length away, creation in all its splendor, alive to the wonder of God.
I suppose sometimes that’s the most natural way to practice faith – doing what you ordinarily do, but now with an awareness behind its significance and a gratitude for God foregrounding it all. And I bet along the way, we echo the prayers of saint Wendell Berry: “And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.”
Together in God’s work of Love,
Pastor Emily
