Happy Thanksgiving

“To be a saint is to be fueled by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less.” Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, restful Thanksgiving.

The Oakley community Thanksgiving service is tonight at 7pm at the United Church of Christ, 4100 Taylor Ave.

Abbie and the girls and I are heading up tomorrow morning to be with my folks in Bellefontaine. All of my siblings and their partners will be around, so we’ll have a full house.

A mix of discipline and miracle

I’ve been pondering a line by Gillian Rose from her book Love’s Work.  She calls the act of writing a “mix of discipline and miracle.”  This sums up well my experience of sermon writing – and writing personal journals, letters, even emails sometimes.  It takes discipline to ponder all of the different sources and thoughts in front of you and in your mind, and then it takes discipline to focus those scattered sources, quotes, memories, ideas, into something coherent that communicates.  Somewhere along this frustrated path there is a miracle that takes place.  Something presents itself that “has emerged from regions beyond your control,” as Rose puts it, and holds all the fragments together.  Not to say that the product is always beautiful, but it is, almost always, miraculous.

I’m wondering what else we experience as a mix of discipline and miracle.  Prayer comes to mind.  The discipline of silence – or of spilling your guts – or of meditating on a thought or an image or a scripture – this is also a way of bringing the scattered elements of our lives into focus.  And the miracle comes as a gift that emerges beyond our control and brings all of our fragments together into a wholeness within God’s care. 

Worship is a mix of discipline and miracle.  We come together at the same time every Sunday morning from our various roles throughout the week, we experience singing, scripture, sermon, and sharing, and we are miraculously united as Christ’s body.

I suppose this is just another way of talking about how our efforts and God’s efforts intertwine and merge and blossom together.  Living with both discipline and miracle feels like a good way to enter the holiday season as a congregation.  Our intentionality about paying attention to God and watching for the movement of the Spirit is a counter-cultural discipline this time of year.  Thanksgiving and Advent present opportunities for the miracle of spiritual and community renewal.

We are also entering a time when we are making some steps toward investing in our church building.  New paint and new carpet on the inside, and a new sign on the outside, are all possibilities in the next several months.  Much work has already been done to lay the groundwork for these things to happen and it will be a matter of making some final decisions on details, doing some physical work to make things happen, and raising the money to cover expenses not already covered in our funds.  What kinds of miracles may come about as a result of these investments? A new, more welcoming ‘face’ of CMF for passers-by outside and visitors inside to see…an enlivened sanctuary area where simple beauty can aid worship …an opening up of our imaginations for ways to continue to make our building a place of hospitality, worship, community, and mission?  Whatever comes about I pray that we can approach it as an intertwining of our efforts and God’s and I pray that we can continue to blossom in new ways as a community of faith.