Dear Friends:

The green in May and early June is glorious—still fresh and spring-like, but now lush, fully covering the trees and shrubs that I see every day. I remember, though, the wistful feeling I had in March as the trees came into leaf and began to obscure the trunks and branches, the outline and skeleton of the trees, which have such a poignant and surprising beauty through the late fall and winter. And my mother, who often thinks she is still in California where plants thrive year round, marveled at the skeleton of the trees in bleak January before they were obscured by leaves.

Many poets and traditions savor the quirky, unique, and singular aspects of nature. In Japan, trees that are ancient, twisted, and broken are often honored with a shimenawa—a sacred rope that demarks a sacred thing or place.

Even this stump is honored with a shimenawa. Not every tree (or stump!) is so honored, but it is moving that it is often the old and deeply compromised trees that stand out as particularly sacred. Photo from Wikipedia/Wikicommons

There are passages in our scripture that delight in the strange, including one we heard last Sunday in Psalm 104, which included these verses 26-28, naming “Leviathan,” the sea monster:

Yonder is the great and wide sea with its living things too many to number, *

creatures both small and great.

There move the ships, and there is that Leviathan, *

which you have made for the sport of it.

All of them look to you *

to give them their food in due season.

Father Richard Rohr connects the strange and marvelous and ordinary of the natural world to God’s love of all creation, and claims that it offers a message of salvation and love woven through our medium of experience: time and space. Deep traditions in Christianity connect the experience of nature with experience of the divine, including the Celtic tradition with “two books of divine revelation” (the Bible and nature); mystic Julian of Norwich who perceived God’s love and providence in a small hazelnut; numerous works of creation theology that have emerged in recent decades. Many people—in and out of the church—have told me that they experience the holy in creation. According to Father Richard, we can also experience love and grace as well.

May we all walk in beauty, bathed in the love of the Holy One, “aware of the generous, creative Presence that exists in all things by their very nature.”

Jen+

Listening to Nature’s Sermons

Richard Rohr

https://cac.org/daily-meditations/listening-to-natures-sermons/

Father Richard Rohr describes how nature reflects and reveals the wisdom and presence of the Divine:

In the backyard of our Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, a massive 150-year-old Rio Grande cottonwood tree spreads its gnarled limbs over the lawn. An arborist once told us that the tree might have a mutation that causes the huge trunks to make such circuitous turns and twists. One wonders how it stands so firmly, yet the cottonwood is easily the finest work of art that we have at the Center, and its asymmetrical beauty makes it a perfect specimen for one of our organization’s core messages: Divine perfection is precisely the ability to include what seems like imperfection. Before we come inside to pray, work, or teach any theology, its giant presence has already spoken a silent sermon over us.

Have you ever had an encounter like this in nature? Perhaps for you, it occurred at a lake or by the seashore, hiking in the mountains, in a garden listening to a mourning dove, even at a busy street corner. I am convinced that when received, such innate theology grows us, expands us, and enlightens us almost effortlessly. All other God talk seems artificial and heady in comparison.

Indigenous religions largely understand this, as do the Scriptures (see Psalms 98, 104, 148, or Daniel 3:57–82 [1]). In Job 12:7–10, and most of Job 38–39, YHWH praises strange animals and elements for their inherently available wisdom—the “pent up sea,” the “wild ass,” the “ostrich’s wing”—reminding humans that we’re part of a much greater ecosystem, which offers lessons in all directions.

God is not bound by the human presumption that we are the center of everything, and creation did not actually demand or need Jesus (or us, for that matter) to confer additional sacredness upon it. From the first moment of the Big Bang, nature was revealing the glory and goodness of the Divine Presence. Jesus came to live in its midst, and enjoy life in all its natural variations, and thus be our model and exemplar. Jesus is the gift that honored the gift, we might say.

Strangely, many Christians today limit God’s provident care to humans, and very few of them at that. How different we are from Jesus, who extended the divine generosity to sparrows, lilies, ravens, donkeys, the grasses of the fields (Luke 12:24, 27–28). No stingy God here! But what stinginess on our side made us limit God’s concern—even eternal concern—to just ourselves? If God chooses and doles out care, we are always insecure and unsure whether we’re among the lucky recipients. Yet once we become aware of the generous, creative Presence that exists in all things by their very nature, we can honor the Indwelling Spirit as the inner Source of all dignity and worthiness. Dignity is not doled out to the supposedly worthy; it grounds the inherent worthiness of things in their very nature and existence.

Rev. Jen has set her office drop-in day as Wednesday of each week from 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. for anyone who would like to stop in and visit. You are always invited to make an appointment for a time convenient for you. Mondays are her Sabbath day.

We are blessed with ample and well organized spaces for our worship, fellowship, and outreach. However, things have a way of collecting at churches—as we found when Gwen Morris and Cathryn Ensley cleaned out the front closet. We want to know what’s going on! Please mark supplies or materials gathered for outreach with the name of the project and the name of the point person.

EVENING PRAYER

Join us for Evening Prayer in the sanctuary on Tuesdays at 4:00. Evening Prayer is a wonderful service to wind down the day and move into the evening hours.

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER **No Contemplative Prayer June 3rd**

On Wednesdays at 1:00, we gather for about a half hour in quiet contemplative prayer. A leader introduces the prayer and a bell is chimed; we sit in prayer for twenty minutes until another chime sounds and then close with a spoken prayer. Feel free to come in any time between 1:00 and 1:20 to pray in silence in a lovely sacred space.

ALTAR FLOWER CALENDAR

An altar flower calendar is posted in Hamilton Hall. Sign up to sponsor the altar flowers to commemorate a birthday or anniversary, remember a loved one, or in thanksgiving for an important event. We ask a donation to help offset the cost of the altar flowers and other worship expenses. Be sure to tell the office your dedication so that it can be printed in the bulletin. Please make checks payable to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and in the memo field please put this information: Altar Flowers, person’s name, occasion, Sunday date you’d like for the flowers to be on the altar.

VESTRY MEETING MINUTES

If any of you are interested in what your Vestry is doing, there are two copies of each month’s minutes on the music stand in Hamilton Hall. Feel free to read and return!

SHOPPING LIST FOR NON-FOOD PANTRY

Please see the Non-Food Pantry Latest section of the newsletter for items most in need for this month. Meals and conversation in Hamilton Hall are going well. Patrons are now able to pick out items they most need. Your contributions help our budget go farther in helping meet the needs of those in Putnam County. Please scroll down to view the distribution dates and latest updates. If you can help with this ministry in any way, please contact Harriet Moore or Carl Huffman.

KROGER COUPONS

If you have any unwanted Kroger coupons, please bring them to Hamilton Hall and place in the window ledge near the “Little Library”. We would like to make them available to our Non-Food Pantry recipients so that they might be able to take advantage of them to help extend their food budget. Thanks in advance!

FREE DAILY DEVOTIONAL

We have some large print Day by Day daily devotionals in the sanctuary that you are free to take home for your personal devotions–and if we know that people would like copies, we can order the right amount. Many of you may also appreciate the on-line version of Day to Day. Click here.

Your prayers are asked for:

Haile Bane, grandson of Joanne Haymaker
Beth Benedix, friend to many at St. Andrew’s
+Tom Breidenthal
Jennifer Clarke, friend of Patti Harmless
Diane * Judy * Angela Evans
Heather Cantonwine and family, friends of the Knuths
Tom Kaiser, friend of Jen+ & Chris
Lynda, friend of Sarah Finlay-Black
Teresa Masten, friend of Karen & Jim Mannon
Sally Motsch, friend to many at St. Andrew’s
Mary Mountz
Gene Shaw, brother-in-law of Patti Harmless
Elizabeth & Natalie Sheffler, daughter & granddaughter of Page & Narda Cotton
Deloris Smith, friend of Emily Knuth
Jenny Smyth, niece of Patti Harmless
Luke Smith, son of Mark Smith
Skip Sutton
Eugene Swanger, friend of Jen+
Larry Taylor, former member of St. Andrew’s
Donald Voermans, father of Nick Voermans
Edwina Vose, friend of Jen+
Catherine Waggoner, friend of Jen+
Dwight Ziegler, uncle of Stephanie Gurnon

For the departed:
Peggy Angleton