[NOTE: As of July 1, I’m appointed to serve as pastor of both the Tracyton church, where I’ve been pastor for four years, and the Brownsville church, 5 miles away across our little peninsula. It’s a large transition for me, and for both congregations. I’m picking up a Brownsville traditional communication, the weekly “Thursday Thoughts,” to keep folks in touch with where we are — where I am — through this time of transition. The “Thursday Thoughts” are emailed, and put up on the Brownsville web page, but sharing them here makes sense, too.]
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Dear sisters and brothers,
The “Thursday Thoughts” email was initiated in the Brownsville congregation to keep the church updated during a major funding project a few years back.
I love the idea! In fact, I love it so much, I think I’ll spread the joy, and share Thursday Thoughts in the Tracyton congregation as well.
Change happens. You make a change, you’re done. Get a new shirt, you have a new shirt. Trade in the car, the new one fits where the old one was.
Transition, however, is another matter. Transition is how our minds are a-swim and our eyes are boggling, and we can’t remember who we are or what we’re looking for in the bookcase, or why we’re gathering for song, and prayer, and a few words, and a meal of bread and juice so skimpy it hardly gets the appetite started.
So we are walking through the wilderness of this Transition together, and it helps to pay curious attention to what we’re learning, what we’re seeing, and what we’re wondering.
It’ll vary from time to time, but I’ll be sharing some of my experiences in these areas … and inviting your reflections in return.
This week, I’ve learned:
- Joe and Susan Tollefson’s infectious enthusiasm and their love of their Brownsville church’s story
- More of who Sally Klein is, as she stayed in the Stanton/Bogue one-star motel and shared rides to and from Puyallup for Annual Conference where she served as Tracyton’s Lay Member
- and, via Geoff Colvin’s Humans Are Underrated, I’ve learned that we humans need physical presence, not just phone & Facebook, and that empathy is a skill that can be learned.
This week, I’ve seen God at work:
- in the Annual Conference’s difficult, grace-filled conversations and risky, courageous decisions
- in a friend’s joy as she received communion at Conference for the first time in years, because it felt to her like a truly welcoming body for the first time
- in Hildegard’s sharing the story of the Brownsville Garden Club with me (okay, this was actually a couple weeks ago, but Oh! What a holy project, helping kids learn the value of caring for plants’ growth, the earth’s health, and the value of patience and partnership).
This week, I’ve wondered:
- Uh-oh. There’s a problem. When I get too busy, I tend not to wonder enough. Wonder and curiosity are related to awe and worship. So are delight in the exquisite, lament for the tragic, breathing deep in times of serenity, and the desire to allow the Mystery to unfold and to enfold me.
- One place I’ve come close to holy wonder this week is in opening Rebecca Solnit’s book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost. I’m halfway through … which means, I’m totally awestruck with amazing writing, lost in it, and not at all sure how I will be changed when I arrive out the other side.
This is how Transition is. When we find ourselves oriented again, (to paraphrase Solnit) we cease to be lost not by returning, but by turning into something else.
This week I wonder: Who will I become? Who will we become?
Love,
Wes
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