It was a summer church service under the protection of a tent. Days of great heat, uncomfortable humidity and frequent heavy rains had relented and given us an idyllic summer day for this annual event.
The tent protected us from the late morning sunshine and the tent also gave us a sense of community beneath its cover.
This was not what one would call a summer tent revival meeting that ends with a pile of discarded crutches, wheel chairs and walkers and folks dancing in the aisles…yet it did yield a residual effect of renewal. It was very Presbyterian. In fact, it was Presbyterian – but with a designer’s touch.
The prosthetics left behind after this meeting was more in the metaphorical sense. For a moment we could cast aside our defenses of indifference and pretense and leave them in a heap out back.
Designer/Pastor Linda K. stood before the gathering and connected the spoken and sung offerings of many. All seemed to point toward the idea of living in the moment…seeing and smelling proverbial and literal roses. All the while, nurturing a sense of hope for the future as the path is lit for each of us in our own way.
While contributions of members who volunteered verse lended to the theme, even more so, the venue itself – an Outdoor Education facility lent more. Elk and deer sauntered over to observe the goings-on. Birds fluttered about. Flowers sprung from the ground, faced us and smiled. The cool, dry summer breeze wafted through the open-walled tent giving an assist to the brought-in flower arrangements, causing them to tumble over again and again.
Perhaps the breeze was telling us that for this one day, at least, we could leave those greenhouse grown flowers in the greenhouse and take more notice at what was already provided on site.
Beech trees swayed in the background as Linda led the service. Their small leaves fluttered, turning each tree in to a kinetic sculpture of green…and with every flutter of each leaf, the contrasting shades of green from opposite sides were randomly revealed. One parishioner stood to read the poem, “Trees”. It fit well.
Then I remembered a trip to my wife’s home Austrian alpine town, Eisenerz. It is a mountain valley town and everywhere one looks into the distance, huge snow capped mountains loom overhead.
Before we had gone there, I worried how I might become complacent and bored with the closed-in constancy of those mountains. But when we were there, each mountain was in motion. Each changed with every passing hour of daylight. Colors changed, hues changed, air currents changed, shadows changed and even outline shapes of the alps changed with the comings and goings of clouds. The mountains were as alive as those leaves on the beech trees.
The light plays upon the forms of the ancient mountains.
The light plays upon the leaves of the trees that change from season to season.
The light plays hide and seek on the ground amid the shadows of earthly things and the light plays upon something as fleeting as a ripple in a body of water.
God gave us light…light gives us life and new ways to see things that God provides.
Beautifully put…. N