A View from the Window….
As I look out my office window this morning, our great lawn is covered with several inches of snow, mostly undisturbed except for a few tracks crossing it here and there. This serene picture of winter is an interesting cover for the whirl-wind of activity taking place at Emmanuel during this Lenten season.
By the time you read this, we will have hosted a Lenten dinner for Bishop Lee so we could hear first-hand about his trip to Sudan and the Diocese of Renk. The 54th Annual Antique Show will have come and gone, furniture will be back in place and planning for #55 will have started. We will be well into our third week of Lent, experiencing a different configuration for worship, and looking ahead to a busy Holy Week that precedes our joyous season of Easter.
In my homily on Ash Wednesday, I referred to poet Mary Oliver‘s image of a very ―human-like God-figure reaching down into the dark earth, grabbing a handful of clay and then molding and shaping us humans, an image straight out of the Genesis creation story. For me, that is a picture of intentional and labor-intensive work, not unlike what we have experienced.
Several days later, a treasured friend suggested that I think about all the transitions in my life as those that come with the molding and shaping of a lump of clay on the potter‘s wheel, an image straight out of the writings of the prophet Jeremiah.
That seemed so appropriate for me personally and for us as a parish corporately.
We have been molded and shaped in the perfect image of God, but along the way – as life has spun us around like the clay on the potter‘s wheel, a few chips and cracks have marred our appearance... not the image that God originally intended for us.
As the potter would do, when the bowl is not quite right, water is added to the clay on the wheel to soften it up so that it can be reshaped and smoothed, cracks filled and chips repaired. All this takes place while the wheel is spinning around and the potter‘s hands are gently working with the clay to restore its original beauty, albeit changed somewhat from the original design.
My friends, this is us! In the whirlwind that is our lives, we get nicked and scratched and chipped and broken. It is through the gentle waters of baptism and the powerful hands of God, the master potter, that we are re-shaped, reformed, refurbished and re-deemed.
There is no better time to reflect on this entire process than Lent. In the whirlwind, there are things that we do and things that we leave undone which nick and scratch us and others, which chip away at our sense of who we are and which break us and others in ways we never expected.
As we pause in this season to examine who we are and what we need to do to be in better relationship with God and our neighbors, let us remember that the process of forgiveness and repair is ever with us. The softening waters of baptism are always flowing; the powerful hands which first scooped up the damp earth in creation are always out-stretched. Both stand ready to repair the ragged edges of our lives, even as we are still spinning around from day to day.
Blessings and peace,
Reverend Terri +
March 2010
