“We must take the utmost care and kindness in all things...”
This weekend is the start of one of the most significant religious weeks in both the Jewish and Christian faiths: Passover week for Jews and Holy Week for Christians. Some of you may be traveling to visit family or friends, others may be bringing guests to North Parish, and still others may have a “regular” week or one focused on the fitful unfolding of spring. I hope all get to take in some beauty and music, have time to pause and reflect, and be in community one way or another. These days we all need to breathe, calm our nervous systems, and set aside times and places to take refuge from the storm.
A small group of us gathered on Wednesday to try out a spiritual practice called “lectio terra” or “earth reading”. It involves a process of being in conversation with the earth as well as with scripture. This week I invited participants to meditate on one (or more) of three poems. The authors were Wendell Berry, Joy Harjo and Mary Oliver- and each poem was a fairly common “scripture” reading in Unitarian Universalist circles. In lectio terra, you notice any word or phrase in a poem that particularly strikes you. One of several that struck me in Joy Harjo’s poem was “…know there is more that you can’t see, can’t hear, can’t know…” True.
There is so much we don’t see or hear- including the Life, the living energy that is all around us, so much of it hidden or unobserved. There is so much we can’t know- including what lies ahead. Ancient religious stories and modern nature poems- all of it scripture- try to point out paths for us as we move forward. I am grateful for this. Joy Harjo writes, “We pray that it will be done in beauty, in beauty.”
A happy and freedom-loving Passover to those who will celebrate on Saturday night! May we all live as if we, too, were once strangers in a strange land.
Rev. Lee