This Labor Day 2022 is a day of reflection for me. In the first half of my life I was a teacher in public schools. I taught mostly in the early elementary years, a very exciting time of exponential growth, interest and excitement in learning. I saw teaching as my “calling” in that season of my life, and am remembered as a caring and creative educator who loved and accepted each child and encouraged each one to discover, develop and share their gifts to make the world a better place. The second half of my life has been devoted to pastoral ministry in the Presbyterian Church (USA). I felt myself “called” out of one season of life into another, and am grateful I found courage to take that step mid-life.
I’ve always treasured Frederick Buechner’s words about vocation: “Vocation comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work one is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God … The kind of work God usually calls us to is the kind of work that we need most to do and that the world most needs to have done. The place God calls us to is the place where our deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.”
A meeting of “our deep gladness” and the “world’s deep hunger” - only God would have such a plan.
A Prayer for Labor Day
The fullness of blessing comes down from you
To you our prayers of blessing rise up.
In your kindness protect these, your servants,
Who stand before you devout and faithful,
bearing the tools of their trade,
offering the work of their hands,
lifting up their minds and their hearts.
Grant that their hard work may contribute
to the perfecting of your creation and
provide them a decent life for themselves and their families.
Help them to be fruitful in their labor, and to strive always to build a better society and a more just and peace-filled world. May their work always praise and glorify your holy name. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Happy Labor Day!
Elizabeth
As another school year begins, I share this very special blessing:
“A Back-to-School Blessing”
Bless my paper and my pen.
Guide mu spirit deep within.
Help me think and help me play,
This whole school year, day by day.
As I move from class to class,
Guide my footsteps, clear my path.
Help my tongue to speak your words.
Let your will in me be heard.
In every subject, high or low,
May God’s excellence I show.
Keep me strong to reach the prize,
to grow in grace, becoming wise.
Whether far from home or near,
may I hold God’s precepts dear.
To do my best at every task,
For this blessing, I do ask.
Help my family be a part,
As I lift my mind and heart.
As I study, work ad play,
Be with them throughout the day.
Rev. Marilyn Thornton
May our children be safe from harm as they work and play together.
May they become all you want them to be!
Bless their teachers with patience, understanding and wisdom.
May each classroom be a place where everyone belongs and finds peace.
Elizabeth
I’m one of the countless “Buechnerds” who give thanks for the life of Frederick Buechner, the 96 year old novelist and theologian who died in his sleep at his farm on August 15, 2022.
Buechner found a way to address a growing cynicism about organized religion at a time when churches and denominations and society itself are divided and polarized. Buechner was able to transcend the political and theological divisions of our common life. Neither liberal nor conservative, neither evangelical or mainline, Buechner managed to attract readers throughout all of life by emphasizing the personal over the political. His eloquence and honesty made him a mentor to a generation of pastors.
I want to share some of my favorite quotes from his writings, to honor the life he lived and to give thanks for the many ways his life touched mine.
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness, touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
“We must be careful with our lives for Christ’s sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.”
“Your life and mine flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me.”
“For all thy blessings, known and unknown, remembered and forgotten, we give thee thanks, runs an old prayer, and it is for the all but unknown ones and the more than half-forgotten ones that we do well to look back over the journeys of our lives, because it is their presence that makes the life of each of us a sacred journey.”
The One who judges us most finally will be the One who loves us most fully … Christ’s love sees us with terribly clarity and sees us whole … The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering which Love has endured for our sake.”
“Jesus never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.”
“Matthew the tax-collector and Thomas the doubter. Peter the Rock and Judas the traitor. Mary Magdalene and Lazarus’s sister Martha. And the popcorn-eating old woman. And the fat man in the pick-up. They are all our family, and you and I are their family and each other’s family, because this is what Jesus has called us as the Church to be. … Be the light of the world, Jesus says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there. Be the salt of the earth. Be life -givers to others. Heal the sick, feed the hungry, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. That is what loving each other means. If the Church is doing things like that, then it is being what Jesus told it to be. If it is not doing things like that – no matter how many other good and useful things it may be doing instead, it is not being what Jesus told it to be. It is as simple as that.”
I could go on and on… I give thanks for the life of Frederick Buechner and for what he has meant to my life and ministry. Rest in peace dear friend, rest in peace.
Elizabeth
(All of these quotes were taken from Listening to Your Life, Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner, with keyed index to individual works in the back of the book. A wonderful resource to help one get acquainted with all of Buechner’s writings)