The 16th Annual Interfaith Service proved to be a great blessing this year, as in years past. This annual event is designed to bring the whole community into a setting in which various traditions share their gratitude for the blessings of this nation and this world.
Unitarian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and the Community of Mindful Living prayers of thanksgiving were offered, as we celebrated the diversity among us in faith and life. A Thanksgiving Offering of canned goods and nonperishable food items was given to The Sandhills/Moore coalition for Human Care.
The sounding of the Shofar and the Adhan called us to worship. The ”Hinei Ma Tov” celebrated these words from Psalm 133: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together.” As we sang together over and over, with increasing passion and fervor, we leaned more deeply into the blessing of that truth. We sang “May I Be Peaceful” first for ourselves, and then for others and finally for all life on this earth – plants, animals, etc.
We gave thanks for the diversity of the American culture, closing with these words:
The cultural atmosphere of the United States will mean new and broader ways of seeing our neighbors, and freer and more generous ways of behaving toward them. It will bring into full play a healthy, creative tension, challenging all groups and individuals to work with one another in contributing from their own life to the good of ALL. Open our eyes, O God, that we may see Your divine image in ALL and gratefully accept the gifts that each race, creed, and nationality brings to our American life.
At the sounding of the Temple Bell, a Buddhist tradition sending our prayers out to the world, we went out in Shalom/Salam/Peace, to form a Unity Circle, and together, we sang:
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me; Let there be peace on earth, the peace that was meant to be. With God our creator, children all are we. Let us walk with each other in perfect harmony.
Let peace begin with me, let this be the moment now. With every step I take, may this be my solemn vow: To take each moment and live each moment in peace eternally. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.
May we become a part of the answer to this heartfelt prayer we sang together on this special day.
Elizabeth
Years ago, I discovered the book Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Perhaps I was drawn by the book’s title and my love for the Mt. Gilead/Lake Tillary area.
“If you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, know that you have been God’s grace to me…” While these words were spoken by an elderly father to his son born late in life, they are the words of my heart when I think of my years in ministry at Jackson Springs Presbyterian. Truly the folks in this corner of creation have been God’s grace to me!
I once read that we share God’s grace with each other in four ways: by extending forgiveness and encouragement, and by extending a helping hand and the hope of the gospel. Truly this church family has done this for me again and again, and hopefully I have done the same for them.
I came across The Graces We Remember (Sacred Days of Ordinary Time) by Phyllis Tickle. While we have shared memorable times of worship and study and joined in acts of witness and service, the “graces” I remember most are those day by day experiences that we’ve shared together: feeding the animals at Hurley Farm; sharing breakfasts and lunches at Greenbows and Blakes; sharing Sunday lunch with families; being invited to family reunions to get to know the larger family; visiting in hospital rooms, on porches, in living rooms, and while riding in the car together; cooking chicken and dumplings at the Community Club; picking berries at Eagles Nest Berry Farm; sharing in anniversary celebrations down at the Spring; worshiping in the parking lot during the pandemic; 50+ gatherings and adventures; participating in Jackson Springs Presbyterians 200th Anniversary celebration; celebrating Services of Witness to the Resurrection, baptisms and marriages; just sharing life and love in this special place!
“The graces we remember” keep us close when separated by time and distance, and in ways beyond our understanding, we continue to be God’s grace to one another.
Elizabeth
November 1 is All Saints’ Day, so yesterday was All Saints’ Sunday at Jackson Springs Presbyterian Church. Each year I turn to Frederick Buechner’s entry for this day in his devotional book, Listening to Your Life.
“How They Do Live On”
How they do live on, those giants of our childhood, and how well they manage to take even death in their stride because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them. Wherever or however else they may have come to life since, it is beyond a doubt that they live still in us.
The people who, for good or ill, taught us things. Dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us – and through them we come to understand ourselves in new ways too.
Who knows what “the communion of saints” means, but surely it means more than just that we are all of us haunted by ghosts because they are not ghosts, these people we once knew, not just echoes of voices that have years since ceased to speak, but saints in the sense that through them something of the power and richness of life itself not only touched us once long ago, but continues to touch us.
They have their own business to get on with now. I assume – “increasing in knowledge and love of Thee,” says the Book of Common Prayer, and moving “from strength to strength,” which sounds like business enough for anybody – and one imagines all of us on the shore fading for them as they journey ahead toward whatever new shore may await the, but it as if they carry something of us on their way as we assuredly carry something of them on ours.
That is perhaps why to think of them is a matter not only of remembering them as they used to be but of seeing and hearing them as in some sense they are now. If they had things to say to us then, they have things to say to us now too … “
I give thanks for the life and work of Frederick Buechner, for all the ways his writings have blessed my life and ministry, and for those “streams of mercy, never ceasing.”
Elizabeth