Why “Boat and Table”?
The Boat and Table symbolize where God meets a person. God sends us into the waters, wildernesses and marketplaces of dying and living. God invites us to find rest, warmth, light and friendship. These symbols point to places of unsettling peace.
One encounters this peace in the sacred scriptures, along with other ordinary things. Hills, houses, bushes and rivers. Water, oil, wine, bread and pieces of wood. The scriptures tell of the encounter with divine life in Jesus Christ, an ordinary enough worker about his Father’s business.
His first disciples met him while mending their nets on shore, beside their fishing boats. Some travelled with Jesus to feed, heal, and teach, proclaiming the kingdom of heaven at hand to tired, distracted and harried people. Others met Jesus along the road, and walked with that stranger. At evening they asked him to share a table, where their hearts were awakened to currents of new life.
The Miraculous Draft of Fishes, Raphael, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Who are we?
Evan Clendenin is a priest of the Episcopal Church, serving in interim and supply ministry. He has worked as a market gardener, horse-farmer, and in a variety of urban, small town and rural ministry settings. Several of these have been in maritime communities struggling in the wake of deindustrialization and collapsed extractive economies.
He also work as co-developer facilitator of the Wild Indigo Guild, a ministry of accompaniment and practical consultation with faith communities desiring to follow a more integral call of tending earth.
He is trained as a spiritual director and community organizer, and enjoys practicing cooking, languages, wood work, boatbuilding and fiber spinning.
Co-Operators: Janice Ariza, John Creasy (more info to come)
(Guest Writers 2020-21: Paul Rietmann, Amy Seese-Bieda, Greg Baker, Lisa Sayre.)