Connections Made

Well, the boats are at the point where I can make connections between the frames, battens (the long pieces) and stems (on the ends.) Then I’ll look the whole framework over, adjust, trim, plane, and otheriwse nudge it until it looks good. A great term in boatbuilding, “fair-ing.” A nice subjective aesthetic quality of judgment in a process that requires careful measurement and precise work.

Also, I’m preaching and praying with St Benedict’s Episcopal Church, Lacey, this and next Sunday. Text and link to the recorded service are below.

Back to boats and the workshop week. If it were such a season that you were able to stop in for workshop hospitality, it might have been a bit of garden, a bit of boats , and a bit of re-organizing. Mr. J. seemed placid if puzzled amidst the chaos of making planting mix and a minor wood emergency, requiring the re-stacking of the lumber.

And after the snow melted, under a tangle of arugula that I’d let take over (and then cut away) I found beautiful red chicories, cornsalad/Nuss-salat, and leeks that came back from little root bulblets. So, that bed is already planted for me.

You could have stopped in for a coffee break and homemade bread with salt or peanut butter or cheese. or maybe some chestnut planting. Or maybe making plans for spring fishing, thinking about fish and water and watersheds to see.

And I stopped by the library. How grateful I am for Timberland Regional Library and their ‘Library Take-out’!

In the parking lot I found a little image of a watershed, an icon of ones you yourselves might see by boat and prayer.

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(please fine links to the readings and recorded service in the heading below.)

Homily, 2nd Sunday in Lent, 2021, St Benedict’s Episcopal Church, Lacey WA The Rev. Evan Graham Clendenin

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He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  Mark 8:34-35

Jesus calls people who say they want to follow him into taking up the cross. This scripture may move us, or scandalize or embarrass us. But Jesus clearly calls us. Your cross will call you. The form of the cross may surprise.

I think back some years to a day I was riding my bicycle on a dry day after heavy rain, riding home from one job or another, hit a lump of wet leaves, and fell. Not seriously injured, but I hurt for a week. Had I not fallen, I might not have let myself stop doing so much that fall and winter, so that God’s prayer of life could sprout, begin to emerge in me. That winter I took part as a staff member in a school program of exchange between students from Portland and from rural eastern Oregon. A faithful 4H leader initiated this opportunity for dialogue in response to a school-involved media-squabble over wolves. It was a pilgrimage of kids from the city-rich and poor, black, white, native- to receive hospitality with ranch families. In coming years, the hospitality would be mutual. The students, teachers and ranch families noticed many things! I noticed a desire to listen on many peoples part, and some common bonds made that lasted beyond that trip. One thing I especially noticed and received was the quality of grace and presence that our hosts offered to us, even at sacrifice. I was given to see that they were participating in this process because of their love of Christ. And of the many things that many people came home with-including horse hair-I came home with stronger faith.

Jesus calls the crowd and the disciples, those who say they want to follow him, to take up the cross, a daily practice of the way leading into the life given by God. He calls them, he calls us to take up our cross daily, to make a practice, to train and learn how to lose the lives we grasp for and squabble over, so that we can gain a deeper, broader, enduring life that makes us plain citizens of the earth- interwoven, interconnected, destined for humus and heavenly things. Like most difficult things, this is something we must practice and take in appropriately sized steps. There is no algorithm or gps map for how this way of divine training will appear. Only that we will be called again and again into the way of life as we are sanctified, growing holier, more whole, resting our bones in the peace of God which passes all understanding. Again and again, daily, God calls us into existence out of non-existence. The psalmist sings with confidence of the God whose love calls us to lose the things that are not and be embraced by what is. The psalmist sings of a God to whom even those whom we perceive to be dead, layered in the humus of the earth, turn in gratitude at the core of their being. They turn to the living God of whom the psalmist sings, a God who notices to the afflictions of the afflicted, the meek, the humbled, and who feeds the poor. The dead, the afflicted, the poor, and those humbled like Abraham, who wake up in despair each day, all are called into God’s way, a covenant, a practice. A practice that breaks us open into the life God has made us to be a part of in Christ.  

With them, with the crowds, with the disciples, Jesus calls us, who say we desire to follow him, to take up our cross. Just for today. Everyday, certainly in Lent, and in Lent 2021 especially, we owe it to ourselves because of God’s covenant of love with us, that we take up the cross, that we notice and let ourselves receive what we must lose, and gain the life God makes us to be part of. Maybe you can spend a little time in a place where soil accumulates, seeds have fallen, and are starting to crack open and emerge. You can notice what is growing, how its growing. Maybe you can practice seeking how to listening well and be in greater solidarity with others, especially with those the psalmist names the poor and afflicted. Good listening, dialogue, presupposes that mutual learning across difference is a real, if difficult, thing. It is possible. Solidarity presupposes that there is a common good of which we are part, plain citizens, members of a larger whole. It means inquiring in our hearts and minds about those good things, those matters of hope and life you may desire in common with others. It requires certain habits of restraint and appreciation, hospitality, covenants.  It requires noticing what is growing, what wants to grow, what needs to.

The cross that can lead to new life this Lent might involve the costly practices of dialogue and solidarity, with family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, church members, and most definitely and principally with God. Let this practice help you to see, desire, enter, gain a larger world and life you hadn’t expected, but of which God has made you a part.