(Inspired by a prompt from Pádraig Ó Tuama)

I believe in breath, and sunrises,
in getting handwritten letters in the mail,
in memory and imagination.

I believe in the companionship of trees,
in crows roosting, in the sound of 
water flowing over rocks.

I believe in spring melt, abundance,
colours, texture, silence, and sweetness. 
In candlelight and darkness.

I believe in vastness. In expansive
living skies. In dense fog, shadow, and what 
I cannot see beneath my feet. In gravity.
​
With absolute certainty and
absolute uncertainty, I believe
​in solace and wonder, in poetry, in God.

- Wendy Janzen

Maybe what we need isn't self-care.
Maybe what we truly need is
grounding, connection, and
entanglement with all that is.
We are not created for
independence or self-reliance.

Maybe we need to open our being
to the gift of life around us, and
remember we are not alone.
We are light and love from others
and for others, our souls nourished
by touch, reaching out in need,
receiving the goodness of 
ordinary beauty
seeping through the cracks.

Celebrate the sun shining on your face, 
water wetting your lips,
gravity hugging you close to the earth,
air filling your lungs,
honey sweetening your tongue,
birds cheering your spirit,
nighttime welcoming your rest,
friends and family surrounding you,
the Divine Presence renewing
and enlivening your spirit.

​-Wendy Janzen

​Our November gathering invited us into Lament. Chip read Romans 8:22-28 from the First Nations Version of the Bible, which includes these words:

"It is plain to see that all creation is still groaning in pain like a mother giving birth. And even we who have first tasted of the Spirit are groaning on the inside...
Spirit helps us in our weakness, for our prayers are often empty words, but Creator’s own Spirit groans deep within us, without words..."

Wendy shared a quoted from Hillarie Maddox, from her substack Black Girl Country Living, Oct. 16, titled "Feeling the Earth in Our Bodies" and sent us into our wandering time with this invitation: 

As we wander today, I invite you to pay attention and tune in to signs of distress, woundedness, loss, or stress the Earth is exhibiting here in this place. Tune in, as well, to similar things you are feeling or suppressing in your body. What do the earth, your body, and the Spirit want you to know today?

We ended with Chip leading us in a ritual of symbolically dropping our 'wordless prayers or groans' into the creek. 

At our October worship gathering we celebrated a ritual created by Wild Church BC called a Forest Feast, which we adapted for our community and bioregion. We want to acknowledge their inspiration in what we are doing here today, and our connection with other faith communities both in the Wild Church Network and in Mennonite Church Eastern Canada.

This ritual was a celebration of our interconnection with the trees and plants of our bioregion – and a celebration of gratitude to God as the Source of all life, and a reminder of the vision of the Tree of Life in the book of Revelation, providing fruit in all seasons and leaves as good medicine for  all nations. (Rev 22:2) 

We shared mushrooms, walnuts, apples and blueberries. At the end of the ritual, we remembered the interconnectedness of all living beings and Christ’s healing and reconciling ministry for all creation. We offered blessings for the web of life and prayed thanks be to God. 

During our wandering time, we took some of the food we had received, and offered it back to the earth as an act of gratitude to God and reciprocity with creation. 

Ephemeral art to mark the autumn equinox - light and dark, blooms and seeds, transitioning from life to death. Life is not static, it is a flow of change that sometimes feels fast, and sometimes goes slowly. Today on this equinox day, we celebrate the balance that invites us to embrace it all. Take time sometime this week or this month to create your own nature mandala to celebrate the transitions of the seasons, and reflect on transitions happening in your own life. 

Thanks be to our Creator,
thanks be to our solar system,
thanks be to the plants
​who shared their beauty in this art!

Our September theme invited us to reflect on being rooted and grounded. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit peace activist, once said “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” Standing in one place and not moving is a part of our work. It is a form of rootedness that leads to knowledge and intimacy and relationship. Resistance to forces of destruction can be the slow work of being present to a place in the face of a transient, fast-paced world.

Ephesians 3:16-18a (from the First Nations Version)
“My prayer for you is that from the great treasures of God’s beauty, Creator will gift you with the Spirit’s mighty power and strengthen you in your inner being… I pray that as you trust in the Chosen One, your roots will go deep into the soil of [God’s] great love, and that from these roots you will draw the strength and courage needed to walk this sacred path together with all… this path of love is higher than the stars, deeper than the great waters, wider than the sky. Yes, this love come from and reaches to all directions.” 

How can we become radically rooted to Place (this place right here where we have been coming to worship month after month, and the places where we each live), getting to know it, learning to love it, learning to love God, walking the sacred path together and making the world a better place? How can we learn from this wise old hemlock tree (pictured) whose roots are holding it upright even as the creek is eroding the soil beneath it? How do we root ourselves in love?

Our August worship theme invited us to reflect on our relationship with trees as kin.

We read Mark 8:22-26, a story of Jesus healing a blind man. When his sight was restored, he was asked what he saw, and the first response was that he saw people who looked like trees. In her comments on the text, Henriette Thompson said: "It’s interesting to think that the first thing the sight-recovering man sees is: 'people who look like trees walking around.' 
 
It sounds humorous even… But what if seeing people as trees was not just something to be corrected, but another way of seeing? 
 
Our bodies resemble trees – we have a trunk, we have limbs and we have appendages (hands, feet, head) at the end of these limbs. Our respiratory and neural systems have roots, stems, and branches that are shaped like tree canopies. Think of a physiology drawing of human lungs with their arteries, veins and capillaries."


During our Wandering & Wondering time we were invited to de-center humans as we reflected on these two questions:

• Who will I be for the trees?
• What does kinship with trees require of me?

This worship theme was inspired by ​Geez, Communing with Trees, Summer 2020, issue no. 57

In July we mark Canada Day, and in the US they mark Independence Day. These national holidays focus on freedom, nationhood, and independence. In contrast, today we will focus on our interdependence and interconnectedness with all creation.

Our readings came from Deuteronomy 6:4 and excerpts from 1 Cor. 12:14-27.

The body analogy used in the second passage could just as easily be applied to a forest, or any ecosystem. We are all parts of something bigger than ourselves, and all parts play their own important roles. Randy Woodley, a Cherokee theologian, calls it the “community of creation.” He writes that the community of creation seeks restoration of harmony between people and “the Creator, the earth, and all that God provides through the earth such as plants and animals.”

In our wandering and wondering time we were invited to pay attention to what drew our attention, and allow them to be our teacher or preacher about interdependence with this place and the lives that live here.

Benediction:
Thank you God, for your presence among us today. Go with us from this place and enable us to live with wisdom and humility, knowing we are connected in a tapestry of relationships that stretches across the earth. Amen. 

Our worship today was a tapestry of interconnection with others who are engaging in various forms of eco-spirituality or land-based worship. The theme came from Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship's contribution to the summer Wild Church worship series in Leader magazine. The opening prayer and closing benediction were adapted from Dirt Church Liturgy. And some of our practices were picked up at the Wild Church Network retreat in June.