Elements

Water, Wind, Earth & Fire - the elements that are the building blocks of all life. Elements is also the word that we use for the wine and bread of communion. Our July worship gathering  connected and played with the interconnection between the communion elements and the elements of the earth/God’s provision in the natural world. Thomas Merton said that the elements can act as spiritual guides to help us on our sacred journey. The qualities of these elements invite us to pray with them, helping us to know the nature of God.

Henriette shared this quote from Barbara Brown Taylor:

“To lie with my back flat on the fragrant ground is to receive a transfusion of the same power that makes the green blade rise. To remember that I am dirt and to dirt I shall return is to be given my life back again, if only for one present moment at a time. 
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Where other people see acreage, timber, soil, and river frontage, I see God's body, or at least as much of it as I am able to see. In the only wisdom I have at my disposal, the Creator does not live apart from creation but spans and suffuses it. When I take a breath, God's Holy Spirit enters me. When a cricket speaks to me, I talk back. Like everything else on earth, I am an embodied soul, who leaps to life when I recognize my kin.”

We wandered, reflecting on the elements, and were invited to respond afterwards by sharing the elements together in the ritual of communion. On our altar, we had the elements of life - bread which comes from earth, juice filled with water, a feather representing air, and a flame of fire - this is the stuff of which we, and all living things are made.