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Sandy Prouty
Minister of Children and Family
Dear Friends,
The Sundays of January 2013 have been quite remarkable in spirit and numbers. Everywhere one goes on these mornings, the spaces of Montview Church are filled with many members of our community gathered in enthusiasm and joy. Children and adults can be seen in each place making their invitations to connection in smiles, greetings, and introductions. They can be seen reaching into the fullness of relationship with focused attention and listening, with exchanges of stories and support. Have you noticed these sights and sounds? And then, as in time-lapse perspective, the spaces are as quiet and empty as they were when the building opened in the early hours of a new day.
The rhythm of our movement toward and away, together and apart, again and again, taps out the meaning of this community and marks our gratitude for it in such good measure. It can be easy not to live into the significance of this rhythm as the world rushes and pushes but if we reflect for a moment we may notice that we come. We are changed. We leave, new in some way because we have been for a time the two or three gathered. We have experienced a counter-weight to the pull of the world and a counter-point to the voices of the week. We come again.
Our Sunday School Assembly and 345 Fellowship groups close in a particular way. It is probably familiar to many of you. We join hands in a circle, right arm over left. We take a few minutes to name all that we have shared in our time together. We talk of happiness, friendship, laughter, service and learning and then we all twist 180 degrees to the right and drop the hands we have been holding. We move out of the circle and out into the world holding instead our promise to share these gifts until we meet again; to follow the still, small voice of love and make our way back to each other soon. A rhythm repeated. Gifts shared. Spirits renewed.
Remarkable Sundays pass by. Thanks be to God and see you soon!
Hope and grace,
Sandy
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The Rev. Ian Gregory Cummins
Lead Pastor of Spiritual Life
Hi Everyone,
This Sunday we will focus on 1 Corinthians 12: 1-12. Here is a part of it for your prayer time:
"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of one Spirit."
I am told that the largest living organism on earth is an aspen grove somewhere in Utah. The trees, which appear to be independent, separate organisms, are actually connected to each other by an intricate root system beneath the surface that stretches for more than a hundred acres. This connection, invisible to you and me, is their source of life.
Are you and I connected to each other? Or are we separate? Is there an invisible root system linking us one to another? We certainly appear to be separate beings. Most of us probably feel like separate beings. Scientists, working at the physical level, would be hard pressed to find this root system. But what about at the level of the Spirit? All the major faith traditions express, in one version or another, the idea that 'all is one'. It is a sentiment so general that it risks meaning nothing. But the implications, if true, mean everything. I wonder sometimes how our world might be different if we thought of ourselves more like an aspen grove; if we imagined, as we stood in the grocery line, or at work, or in the Commons, that we had roots growing from our shoes connecting us to everyone else around us. How would you treat people differently if you saw them not as a separate 'tree' but as an extension of yourself, intricately and permanently linked to your own well-being? Are we a part of the One Body, or not? What do you think?
Grace and goodness,
Ian
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