Beloved Family,
Despite my love of Autumn, I am not in any rush for Summer to end. Yet, even though we are not yet at a technical meteorological change of seasons, we stand at the threshold of a definite shift in rhythm. Students’ summer plans have ended, and they are returning to school. Families are shifting from Summer mode into the regularity of Fall activities. The days are slowly getting shorter and the evenings cooler. And people return to their usual cadence of church attendance.
Beginning the first Sunday in September through the first Sunday in October, our liturgy will celebrate the Season of Creation. Of course, an important theme of this Season is justice for the environment and for our neighbors with whom we share “this fragile earth, our island home.” (BCP 370.) But there is another theme that serves as the foundation of the call for justice: gratitude for God’s good gift of creation.
The Holy Scriptures begin with God speaking everything into existence and proclaiming that all creation is, at its core, good. (Gen. 1:1-31.) Better yet, when God had called everything into being, God blessed creation, and “God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:28, 31.) I love the creation story in Genesis 1 because it reminds us that God is the ground of all being (God is what it is to exist); God’s creation is an act of pure grace; and God is always calling us toward and hoping that we experience goodness.
As we enter this new season of busier work and school schedules, I invite you to take some time to slow down and look around you. Take in the sunrises and sunsets. Revel in the leaves blowing in the wind, and then changing color and falling to the ground to reinfuse it with nutrients for growth in the spring. Remember that the world around us is a gift from God, made new for us each day.
Happy Season of Creation!
Love and blessings,
Michael+