Blessing Our Kin, the Animals, Who Bless Us

reKINdling through the Blessing of the Animals

by Victoria Loorz

This month, we at Echoes are focusing on another RE word…rekindle, as in rekindling your love for your spouse after the kids move away.  That kind of rekindle.  But I’m intrigued by another use of rekindle.  As in re-KIN.  Become kin again.  It is a call to remember that we are already kin with all created beings, with all creatures and more-than-human-others.  But, because of centuries of (what I think is intentional) perceived separation, it is urgently important to remember that we belong in a larger family than a couple of parents and siblings.  We are intimately connected with All That Is.  

Saint Francis, whose feast happened this week and in whose name the lovely Blessing of the Animals service is dedicated, was consistent in calling all Others kin:  Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wolf, Sister Starling.  Emma told a story this morning during Wild Church about how Francis went to talk to his brother, the Wolf when his human kinsmen wanted to go hunt down the wolf out of fear. Francis had a chat with his brother and the wolf didn’t bother the village again.  I want to talk to wolves like that.  Gathered among us this morning were a handful of humans, including Joanna Schmidt, our Bellinghamster guest for Monday night’s Hamster Church.  Among other gifts, she has developed a similar ability to talk to animals, and to listen to them.  6:30 pm Monday, Oct 7 at the Old Parish Hall.  Just a quick plug.  

Joanna and her husband brought two amazing friends whom they are foster parenting until someone comes and offers these two cuddly ladies a permanent home.  Charis offered kind and holy blessings for all the wolf descendants in attendance, and a few whose photos were shared to proffer proper blessings.  Oh, it was so lovely.  The pups also were the privileged recipients of Communion Jerky that Emma got permission from Molly to share.  The body and the blood of Christ offered to all beings.  

We began Wild Church this morning with a reminder from the Old Testament, from the Book of Job, that animals and the earth herself has wisdom to share with us…if only we’d listen:

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,

or the birds of the air, and they will tell you;

or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,

or let the fish of the sea inform you.

Which of all these does not know

that the hand of the LORD has done this?

In God's hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all humankind.”

(Job 12:7-10)

And an invocation I adapted from my friend, Gary Nabham, an eco-theologian, a Franciscan oblate, and a farmer who launches his Wild Church in southern Arizona this weekend:

Invocation for the Blessing of the Wild Animals

Our Creator is the Elder on the trail blessing the herds and flocks.  

Let us also bless the herds and the flocks!

Our Creator is the Shepard seeking out the lost, the rare and those at risk, 

Bringing them back to safety. 

Let us also care for the lost, the rare and those at risk!

Our Creator cares for the migrants facing perils and walls along their way.

Let us also pray for safe passage for all kinds of migrants.

Our Creator listens for the ones who have taken flight.

Let us also listen & support those in flight.

Let us now, each in our own turn, offers blessings and prayers for the wild animals

Who move through the lands and waters around us, enriching our own lives.

Let us bless the wild among us.

Let us bless the wild among us.

Bless the bald eagles and the swans and other migrating birds who move cryptically among us, crossing borders and facing perils that threaten their survival. Let our prayers travel with them.

Bless the Great Blue Heron who have been displaced from their nests by construction and extraction. Let our prayers travel with them.

Bless the chum, chinook, pink, sockeye and coho who swim through our streams, whose life journeys have been interrupted by human obstruction. Let our prayers travel with them.

Bless the deer and squirrels and raccoons, the crows, ducks, rabbits and bats, and all the creatures who adapt to human-adjusted habitat and co-exist easily with us.  Protect them from cars and poisons and may they find food and safety.  Let our prayers travel with them.

Bless the orca whose hunting grounds have been decimated by overfishing and climate changes affecting the sea.  In their struggle to survive, Let our prayers travel with them.

Bless the tree frogs who swim through our streams, whose life journeys have been interrupted by human obstruction. Let our prayers travel with them.

Bless the cougars and owls, the coyotes and bears and other predators who need to be stealth and stay hidden to survive. Let our prayers travel with them.

Bless the domestic animals on farms and in our homes.  May we be compassionate friends and care for them, as they companion with us. Let our prayers be with them.

And, as our Benediction, we heard from Father Zossima, the great priest from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s brilliant novel, The Brothers Karamazov:

“Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvelously know their path; though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it them-selves.”

“Love all of God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light! Love the animals. Love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will soon perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”

Thank you.  What a blessing and honor to share these sacred moments with friends, human, dog, bluejay, black squirrel, and all.  

Amen.

A Few More Thoughts on Gathering

Image from UnSplash!

The Gospel text in the Lutheran Lectionary (cycle of Bible readings) this past Sunday was Luke 15: 1-10 or the parable about the shepherd who has 99 sheep that flock as they should and one sheep that wanders off into the night. The shephard abandon’s the good sheep in search for the one that has gone it’s own way. Jesus was using this story to talk to the self-righteous people of his time about why he was hanging out with sinners, the wrong sort, or the undesirables.

This text has been used by others to also stress that we are all sinners. That if you really really repent, then there will be happiness in heaven. Sometimes it has also been used to tell the people in the congregation that they need to go out and save sinners, even if it might be against their will, because well, the shepherd always knows better. Both of these readings of Luke can be off putting. Especially for many of us who have suffered at the hands of religious people who either always told us we were only sinners, or that we weren’t working hard enough to convert other people.

It is with this human-centered perspective that we often come to the text as well. We focus on either being one of the 99 well behaved sheep or maybe the one rebel sheep. Maybe you are the sheep who was inspired by Fleetwood Mac and decided to “Go Your Own Way.” And these are often the only two roles we see: good and bad. Well-behaved and troublesome. Normal and weird.

We are so focused on the sheep in this parable that we forget all about what Jesus is doing in the story. Jesus as the shepherd is gathering all of the sheep in one place. Gathering. Gathering up. Collecting. Rounding up. Congregating. Now that last word, is also related to congregation, which comes from the Latin “congregare” or ‘collect into a flock.’ A fold. The body of Christ.

Let’s focus our attention on becoming like Jesus in the coming weeks. Not to correct. Not to reprimand. Not to scold others for going astray, but simply embracing them. Gathering them into our arms. Making a larger space in our lives for other people we encounter. By doing this, we will be adding them into the worship we have here and now among one another. Adding them into the body of the Living God who continues to be among us at all times.

By Jory Mickelson

September is for RE/membering

Image from UnSplash

Most of us, when we see the word remember, will look back into our past for memories. But re-membering can have many other meanings as well. My favorite among these, is the idea of re-gathering, or bringing together again. Where member means to make whole. For it is in community, that we are truly made whole.

At Echoes gathering together each week in often its own unique experience. I would go so far as to say that at Echoes gathering is a special grace or spiritual gift that we offer to people.

Echoes is about welcome. No matter where you are coming from, no matter where you have been, we welcome you. We hold out our hand to embrace you. I know in my own discovering of Echoes, I had undergone some trauma in another religious congregation. I was not feeling welcomed.

And Echoes took me just as I was in the moment. No need to apologize for coming in emotionally messy. No need to put on anything other than street clothes. Echoes was there as something between a place of worship and a spiritual refuge.

I could worship with all of you and authentically be myself. I was seen. I was held. I was gathered together with everyone else into the embrace of the Loving One.

Lots of organizations use community as a buzzword. Even the ELCA Lutheran denomination, of which Echoes is a part, recognizes that one of the four parts of every worship service is Gathering.

But what does that look like in practice? For Echoes, it takes many forms.

-We gather outdoors for worship and deep gratitude once a month in Wild Church.

-We gather together at the pub for discussion and fellowship with Pub Theology.

-We gather together to get messy with art supplies during Creative Church.

-We gather together to meet new people in the Bellingham community through our Hamster Church.

No matter what gathering together may look like, we welcome you. Having experienced the unique spiritual gift of gathering that Echoes offers, I make it my mission to continue to offer it to you. It is my hope and my job as a member of Echoes to continue to offer this gift to others as it was so freely offered to me.

If you are feeling alone this week, if you are feeling a bit down, if you are feeling a bit off or out of place, we invite you to our next Echoes gathering. But even more importantly we encourage you to reach out. We would love to hear from you.

We would love the opportunity to embrace you, wherever you may be at in the present moment.

By Jory Mickelson

Repair Blessing

Repair Blessing
written by Emma Donohew for Wild Church, August 2019

May this blessing come in waves
waves of wonder
waves of astonishment
then waves of despair

It’s so much easier sometimes to tear it down
But then begins the long slow work of REpair

So before we begin to feel the crushing weight, that we are in this all alone,
This Blessing comes again once more 
In not one but in twos

The first wave is to remind you of the companioning that happens
and is necessary in the delicate art of healing and making things new
The sacred pairing that we hope to have
as we work towards reconciliation between all beings.

It can be overwhelming all the work that needs to be done.

We need not look hard for the cracks to appear
For in those things & relationships worth renewing 
REpair
Will always follow wear

The second wave comes swiftly and forcefully 
to remind you that all things worth saving come out of a deep relationship of love

This blessing is begging you to reconsider your role as someone who can mend

Is it ok to want to go back to when something was new?
Or at least not throw it away without trying to mend, fix or repair it?

This blessing is for a repair that goes beyond hammers and nails
Goes beyond gauze and bandages 
Goes beyond sorry and forgiveness

This blessing
Requires vulnerability to know our place in the cycle of life and death
The earth knows how to repair
To renew
To refill empty space with life

Open yourself to this blessing and it’s final wave of courage
For repairing ourselves, community and world
For you have been made holy and whole.

Amen.

August is for RE-PAIR

We are on the cusp of high summer. Our upcoming word for the month, or theme at Echoes, is re-pair. Repair. As you all know by now, I love words. Their various meanings feed me intellectually and also spiritually.

 Repair has several meanings, which means there are several ways we can interpret this word in our own lives. Perhaps if you are a pessimist like me, you immediately ask yourself: “What in my life is in need of repair?” or aka “How broken am I?”

 Most negative christian theology is focused on how broken we are as human beings. How far we have fallen from the light of God. How unworthy we are of love, how undeserving of God’s grace. But thankfully, this isn’t the only meaning of repair. This isn’t the only way we can experience our humanness in the light of the Holy One.

 One definition of repair is: A STATE OF BEING or FITNESS. Repair can ask us what state we are in. How is our spiritual, emotional, physical, financial and mental health? What kind of estate or form do we find ourselves in in the present moment? Where are we in good order in our lives? Where do we feel most together? Where do we find our deepest tenderness? Our most intimate places with the Divine?

 Another definition for repair is TO RESTORE TO A PREVIOUS STATE OR VIGOR. Instead of thinking we must be entirely destroyed or remade (calling to mind our culture’s obsession to makeover nearly everything), we can begin to think about nurturing life and greenness into areas that use to have more vigor. Instead of demolition think freshen, refresh, rejuvenate, refill, replenish. Our God is a gentle and tender-hearted one. In our upcoming indoor worship, we pray recalling the Psalms:

 When hard pressed, we cry out to You our God, and You bring us into a spacious place. Holy One, you are with us, we will not be afraid.

In the month to come, as all things are ripening and bearing fruit—as we take in the warmth of the sun—as we remember the abundance of the natural world—let us recall the gentle abundance of the Holy One. Let us find what is ripening within ourselves and see what God is bringing into fruition in our lives.

By Jory Mickelson

reWilding Blessing

reWilding Blessing
written by Emma Donohew for Wild Church, June 2019

This Blessing is impatient
Unable to wait any longer 
here it is already with us
Unfolding
Creeping
Taking over
This moment
This place
This earth
Inviting you into a state of awe

Arch your neck
Cradle your ear
Attune your auditory channel 
for this blessing is
Silently whispering to
Your hearts
& Our spirits

Pleading with you & us to listen
Groaning at you & us to care
Crying at you & us to do something

This blessing burst forth into existence awakening us to the glorious wild gift all around you
And under the layers of human overuse, misuse & abuse
Is a land transformed 
But is not a land without hope

This blessing invokes a compassionate song from the layers, from the earth & from the land
That is older
And wiser
And more wild
Than we will ever know

Pleading with us to step aside and let nature do her work
With us as collaborators & caretakers
Letting what wildly roamed this place
Work it’s way back into the ground, the hills, the waterways & reservoirs once more
And maybe even calling forth a little wildness in us, for us, to free us

May this blessing invite you into reWilding as an expression of love for all creation 
Respecting all beings and landscapes as they are authentically

[not only as we wish them to be]

This impatient blessing has found you
It can wait no longer
For that which is reWilding in you.

A Blessing for reSURGEence

A Blessing for reSURGEence
Written by Emma Donohew for Wild Church, May 2019

Upon which ground do you find yourself today?
A ground
fertile with things just becoming aware of their purpose?
A ground
drying out things up becoming awakened to their living?
A ground
teeming with invisible & visible water ways connecting with their origin places?
This ground
Greening with cycles of life & death, a rush & a trickle, a gush & a stream, withering & lushness, closeness & openness

This ground is closer than we think.
Further than we know and always
Ever present modeling the way of life & death.

Of less & more

May this Blessing wriggle its way to you.
Inviting, 
No, Encouraging you
To rise up
From your low places
Knowing this ground can hold you

Allow this Blessing,
Like the water,
Even if just the sound

To lift you.
Knowing this water can carry you.

Attune Yourself to Living Things.
Already Around You.

Attune Yourself to Living Things
As this Blessing Frees You,
To participate in the Resurgence around you.

The Resurgence in You.
The Resurgence of You.
Amen.

Entering into Pride

Image Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/MfhETsgQM6A

It is almost June and for many of us this means the end of the school year and the start of summer. For many people, it also means the start of PRIDE month. Sometimes called Gay Pride or LGBT Pride. This year is seems especially important.

For one, it is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In the wee hours Saturday June 28th, 1969, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn (43 Christopher Street, New York City). This led to further protests and rioting on successive evenings. Though not the first protest for LGBTQ rights in the US, it served as the watershed moment in the modern LGBT rights movement.

So this June, people across the country will be celebrating 50 years of Pride. Fifty years of affirming themselves as people worthy of love, respect, dignity, and civil rights when no one else would.

But as followers of Jesus, we have a terrible track record. If we are honest, a deplorable one, when it comes to loving LGBTQ+ identified people. While many Christian denominations are in the process of change around their understanding of human sexuality, it is still a recent phenomenon. Queer people (an inclusive term for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people) continue to struggle with the idea of faith.

What does it mean to embrace LGBTQ+ people?

Many churches now call themselves welcoming, as in welcoming to Queer people. Others use the term affirming. Still others, like the ELCA Lutheran church uses the term “Reconciling in Christ,” defined as ‘communities who have made a public commitment to welcome, include and celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) people.‘

But what does this really look like?

Too often it is a sign hanging near the entrance of a church. Congregations say they love LGBTQ+ people, but keep waiting for them to show up. Followers of Jesus may be reconciled to Christ, but they have yet to reconcile themselves to the queer people in their community.

What COULD it look like?

To truly love others, Jesus told his followers to serve one another: “But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant” (Matthew 10:43). After his resurrection from the dead, Jesus speaks to Peter saying, “Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me? ”He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” (John 21:16). Jesus is always turning those who would follow him toward service to others.

In this same way, embracing LGBTQ+ people means more than just hanging up a sign. More than just attending a Pride parade or marching in it.

Loving queer people means actively listening to their stories. It means really hearing the pain they have experienced from people of faith. It means remaining openhearted to the harm, trauma, oppression, and heartbreak that LGBTQ people have experienced without denying it. Without explaining it away. Without adding your own opinions about it. Not even to say, that it wasn’t you who did this or that things are different now. It means you have to own your part, even if that part is historical or collective.

We wound never say to Jesus, “Well your suffering happened a long time ago” or “Yes Jesus, but things have changed for the better.” So why are we so prone to do it to our LGBTQ+ neighbors and loved ones?

Learning to deeply listen and bear witness to the pain, anger, frustration, confusion and hurt of others is part of what it means to truly love. As followers of Jesus we must learn how to stop telling our own stories, so that we may begin to hear how God may be working in the lives of LGBTQ+ people. Only when we truly listen we can respond to those stories by saying, “What do you need from me?” and “How can I be of service to you?”

Easter Blessing

An Easter Blessing
written by Emma Donohew for Easter Sunday 2019

This is a blessing for those still finding their way on this Easter Day,
For those who are finding it difficult to see
The Pattern of Love in all Things,

In the midst of this world’s overwhelming sadness.
In the midst of the places that experience violence
In the midst of the people that experience pain both physical and emotional
In the midst of the creatures that experience destruction of their homes and land

This blessing is for those still searching for hope on this Easter Day.

Looking for life amongst death.
Listening for sound amongst silence.
Grasping for sense, amongst nonsense.

This blessing asks you to set aside for a moment
Those things which are no longer bringing you life.
In your stories.
In your home.
In your being.
Set them aside for this day.

This day is for mystery.
This time is for wondering.
This moment is for gratefulness.

This blessing is for those still seeking new life on this Easter Day.

May this blessing remind you that
You are alive. Today. Here. Now. Still.
You have arisen once more to a new day. Still.
Resurrection is not a one time thing.

May the new life that is always arising,

Find You.
May the old fall away around you.
As it keeps doing.

Making way for revival.
Making way for hope.
Making way for love.

This is a blessing for those still finding their way on this Easter Day.
May it find you too.

A Blessing written for Easter Day, April 21, 2019

A Pattern of Love in All Things

by Victoria Loorz

The resurrection is a pretty extreme application of our monthly theme of “ReVIVE.” It would be a little hokey, in fact, if we were trying to be literal about it. But, the resurrection story of Jesus is interesting to me not just because Jesus walked out of a tomb and through walls, freaking everyone out along the way. The story is fantastically and naturally and wonderfully and simply relevant because the pattern of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection follows a pattern found in everything. It’s a pattern of Love.

Life simply does follow this pattern: Life: Death: Grief: New Life. It’s built into nature. It’s built into transformation. It’s built into the stories we tell. It’s just the way it is. Love is all about What Actually Is, not what we think it (or at least the “other”) should be.

LIFE. It begins with life, regular good life. Life that you hope would and should, honestly, go on forever. A lover who understands you and sees you and laughs at all your jokes. A family you made all on your own with children and a house and holidays. A healthy body that can do anything: look hot in your new jeans, climb mountains, cry at happy movies, move furniture for your friends. A job that uses your skills and challenges you in just the right ways, bringing in more money than you really need.

GOOD FRIDAY. And THEN something happens. The lover who betrays you. The children who move away and stop talking to you. The body that won’t stop hurting long enough to make it to the market much less the mountaintop. The job that gets cut out and never really materializes again. The car accident, the violence, the loss, the ending. Everything you thought life would be….isn’t. Good Friday comes in a variety of ways….almost never welcome.

HOLY SATURDAY. Followed by an emptiness, a grief, a silence. A wondering what you did wrong. A confusion. A loneliness. Sometimes we try to skip this step, this Holy Saturday, and we want to climb right into whatever can take us out of this pain. But when we try to force the end of the pain, it never leads into New Life. It is just Distraction or Denial or Delay. And it usually leads to Addiction. But, when we try to avoid the pain of Love lost, we miss something. We miss the actual resurrection. The pattern requires a time of emptiness, surrender. When you are in the clutches of grief, your priorities suddenly get rearranged. Urgent projects are suddenly rendered meaningless. People you used to think were important to you disappear and others who you never noticed, show up and sit with you. As you grieve, something shifts in you, a softening begins to happen.

EASTER SUNDAY. Only Mystery we sometimes recognize as God can bring about the new life of resurrection after a major loss. And while we don’t want to even think about “something more” when in the reckoning of loss and death, this is the only way through. All we can do is face the death and surrender to it, allow the emptiness so that we can receive whatever lies on the other side. When you do allow it, something new awakens in you. New gifts, new insights, new perspectives. Deeper connection with your soul. The new life will not bring back that which you lost. Your lost loved one will probably not be resurrected and revived like Jesus. But, new life does follow. Something expands in you …. a compassion, a kindness and tenderness you never knew before being thrashed open, and a deepened capacity to love.

My favorite book of 2018 is called Matter and Desire: an Erotic Ecology. In it, author and biologist Andreas Weber, with nearly swooning language befitting Song of Solomon, describes how all of life is actually grounded in this pattern of life-death-emptiness-new life and how it is Love. I like this kind of thinking. It’s spiritual truth told through a non-spiritual lens and language. Sometimes we forget that spirit and matter are not actually disconnected.

The logic of the living world, he says “relies on the fact that every species is dependent on another, that every act of taking is balanced by an act of giving.” The inherent relationship between predator and prey reveals a degree of intimate interconnectivity. The salad you eat require the lives of the carrot and beet to be taken. The giving of one life to continue to life of another is built into the system. “All matter,” he says, “can only be understood as the experience of being in relationship.” The world is not a series of singular autonomous separate beings. “Everything is a dynamic of interaction where one thing changes through the change of another.” And that change is a pattern of new life, surrendering to death, surrendering to new life.

I had to cut back the ferns hogging all the space in the front of my house this morning. They were not allowing the purple Easter-looking flowers enough sun to stand up straight. I didn’t kill them, but it felt like it. I’m not a gardener and so i have an aversion to cutting things back. But it was clear that unless I participate in the Pattern of Love, which in this case, was cutting off the still alive fern fronds suffocating everyone else, the new life of the flowers, longing to show up this Spring, was not going to happen.

It is good to celebrate Easter, new life, resurrection. But, the whole pascal mystery, the whole passion week is the pattern of Love in this sacred story, not just the Sunday part. The deaths come without my beckoning. The new life comes mysteriously and in ways I can’t contrive. The only part of the pattern where I actually have any agency is the part where I face up to the losses, accept them, grieve, and hold out my broken heart in a posture of vulnerability. It takes a lifetime, it seems, to trust the pattern of love in all things. All things. For the new and deeper life I seek, for the love I long to see awakened, what must I surrender? What is dying or already dead in me that is waiting patiently for me to grieve and feel and enter into emptiness so that I can be open to the new life starting to unfold within me? Dare we trust that in all things, the pattern of love is enacted in us and through us, to the whole world?

Come to the Easter Walk next Sunday, which honors the pattern of love weaving through the life, death, new life of our city and the story of Jesus.