Sunday morn the congregation is excited
AT THE CHURCH O’ THE PINES on this Sunday morn the congregation is excited. They are excited because any day now—perhaps any hour—their friends and relatives that we call ‘snowbirds’—but they aren’t actually the real kind of snowbirds we just call them that—will be returning from the south. Sometimes very far south from what humans call another whole CONTINENT! There will be much gossiping and sharing of news, and talk in Fellowship Hall about long trips and isn’t the weather fine and have you seen any apartment openings in the neighborhood? Of course some travelers have already arrived or passed through on their way Up North—wood ducks and mergansers and sand hill cranes and tundra swans. But soon we will have new songs and new Sunday morning outfits—catbirds and brown thrashers and yellow rump warblers and rose breasted grosbeaks and indigo buntings. Highly anticipated is the arrival of the most famous singer of them all, the remarkable wood thrush, who every year provides Sparky the Cardinal—the acknowledged and highly praised church choir soloist—a small slice of humble pie.
But in truth there is little competition and no hard feelings—both just like to sing and share their gift of music. As readers know, our Church is a welcoming space, an ecumenical gathering where no time or energy are wasted in excommunicating one another, or purging the rolls or claiming that someone for some reason is not ‘real’ enough or acceptable enough in some way or another. Or splitting of the church into competing fiefdoms over some serious misstep or error of thought. Such things seem to our members a head-shaking waste of time and spirit. Who is one singer or tree-dweller to say that another doesn’t ’belong,’ or wears the wrong outfit or behaves in some way unacceptably in the eyes of the universe? We all share the same woods, breathe the same air and drink the same water, all share the same animating force inside of us and above and around us that we often call Spirit. So we can surely share the same good space for fellowship on a morning that the humans call the Sabbath. Which is pretty much like all the other mornings we share but it is a nice idea to set one aside to remember Important Things. Like how we ALL BELONG.
Anyway, on this beautiful blue sky morning, that is the view from the Church O’ The Pines, where Sparky sings and blue jays yell and deer browse and otters swim and painted turtles rest silently on riverbank logs. And where all send you their finest wishes for a Good Sabbath.