Reflection for Monday, March 16 from Pastor Lauren

Building an Altar

It is looking more and more likely that many of us will be staying indoors, turning our dwellings into our workplaces, restaurants, cafés, studios, and social centers. Social engagement will look more like phone calls than being at church. What will this look like for worship?

This week, our Lenten focus is on worship and as our experience of worship will be different for the next few weeks, it is the perfect time to consider what worship means to us and to God. When we worship, we give adoration and reverence to God. Worship is a time when we attune ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit, lean into the wisdom of people of faith throughout generations, and more fully consider our role in bringing the kin-dom of heaven to earth by our words, actions, and postures.

As we enter into thinking about worship this week, I invite you to find a space in your home that can be your altar -- maybe it’s temporary, for this time, or maybe it’s permanent. Altars are spaces dedicated to the holy, places we can find God routinely. They can be in our homes, in our cars, even in our wallets or our imaginations. In our home, we have an altar that faces the door. Is it filled with photos of our ancestors, sacred texts, meaningful objects, and mementos of cultures around the globe. On our altar are also candles, incense, and sage -- relics of the faith of our ancestors and objects that can bring our senses into worship.

Where is your altar? What is on it? How can you worship at your altar this week?

If you are able, send in a photo of your altar or describe it so we can worship with you.

Reflection for Friday, March 13 from Pastor Brad

These last couple of days have been wonky and even disconcerting. In view of the unsettledness around us (perhaps even within us), we wake to this morning as people of hope. We believe love is moving even when the fixtures of the world are less fixed than we thought. God’s love is so deep and so broad that it is at work now in ways that are beyond what we can even see or ask for or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).

So, we take hope and heart, and as we together come to the table of God’s grace on this day, we pray: for the fullness of life in all Creation; for the sick and for those among us who are most physically and economically vulnerable; for caretakers, who provide relief and healing. We let our own vulnerable lives fall into the gracious love in which God always and everywhere holds us and we remember together that “Our help comes from God, who made heaven and earth…..God will keep us. God will keep our life. God will keep our going out and our coming in from this time on and forevermore.” (Psalm 121)

Reflection for Thursday, March 12 from Pastor Brad

I’m not an especially adventurous cook. I sometimes wish that I were more so; that I could combine ingredients that seem (to me at least) a little exotic or unfamiliar to make a sumptuous dish that really expands my taste buds and leaves me with a new way my appetite is filled. I know that it takes practice to become a good cook and that as one grows in confidence, one feels more and more confident in trying new ways of cooking and experimenting with wider combinations of ingredients.

What goes into a good meal for you? I don’t just the mean the ingredients of the food dishes that are on the table, but the other, indispensable parts of a meal that really bring it to life; that can make any table a holy table -- a table that seems set apart from the ordinary; a table that seems sacred and whole. Perhaps those ingredients include great food to be sure but good company - new company, even, when you eat with folks that you haven’t eaten with before. Maybe those ingredients include, too, thanksgiving for what is before you or spiritual space to accommodate everything that might come up at the table -- laughter and joy and perhaps even tears and care for sorrow at the table. There are so many ingredients that could make a meal a holy meal. What might they be for you? Have your meals this week included perhaps even a few of the things that might be on your list? What might you add to your ingredients’ list to try on in coming days of your table sharing?

In our class video this week, we saw an image of some of the many different foods that were part of table fellowship scenes from scripture. Time after time, table sharing in scripture -- and the foods themselves that were shared -- become signs for us of the way that God uses tables to break through the bounds of what our tastes already know and grow the palates of our compassion, gracefulness and humanity in this life.

Thanks be to God for the way your table sharing expands that palate of life before you, and for all of the wonderful tastes of this life that God will reveal through the days ahead.

Reflection for Wednesday, March 11 from Pastor Brad

“Eat with me, Uncle Brad!”

I am wandering in the middle of the open kitchen at my brother’s home. I grab another slice of pizza from the counter and pace -- rather aimlessly -- back and forth across the kitchen. I look toward the living room and pay only a moment’s attention to whatever was on the TV, and these words from my niece beckon me almost as though they were a call from heaven. “Eat with me, Uncle Brad!” They are so full of energy and hope; full of desire and yearning! She saved a place for me right next to her, and her desire in that moment was that I would take that place and be with her in the simple delights of putting pizza in our mouths and laughing at silly things. When I take her invitation, my mind seems to settle and become less distracted and my spirit feels like it stretches out to hold the beauty and grace of just being with another beautiful person. (I hope I tell my niece how much her simple invitations to share table fellowship with her mean to me! :-) )

I think Jesus was an “Eat with me, friends!” kind of person. Jesus said things kind of like: “Let’s keep this good party at Cana going a little longer!” or “Hey Zaccheus, I’m coming over to your house today!” or “Of course, there’s enough bread and fish for all of us!” Jesus was eager to share good table fellowship where everyone had a place and everyone shared in the goodness of God that was revealed at table. Jesus lived an invitational life and invites our lives to do the same in how and with whom we practice table sharing.

As I’m reflecting a bit about table sharing in the love of Christ this week, I pray that my life might lean a little more toward that unabashed, invitational graciousness of Christ’s table sharing with others; especially others that I may not yet know so well.. I think my niece is helping to show me the way. For you, this Lent -- perhaps this week -- may there be moments when the energy of your life speaks those welcoming words, “Hey, eat with me!”

Reflection for Wednesday, March 11 from Pastor Brad

“Eat with me, Uncle Brad!”

I am wandering in the middle of the open kitchen at my brother’s home. I grab another slice of pizza from the counter and pace -- rather aimlessly -- back and forth across the kitchen. I look toward the living room and pay only a moment’s attention to whatever was on the TV, and these words from my niece beckon me almost as though they were a call from heaven. “Eat with me, Uncle Brad!” They are so full of energy and hope; full of desire and yearning! She saved a place for me right next to her, and her desire in that moment was that I would take that place and be with her in the simple delights of putting pizza in our mouths and laughing at silly things. When I take her invitation, my mind seems to settle and become less distracted and my spirit feels like it stretches out to hold the beauty and grace of just being with another beautiful person. (I hope I tell my niece how much her simple invitations to share table fellowship with her mean to me! :-) )

I think Jesus was an “Eat with me, friends!” kind of person. Jesus said things kind of like: “Let’s keep this good party at Cana going a little longer!” or “Hey Zaccheus, I’m coming over to your house today!” or “Of course, there’s enough bread and fish for all of us!” Jesus was eager to share good table fellowship where everyone had a place and everyone shared in the goodness of God that was revealed at table. Jesus lived an invitational life and invites our lives to do the same in how and with whom we practice table sharing.

As I’m reflecting a bit about table sharing in the love of Christ this week, I pray that my life might lean a little more toward that unabashed, invitational graciousness of Christ’s table sharing with others; especially others that I may not yet know so well.. I think my niece is helping to show me the way. For you, this Lent -- perhaps this week -- may there be moments when the energy of your life speaks those welcoming words, “Hey, eat with me!”

Reflection for Tuesday, March 10 from Pastor Brad

As we’ve moved into these days of reflecting about the way food is a part of our spiritual practice, I’ve thought a bit about time as a component of a meaningful meal. Of course, there’s the time to prepare the ingredients of the foods we eat, to say nothing of the time it takes to harvest those ingredients in places far from the shores of our own lives. There’s the time we invest to eat a meal -- not to swallow it whole but to take time to appreciate the food we have and to focus on being present with our meal companions in a way that feels spacious and open. When I think about meaningful meals in my life, a generous sense of time has been an important quality in what made them good.

Time seems an important value to Jesus in meal sharing. In the feeding of the five thousand in Mark 6, Jesus seems to observe time so spaciously. Even as the disciples want to hurry things along and have the crowd disperse to find something to eat for themselves, Jesus invites folks to sit down and stay and sees the moment as a beautiful opportunity for sharing together. Jesus takes the time to bless God for the food that is at hand and for the way that it would nourish all of those hungry lives on the grassy plain. There’s no hurry; there’s just the opportunity to hold good time together.

On this Lenten pathway, I hope that I might take the Spirit’s invitation to practice holding good time with the meals that I am fortunate to eat each day. In prayer, in conversation at table, in an attitude of hospitality and openness, in thanksgiving for God’s provision, may mealtime be marked for us with time that is full of grace.

Reflection for Monday, March 9 from Pastor Brad

It’s the second week of Lent, and we’ll take some time this week for our hearts’ reflections to tune in to table fellowship and food sharing as a spiritual practice in our daily lives. As we begin this week, I’m thinking of a story of mashed potato preparation for a large dinner at Carondelet UCC years ago. Members of the church were busy preparing for this particular dinner in the same way they had many times before; by this time, meal prep was routine at CUCC. Everyone had a job and knew how to execute it with efficiency.

The mashed potatoes, too, were being prepared like before. They were mixed together in a large bowl with a commercial-sized mixer to do the mashing and mixing. This time, though, the mixer spun and whirred and spun gobs of mashed potatoes right out of the basin and all over the kitchen walls. What a surprise! What a mess! (And according to the story, what a good memory it was for those who worked together to prepare that meal and to clean it up, too)

Perhaps one of the gifts of our table sharing as a spiritual practice in our lives is that the Holy Spirit whirs wondrous surprises when God’s people take time to share food, conversation and presence with others. At table, we find wonders of friendships growing deeper; strangers becoming friends; communities built to be stronger; love that is known even more profoundly; visions of hope shared that can seed a bright future.

As you reflect on your food sharing and table fellowship spiritual practice this week, may the Spirit make your tables holy tables, and may you know the goodness, delight and surprise that God can bring to you and the places where you gather with others.