This week, Sunday April 11, we will not gather together online or in-person.
Instead, I invite you to head outside for some reflection and engagement on your own as I take a weekend off. Go for a walk around your neighborhood or on a trail nearby, sit in a chair in the sun, or get in your yard and pull weeds. The weather here in the PNW should be wonderful for the next few days, take advantage of it! Take deep gulps of the fresh air, begin to shake off the cobwebs of winter and reflect on these words of poetry by Mary Oliver.
Snake by: Mary Oliver from: House of Light (Also published under the title Spring) And here is the serpent again, dragging himself out from his nest of darkness, his cave under the black rocks, his winter-death. He slides over the pine needles. He loops around the bunches of rising grass, looking for the sun. Well, who doesn’t want the sun after the long winter? I step aside, he feels the air with his soft tongue, around the bones of his body he moves like oil, downhill he goes toward the black mirrors of the pond. Last night it was still so cold I woke and went out to stand in the yard, and there was no moon. So I just stood there, inside the jaw of nothing. An owl cried in the distance, I thought of Jesus, how he crouched in the dark for two nights, then floated back above the horizon. There are so many stories, more beautiful than answers. I follow the snake down to the pond, thick and musky he is as circular as hope.
I look forward to seeing you on Zoom on April 18. Blessings, Liz