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Green Season
Welcome to
the Green Season, the longest season in the church calendar.
This time has other names as well: Pentecost Season, because
it begins on Pentecost Sunday, and Ordinary Time, for being
“ordinal,” or numbered. The weeks between Pentecost Sunday and
the first Sunday of Advent are referred to by number -- the
first Sunday after Pentecost, the second Sunday after Pentecost,
and so on. It's called the Green Season for its green liturgical
color and themes of new life and growth.
Prayers of the People for God's Spirit
These
Prayers of the People are based on prayers first used at St.
Paul's Episcopal Church in Port Townsend on May 11, 2008, the
Day of Pentecost. They were written by Roberta Hiday, a
spiritual director who lives in Sequim, Washington, and whose
blog
Spiritually Directed offers daily inspirational quotes and
musings.
More about
responsive prayer.
Our
God—we, your people, stand ready and open
(Leader's words in plain text.)
to
receive the flame of your Spirit.
Give
us the ability to speak your truth so that others may hear.
Come, Spirit of Truth, fill our hearts. (People's responses in bold italic.)
May that which was of stone be now transformed into life.
Come, Spirit of Life, change our hearts.
May we who receive your light dwell together in Your love.
Come, Spirit of Love, soften our hearts.
Bestow your compassion on those who suffer in mind, spirit, and
body.
Come, Spirit of Hope, heal our hearts.
Make us bold to bring light to the dark places, warmth to the
cold places, and love to the empty places.
Come, Spirit of Faith, strengthen our hearts.
Spirit of the Living God, fill our hearts, minds, and souls to
overflowing.
Come, Spirit of God, move in our hearts.
Our God—we, your people, celebrate the mystery of your
never-ending love.
Amen.
Meditation for the Green Season
I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to
them,
‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me,
‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
God said to Moses, “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.” (*)
-- Exodus 3:13-14
Lichen and moss growing willy-nilly from a rotting fence post,
topped by a purple mushroom — the very image of abundant life
and the spirit of surprise in God’s unfolding creation.
The fence sits on the edge of our land. The rough-hewn posts,
planted by our neighbor many years before we moved here, take on
greater life season by season. Summer before last, a mushroom
sprung up and stuck around for weeks. I admired it during a
number of early morning walks before taking its picture. The 4x6
snapshot turned out pretty good, so I ordered an enlargement for
framing.
 By
the time the print came back from the photo shop, the mushroom
was long gone from our neighbor’s fence post. I was happy to see
it again up close in the photograph.
 Then
I noticed that in the enlargement, a little white dot on the
mushroom’s crown — I’d never even been aware of it on the living
mushroom — had taken hazy shape. I peered at the photo, blinked,
looked closer.
Could a second mushroom be growing out of the first?
When I showed the picture to my spiritual director and pointed
out the tiny umbrella shape, she exclaimed with delight,
“Wonderful! An immaculate conception!”
(*) God’s answer to Moses is an early form of the Hebrew verb
“to be” that is sometimes translated “I AM WHO I AM.”
Meditation for All Saints Day
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in
God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there
are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I
have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and will take you to myself, so that where I
am, there you may be also. And you know the way to
the place where I am going.” — John
14:1-4
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The Reverend
Kenneth J. Scott, fisherman |
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When I was a kid visiting my mother’s parents in West Virginia,
my grandfather used to take my brother and sister and me fishing with him. First, we’d go to
the backyard compost pile that fed my grandmother’s flower
garden. Grandfather Scott would turn over the pile with a
pitchfork, revealing a mass of red wrigglers in the dark humus.
We pulled out the worms we needed and dropped them in a used
coffee can. Then we all piled in his old station wagon and drove
to a pond belonging to a farmer friend. We baited our hooks, set
little red bobbers, and threw in our lines.
I can still remember the first time my fishing pole – a dead
thing a moment before – suddenly sprang to life in my hands. We
pulled out blue gills and sunnies until we had enough, then
drove home. Back beside the compost pile again, we watched my
grandfather sharpen his thin filleting knife, then gut and clean
the fish, sending the guts back to the worms in the compost
pile. That evening, he’d fry us up a fish dinner.
I don’t know much about the afterlife. The idea of heaven as a
place where I go after I die, a place where I exist as myself in
some essential way, is for me more a puzzle than a hope. I can’t
say it won’t be that way, of course, but I can’t say that it
will, either.
And yet, I do know that the human spirit lives on after death.
My grandfather’s spirit is alive in me today. When I watch the
still surface of a lake explode with life and feel an answering
explosion of joy inside me, my grandfather’s spirit is alive.
When I feed my compost pile with kitchen scraps, then feed my
raspberry canes from my compost pile, then feed a nephew some
raspberry pie, my grandfather’s spirit is alive.
My spirit will live on after I die: there’s no way to avoid it.
It will live in my nephews, their children, and their children’s
children. It will live in my neighbors, the people I’ve worked
with, even the people I’ve encountered on the street or in a
community meeting. That kind of afterlife may or may not be what
Jesus was talking about when he said that he would go and
prepare a place for me in his Father’s house, but I know that
it’s true and will be true as long as people exist.
So I pray:
Oh God, help me find a way to live in your
house today, so that my spirit may bring life to
your house tomorrow. Amen.
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