Every year the Transitions small group ends with an evening mini-retreat.  After a shared meal, we meet in the sanctuary for a ritual of passage that marks the end/fading/composting of a life stage for each participant, and the beginning/emerging/growing of the next.

Every thirty years or so we get a new roof on the church. 

This Tuesday evening those rare stars perfectly aligned. 

Above, the work crew pounded and screwed, removed and replaced, flashed and sealed.  These are the essential workers without whom our country would grind to a halt, and our buildings would slowly decay.  They worked well into the evening, sometimes directly overhead our gathering.  The next time you’re by the church building be sure to look up and admire the work.  It’s the first expenditure from our “What is this Place?” capital campaign, an important investment for the next thirty-plus years.

Below, eleven of us did another kind of essential work.  We gathered in a circle, each person describing the symbolic objects they brought to represent what they were letting go of, and what they were now embracing.  Ages ranging from 30s into the 70s made for very different life stages traversed.  However, a theme of home connected many reflections, from hopes of buying a home, to a new work home, to preparing for children to leave home, to pondering a new home near grandchildren.  No pounding or heavy lifting with this contemplative crew, but the inner work is always its own form of labor, often just as tiring, and essential, just as much an investment in self and community.

Thank you to workers of all kinds – who keep us dry and warm, who tend the flame of their soul through its many transitions.

Joel

The final-final aspect of the Transitions group will be leading worship this Sunday.  Come hear from them and see the new roof all at once.