Dear Good Samaritans,

Last Sunday, during our coffee hour, I was invited out to the playground to see something amazing. When I got outside the adults and the children had all paused and were rapt in awe of an owl sitting on the fence. It was incredible, just taking us all in. It was probably as curious about us as we were about it. Then, after a few minutes its attention span was up (as was the kids’) and it flew into some nearby trees.

I was struck by the simple realization that we are closer to the wild, and to the land and creation itself, than we (or at least I) usually remember.

It really doesn’t take much in our modern world to forget it. So much of what we do is lived indoors, on screens, or in climate-controlled rooms and cars. We move from one enclosed space to another. We have carefully mowed and watered lawns and curated gardens. Bread comes from the grocery store pre-sliced, our meat pre-portioned. Our society just isn’t as connected with the soil, the weather, or the hands and the labor and the waiting that so many things in our lives require.

For me, an owl on the playground breaks through all of that, if only for a moment. It’s a reminder that the wild has never actually left us. We have simply stopped looking for it.

This is part of why the Church gives us a Season of Creation. Beginning this year on September 6th, we will spend five weeks paying deliberate attention to the world God made and called good. It is an invitation to think of the world around us, not as a backdrop to our faith, but as one of its primary texts. The Celtic tradition has long spoken of Christ moving among us in two forms: creation and scripture. As J. Philip Newell reminds us, “[The Celtic Church] stressed the need to be as alert and attentive to Christ moving among us in creation as we are to the voice of Christ in scripture” (Listening to the Heartbeat of God). This season asks us to open to Christ’s presence in both of these places.

So, I have an invitation for you. And it’s a tangible one! Throughout the Season of Creation, I want us to be intentional and mindful about how the things we use in worship are connected to the world we live in. I am hoping that each Sunday we can have locally made wine (we use port at Good Samaritan), homemade bread (here is a recipe you can use), and flowers (or greenery) from our gardens.

I’ve chosen these three quite deliberately. Bread and wine are, of course, ancient eucharistic symbols. But before they ever reach our altar, they pass through soil, sun, rain, sometimes yeast, patience, and human hands. A loaf of bread is wheat that a field grew and someone kneaded. A bottle of port is a vineyard’s slow, patient work, bottled by people we may never meet. And flowers or plants from your own garden are perhaps the most direct offering of all: something you tended yourself, with your own hands, in your own soil, now carried into our sacred space.

Together, these gifts will become concrete reminders of the earth that brings forth, the hands that grow and process, and our own need for both. We need the earth’s abundance and the labor that shapes it into something we can share. This season, I want our worship space to be filled, quite literally, with the fruits of creation and the work of human hands, so that we might see, smell, touch, and even taste what it means to be creatures among the creation, cared for by a God who made dirt and rain and wheat and grapevines and called them good.

A sign-up sheet can be found here if you’d like to offer something during the season. Please don’t worry about matching some standard of perfection—a lopsided loaf, a modest cutting from a windowsill plant, a bottle from the shop down the road all count. This is not a competition. It is an offering.

And who knows—perhaps the owl will make another appearance. Either way, I hope this season helps us remember what that Sunday morning visitor reminded me of: that the wild, the earth, and the sacred were never as far from us as we thought.

Peace,