Saturday, June 13, 9am – to noon
Physically Distant Work Party
Please find Elmer Taylor at the church he’ll find something for you to do.
Sunday Worship, 10am
RE Sunday, Naomi Yoshida
And the RE Committee
Sunday, 11:30am
Racial Justice Workshop
What will we do as a faith community about the systemic racism in U.S. society?
Small Group Ministry (SGM)
Deadline to sign up is June 15
This will be the last week that I do these messages
I will give my last message on Saturday, 1pm
I am still your minister through June 30
Next week
I’ll attend the Board meeting
I’ll attend the Pastoral Care meeting
I’ll lead the weekly staff meeting
I have a sermon to write for June 21
And I’ll working on preparing communication for Lissa.
June 21, is my last day preaching to you
Then for the last week of the month
I will participate in GA and Ministry Days activities
I will finish cleaning out my office
So, I’ve been thinking about how to make an ending
For the last several weeks.
Not just how to stop
But how to make the ending
Feel like an ending
In music,
One way to make an ending
Is to make a big powerful series of chords
Think Beethoven symphonies
In tonal music the ending comes
When the music finds it’s way back to the home key
And settles there
But there is also music that ends softly
Fading away
A single instrument
And that can feel like an ending, too
And atonal music can also make a convincing ending
Without having a tonic key to return to.
But one thing that all kinds of music has
That helps to make an ending
Classical music, pop music
3 minutes of music
Or three hours of music
Is that when the music stops
There is silence
However the sound reaches its end
What makes the ending
Is the silence
I’ve been reading Proust this year
It’s very long
And sometimes it feels like it will go on forever
And Proust is also famous for very long sentences
And very long paragraphs
I recently read through a single paragraph
That continues over seven solid pages of text! (Vol. III, pp. 509-516)
But eventually you know that the sentence ends with a period
And space
The paragraph ends with a line break
And space
The chapters end
The individual volumes end
I know I will have reached the end
When the words stop
And there is space
There is silence
As we search for an end to this interim
An ending that feels like an end
(The end that we need
So that you can begin again anew)
Consider the use of silence
How a space of silence, after the words
After the “music” of the interim
Can communicate
An ending
So maybe July
Can be that space
Between chapters
That pause
Between movements
That deliberate time not to just
Rush forward
Smashing the new onto the old
With no chance for a breath
Take a breath
Take a break
Lean into the space
Listen to the silence
I close with these words from our hymnal
#482, Jacob Trapp
If it is language that makes us human, one half of language is to listen.
Silence can exist without speech, but speech cannot live without silence.
Listen to the speech of others. Listen even more to their silence.
To pray is to listen to the revelations of nature, to the meaning of events.
To listen to music is to listen also to silence, and to find the stillness deepened and enriched.