Astonishing Grace

• 80th Annual Village Fair (9:30-1:30) and 10th Annual 5K (8:30am) on August 16th
• First Thursday Lunch at Herricks is this week at Noon (no need to RSVP)
• Bible Study with Seth is on August 7th and 21st at 7pm (1st and 3rd Thursday; in person and via Zoom)
• August 17th, we will be joining INC at SAUMC for a Tropical Worship with a Steel Drum Band (there will be no services at CCNOT that day)
• Discussion Group with Pastor Charlotte Sunday is August 31st after Church (last Sunday; in person and via Zoom)
• Next Death Cafe is September 27th at 4pm (join us for an informal conversation around death and dying that may include curiosities, living well, and managing grief–we provide the sweetness with snacks and coffee)
• Council Resumes in September

Watch the recording HERE. Recording posts after services are complete each Sunday (usually by noon).

We are usually willing to be surprised. Surprise opens us up to questions and a quest that opens windows and doors that lead us toward understanding and deeper connection.  We don’t like shock.  Shock separates us and we put up guards which leads us to less understanding and less connection.  Sometimes, though, it is an incredible gift to be “Startled by Beauty”.  

This Startlement awakens us to Awe and Wonder, which lead us toward “something more” and “something bigger” within the “smallness” of our lives.  Maybe we call it God. Maybe we call it something else. There is a sense of the awesomeness that we are a part of this wonder of creation.  Yes, us, each and every small one of us.  We are part of a collective whole-ness.  

We were talking in Discussion this past Sunday about the collective “watching”. Those times when we stop together to turn our attention to something awesome.  We seek an experience. We seek to be startled by beauty.  We are drawn to pause when someone is stopped by the side of the road looking up or out.  We want to be a part of rediscovering the wonder of our lives.  

Perhaps it’s these times that remind us also that we want to share. We want to be in community. Perhaps we could call this collective watching as a form of communion and a reminder that we are meant to be together with and for one another.  No one hungry. No one thirsty.  No one without awe.  

This week, we may have looked up collectively to watch meteor showers.  We may be making plans to watch next August’s eclipse together.  We stop our cars together by the side of the road to watch the moose in a field or a sunset over the ocean.  We are together in a shared moment of Collective Wonder.  

I’ve said this before, but I like to call these little startlements out of our ordinary lives Love Notes. It is as if the Divine is reminding us to stop, take a moment, and take it all in. The wonderment. The awe.  The incredible mysteriousness of it all.  I don’t think it was a coincidence that I sat down to write this week’s words and I saw a bobcat wandering around the yard. I was “startled by beauty”.  

We try to capture these moments in words and it feels impossible.  There are no words.  Perhaps it is a reminder of the power of feeling and intuition.  The “something more” within us. The knowing within the not-knowing.   

What is the word for this collective communion around Watching for wonder and awe and beauty?  It is uncaptureable.  There are no words.  Perhaps this is why the Word in the Stories is so incredible and powerful, and also indescribable.  

This sense of awakening to wonder and awe is so obvious and yet, untouchable and unnameable and unknowable.  And yet…we know.  We feel it.  We sense it.  But we are unable to truly express it. Maybe it’s because the experience is a turning inward and expression is a turning out.  

Maybe it’s like Love.  You cannot box it.  You cannot tame it. You cannot hold it. You cannot dissect it, but you know it is there.  You feel it. You sense it.  

Yet there is magic is in continuing to try to express it.  It’s where we get our most beautiful art.  The painting that tries to capture the sunset over the ocean.  The poem that tries to explain the feeling of an eclipse.  The Story that tries to explain God.  

We use brushes and paints.  We create stories and poems.  We create wordless art on teeny tiny canvases and on the sides of giant buildings.  We create tiny haikus (poem-lets) and endless epics.  We use one word and every word.  

And still…

It is knowable and unknowable.  

It is namable and impossibly unnamable.  

It is possible and impossible.  

Perhaps this is why we are not meant to speak the name of God.  It cannot ever do justice. It is something beyond words and beyond comprehension.  The name is not what matters, but the feeling, the relationship, the wonder, the awe, the Mystery.  

Perhaps, it is best expressed as Love.  Perhaps that is the closest we can get.

As I was pondering this question this week, of what is the word we use for this “noticing”, this phrase arrived: Astonishing Grace. Of course, it was gifted by a poet, one of those best able to use the limited words we have to try and express the inexpressible.  

Perhaps, it is Astonishing Grace.

Grace as a gift from that something bigger (God/Universe/Spirit).  A gift of Grace for us and to us. A favorite teacher often says: there is more Grace in God than there is sin in me.  

Perhaps, Astonishing Grace is both a great gift (a Giant Love Note) and also an action.  Perhaps it is something we absorb and it is also something we do.  The reciprocity of being in relationship (or covenant). 

We stop and notice the unnamable Mystery.  Those moments of communion with our fellow creatures to watch a meteor shower, turn our gaze to an eclipse, or watch the sun rise over the morning sea.  Those Astonishing Grace moments when we know are all part of a greater Mystery more enormous than each of us alone.  Both a gift and something we are a part of.  

They come unexpectedly.  A moment of communion with Grace when we read a poem that lights up our soul.  In the moment when we send that little love note to a friend who needs to hear those same words.  Both a gift and something we do.  

It is the pause.  Those moments when we stop and are filled with Awe and Wonder and our lives are changed, if only for that one moment in time.  

Astonishing Grace.  

Perhaps this Astonishing Grace wakes us up to our own astonishment and grace within.  It is a reminder that we are gifted something precious and powerful.  Yes, each and every one of us.  A collective gift and also an individual gift needed in this time and this place.  Astonishing!  

Perhaps, we are also God’s Little Love Notes.  

Perhaps that’s why we are said to be made in God’s image.  We are a creation in God’s image, with the spark of the divine life, and gifted a little bit of that Astonishing Grace.  We are caught up in Astonishing Grace to give forward our small gifts of astonishing grace to one another.  

Astonishing Graces remind us of what is most precious and awesome and wonderful.  That we must protect what we love the most.  And that we must love more.  

The more we love, the more open our heart is.  The more open our hearts are, the more willing we are to be astonished by Astonishing Grace.  The more we are astonished, the more we know the preciousness of this grace.  The more we love…the more we have to give to this world and one another.  

And the more we stand side by side, allowing ourselves to be awed by collective Astonishing Graces, the more we come to love one another.  The more we love one another, the closer to God are we.  It’s Astonishing!!