pastor prayers

Originally uploaded by ParsaSilva

A couple of weeks ago, we joined the Universalist Church of Essex on their annual sunset cruise around Cape Ann. It’s the best church fundraiser I’ve ever attended.

I’ve been reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower this summer, so as we soaked in the beauty of the landscape — the craggy inlets, the green, green marshes, the twists and turns as the land and sea do their intimate dance — I couldn’t help but think about the folks who arrived on these shores by sea and the wonder and terror and disorientation of it all. Whatever history’s judgment of them, they were folks looking for a way to be faithful, a way to live their lives fully and abundantly, and they were willing to risk their lives for it. Riding the choppy waters, listening to tunes played by the resident church D.J. on the upper deck, I was grateful to have this relaxing, fun tour through a place that for so many people was fraught with peril. Our religious forbearers, we owe them a lot.

And I wondered at what risks I am willing to take to live this faith, ill-defined as it is theologically, oddball as it is in our cultural landscape. I’m not talking live on a stinky ship with a hundred other people, no water for months, and no guarantee of help on the other side kind of risky. Thank god some faithful, brave or desperate (or all three) folks already did that. I beseech the ancestors for the wisdom to discern how to live this faith in the face of that which might crush it, to believe that there is a purpose and a meaning that is worth danger of reprisal, or being outcast, or just plain seeming weird. I pray that I can find a ways to listen so that the call of that great spirit, the spirit of the sea and the earth and the sky that meet and mingle on this coast might be more audible than the rush of the clock and the list of things to do and the pressure to be all, know all, do all, that conspire to do the work of stifling the soul and keeping life too small, justice too far, forgiveness too empty and love too saccharine to be compelling. May the beacon of the eternal light be in all our sights as we navigate the waters of faith. And may it offer us the challenge of honesty, a balm of healing, and the promise of love eternal and enveloping.