One August Saturday, as we anticipated moving back into the meetinghouse for worship after a year and a half being mostly outdoors or on line, several members gathered to clean, declutter, and bless our sanctuary.
Here's some of what's gone. (Yes, among it all was a pile of splintered sticks with nails protruding. Why, Church? Why do we keep such things?!)
As for what's left: the beauty, simplicity, intentionality, history, and holiness you who know our worship space know it for.
Jesus is remembered to have promised that he'd go ahead and prepare a place for us all. One implication in this lovely promise is the importance of having a prepared place, something that is ready for us to fill with our presence and hope, our prayers and attention.
Incidentally this is also an aspect of Godly Play, as modeled on the pedagogy developed by Maria Montessori, that a prepared place is one to which we can take our readiness, one where we can be open to encounter and surprise, insight, an arrival of wisdom and peace.
So, we're prepared this place once again to be open, an opening to mysteries divine and encounters true.
Come and see!