Beloved,

As most of you know, I am heading out of Vermont tomorrow for a week of what we now call, "Same Job. Different View". I will be working from an oceanfront condo in Maryland, enjoying the view and breathing deeply of the cool salt air. This has got me thinking about perspective, and especially as it relates to church.

It has always amused me that we churchgoers claim to have "our pew" or "our chair" in which we sit every week and, if we are honest with ourselves, for which we get a bit put off if a visitor dares to sit in it. We can laugh a little at that, but it is largely true, isn't it? Yet here's the thing about that; if we only ever sit in the same place, we only ever receive one perspective of the experience. When I was a seminarian, one of my mentors required that I sit in various parts of the church on Sunday mornings, including the balcony, to know what it was like to worship in that spot. It seemed silly at the time, but I remain grateful for his wisdom.

When we become cemented to a thing or a seat or a way of doing something, we lose all perspectives but that one. We will return to worship together at some point this year, and though that will be wonderful, it will not be the same as it once was. There will be new people with us, my customs for celebration will be new, we will be incorporating a virtual congregation, there may be people who will never be comfortable sitting right next to a stranger, we may make changes to the way we pass the peace, and I could go on. The point is that our perspective will be challenged.

I pray that as we come to the other side of this pandemic, we are ready to embrace the fact that we are not the same people we were a year ago, and our church is not the same church, and our worship will not be the same worship. We can and will move forward together, rejoicing in the resurrection of our life together; a resurrection that brings change and moves us from glory to glory.

Same Church. Different View.

In Christ's Love,

Greta+