Sunny Sunday

Oh what a lovely morning! The one thing about the clunky dark building that we rent? We know what our church is about; the people. Our walls, our rooms, our core--it's the people. I love our people.

I have been trying to keep a practice of doing a UU History lesson "Story for All Ages" on the first Sunday of the month. So to coordinate that with the sermon and somehow with the theme of the Chalice Chapel downstairs and the Service Sunday project gets a little hectic! Today I told the story of Lewis Latimer it tied the Passover story of escape (his parents escaped from slavery) and the search for light and truth (he invented the part of a lightbulb that let's it burn more than three times). But it didn't tie into the Environmental Action pillar we're on with the kids. Oh well!

I love leading the Chalice Chapel, our little monthly children's worship time. Today I created a lush altar with primroses and little pea starts and candles and chimes. I added my chalice banner and our Children's Chalice. We lit our chalice with the worlds from the Tapestry of Faith series "We are Unitarian Universalists, with minds that think, hearts that love, and hands that are ready to serve". Then we sang "Come Sing a Song With Me" zipping in other things like "come hang out with me"! I promised them we'd sing the version my family sings: so Ryan and I sang "Come do laundry with me, come do laundry with me, come do laundry with me that I might have clean shirts". Yep, that's a real story from our family. I heard belly laughs from the littler ones over that one. Joys and sorrows were good, sharing real things. Then I read this little reading:

The seed turns to shoot
The shoot turns to plant
The plant grows a bean
The bean is picked
And eaten
and turns into YOU!

We did a nice tangerine meditation, thinking about the tangerine momma-the tree and where the tree lived, the rain on the tree, what happened in the breeze. The bloom that grew to our little tiny tangerine, which grew ripe and fat and got picked and delivered to the store and then.....to us! I would have loved to have local food, but this was good, too.

To end we each took a bean seed in a quiet bean communion. I hope we'll all go home and plant our seeds and remember our lovely community and how we're all a part of each other.

Then the kids did their service work. We made kits for natural cleaning. Vinegar, baking soda, rosemary infused water with borax (YES, real rosemary plants!) lemons. Good stuff. I got to sit with a few little girls and read stories, even one about Rachel Carson. One four-year-old asked if I could come over for a play date.

I can't think of one thing I'd rather do. Not one.

Now the sun is out, and I'm going to go put those primroses from the altar into my garden and plant the pea starts I have left--many went home with loved ones at church. And I'm going to plant a nice circle of beans from our bean communion. All summer it will remind me of the precious circle of children, youth and adults that I was blessed to be a part of today.

And I will look forward to my play date.