Dear Beloveds,
I invite you to join part of our teaching from the final outdoor Tuesday of the ArtSmart Summer Camp.
We are each given a hand drawn map of the Sacred Commons that has six distinctly different gardens on it. A noticing practice around the gardens in the Sacred Commons has us go slow and spend some time with our senses. What do you see, touch, smell, hear….what is the same in each garden space and what is different?
What is different in the Sunflower garden is how the sunflowers have grown and changed over the four weeks of camp.
On our first Tuesday outside, our introductory garden tour had us engage the practice of measuring the sunflowers at the center of the sunflower garden We had planted two different varieties in the garden — each growing to a different height.
The outside circle of sunflowers is a variety that grow 4-5 feet, and at the center is a variety that grow 10-12 feet tall.
That first Tuesday, the children measured themselves next to one of the center sunflowers, and most of them were smaller or about even with the plant.
Maybe you could imagine what changed over time?
The first group of children on Tuesday shouted with delight when they noticed the change in size! The sunflower was way up above their heads! What proximate beauty and delight in God’s good creation!
So what teaching does the Magnolia tree offer?
The Magnolia tree is more than willing to share opportunities for teachings about creation and God.
The tree offers a steadiness in the Luther Place Sacred Commons that hosts a complex ecosystem in an urban space — gifts of creation for the children of God that are accessible in our downtown neighborhood.
May creation, in its various forms, offer you some joy this week. And please stop by Luther Place if you can, and take a slow walk around the Sacred Commons — the gifts of creation are for you too.
in Christ,
Pastor Karen Brau
