Outdoor Worship
06/09/20
Service in Nature
There are countless examples of outdoor worship from the Sermon on the Mount to a growing number of churches like Church in the Woods in Canterbury, NH, Salal + Cedar in Vancouver British Columbia, and Abundant Table Farm Church in Ventura, California. Many, if not most, of our congregations, hold outdoor worship services during the summer or for special celebrations. During COVID we are gathering on-line and open to new ways of gathering for worship. Yesterday's meeting was inspiring and many thanks are due to The Rt. Rev. Brian Lee Cole and Rev. Anna Woofenden for sharing their experience and wisdom.
Watch the Full Webinar Recording: YOUTUBE
Listen to the PodCast: SOUNDCLOUD
Resources Mentioned in the Webinar:
Anna’s podcast: https://www.foodandfaithpodcast.org/
Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible by Ellen Davis
https://holyhikes.org
https://episcopalchurch.org/good-news-gardens
Facebook group to network with others involved in the garden, farm, and food ministries: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2564507933827285/
https://christianfoodmovement.org/
How often do we hear people say that they encounter God in nature in ways they are unable inside a building? Sometime in the not too distant future, we will gather again as communities of faith, face-to-face in communal worship. As we do there will be people who will feel reluctant to enter into an enclosed space.
Prayer is not just an activity of formal worship. So many of you know another form of prayer, by digging your hands in the soil and worshiping through your nurture of creation. For so many, this bears awe that equals that which is experienced inside our Sunday sanctuaries. It was, after all, the work that God gave to Adam and Eve, not as drudgery, but as a co-creative activity with God. As the poet,
Wendell Berry writes,
"The grower of trees, the gardener, the man/woman born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. S/he enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing.
What miraculous seed has s/he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his/her love flows out of [their] mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?"
