Weekly Clergy Letter from Mother Anne Turner

Dear Friends in Christ—

 

As some of you know, I love birdwatching.  I will take myself out to the wetlands or the woods, especially in the springtime, with the express purpose of looking for warblers or ducks or raptors.  I go prepared with binoculars and comfortable shoes.

 

But I also love another kind of birding, which is when I am in the middle of some ordinary task, pumping gas or carrying packages to the post office or taking out the garbage.  A bird will alight within my vision or sing in earshot.  And everything stops.  I am arrested by beauty.  The bird will not wait for me; I must appreciate it in this singular moment.

 

Even if you are not a lover of birds, I hope you know what it is like to be arrested by beauty.  It comes in the unexpectedly vivid December predawn skies, coral and turquoise.  It comes in a line of poetry in a forwarded email.  It comes in a sweet melody as you are changing from one radio station to another.

 

Beauty is one of the ways God saves us.  When we are weighed down by the despair of the world, when our shared life is coarsened and demeaned, the image of God marred.  Beauty restores that image, at least in part.

 

Last week, I wrote about using Grace Church during Advent as a resource for being present.  I hope it can also be a resource for encountering salvific beauty.  Our worship here—our music, our scripture, our prayers—has the capacity to arrest us in the moment and remind us what God looks like.  It is the bird that demands attention for the moment it alights.

 

I especially want to invite you to this Sunday’s Lessons and Carols service at 5:00 p.m.  This service is a planned date with beauty—putting yourself in its path, where it might alight and bless you.

 

I hope this beautiful season will bless you richly.

 

Yours in Christ,

Anne