A Message from Pastor Kaji

I’ve very much enjoyed hearing about your initial forays into living more softly. It’s inspiring to hear your examples of making soft adjustments in your life. Please do keep sharing with me – and perhaps even with your friends! (If none of this makes sense, don’t worry. Just watch last Sunday’s sermon to catch up.) In last week’s Elders meeting, we even discussed making time to build some conversations around how we’re living into our Soft Summers and encountering God, anew, on the way. Watch this space for more information from the Elders about summer conversations in the weeks to come.This Sunday marks the final part of our 5-part series on our spiritual seasons: autumn. In Parker Palmer’s words:

Autumn is a season of great beauty, but it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death. Faced with this inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring – and she scatters them with amazing abandon. In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. Instead, my mind is on the fact that the green growth of summer is browning and beginning to die. My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty all around. I am drawn down by the prospect of death more than I am lifted by the hope of new life. But as I explore autumn’s paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I am easily fixated on surface appearances – on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. And yet, if I look more deeply, I may see the myriad possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season yet to come.

I’m excited to explore our spiritual autumns through Jesus’ lens. I don’t want to give too much away for Sunday, but I will say that a great way to prepare is to take a look at The Park’s beloved friend, Traci Curry’s new series: Searching for Soul Food, which is streaming on Hulu. It’s a beautiful and inspiring illustration of one particular aspect of this week’s Matthew text, and if you’ve seen it, it might even enhance your understanding of the gospel. If you can, please do take a look.

I can’t wait to worship with you!

Pax,
Pastor Kaji

Scripture: Matthew 13:31-35 (Year A, p. 376):

31 Jesus laid out another parable before the crowd: “The realm of the heavens is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in their field. 32 Indeed it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” 33 Then Jesus told them another parable: “The realm of the heavens is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three scoops of flour until all of it was leavened.”

34 All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; without a parable he said nothing to them. 35 This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth to speak in parables;

I will declare what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”