Friends, 

As always I hope this finds you healthy and well. Mud season has arrived here in southern Maine and it always has many lessons for us. What appears to be solid ground is not always so. We must endure some muck to get through to the blooming of new life. Boots are almost always a good idea. 

Many of you know that Lucy and I bought our first home this winter. A little house with a big backyard. The day we closed and began to move in, it snowed. The ground has been covered ever since. So we’re not entirely sure what the land is like… what plants will grow, what the trees will look like with leaves, what is under all that snow. The past week’s melting has slowly revealed more and more of the yard. Going outside each day has felt like unwrapping a present… something new appears! A stump, what I think might be a blueberry bush, the top of the compost bucket that blew away in the last blizzard and was promptly buried, a teenage-mutant-ninja-turtle figurine from the child who lived there before. 

It’s pretty muddy and gross back there in our yard, and it will be a while until that changes. More waiting ahead. But the wheels of time turn, and I am practicing patience and curiosity. Imperfectly. This whole being in the in-between, in life’s mud season, and not rushing to the next thing… turns out to be quite challenging. I want answers, movement, change, flourishing now. I am grateful for the wisdom that visits from time to time and reminds me that there is holiness in the waiting… in the mud. 

As we make our way through March, together as a community, in our season of stewardship and recommitment to our spiritual home, we have reflected on church and how it helps us be wind over the water. We reflected, with Rev. Lara last week, on how we can show up for one another in care and make the most seemingly unholy places sacred. And this week, we’ll ponder (your Worship Committee and I leading service together) how and why it is that we keep coming back to communal worship as a cornerstone of our weeks. 

In this season of mud, where much is in process and has yet to reveal itself, may we remember that we are guided by the Spirit, are held by a love that knows no bounds, and are held in care by our community. Rain or shine, I’ll see you in church. 

In faith,

Rev. Tara