Dear Friends,

 We pray you are safe and well.

Today's Meditation lets our Ash Wednesday Service from last night echo. If you were able to attend, you know that The Spirit of Life: A Catholic Community of Justice and Joy joined the The Congregational Church of Weston and Wellesley Village Congregational Church in putting together our joint Ash Wednesday Service.

It was a joy for us to prepare the service with the other ministers: our thinking is very similar. Here in today's Meditation, Rev. Bob Feeny expands his thinking in the new cosmology--the new ecotheology.

We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in healthcare, in the workplace, in the Church--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.

In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that in God’s economy of abundance, when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.

We hope and pray that you and your loved ones experience genuine peace of mind and heart, and remain in good health during this challenging time.

In this time of Lenten Pilgrimage may you find peace, healing, hope, and the infusion of joy in your life!

With our love and care,

Jean & Ron

MEDITATION 283: We are dust of the earth and dust of the stars

“Four and a half billion years ago, the earth was a flaming molten ball of rock and now…it can sing opera.”

-Brian Swimme

That’s how one cosmologist tells the story of humanity in a nutshell. You may have heard that quote, and you certainly heard it if you attended our Ash Wednesday service. I believe our tradition tells it a bit more elegantly, more poetically, but the basic insight seems the same to me: we are part of a wondrous Creation that continues to unfold.

We have entered into the Lenten season. Like Advent, Lent is a season of preparation, a time of prayer and reflection—a time of yearning. In much of Christianity, it was marked with fasting and observing additional prohibitions or practices. This type of thinking can, and frequently has, led to a certain denial of the body in favor of the spirit. Taking into account what we now know about our origins in the cosmos, and the wondrous way that we have come to consciousness, we know that our bodies are in fact essential to our spiritual life!

Remember—you are dust! Dust that breathes, dust born of stars, dust that sings opera, dust that organizes itself into tour groups to walk in amazement through national parks made of...yep, you guessed it: dust!

I want to invite us all to a holy Lent this year. Not by denying our earthly existence in favor of a higher spiritual realm, but by seeing our dusty lives for what they are—complicated and filled with mystery. As we prepare our hearts for this holy season, and as we journey again through the story of Jesus’ life, death, and (hopefully) resurrection, I hope that you will join me in cultivating a deeper reverence for the wondrous, creativity of our life on this planet. I hope that you will join me in repenting from seeing this ball of dust that we call home as anything other than a miracle.

Peace,

Bob

Rev. Bob Feeny

Pastoral Resident

Wellesley Village Church & The Congregational Church of Weston