Gathering Our Spirit with God's Spirit

Prayer stations: one table in the middle – the big one, or a few smaller ones – with a big candle in the middle. Little tea lights are all over, NOT LIT yet. Matchsticks all around. Rick is providing cutout pictures of many things. They're all over the table. The room is pretty dark. This is serious stuff today.

• “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye plays
• A Journeyer steps up to light the lamp and another rings the bell
• Rick (E) and Leslie (L) make announcements

Worshiping with Our Children

• A Journeyer leads our children in talking about how sometimes things that we want to keep aren’t going to help us any, like a toy we’ve had a long time that doesn’t work anymore, or clothes that are too little, or training wheels for our bike when we don’t need them anymore. God tells us it’s okay to let some things go, so we can move on to new things.

Welcome and Breathe

• Pruning video plays
• A Journeyer reads from The Tao of Gardening. This poem is not on the screen. Instead show pictures of plants, flowers, a shrub, gardening tools, whatever.

If you overvalue some plants,
the plant will become overpowering.
The master gardener understands
that growing things must be pruned.
Loss by pruning creates growth and gain.
The empty spaces become full and healthy.
Taking away is giving new life.
Can you admit that you don’t know?
When you think you know,
you stop asking questions.
Healing and growth come from openness.
In gardening, as in life, follow this:
in planting, select a variety of seeds;
in pruning, be light-handed.

• Rick welcomes, has us breathe

God’s Spirit and Our Spirit

• Reader Two comes to microphone, invites everyone to be quiet, waits a full minute, then, reads poem by Frederick Buechner

Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely,
but Christ’s love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole.
Christ’s love so wishes our joy
that it is ruthless
against everything in us that diminishes our joy.

• Sesame Street video plays
• A Journeyer reads a definition of pruning and a passage from Hebrews 12

A definition of pruning:

Pruning is the horticultural practice of cutting away an unwanted, unnecessary, or undesirable plant part, used most often on trees, shrubs, hedges, and woody vines. Pruning is used to remove diseased or injured parts of the plant, to influence vertical or lateral growth for various reasons, and to increase flowering or fruit yield. Judicious pruning of garden perennials helps to maintain plant vigor and prolongs blooming. As in other horticultural practices, the type of pruning and its timing vary and must be adapted to the specific plant and the conditions of its environment.

-- E. P. Christopher, The Pruning Manual, 1954

And, from the letter to the early Jewish Christians, called Hebrews, chapter 12:

See the difficulties of growing spiritually, as being like the discipline a loving parent offers their children. When a loving parent disciplines her child, the child learns boundaries, and what is good, and what is not healthy. To experience difficulties in our spiritual life is like receiving boundaries and instruction. God cares about you and wants you to grow. And when you’ve been trained and strengthened by what you're learning, it will be as if you are a healthy plant, and you will produce a harvest – a harvest of goodness and peace. So, strengthen your arms when they feel weak. Work hard and your knees will grow stronger. And this will produce healing for the world.

• Rick leads discussion on idea of pruning as spiritual necessity

Giving -- To Help God Do God's Work in This World

• A Journeyer reads poem from The Tao of Gardening again, still not on screen, then says offering prayer
• A gardening Journeyer prunes a shrub as the ushers pass the baskets and then bring them forward; music plays (either Renee plays or we play music on the iPod) (something quiet, small)

Telling The Story and Our Story

• Reader Four invites everyone to be quiet, waits a full minute, then reads from the Gospel of John

Jesus, at his last supper with his followers, in the story called the Gospel of John, told them this:

"I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn't bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing, he prunes back so it will bear even more grapes.

I have already pruned you back; you’ve listened to the message I’ve shown you.

"Live in me. Make your home in me; I’m making my home in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself, but only by being joined to the vine, when you are attached to me, you will bear abundant good fruit.

"I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be overflowing. When you are I are separated, you’ll find it hard to bloom, and grow. And this is how my Father shows the world who he is: when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples, the world will see whom you belong to.

"I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love.”

• Rick talks
• Rick has us go to prayer stations where we will pick an object or picture that we feel led to either let go of, or let God grow in us – and put a candle on it, and light the candle. Music plays – something instrumental and soft – Renee? IPod?

Go Out to Serve with Courage and Grace

• A Journeyer reads poem from The Tao of Gardening for the third time (finally on screen.)
• Reader Five dismisses us. This is on the screen.

Go into the garden entrusted to you. Ask God to help you see what is healthy, and what is not. Ask God for help in knowing what to let go, and what to let grow.

And be courageous. You are not alone in this work. Go in peace. Amen.

• “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye plays again as folks depart