Our refuge is the house to the upper right of the photo
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to mount Horeb, the mountain of God.
There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.
Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up."
When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground
Exodus 3:1-5 NRSVue
A week ago today I was sitting on the deck of the 100+ year old house we stay in just about annually on Change Islands, Newfoundland. These islands have a little over a hundred year-round inhabitants and while they are busier in the summer they aren't a tourist destination like the nearby Fogo Island.
Last Sunday I went outside to sit and ponder in the relatively windless calm, a rarity in Newfoundland. I was almost overwhelmed by the absence of human-made noise which is omnipresent in our world. We are inclined to be up early at home and go out to our deck before the often-time strident hum begins. We hear the dawn chorus and the breeze in surrounding trees. Even still, we may also hear trains being shunted on tracks a kilometre away, or a siren, or air-conditioning units. None of these sounds were evident last week. No one was heading out fishing or cutting grass.
A sunset from the deck on Parson's Lane
My re-read while on Change Islands this year
Ruth joined me outside last week as I was reading resources for the Feast of Creation in Christ which will be celebrated ecumenically on Tuesday, September 1 or next Sunday. As we looked out on the sea we agreed that the silence, other than the cries of gulls and terns and crows. was an almost palpable presence. There was the profound sense that we were on the "holy ground" of Creation and Creator we hear about in one of this week's lectionary passages.
There were once four churches on Change Islands but the United Church is now closed as is the Pentecostal building. The tiny "Hanglican" and "Harmy" congregations gather intermittently as their priest and officer is able to include them in the schedule. Last week there was no service on the islands at all so we were a congregation of two, giving thanks for the solitude and beauty.
We did visit the beautiful old St. Margaret's Anglican while we were there and I opened the 175-year-old King James Version bible to the theme "Living Water" verses for the Feast of Creation from Ezekiel. It seemed appropriate to do so for this "out to pasture pastor".
Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish once these waters reach there. It will become fresh, and everything will live where the river goes. People will stand fishing beside the sea from En-gedi to En-eglaim; it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of a great many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea.
On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.”
Ezekiel 47 9,10,12 NRSVue
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