You probably don’t know this, but I have a secret ritual I practice every Sunday morning before I get to church. I’d like to share it with you today because I don’t think I always have the words as to why I was doing this, until this week. So here goes:
Every Sunday morning, before I get to the church, I pull my car into Cottage Lake Park and pull up to the dock there. The first thing I do is just take a deep breath and breathe in the majestic scene. I know most of us have known this little lake almost all of our lives, and because of it maybe we don’t realize just how beautiful it is…especially at 6:30 or 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning when you share the park with a few friendly ducks, one majestic eagle, and a few trout that are practicing their morning leaps for joy. Often in the morning there is a light fog that is just starting to lift from the lake. This is what I’m breathing in…all of this…allowing it all to merge into one almighty sacred moment.
After I breathe all that in…and that takes about 5-10 minutes...I go to the shore and pick a special rock out. Rocks have always been special to me.
When I was a kid, my older brothers took me to the shore of a stock pond (Joe and Erin would ride their bikes, and I’d ride on the handlebars) where they taught me how to skip rocks. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but before the summer was over, I was right there with them…6 skips…7…one time I did 11! My brothers didn’t do as many, but they could actually skip a rock across the pond…it wasn’t a very big pond!
After I choose the perfect rock…I go to the edge of the dock and I ponder the sermon I have written (sometimes as I ponder it, I may even change it a bit), I pray about the people I imagine walking through our church doors and all the stones they may be carrying, I think about my dad and mom and all they’ve given me, I think of my family and just how blessed I am, and I think of the pull God still has on my heart to do just what God seems to want me to do.
And then I give that rock a heave (I don’t skip it), I just let it fly, and then I watch as that rock lands into the stillest lake I’ve ever witnessed and witness in wonder what happens as ripple after ripple after ripple work across the lake and finally come back to kiss my feet.
Then I take one last breath and head to the church, ready to preach the good news.
I’ve never really thought too much about what all that means for me, until I started reading Leonard Sweet’s book “From Tablet to Table”, and in his introduction he writes this:
“EVERY BOOK I WRITE IS a rock thrown into the water. I heave and trust heaven, hoping that God will create a wave of beauty, truth, and goodness, a wave that rolls on and on, reaching out to the ends of the earth and deep into the spirit of humanity. I am here because of waves from rocks hurled into the ocean by ancestors both biological and theological, some of whose names I know and celebrate, some of whose names I will know only in eternity.”
I think I’ve met Leonard Sweet once, and I know for a fact he has never met me at Cottage Lake on a Sunday morning, but if he had…he would have written these exact words as he witnessed my Sunday morning ritual.
May God give you the courage to heave and trust and hope this week and always. May God continue to call us to be a part of the Sacred Wave of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.
Your friend and pastor, always looking for creative ways to make a splash and ride the wave, Brook