A weary world, rejoicing?
(And some thoughts on, well, sharing our thoughts)
A few weeks ago, my church took a week off from offering a normal Sunday service, and one member led the most wonderful thing in its place: “Wild Church.”
We gathered at a nearby park on the shoreline of whulge / Puget Sound and spent time wandering around outdoors, paying attention to any ways nature might be speaking to us. Then we gathered back together so that those who wanted to share a thought, reflection, or observation could share.
The forty minutes of unstructured wandering time passed more quickly than I expected.
Normally, when I go to this park, I’m always walking. Walking on the beach. Walking on the paved paths. Walking on the dirt (or mud, in winter) trails.
But this time, I sat. I plopped myself down on a damp driftwood log and stayed there for I’m-not-sure-how-long. (It was kind of nice not looking at my phone every two seconds to see what time it was.) I watched the birds sitting on the water and diving for food.
Usually, when I’m looking out at whulge, I’m scouting for harbor seals. It’s not uncommon to see a seal’s labrador-like head bobbing along the surface before it dives down again. I have often considered birds a distraction, a false alarm, something that might look like a seal from a distance but turns out not to be. Oh, it’s just a bird. A bit of a disappointment.
But this time—to borrow language from Jesus in Matthew 6:26 (some reflections here)—I considered the birds.
I thought about the theme we were invited to contemplate. It was something like this: Where do you see a weary world rejoicing? There are so many ways nature is telling us something is very wrong. And yet there is joy, too. Where do we see that joy?
What a lovely question.
I watched the birds and thought about the joy of sitting on the surface of the water. Peter briefly went walking on water, as the Bible stories tell it, but quickly started to sink; these birds float naturally.
It looked so peaceful and beautiful. I thought of the delight of the simplicity of spending so much of your day looking for, swimming and diving for, and eating your food.
I don’t know whether or how birds experience joy, or what that means to them. But I saw joy in their everyday shenanigans, just going about their business of survival.
When we re-gathered to share in the group, I hesitated. Maybe I was the only person who found a few minutes of sitting and observing waterfowl an unusual experience, and a profound one.
Did I feel a bit embarrassed not to have noticed the gorgeous water birds before, because I’m always so busy scanning for seals? Should I feel embarrassed?
I often wonder something along these lines, in group settings. Am I the only one? Are my thoughts worth sharing? Is what I’m currently learning already totally obvious to others?
I often don’t know the answer to the last question. But I want to be okay with the answer sometimes being “yes.” Of course we’re all learning different things, all the time. We’re all on our own journeys, and that’s wonderful. Of course some things that are new to me are obvious to others. But that’s okay. And it doesn’t mean my thoughts aren’t worth sharing, anyway.
When others share thoughts that aren’t particularly new to me, I still enjoy hearing them. I care about the person, and I care about their journey—so I’m interested in how they’re experiencing and processing things.
And if they share something I’ve thought about already, that’s beautiful too. It connects us.
Our honest thoughts, the ones that mean something to us, are worth sharing. They don’t have to be new and exciting to everyone all the time. They’re still worth voicing, worth putting out there into the world.
Am I the only one? Maybe, but even if so, that’s okay.
Are my thoughts worth sharing? Absolutely. Not in a way that takes space from other people’s thoughts, but in a way that shares time with others, affirming that we are all of equal worth and we all have thoughts worth sharing.
Is what I’m currently learning already totally obvious to others? Maybe, but even if so, that’s okay.
Our thoughts are worth sharing because our journeys are worth sharing. We’re all best off if we’re processing what we’re learning together, talking about the directions we want to move in together—and then moving in those directions together.
This Substack is still so new and infant-like; I wanted to share this reflection as a way of expanding on the idea of growth that lies behind everything I’m hoping to do here.
I want to offer some encouragement that it’s worthwhile to share the ways we’re growing. Even as it feels like a risk to do so, because maybe others have grown in that direction already. And that’s all okay.
We were not meant to learn and grow alone. And we make the journey more interesting for one another as we share it together.
And maybe, in the weariness of our weary world, hearing how others are pressing into growth and seeking to grow into kinship might spark a bit of joy. Like the waterfowl swimming along whulge’s surface.