Pastoral Message: “About Those Quiet Days” Week of the Fourth Sunday of Easter May 3, 2023
Pastoral Message:
“About Those Quiet Days”
Week of the Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2023
Dear People of God at Faith-La Fe!
Some of you have asked me, “Just what is a Quiet Day?” Since we have several of these events scheduled on various Saturdays throughout the calendar year, I would do well to say more about these occasions and what happens at them. First off, a Quiet Day is something other than business – or busyness – as usual at church. Our Sunday assemblies are highly active and involved times together when we arrive to get ready for worship and then spend a quick hour or a bit more as we are gathered around Christ via Word and Sacrament. Then we adjourn to the parish hall for coffee, treats, and the forum on worship. Then the 11:00 am service in Spanish happens on the heels of the forum time, followed by festive Convivio. In short, Sunday mornings are fast-paced, one feature of the day leading quickly to the next. Similarly, our weekly bible studies are limited to an hour to honor people’s busy schedules. Business meetings of the church usually last an hour or two, and most want to get done with meetings as quickly as possible.
Our Saturday Quiet Days are a stark contrast in tone and pace and spirit compared to other typical gatherings at church. You might think of a Quiet Day as a mini-retreat. True retreats generally happen for an overnight or longer, and often take place in settings far removed from our church campus, like Spirit in the Desert Retreat Center in Carefree. Our Quiet Days happen here on campus and involve the better part of day, generally beginning mid-morning and then concluding by early to mid-afternoon, depending on the topic. So, in short, our Quiet Days last longer than our usual church events, but are notably more brief than genuine retreats.
Quiet Days open a sense of spaciousness and comparative leisure, of being more than doing, of being receptive and not so concerned with productivity and getting things done. Quiet Days involve time to really listen. They have a slower pace than our usual doings in church and world. In these ways, our Quiet Days are also strikingly counter-cultural when what takes place in our wider society is fast-paced, high energy, often giving only a superficial, once over lightly approach to engaging our days and events.
This past Saturday’s Quiet Day focused on the ancient monastic practice of lectio divina, or spiritual reading of the scriptures. After giving an introduction to the history of lectio divina and how it is practiced, the eleven of us participants gathered around the passage from John’s Gospel where Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd” – a fitting way to prepare us for worship on Good Shepherd Sunday the next day. We read the passage not once, not twice, not three times, but four. Thus, we benefited from the importance of repetition in allowing God’s word to soak deeply into us. And we heard and saw things in subsequent readings that we didn’t hear and see at first. Each reading of the passage was followed by a full five minutes of silence, again, serving to allow the word to penetrate us and be incorporated into us more deeply. Such silence is not an empty void, but is filled with the echoes and reverberations of God’s word in us, the Spirit’s still small voice speaking to us via the pages of scripture.
Quiet Days on the campus of Faith-La Fe Church also typically make the most of our monastic-style setting with its lovely courtyard and cloister walk, our chapel and nave. Participants had occasion to wander slowly, quietly on our sacred grounds, or just sit on the benches outdoors or in the chapel to be still.
Which is to say, a Quiet Day is an occasion to obey what we hear from the divine voice in a beloved Psalm – “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalm 46:10a) Moreover, Quiet Days are those occasions when in Christian community we hold each other accountable for maintaining the discipline to not rush through things, but rather to linger with the holy before we move on to what is next. And still more, our Quiet Days give us occasion to keep Jesus’ word of promise when he invitingly commands us: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5) In short, a Quiet Day is an occasion to abide with Christ, the vine, and to ripen and slowly mature so that we might bear fruit in our ministry in daily life.
Our half dozen or so Quiet Days per year are a programmatic centerpiece of what you have stated you desire in me as a pastor at Faith-La Fe, namely to enhance, strengthen and deepen your spiritual lives, your lived journeys of faith. Through this message, especially for those who have not yet attended one of our Quiet Days, I have endeavored to give you a flavor of what occurs on these lovely days apart and together, when in greater leisure with each other, we also deepen our sense of Christian community – another desired outcome of our life together in this post-pandemic season of rebuilding.
The remaining Quiet Days for 2023 are listed and described in brief at the conclusion of the announcements that follow this message. If you haven’t done so, kindly mark your calendars now and plan to attend one or more of our coming Quiet Days.
Prayerfully in Christ Jesus,
Pastor Jonathan Linman
Pastor’s Office Phone Number: 602-265-5860
Email: pastor@faithalive.com
Announcements
Preschool/Church Workday Volunteer Opportunity
When: Saturday, May 6th, 8:30 – 11:30 am at Faith-La Fe
What:
· Preschool – we’ll build and plant a vegetable/flower garden (if you want to work on this project, please bring your own tools, like a shovel or trowel).
· Church – under the guidance of members of our Property Team, we’ll engage in initiatives to help make our campus look great.
Action Item: please let Fred know if you can or cannot make it, for we hope for a good turn-out of volunteers (602-228-3349).
Annual Meeting on May 21!
Kindly mark your calendars now and plan to attend the annual meeting focused on electing new Council members. We met in annual meeting in January to pass our budget. Now we will focus on selecting our elected leaders along with hearing reports of what’s been going on at Faith-La Fe in past year. Further details are forthcoming, but this annual meeting is scheduled for Sunday morning, May 21.
An Updated Membership Directory is Almost Here!
The long-awaited, updated Faith/La Fe Directory is almost ready, but first we need your help. Please check your listing in one of the proof copies available in the Narthex and mark it OK or provide changes if needed. Also check the picture section at the end. If your picture does not appear or if you want to show a different picture, please email your picture to info@faithalive.com by May 18. If you notice omissions, please also note those. If you prefer you may provide any changes to your contact information (street address, phone, email), directly to the office by email to info@faithalive.com. With your help, our new directory will be complete and accurate.
We Invite you to Share with Us Your Favorite Hymns
What are some of your most favorite hymns? The Worship and Music Team at Faith-La Fe would like to know. We intentionally choose hymns and music that fit appropriately with a particular Sunday’s lectionary readings and also the liturgical season. But there will be occasions when your favorites will make good choices to honor a Sunday’s readings and seasonal themes. Kindly send your favorites via email to Pastor Linman at pastor@faithalive.com. We’ll compile a listing of these hymns to guide us in our selections.
Invitation to Contribute to These Weekly Pastoral Messages
Please remember that our congregation newsletter is now published quarterly and has more of a wider community, outward-facing, evangelistic focus to herald special, seasonal events at Faith-La Fe. Which is to say, these weekly pastoral messages and their announcements effectively take the place of the more membership-focused concerns of our congregational life. Thus, if there are events and matters related to our life together that you wish to have included in these weekly messages and announcements, please let Pastor Linman know: pastor@faithalive.com. He is always looking for and welcomes new content.
Mark Your Calendars Now for Upcoming Special Worship Services
Further detail about the following special occasions for worship is forthcoming, but please note these special liturgies now in your calendars!
May 18 at 7:00 pm + Ascension of Our Lord, Holy Communion
May 28 at 9:00 and 11:00 am + Day of Pentecost
May 31 at 7:00 pm + Visit of Mary to Elizabeth, Holy Communion
July 22 at 10:00 am + Mary Magdalene, Apostle, Morning Prayer
August 15 at 7:00 pm + Mary, Mother of Our Lord, Holy Communion
September 14 at 7:00 pm + Holy Cross Day, Evensong
November 1 at 7:00 pm + All Saints’ Day, Holy Communion
Upcoming Saturday Quiet Days at Faith-La Fe in 2023
Saturday, June 3 – a day to more deeply explore the spirituality of preaching, with special focus on how sermons are occasions of spiritual guidance. We’ll also spend some more time on your role as listeners to sermons, and how you can get still more out of preaching for your spiritual edification. We will touch on listening to sermons at next Sunday’s adult forum, but focusing on this topic for a whole Saturday will give us occasion to go still more deeply into the topic. On this day, we’ll also learn some of what Luther had to say about preaching!
Saturday, September 30 – on this day, close to the commemoration of St. Francis of Assisi, we will explore Franciscan Spirituality and what it might mean for Lutherans in ministry and mission in the 21st Century.
Saturday, October 28 – as we approach Reformation Sunday, this will be a day devoted to revealing key features of specifically Lutheran Spirituality, or Christian spirituality with Lutheran accents. We will discover that there’s a lot to draw from in our own tradition to take us ever more deeply into the spiritual life.
Saturday, November 18 – this day will be devoted to spending our time together in our beautiful nave doing “Stations of Our Stained Glass Windows,” a series of visual meditations on our stained-glass windows and the miracles and parables of Jesus they depict. We’ll explore in conversation the bible stories the windows are based on, and then look carefully at the windows to see features of the story which the stained-glass art highlights. Each station will feature a hymn before we move on to the next window.