Always in life we are relinquishing something or someone, gracefully or with great struggle. We relinquish childhood for adolescence, adolescence for adulthood and its various stages one for another. We relinquish one state of health for another, one beloved home for the smaller one that meets our needs. To be able to live well in this relinquishing; to inhabit with courage and creativity and compassion our vulnerability is something with which the church can be helpful. Sometimes one of the ways to find meaning in the various transitions is through ritual.
Like so many of our loves in life the building in which we once worshiped has been relinquished, by many, gracefully, but not without sadness. Last Sunday we made prayer flags in our new worship space. As the old building comes down; prayer flags will be suspended from the exterior of our new church home. These are flags that remind us of blessing released softly, gently, persistently into the world.This is what we imagined in Sunday worship. As the demolition of that historic place where many worked and worshiped, is imminent we imagined the building like a prayer flag, the blessings of the work and worship there of so many, released into the world as the building is erased by time, like the words on these flags. See the vividness of all that was offered in that place set free; blessings in the world
