Join us north of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in Riverside Park!
Sunday, August 13 at 10am | Bulletin
Friends,
I have a favor to ask of you, a favor intended to become a blessing for us all. Weather permitting, we’re doing church outside this coming Sunday, in Riverside Park, very close to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument at 87th Street. As part of our worship, we’ll build an outdoor altar – not an altar to nature but made of the stuff of nature. Please bring stones, a flower, a stick, a leaf, a branch, a small plant, a pinecone, or another random sacred object you pick up along the way to Riverside Park. Any sign of nature’s beauty will do, as we lift our praises to the Creator. The intention is to remind us of our deep connections to what the Book of Common Prayer calls “this fragile earth, our island home.” We’ll bless these sacred objects, offering them back to the One who created them in the first place.
As part of our informal outdoor worship, we’ll sing songs, sit in moments of silence, say our prayers, and hear about Matthew’s account of Jesus defying gravity by walking on water. It’s another of those big-ticket New Testament miracles like last week’s Gospel of loaves and the fishes. As we move inexorably deeper into a global climate emergency, it seems like all of us could use some lessons on how to walk on water. Ot at least where to find the lifeboats. How will we respond when Jesus calls us out of the boat? Will we sink like Peter, or will we keep on walking?
Join us as we think together about what it means to hold fear, faith and hope – all together – under the canopy of heaven.
See you there,
Pastor Terry
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