Advent Greetings & Christmas Updates

Advent Greetings!

With joy, this month I invite each of us (myself included)— to just take a breath, or at least a few minutes’ worth of them. The follow are a little pile of questions, and updates for this fun, but packed month:

Did you get the recent emails from me? I’ve started a semi-regular email newsletter, and the last one had links to a handful of excellent Advent devotionals and details on Advent Wednesdays at my place. If you’re not getting the emails, check and make sure I’m in your address book: InternPastorSam@gmail.com. Also, check your spam folder. It might be in there.

We’re doing things differently this Christmas, and I hope that I’ll see you there at one or both services. The details for both are below:

 

• Pay special attention to the December 24 service. Janice and I have been working on a fun surprise—- let’s just say… Comfort Ye, my friends. There are Good Tidings potentially being Tellest to The People That Walk In Darkness, and truly if this all shakes out there will be much Rejoicing Greatly in the end! Hallelujah! 🙂 
• The December 25 evening service will be simple, but warm and full of carol singing. I know many people prefer to stay in with their families on Christmas Day, and if you are one of those people, do not feel obligated to show up. However, if you feel like closing out Christmas Day with a simple service might be up your alley, I hope you’ll be there.

Last but not least– the paraments for Advent, like our Advent worship aid covers, will shift and change throughout the season of Advent and into Christmas. I offer either a very quality bag of chocolate treats to the first three people who stop by and give me theological reasoning for why I would design these to grow and play off one another through the Advent season and into Christmas rather than just change to an entirely new set of paraments once Christmas arrives.

Happy December, Faith Lutheran! I’m so grateful to be blessed by your presence in my life and can’t wait to see what we do together and learn from one another in the coming month.

-Intern Pastor Sam

Songs That Are Most Rare

Painting by Sam. R. LaDue, 2024 | “The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful– they are the most rare” Joy Harjo, Singing Everything

October was Pastor Appreciation Month, and I am so touched by the heartfelt messages you wrote in cards for pastors who have supported faith. It reminds me of what makes Faith Lutheran so special: your boundless love. Thank you for taking the time to recognize all the pastors who have served and continue to serve our community.

In the last month, I have noticed Galatians 5:6 coming to mind, often. Do you know the verse? It concludes with, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” When I think about Faith Lutheran, I see a congregation dedicated to expressing that kind of love. I wonder, how do you perceive our community? Do you see yourselves as embodying this message? I’d love to hear your thoughts, stories, and experiences. After all, our journeys are richer when we share them with one another.

Connecting and Caring: New Ways to Reach Out
Speaking of expressing faith through love, I’m excited to share a new way to connect. It’s taken me a couple beats to be able to get my calendar straightened out and accessible. But- I am finally all organized and ready to go. Whether you’d like a visit, need someone to bring communion, or just want to talk about God and spiritual stuff, you can now easily schedule time with me. Just head to calendly.com/InternPastorSam and choose a time that works for you.

Book Reading Adventure: “Our Unforming”
On a different note, the Lay Internship Committee and I are embarking on a book-reading adventure! Our first pick is Cindy S. Lee’s Our Unforming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation. If the idea of exploring this book intrigues you, let me know! We plan to schedule discussion times by early November. And if you can’t join this round, no worries—I’ve got at least four other books lined up for the year. There will be more opportunities to dive into thoughtful conversations together!

Advent: A New Way to Gather
Looking ahead, Advent is right around the corner, and we have some exciting plans. This year, we’re trying something a little different with midweek gatherings. Starting December 4, we’ll be meeting at my place for dinner and fellowship at 5:30 pm each Wednesday. For those in the choir, rehearsals will be held at 4:30 pm, followed by dinner together. Afterward, you can join us for Holden Evening Prayer at 7 pm at Bethlehem Lutheran, just a short walk away. This collaboration with Pastor Tyler will offer a lovely opportunity to enjoy music, worship, and community.

Post-Vote Vigil: November 6
On a different note, there’s an upcoming event I’d like to invite you to. On November 6, at 6 pm, a post-vote Vigil will be held at Thanksgiving/Knox. I’ve been working with Pastor Janet Blair, Pastor Lindsey Bell-Kerr at Christ Church UMC, North Bay Organizing Project, and Deep Democracy to create this special time. It’s a time for us to exhale, recenter, and connect with one another and the Divine. Everyone is welcome, and I encourage you to join us for this important gathering.

Reflections on the Season: Finding Stillness
Lastly, in my last reflection, I shared how much I love the “thinness” of this time of year. And that still holds true. There’s something special about the changing colors and the quiet moments that invite us to pause before the busyness of the holiday season. I often turn to poetry during these times, and there’s one by Indigenous poet Joy Harjo that I’d like to share with you. Her poem Singing Everything helps me center myself each morning this time of year. I hope it brings you the same sense of peace and reflection:

Once there were songs for everything,
Songs for planting, for growing, for harvesting,
For eating, getting drunk, falling asleep,
For sunrise, birth, mind-break, and war.
For death (those are the heaviest songs and they
have to be pried from the earth with shovels of grief)

Now all we hear are falling-in-love songs and
Falling apart after falling in love songs.

The earth is leaning sideways
And a song is emerging from the floods
And fires. Urgent tendrils lift toward the sun.

You must be friends with silence to hear.
The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful—
They are the most rare.

As we move through this beautiful, ever-changing season, may we embrace its invitation to pause, reflect, and be present. I look forward to continuing our journey together, growing in faith and love.

with joy,

Intern Pr. Sam

October 2024: Focus in the Fog

Drawing near to darkness, or that which you cannot see clearly, also gets you closer to light, or that which you might see more clearly. | “Road to…somewhere” photo by Sam R LaDue, taken on the final leg of the Camino de Sonoma, a 12-mile trek I did with our Redeemer Presbyterian friends on a foggy Saturday in September. Fall is one of my favorite times of the year. It’s a liminal time; Not winter, but also not summer. I enjoy the weather fluctuating back and forth between cooler winter-like foggy days, and little spurts of heat waves that remind us summer is not ready to relinquish to winter just yet. There is a sense of thinness to this season. Death and life are especially close to one another and doing an elegant dance that plays out for us in the colors of falling leaves, the rush of fall breeze, and prickly cool mornings that are a little too dark to want to get out of bed. For some, this is the season of endings (like the end of a growth and harvest cycle)— but for us Christians, it’s also the precursor to the start of beginning our new liturgical year (also one of my favorite liturgical seasons): Advent. I think it was Parker Palmer who said that if we want to draw nearer to the light, we must draw nearer to the darkness. The two are intrinsically intertwined, we need both. I see how this works out as a photographer in very practical ways, all the time. An image made by a camera requires both light and darkness. Especially when using a digital camera. Digital sensors seek where to focus based on the contrasts of what is light and what is dark in the area you point your lens to. We photographers can always manually adjust where the focus will be, of course. But, regardless of whether the camera is doing the work or the photographer is: it is the presence of both shadows and highlights that make the image possible. Similarly, it’s the presence of changing seasons (liturgical or otherwise) and shifting of focus that makes it possible for us dive into the nuances and many variations of experiencing God and Christ throughout our lives. With the end of Pentecost (sometimes called Ordinary time) coming, and Reformation as well as All Saints Sundays right around the corner, the increasingly darker days will give in to the Advent season where we’ll speak of hope, and light…but we’ll need to remember and allow for the darkness of the season (the things we cannot see, the things we do not understand, the things that we’re unsure about, things we don’t love about ourselves) that makes that contrast of light noticeable. Taking this time to notice our own challenges and difficulties and growth areas make it possible for us to experience abundant grace and mercy. And, of course, keep ourselves working toward the ever-inbreaking of God’s kindom. It’s never an easy task, yet always the call of the Gospel.Perhaps, like me, you enjoy little spiritual practices that help you center and listen carefully for what God is saying to you. This practice, adapted from the book Hello, Goodbye (by Day Schildkret) is a tool for entering the liminal space that is fall, beginning some thinking about how Reformation Sunday calls us to careful thought and transformation, and (of course) preparing ourselves for the new liturgical year. I have so much gratitude for the ways this community has welcomed me. From showing me bicycling routes to helping me know where to get great food to simply laughing with me and telling me your stories, it’s been an amazing month of starting to get to know Faith Lutheran and some of our neighbors with Redeemer and the Korean Presbyterian church. It has also been a very chaotic month, between defending a masters thesis, handling unpacking, as well as starting here, yet your gracious welcome and warmth in hospitality has sustained me and reminded me that careful discernment and choosing to be here with you, was certainly the best Spirit-influenced choice I ever could have made. Thank you for being wonderful you, Faith Lutheran. It’s really an honor to be here with you, and I’m excited for what we might get up to over the next 11 months. with joy, and deep gratitude for your presence on this journey -Intern Pr. Sam