Pastor’s Pen
Daylight is decreasing and cold weather and snow is just around the corner. November is a month where the beautiful changing colors of autumn give way to the reality of winter. It is a time when harvest season has ended, and we prepare for the gray days which are to come. We change our clocks and sunlight becomes ever more precious. It is the final month of our liturgical calendar and precedes the joyous precession of Christmas. We may feel inclined to look forward to the hallowed Advent season just around the corner, but I hope that we would appreciate the beauty that this transitional month would offer us.
Summer abundance gives way to winter scarcity. While we as modern people do not have to bury and store our nuts like peoples past, we would do well to recall the importance of this rhythm. In the modern era we are removed from the sacred habits of coexisting with the land. We can eat bananas year-round and have tacos on any Tuesday we wish. Yet, something has been lost the farther we have been removed from living with the land. We have forgotten that consumption has an end. We have lost the art of preserving, recycling, and using every ounce of our resources available. While we currently seem to possess the luxury of waste, this is ultimately a mirage. Overconsumption impacts someone somewhere. Trash piles floating in the ocean and filling beaches show that we cannot easily hide our transgressions. Though we may have forgotten this winter rhythm of preserving and preparing, creation has not. November reminds us that we cannot take more than the land gives. As a part of our Christian faith, we are called to be stewards of the land and live in harmony with the world around us. As we prepare for winter, how can we live in harmony with the land? What practices of sustainability and recycling can we embody?
Thanksgiving is a holiday that has epitomized our current distance from the land. We consume and consume and consume. Whereas the thanksgiving feast would have been a treat at the beginning of a season of famine, it is just another opportunity for us to be gluttonous. While we may say what we are faithful for on Thanksgiving Thursday, advertisements encourage us to look at all the deals available to us on Black Friday. A holiday for giving thanks to the land, to our neighbor, and to our God has become a holiday to worship the mechanisms of endless consumption and ceaseless wants. As Christians we must be wary of these structures of sin; we must be different. Instead of spending money on things we do not need, we could spend our dollars supporting local service organizations. We could fast in preparation of the feast prepared for us on Thanksgiving. We could invite people over to our homes who might be spending the holiday alone. While the spirit of Thanksgiving and the month of November may have alluded us, our faith gives us the tools to recall the riches of this season. November can be a month where we can experience peace, joy, and love, but are first called to walk away from the temptation of more.
Pastor Andrew
