Goodbyes and endings are sometimes hard, sometimes freeing, sometimes necessary, often fraught with ambivalence and always an opportunity for growth.
Without loss, can you ever truly find what you’re looking for?
Without leaving, can you ever really come home?
Without ending, can you ever start again?
My church community celebrated the end of our church as we know it on Sunday. Like many churches, Covid was a contributing nail in the coffin. Declining attendance and challenges with the building, among other things, all contributed to an inevitable end. We had a beautiful last service together on the beach. So many people shared stories of how this spiritual community nourished and held them through the years.
As we held space together against the backdrop of the ocean’s waves rolling in and out, I was reminded of my friend Amy’s words at our recent Fall retreat. She reflected on the ebb and flow of the ocean’s tides as a metaphor for the times of “fullness” and “emptiness” in her own life. Amy expressed her desire to remain open, not clinging to anything that could slip through her fingers like water. She spoke of the value in holding loosely because nothing lasts forever. Amy trusts the faithfulness of our Creator, the one who created the very tides that alternate releasing and receiving without fail. My soul echoed this sentiment on Sunday.
I had the privilege of giving the final benediction. These words from Ecclesiastes burned in my heart:
Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
for you know not what disaster may happen on earth…
He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.
As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
Ecclesiastes 11: 1-6
Aren’t we all called to “cast our bread upon the waters” at times?
To release our grip…
To invest our time, our gifting, our finances without promise of return…
To relinquish our hopes for what we thought could be…
To lay down our dreams of what we longed would be…
To trust that the same ocean which makes us unsteady as it pulls the sand from beneath our feet, provides a spacious place to stand, run and dance in the sunlight when the tide is out.
The waves that crash over us also carry us to a new place, simultaneously transforming our rough edges into smooth, rounded, curves.
The power that awes us and even scares us at times, can be as gentle and warm as tide pools filled with sea treasures.
I wonder, too, if when we cast our bread upon the waters our hands become open and freed to receive?
To be filled with sea glass and shells and beautiful stones, gifts of divine intervention…
To be clasped with the hands of new partners, walking with us along the way…
To receive old friends, enemies and past versions of ourselves with fresh grace…
To create castles and sculptures that reflect beauty…
To linger, freely, or sway side to side as we bring our whole selves into the light of the sun, which is the light of God’s loving presence.
My friends, may we be free to cast our bread upon the waters, to release and to receive all that God has for us in this new season.
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