What a beautiful week we've enjoyed! True, it has been a bit humid, but not nearly as bad as last week. I've enjoyed a nice, long bike ride and a couple of good walks. I hope you have had the chance to get outside as well!

In New England, each season has it's joys. As we appreciate the beauty of summer, let us consider a challenge from the Bishops of the United Methodist Church. A letter was recently put out by our Council of Bishops to encourage us to live in a way that shows respect and appreciation for God's creation. They write (in part):

With God's help and with you as our witnesses--

1. We as your bishops pledge to answer God’s call to deepen our spiritual consciousness as just stewards of creation. We commit ourselves to faithful and effective leadership on these issues, in our denomination and in our communities and nations.

2. We pledge to make God’s vision of renewal our goal. With every evaluation and decision, we will ask: Does this contribute to God's renewal of creation? Ever aware of the difference between what is and what must be, we pledge to practice Wesleyan “holy dissatisfaction.”

3. We pledge to practice dialogue with those whose life experience differs dramatically from our own, and we pledge to practice prayerful self-examination. For example, in the Council of Bishops, the fifty active bishops in the United States are committed to listening and learning with the nineteen active bishops in Africa, Asia, and Europe. And the bishops representing the conferences in the United States will prayerfully examine the fact that their nation consumes more than its fair share of the world‟s resources, generates the most waste, and produces the most weapons.

4. We pledge ourselves to make common cause with religious leaders and people of goodwill worldwide who share these concerns. We will connect and collaborate with ecumenical and interreligious partners and with community and faith organizations so that we may strengthen our common efforts.

5. We pledge to advocate for justice and peace in the halls of power in our respective nations and international organizations.

6. We pledge to measure the “carbon footprint” of our episcopal and denominational offices, determine how to reduce it, and implement those changes. We will urge our congregations, schools, and settings of ministry to do the same.

7. We pledge to provide, to the best of our ability, the resources needed by our conferences to reduce dramatically our collective exploitation of the planet, peoples, and communities, including technical assistance with buildings and programs: education and training: and young people’s and online networking resources.

8. We pledge to practice hope as we engage and continue supporting the many transforming ministries of our denomination. Every day we will thank God for fruit produced through the work of The United Methodist Church and through each of you.

9. We pledge more effective use of the church and community Web pages to inspire and share what we learn. We celebrate the communications efforts that tell the stories of struggle and transformation within our denomination.

With these pledges, we respond to God's gracious invitation to join in the process of renewal. God is already visibly at work in people and groups around the world. We rededicate ourselves to join these movements, the movements of the Spirit. Young people are passionately raising funds to provide mosquito nets for their “siblings” thousands of miles away. Dock workers are refusing to off-load small weapons being smuggled to armed combatants in civil wars on their continents. People of faith are demanding land reform on behalf of landless farm workers. Children and young people have formed church-wide “green teams” to transform our buildings and ministries into testimonies of stewardship and sustainability. Ecumenical and interreligious partners persist in demanding the major nuclear powers to reduce their arsenals, step by verifiable step, making a way to a more secure world totally disarmed of nuclear weapons. God is already doing a new thing. With this Letter and the accompanying Foundation Document, we rededicate ourselves to participate in God‟s work, and we urge you all to rededicate yourselves as well.

We beseech every United Methodist, every congregation, and every public leader: Will you participate in God’s renewing work? We are filled with hope for what God can accomplish through us, and we pray you respond: “We will, with God's help!”

Over the past few months the Lay Leadership Team has been reading the book "Everything Must Change" by Brian McLaren. It is a difficult book to describe and, truthfully, I have not enjoyed it as much as I did McLaren's previous book "Generous Orthodoxy." However, in it McLaren makes some important points about our calling as Christians living in the world. McLaren asserts that we live in a cultural system that has tamed and watered-down the Gospel. To live as Christians we must reclaim the radical-ness of Jesus and our faith.

In the final chapter McLaren makes a statement about the most radical thing we can do. In his opinion, the most radical thing we can do is beleive, especailly when our belief takes us outside the dominant cultural values of our day. He writes, "Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., Galileo, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Saint Francis...they all showed this heroic courage to believe against and beyond the dominant systems of their day." It is easy to live our faith when we don't have to make waves. Yet, living our belief can become more challenging when we see injustice and are called to stand against it.

What do you think? Does your belief challenge you to see things in our culture and society in a different way than others? Is believing the most radical thing we can do?

We are approaching the third Sunday of our series on Sabbath. I've enjoyed hearing about what brings you peace and how you find moments of Sabbath in your daily and weekly routine. It has also been fun to see the Sabbath items appear on our Sabbath table. This week we will be discussing the role of Sabbath in our 24-hour world.

Our questions for this week include:

Does Sabbath have to be observed on a particular day of the week?
How would you describe the pace at which you live life?
How do you feel God’s presence in the pace of your life?

This week I took at day of Sabbath rest on Monday. Gary and I rented a canoe and floated down the Winooski River at a slow and leisurely pace. We saw lots of wildlife and gave thanks to God for the beauty of creation. It was both fun and relaxing! Canoeing was followed by lunch in Stowe and a quiet evening at home.

Have you experienced a day or a moment of Sabbath this week? I'd love to hear about it. I pray that we all may find times of quiet rest to restore our souls and praise God for all that is!