Dear Friends,

This day – a gift from you.

This is the second line in the poem, “Marked by Ashes” by Walter Brueggemann (click here to read it), the one we are revisiting and reflecting from week-to-week this Lent. This line follows the poem’s opening, an address to God as the “Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day….”

Did you see what happened in two short lines? God is simultaneously held as transcendent, distant, detached and earthly, close, personal. God who is big-R Ruler and big-G Guarantor, is also little-y you.

What are we to make of this gift offered by a remote-made-approachable Divine One? What is a gift as it relates to a day? It must be somewhat different than what can be neatly boxed, wrapped, and bowed. 

I’ve seen gift described as the combination of qualities that all living things (humans among them) embody and offer to the world as “medicine.” The connection of gift to medicine is apparently common in some indigenous sacred traditions. I learned that the combination of qualities in a tree, for example, is its medicine. A tree offers shade and shelter, models a beauty drawn from being rooted in a single place over time, and teaches a kind of flexibility because it can change with the seasons, bear surprising shifts in seasons as this past weekend showed, and moves and bends with the wind without breaking.

And what of a day? What is the gift, the medicine it offers? 

Monday this week, I encountered a gentleman who was on the church property with chicken wire and wooden stakes. From far off, I could see some work being done but could not figure out the what or who or why. I was a little concerned. And truth-be-told, I wanted to make a quick assessment from afar and return to my office. I wanted to continue working silently on my own, alone in a kind of recovery mode from the busy weekend. I did not want to interact with anyone (note the sign of an introvert), especially a stranger who was doing God-knows-what on a property I had new responsibility for and was still getting to know. 

It turns out this person was caring for a tree that he had planted the year before with permission from someone here on staff. It was a tree his daughter received from her college when she graduated. She graduated from Elon University in May 2021. In honor of the connection she had with this parish many years ago, she wanted to plant the tree here. Apparently, deer had gotten to it last year. Her father had come to tend to the care of this wee sapling so it could grow stronger without deer interference this year.  

This is the same kind of tree my son will receive in two months when he graduates from the same university. The two of us laughed, delighted at the surprising commonality between us and immediately shared stories about our kids and the university, right down to the little acorn each of our children received at convocation when they started. (If you want to learn more about what is the Acorn to Sapling tradition, click here.) 

I appreciated the connection between us. What I appreciated more was the way he had clearly come to check on the sapling over time (he attends a Catholic church in Reston) and continues to care and watch over this tree in its vulnerability. 

Then I thought of Epiphany Episcopal – of you – who in the short time I’ve been here I have witnessed similar care for the metaphorical saplings in our midst. These “saplings” come in the form of our individual and collective lives, this building, and its grounds. 

I left that short encounter energized, refueled. I left feeling a connection with Epiphany that I could not explain and that suddenly ran deeper than my weeks here could account, sparked by a tree that was not mine, and a person I did not know, on a day that seemed like any other.

This unplanned encounter bore unanticipated medicine through the gift a day, the gift of a human, linked by the gift of a tree.

What is the medicine in a day? A day offers renewal by the rising of the sun, its light filtered through clouds or shining brightly against a blue sky. It models faithfulness in its unwavering rhythm. And it teaches patience and hope and benevolent surprise because every start is unburdened by a memory for what came before. 

What is the medicine in a human? We often think of gifts as the collection of qualities that make each of us unique. But I wonder in the context of medicine, gift is core and universal. I thought of God who is big-R Ruler and big-G Guarantor and is also little-y you. The medicine in a human? We humans offer connection by the divine within. We model energy and vibrancy in our ability to move, to turn. We teach humility and compassion by turning toward one another, closing the distance between us, and becoming as familiar as God has offered to us in the little-y you. 

May we notice and receive the medicine in a day, a gift from you Ruler and Guarantor. May we offer our medicine to the world in the spirit of the little-y you. 

In Peace,
Dina