Quartz Forest Church, 16th June 2024
Intro
As usual we will meet outside the Crichton chapel at 2pm. There are no facilities, bring a portable chair if you’d like to perch for a while. We will walk round the grounds and adapt what we do in order to work with our surrounding environment rather than battle against it.
The theme for this month will be flow. A flow state can be described as total immersion in a task, or a feeling of complete concentration and losing track of the outside world. It can be active like playing a sport, or more contemplative like watching the wind blow the leaves on a tree.
Our usual pattern for gathering helps with this. We meet, chat, prepare, and then share the peace with each other. Reading (or listening) and perhaps singing helps slow our minds down. Spending this time shifting our mental state and become aware of the movement in our surroundings then helps prepare us to enter a ‘flow’ where we can practice #SensingSpirituality as we encounter the environment.
This month we will have the options to try some challenges like poi (bring headphones and a device if music helps you with this) or making string from Nettles. Other opportunities to engage in flow activities will present themselves. We will spend a bit of time at the beginning getting things ready to move into the activities when the time comes.
Peace
We will begin by sharing the peace. All are welcome as we meet in Christs name – whether you consider yourself a close friend or a simply curious.
Creator, you always guide your people whom you build up on the foundation of your love: make us ever stand in awe of your Holy Name, and love you in equal measure; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen
Inspired by the SEC collect for Sunday the 16th
Reading from the book
He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”Mark 4:26-34
With many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Flow activities
Dancing with poi, or making string with nettles. Or you might simply want to walk.
If you would like to chat with someone, wait till they make eye contact with you. If you would like to contemplate quietly don’t make eye contact. You are not being rude and this is a way we can enjoy each other’s unspoken as well as spoken company.
Reflection
We can chat during the activities, but this is a pause to put our experiences into words. Sometimes talking about what has just happened is the moment at which creative ideas emerge for folk, some people prefer to contemplate internally.
Refreshment
We usually share some food and drink at one of the cafes in the Crichton.
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