Lenten Greetings 2021
Dear Abbey Folks,
Lent is a season of spiritual growth, as the day-light hours lengthen and winter gives way the the first green-gray shoots of life breaking through the soil, we prepare for what is and what may be made new within and around us. I invite you to the Abbey on the 14th of February, from 1:00pm to 2:00pm we will have a curbside service, praying, cleaning trash and taking home care packages for the season. Ash Wednesday is the 17th of February and your kit will have what you need for the services we will stream on Facebook Live at Noon and 7:00pm.
We will begin praying our way into a new season and new ministry. For six years we have partnered with Liberty Elementary, sharing coffee, notes of encouragement and raising money to support their teachers, because we listen to what they would like us to do. In that time we have grown, and with our growth comes the possibility of diving into help even more. We have the opportunity to prepare to help with the after school programming through Completely Kids, another great partner of ours. I want to ask you to imagine what it would look like for you to come and read, come and listen, come and serve snacks, come and share something you love…like how to take photos or how to play chess or art or poetry or really, the sky is the limit. I am hoping by next fall we are able to be a team of folks who show up once a week for the kids at Liberty. This will require background checks and Completely Kids will handle all of that for us. I want you to imagine Thursday night is Abbey night and the kids know that from 4:30pm to 5:30pm you will be there to read, listen, smile, play games and maybe even teach a special skill.
I want us to be the kind of folks who don’t just show up to help and then leave feeling pretty good about ourselves. I want us to show up help and leave to call our Governor one more time about investing in our public schools. I want us to show up and delight in the time connecting with young people and then call our Senators to remind them of the power of small class sizes and great teachers. Sometimes churches show up to help and then they go home and vote for the exact people who make their service necessary, sometimes churches travel to other countries and then deny refugees. Sometimes churches drive in from West Omaha to put food on trays at the Open Door Mission, and while they may pray for the people they met, they do not vote for changes that provide living wages, sustainable and supportive housing and access to mental health care. Service that matters transforms us all. Our work of service will have a structure for spiritual growth, a prayer before entering, a reflection on what we learn upon exiting, and a call to advocate.
As we prepare for this collective effort, I invite you to pray and to go ahead and call every representative you can to fund public schools. We must stop short-changing the future and looking to school as the first place to cut costs rather than raising taxes on those whom have more than enough. I realize leaving..oh I don’t know…Don Bacon a phone message every week may seem annoying. But I have meet with Senators and Congressmen and they have told me exactly how many calls they received on each side of every issue. So let’s not tire, let’s be counted.
Many Blessings from your friendly, local Abbot,
Rev. Debra