Yo howdy!
Let’s be joyful, folks, united in our Faith in Creator/Creation.
Let’s in celebration of this gift of this life blessed with an abundance of sunflowers!
Gardening with God has given us all a chance to share in summertime sunflower ministry!
From our loaves and fishes-like garden we can harvest a sunflower bloom for everybody in AUS! I think we can! Almost daily Central Christian Church has a tin bucket (still pronounced “bouquet”) on a corner or two, and folks have become comfortable choosing some flowers as they pass by.
I’ve learned most it is welcomed to pause, with arm gently extended yet slightly aloft, sunflower(s) in hand and ask as approached, “Have you had your sunflower today?” Almost all sunflowers are accepted with smiling faces. It’s a really fun and surprising way to be church. “Keep Austin Mellow”, old timers once said.
Would you, could you help out in our Gardens? A sunflower for everybody includes each and every one of you. Yeah, cut your own blooming weeds. Give some away, too, you’ll like it.
Maybe the best garden help would be coming down on a weekday to our urban sanctuary to share a prayer of gratitude for our church, for this place of sacred Grace.
Yes, just cutting off faded blooms is a great help; “deadheading” is something that can be done solo or with your friends, done while standing between steps. Yes, clipping a dozen or so helps the blooms “keep on truckin’ “. (There are clipping scissors hidden under the purple pot on the gardening table.) Comfy chairs in the hilltop shade for mint juleps while resting.
Welcome is help rotating the sidewalk signs throughout the different areas that are up for adoption. Lotsa folks do read those signs, it’s successful outreach.
Or collard greens can be cut, washed and bagged in the kitchen, or harvested while sitting in the morning shade on a concrete rise. Mornings and twilight times of day are beautiful times to be outside wilding in prayer within our placement downtown.
We now have a printed visitor greeting page written by our pastors and placed in our narthex, informing about us and our urban sanctuary. It describes our logo as representing our placement downtown at intersections of layers of diversity, all welcomed to come together at this sacred space. Our logo is a cross formed by four colored arrows embraced by loving heart. The cross is present when “all the pieces come together in the space that exists between the differing elements. When we show up authentically from our various perspectives and backgrounds, we create a space that allows the Body of Christ to be formed in our midst.”
Maybe a coincidence, maybe providence – the arrow representing our physical place in these intersections is sunflower yellow. Surprising July rains provide daily opportunities for sunflower appreciation, trimming, sculpting and sharing.
C’mon down, sunflowers for everybody.
Be well be safe know joy.
Phil