The corn is shoulder high.  The huge round bales of hay lie in the fields looking like great stones.  The rhythm of parish life alters.  For some the return of summer people creates an increase in activity. While for others these glorious summer months bring a chance for vacation, a rest from the busyness of parish life.  Whatever the rhythm of your particular life, it is clear that there is a divine ordering of our days – a sacred pattern of work and rest, of creative activity and a blessed idleness.

The pattern of work and Sabbath, of worship and daily life are at the heart of our life’s ebb and flow.  What sets religious communities apart, among other things, is the interruption in the otherwise unending cycle of work.  We not only rest while we are asleep. We set apart specific times in each day, in every week as well as in the entire year to remember that at the center of all our days is the Son who is the one around whom our lives orbit.  Informed by the temporal liturgical calendar we organize our lives around the incarnation of God.  Informed by the sanctoral calendar we recall the lives of our ancestors in the faith whose lives vividly illustrate the transforming power of God’s grace.

The late great Eastern Orthodox teacher Alexander Schmemann, in his classic work, For the Life of the World (first published in 1965 as The World as Sacrament), says that before we are creatures who know things, homo sapiens, we are creatures that have the capacity to bless God, to worship.  We are, first of all, homo adorans. 

The rhythm of our days unfolds with or without our consent or even our awareness.  The gifts of the patterned life of the Christian community include the regular, daily invitation to come awake, to attend to the beauty of the world around us, the pain and the joy of those with whom we share the planet, and to be alert to the cruciform movements of the One in whom all things in heaven and earth hold together.  And through it all we can say again and again:  “Let us bless the Lord.”   Thanks be to God.

Peace to all of you

Pastor Lee Goodwin +

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The Project Director
The Rev. Dr. Lee Goodwin

Pastor Lee Goodwin has been called by the Northern Great Lakes Synod Council to serve as Director of The Sabbath Project.

Pr. Goodwin has served as a Parish Pastor for over 27 years, 22 of them on the territory of the NGLS. He has served as Pastor Developer of a new mission congregation and has extensive experience as a retreat leader and spiritual director.

He received the B.A. Degree in American Studies from Hamline University, St. Paul, Minn. (1977); the M. Div. from Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (1981); and the D. Min. in Spiritual Direction from The Graduate Theological Foundation, South Bend, IN (1999) He is also a graduate of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation’s Contemplative Prayer Group Leaders Program (1996) and Spiritual Guidance Program (1999), and has completed the Teaching Practicum in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction at the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School(2008).