Letter from Amy: Sept 2, 2026

Dear friends,

Two Sundays ago, we gathered in the home of Leigh McAfee to pray through the Incarnation Examen together. I was so grateful for those who showed up to pray, including many who are new(ish) to our church! If you missed it, you can read the responses from our prayer time on the leaf post-its in the church narthex. I encourage you to read these as you consider your own prayers for our church.

As I have said many times, this summer discernment was not in response to any crisis or decision point, but simply a desire to continue in our practice of the Examen, especially as the dust settles from planting Holy Comforter and we enter a new season of our life together. We wanted to take some time to prayerfully wonder together: what might God be saying to us as a church?

The summer season is now wrapping up, and we are turning our attention toward fall. However, if you haven’t yet taken 15 minutes to listen and pray for Incarnation, I want to encourage you one last time to please do so! There are printed copies of the Incarnation Examen in the narthex (printed on a green half-sheet), or use the link above for an online version. You can share your impressions by adding post-its to the tree on Sunday, or by sending me a quick text or email. It is always a joy to hear from you! Thank you so much for listening to God on behalf of our church.

***

Earlier this week, one of my heroes died. Wendell Berry’s Collected Poems has been my bedside companion for over twenty years, and is where I often turn to restore my hope in God's slow and hidden work of resurrection. I so often need that hope as a pastor (and as a mom, wife, neighbor, citizen…).

Church is a place where we witness the slow and hidden work of resurrection, where God works quiet miracles in the soil of our everyday lives. But it’s easy to miss things that are slow and hidden! So we must learn to discern, to attentively look and listen for God's presence and to share with each other what we see and hear.

I’ll close this final invitation to summer discernment with an excerpt from a favorite poem by Saint Wendell. It was hard to choose, but I love the image of slow-growing trees on a ruined place as a vision for the church.

From Work Song, Part 2. A Vision

by Wendell Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow-growing trees

on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,

if we will make our seasons welcome here,

asking not too much of earth or heaven,

then a long time after we are dead

the lives our lives prepare will live

here, their houses strongly placed

upon the valley sides, fields and gardens

rich in the windows. The river will run

clear, as we will never know it,

and over it, birdsong like a canopy.

On the levels of the hills will be

green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.

On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down

the old forest, an old forest will stand,

its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.

The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields.

In their voices they will hear a music

risen out of the ground. They will take

nothing from the ground they will not return,

whatever the grief at parting. Memory,

native to this valley, will spread over it

like a grove, and memory will grow

into legend, legend into song, song

into sacrament. The abundance of this place,

the songs of its people and its birds,

will be health and wisdom and indwelling

light. This is no paradisal dream.

Its hardship is its possibility.

***

I'm looking forward to Sunday! Our liturgy will switch to the Renewed Ancient and we'll share a potluck after church. Fall is upon us — see you soon!

With resurrection hope,

Amy