A farmer, working in his field, noticed his horse was sickly. Feeling compassion for the animal, he let it free to live the rest of its life in the mountains. Friends of the farmer noticed that he was working his land without the help of his horse. “How will you continue to grow your crops?” they asked. “How terrible!” To which the farmer responded, “Maybe. We shall see.”….

In The House at Pooh Corner, Winnie the Pooh is asked what he likes doing best in the world. He starts to say eating honey, but then reflects that there is “a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.”….

As we inch closer to the summer months, we may be starting to look forward to the possibilities that the season could bring. Most of all, we may be hoping for a more relaxed pace to life, a time when things slow down a little, and we can find some rest and renewal. Some among us, though, may have trouble with the idea of relaxing and slowing down ― or even if we want to do it, we find it very hard to shift out of our more usual compulsion to accomplish things. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I count myself in that group!) If you find yourself in that category too, I encourage you to read the passage above again ― Pooh and Christopher Robin might help us reframe things!

Our Adult Forum on Stewardship last Sunday focused on caring for the environment. In preparing to lead the session, I came upon a website for JUMP (www.takethejump.org). JUMP is a grass roots environmental movement inspired by research from Leeds University in the UK, asking people to commit to six behavioral shifts to help the health of the planet. While the site for JUMP grants that corporate and legal entities bear a huge responsibility for addressing climate chaos, it also insists that individuals and their choices also have an important role to play….