Dear Friends,
    
As we lean into the last weeks of summer under milkweed skies and drifting monarch butterflies, I hope you get some time to daydream. It may be a lost art today, since we are so often rewarded for producing and consuming, and above all, being busy. A few weeks ago, a church member gave me some advice about preaching. Half-apologetically, they said, this morning’s sermon was a little long; I suppose you saw me looking out the window. Immediately I assured him that looking out the window doesn’t trouble me one bit. Some of my sweetest moments have been spent daydreaming!

Since then I’ve been thinking about gazing out the window, about drifting away in that state that researchers call mind-wandering. I’m pretty sure it’s an important part of what we do in church.  That mid-sermon daydream is one way we connect our lives with text and tradition. It makes space for us to integrate what we’re receiving from the outside with what’s going on inside. Daydreams help keep our spiritual life vital and creative.

We don’t grow in faith, or even in self-understanding, by simply receiving what others tell us to be true, or by staying laser focused (even on a fabulous sermon)! Psychologists and neurologists tell us that daydreaming helps us make sense of the world and our place in it. In this state we can draw together the truths of faith and our lived experience. When we let our minds wander, we encounter new insights, fresh ways to live with others, and even with ourselves. In daydreams we can range over our past and also look ahead – to hope for the future.

So I hope you’ll join us this fall for some daydreaming in church and children’s church, in study groups and prayer and choir, and maybe even during a sermon! We welcome you to explore with us the inner life, the life of heart and mind and spirit, and our life together in God.    
In Peace,
Becky