Today, my calendar informs me, is Earth Day, and I am glad of it. But I will admit that when I hear the word “earth,” I do not picture the planet from space. I picture the water at the end of Lakeshore Lane, gray in November, impossibly blue in June, and the path beside it where half this parish walks off its Sunday lunch.
The lake gives us more than we could ever invoice. It gives us the light that comes through the windows on the water side of the church. It gives the kids something to skip stones across after coffee hour. It gives Rev. Marsh her garden weather and me my thinking walks. It has heard more of my honest prayers than the pews have, and I say that as a man who is in the pews quite a lot.
So once a year, on a Saturday in August, we give the lake a morning back. We call it the Lakeshore Cleanup, which is exactly what it sounds like: gloves, trash bags, a very large thermos of coffee, and shoes you do not mind sacrificing to the mud. Last summer somebody’s grandmother out-hauled the entire youth group, and the youth group has not forgotten it.
Gratitude, not a position paper
People sometimes ask, kindly, whether this is the church getting political. It is not, or at least no more political than a casserole. The oldest job description in Scripture is given to the first human being, in a garden:
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”
Genesis 2:15
The Hebrew behind “till and keep” is the language of serving and guarding, the same “keep” as in “the Lord bless you and keep you.” Caring for a shoreline is not an ideology we signed onto. It is a blessing we are passing along. The lake was here before our bell tower and will be here after it, and everyone who lives along this water is our neighbor, which settles the question of whether it is our business.
Here is my favorite part. Most of the people working the waterline with us each August are not from St. Dunstan’s. They come with the neighborhood association, the running club, the middle-school science teacher and whoever she has recruited that year. Nobody hands them a pamphlet. Nobody asks them what they believe. We sort ourselves by stretch of sand and get to work, and by ten o’clock you cannot tell the baptized from the merely sunburned. I have come to think that is its own kind of sermon.
And if your faith is mostly questions right now, good news: you do not need settled theology to pick up a bottle cap. I preached a couple of Sundays ago about Thomas, the disciple who wanted to see for himself, and I meant what I said: doubt is welcome at the table. It turns out doubt can also put on gloves.
This year’s cleanup will land on its usual Saturday in August, alongside our community partners. The Bellringer, our parish newsletter, will carry the date and details, and the Parish Office can answer anything before then. Bring good shoes and a hat. We will bring the coffee, the gloves, and the gratitude. If bending down is no longer in your repertoire, come anyway; someone has to guard the doughnuts and cheer.
The red doors are open every Sunday, and there is a place for you inside. One Saturday in August, the church simply gets a little wider than the building, and there is a place for you at the waterline too.
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