In these early days of summer when school has not yet released, the church calendar is so often filled with all the celebrations. Pride. Graduations. Confirmation. Every Sunday it seems like there is a really good reason to have cake.

There are litanies of celebration in worship and we try to say all the things that matter one more time while we are all still together. There are a thousand reasons for this but I can’t escape the urgency. These are important things even though they are incredibly hard to talk about. We want our young people to grow into righteousness. We want them to see that goodness in their God just as we want them to know that they are so very loved. Ordinary church life with all the cake encourages us to spend a lot of time this month talking about how very loved so many of our children are — and the stakes are high in the United States right now. There is enough legislation pushing through that proclaims hate. We need more love and righteousness.

When the call came for this summer’s writing assignments with the Living Psalms Project of the United Church of Christ, I was captivated by this line in verse seven about God gathering the seas into a bottle. It was something I did as a kid. It also made me think of that glee that comes from shaking a soda bottle and then opening it as so many did in sticky celebration on the last day of school in my hometown. I wondered about all that was contained in that tiny bottle. Our seas are not little even at their current levels in the climate crisis. So this Brough me back to a place of memory and I believe kids know all the things about God when they are wee. They know them better than adults if we are brave enough to listen but sometimes we don’t. So we need to push ourselves to remember what it was like when we were children.

My riff on Psalm 33:1-12 hasn’t posted yet over on Living Psalms but it can be found here below.

Remember, you who say you do good. 
Remember what it means to be good
and feel that rhythm pulse through your entire being
so that you can only dance with joy.

Remember what it is like when everything 
feels so new, when it feels like 
anything and everything could happen. 
Remember how it was before you
grew so tired and old.

Remember that kind of wonder
and delight that stands on the shoreline
and twinkles in the night skies
with the promise of justice and love.

Try to remember through
all that scares you. Feel that 
grace breathe upon you 
so that your mouth is full of love.
Shake yourself up like a soda bottle 
exploding into a messy, sticky wonder
where the only response is laughter.  

Let this be what we remember together 
rather than focusing on all that has gone wrong
and all that could still go wrong. There is enough frustration.
Let us remember all that goodness and 
invite each other to keep dancing. 

I hope this might be something you might use in worship. You might notice there’s also a nod to the Genesis and Matthew reading. I almost wonder if it could be read as a prayer of illumination. Maybe that last stanza is read together by the whole congregation before the next text is heard.

I also kinda want there to be dancing. If you get to that in your worship, please send me the link to livestream. I would so love to see that!

Blessings to you in early beatitful days of summer, dear one.