Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

It’s harvest season here in the Pacific Northwest, a season to celebrate the abundance and generosity of God. The abundance from garden is always a little overwhelming at this season, inspiring creativity and generosity in order to cope. I love experimenting with new recipes and writing prayers and liturgies that express my gratitude. I love inviting friends and neighbors to share God’s generosity, and I love to take time to look back over the year and remind myself of the new things God has grown in my life that are part of this abundant harvest.

This is a great time of year to inspire our congregations with gratitude and generosity. Helping those we shepherd see the world from a perspective of God’s abundance, rather than the economy of scarcity our culture constantly bombards us with, is very important. Harvest festivals can be combined with services of thanksgiving or opportunities to share from our own abundance with those in need around us.

The following prayer is one I wrote several years ago that has been extensively used by congregations for celebrations at this season. 

The photo was taken at a recent harvest workshop where participants walked around the property collecting leaves and then spent time reflecting on the season and what it meant to them. At the end they used paint pens to write on the leaves, saving them to use as decorations for upcoming celebrations. You can find more details of how to do this here. 

Another possibility is to use the challenge of coping with an abundant garden harvest as an analogy of how to cope with spiritual abundance as I reflect on here. 

I am not the only one inspired by this season. Here are some other resources that might help you plan your harvest celebration.

• This is my favourite set of resources from Christian Concern for One World. 
• My friend John Birch at Faith and Worship in the UK also has an excellent resource list as well as this great Harvest Thanksgiving liturgy. 
• Another beautiful prayer for the season is this litany written by Andrew Warmback and Brian Wilinson, Network of Earthkeeping Christian Communities in South Africa. 

And my favourite harvest poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins

SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise 
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour 
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier 
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, 
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; 
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a 
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder 
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! 
These things, these things were here and but the beholder 
Wanting; which two when they once meet, 
The heart rears wings bold and bolder 
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

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