Dear Ones of St. Columba's,

Over sabbatical I got pretty into Louise Penny's Canadian murder mystery novels starring Inspector Armand Gamache. There are something like 17 of these books in the series and I am well on my way to having read them all. Penny is known for the emotional depth in her somewhat formulaic murder mysteries, and for her beloved central character Inspector Gamache, chief of homicide in the Quebec police force known as the Surete. 

Every book has at least one preachable quote (fair warning, I have resisted them so far but it is only a matter of time) but this week in my reading there was a throw-away line that I couldn't stop thinking about. One of Penny's characters repeated a quote by famous painter Pablo Picasso "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." 

My first response is to resist this idea, but I can see where it comes from. Everything new comes from some other thing's end in one way or another. Does this mean the first thing is destroyed? Maybe not, Picasso. But I bet that depends on how attached we are to those first things. Does autumn destroy summer, or merely come from it? How you feel about summer is going to deeply affect how you answer that question. 

As a creative person and someone who loves new ideas and experiences and things, this quote helps me see that perhaps sometimes the new thing cannot arrive until we have said goodbye to what came before. As someone who craves stability in a world that is always changing Picasso's words (almost certainly about art), help me hope that perhaps there is something new ahead, when something beloved to me comes to an end.

We are coming quickly to the end of our church year. Two more Sundays to go and we will be starting again, starting anew, with the season of Advent. Our scriptures this week and next (and into Advent as well) sound like doom and gloom, a bit. And this is appropriate because we are coming to the end. 

I appreciate our geography, in these times of year. I like it that as the light fades and the trees go bare our church calendar also heaves one last sigh and then ends. I am captivated by beginning a new year of worship, community, and faith in the darkest days of winter. 

I don't know where you are this season - glorying in the fall colors and pumpkin spice lattes or hitting snooze and wishing you could hibernate until the sunshine returns or somewhere in between. Our Church calendar gives us permission to live into both the destruction of the year coming to a close and the promise of new creation that lies ahead. You don't have to be one or other - part of our tradition as Episcopalians is that we believe in the capacity, together, to hold both things with reverence and hope. 

Here is a key thing to remember, no matter how you feel about the creative destruction of the present moment: you aren't in it alone. As a church community we create together, and when things end we mourn that together, too. I hope you'll come and worship these last two Sundays in what has been a remarkable and unusual church year. Let's set this year to rest and see what God has waiting for us just around the corner in the dark. 

with care and gratitude,

Alissa