Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Karen Hollis | May 11, 2025
CUU Wrap-up
Deuteronomy 31&32:
So Moses recited this entire song publicly to the assembly of Israel:
“Listen, O heavens, and I will speak!
Hear, O earth, the words that I say!
Let my teaching fall on you like rain;
let my speech settle like dew.
Let my words fall like rain on tender grass,
like gentle showers on young plants.
I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
how glorious is our God!
Philippians 4:8-9
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.
1 Peter 4:10:
God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
I’ve been thinking about all the learning we do in life. A friend of mine just had a baby . . . one day her 3 month old just stared at her own hand all day long. Then she did the same thing with her foot. She’s just there taking in the reality of hand and foot . . . some of the most foundational understanding in life, that we are embodied. Eventually she will use her body to move and play and work with others. As we receive lessons in life, collect them one after another, and put those lessons into practice, we have an ever greater capacity to be of service to the greater good. I invite us this morning to think about learning as this kind of arc of receiving teachings, practicing, and using what we have learned to serve others.
Let us begin with Moses, as he passes on his teaching to those who will come after him at the end of his life and ministry. After being told by God that this transition will be difficult for them, he teaches them about remaining in relationship with God. Moses begins with this lovely imagery: let my teaching fall on you like rain, my speech settle like dew. He uses imagery of young plants in the harsh landscape to prepare his people for a new chapter with challenging circumstances. He prays his words will rain down on them and get absorbed like thirsty plants in the desert. It seems fitting for a lesson like “be in relationship with God,” to rain down as a teaching so universal that wherever you are, whatever your context, the teaching is relevant, and you can drink it in and be sustained with what you need for the road ahead. It’s a teaching we receive over and over and over again, and along the journey of faith, it builds on itself.
I had an experience, in what feels like another life, of knowledge building on knowledge, when I was studying physics in university. I remember one of the first homework assignments was to calculate the electric charge on a sphere. It took us the entire week to figure it out. My study group was huddled together day after day, sharing insights and details up and down the table. By the time the assignment was due, we were mostly on the same page. I was so relieved to turn in the assignment that when I received the next one, reality abruptly dropped in for me with the realization that we had merely completed the preparatory exercise. We would be slowly building knowledge and skill that we would apply for the rest of the year . . . and for the rest of my years in physics. After a great deal of effort, those skills became second nature, they became useful tools to employ while exploring larger questions.
Whether learning about relationship with God, the physical world, or anything else, think about how the process of learning needs our attention. Paul says in his letter to the Philippians: “keep putting into practice what you have learned.” Attention and practice makes all the difference. When learning an instrument, for instance, we attend to the fundamentals, and first figure out how to make sound, then intentional sound, then quality of sound, and sound with meaning . . . they braid together and build on one another through hours and hours of practice. We have to literally build the muscle and construct the neuropathways. Another example of practice is learning about the continually emerging language of the LGBTQ++ community. Learning about pronouns and pronoun usage that is new to our ears. When we practice they/them or zi/zir, we notice the dissonance of new language . . . in our ears and in our speech . . . as we practice using the new pronouns, they begin to sound familiar to us, as we learn how to honour our friends and neighbours in this way. Any kind of practicing makes accessible to us a whole new world. Maybe we become masters at it, but more importantly, it is the journey of practice that shapes us.
The last stage in this arc of learning is about using what we have learned to serve others. I recently heard a really wonderful story from a woman named Blair Braverman about her team of sled dogs. It’s well known that huskies love to run and they also love to sing, but they don’t do them at the same time. She says, it’s unheard of for huskies to combine them. They’re so focused while running, they’re just in a different mode. Blair had a sled dog named Refried who had this gift of singing while running, and she would sing a particular song. She wouldn’t sing indiscriminately; she would sing when the team needed it most. It would be like 4 in the morning, they’ve been mushing all night, it felt like the sun would never rise, and morale would get low. That’s when Refried would sing. And when she did, the rest of the dogs would get really excited. Blair says she would have to hold tight to the handlebars of the sled, because they would accelerate and she would fly off the back. Refried passed away over a year ago after a long and wonderful life, and Blair was particularly sad that she wouldn’t hear that song again. On the first run after Refried passed, they were mushing along in the silence, and then suddenly she heard Refried again, it sounded exactly like her. The other dogs, who would never ever ever have considered singing while running, had learned the music from Refried, and were starting to sing in her absence. Blair now has a singing dog team, which she said, she cannot emphasize enough, is not a thing. There are not singing dog teams, except that Refried taught them her song, she taught them the value of singing at those critical moments where everyone needs that extra bit of hope to make it through together – gosh, that resonates, doesn’t it!? They learned from her and continue to put her teaching into practice to serve the greater whole.
God’s world is full of teachings, we can hardly open our eyes in the morning or look out the window without receiving some blessing, some message from God about this incredible world. May they rain down on us and enrich us all for the good of all. Thanks be to God.