These words Suzanne posted yesterday get right to the heart of what The Juniper Tree is trying to be about: a life in the Spirit so wild, so untamed it can’t be contained inside conventional forms; it has to burst out into the world. It has to share that life with whoever it meets.
I don’t know what you think of when you read that sentence. I think of the puppet saints of First Church in Cambridge, like St. Lionel, who was raised by lions and became a minister to lions after saving one from a poacher, and who believes that all of nature (especially lions!) is a sacred gift from God; and St. Michiro, who lives in Japan, where he teaches Japanese to monkeys; and St. Rainbow, loving and compassionate, who helps people in need by finding houses for them and caring for them when they are sick. The children have created thirteen puppet saints in all—giant ones, medium ones, and small ones for the youngest ones to carry, each with his or her own story. On All Saints Sunday the children and puppets gather at the back of the church and dance down the aisle to “When the Saints Come Marching In” accompanied by choir, organ, a small but raucous marching band, and a hundred or so congregants singing their hearts out. They circle the Communion Table a few times, and then they sit down, and together we tell the story of a love so big it gathers all of us in, all ages and sizes, all our life stories, our imaginations, our dreams, our crooked places and unhealed hurts, what we have done and what we have left undone, our loves and our longings.
Someone got a vision about those puppets during a congregational discerment session a couple weeks ago. We were doing small group listening and sharing about where we felt the Spirit calling us as a congregation, and one of our oldest and most respected members blurted out, “I see our puppet saints leading us out into the world!”
“Out into the streets!” someone seconded.
“With banners!”
“And bread! Armfuls of bread to give away!”
We wrote the vision on a sticky note: “Going out into the world with puppets, banners, and bread.” First Church in Cambridge’s beautiful, joyful, intergenerational life taking to the streets like a Mardi Gras parade. “You’ve tasted heaven,” the Spirit seemed to be urging. “Now go out and share it!”
The world is so greatly in need of saints.
St. Lelo, who loves to sail around the world with her pet chameleon and pet chinchilla, who can speak to frogs and help them survive in difficult climates, and St. Valerie, who plants flower bulbs, vegetable seeds, and grains so that all can be fed, and gives food away to people who need it.
And all the others.