March - a month of ambivalence.  Snow then warmth.  Sun then rain, then snow again, hot and cold and so it goes.  It is not that March (or God or nature) cannot make up its mind.  It is that the truth of March is all those things, rolled into one.  Its essence is the fertility of ambivalence, the nutritious environment of indecision that embraces all the possibilities.  March may be the most complained about month of the year.  We do not like uncertainty.  Predictability is comforting - but rarely does it spur us to grow.  It is our good fortune that we are gifted each year with March, and its experience in the flesh of the truth of the psyche, soul and spirit.

So my friends, even as your Search Committee is searching diligently for your new settled minister, and folks are getting excited about the future yet to be, I encourage you to view that future firmly rooted in the present, in the time of uncertainty and unpredictability, of changes both whimsical and sound.  Stay with me and with each other in the rich and nourishing time when possibility stretches endlessly and creativity can come out and play.  Do not close the door on it too quickly, lest you miss the opportunities to dream yourselves anew.

It may seem a strange message for me to be sending when you are receiving the request for generous pledged giving that will support this congregation’s future.  If so, I have not made myself clear.  Supporting your future is essential. The more generously it is supported, the more it can flourish, flower, and fruit, thus feeding the souls that gather within and those to whom you reach out.

What I know of life (my own as well as church life) is that the most vibrant and compelling future is fed and sustained by a generosity of thought, of dreams, of mind and spirit nurtured in the ambiguous and dreaming times when we allow ourselves to have them.

So do join me in the welcoming of March, reveling in its annoying habit of surprise and unpredictability. Enter into the spirit of the time, with hopes raised and dashed and raised again.  It is the preparation.  Come April, surely you will find yourself ready to welcome Easter.