Several years ago, when I was a youthworker, I traveled to the Diocese of Ecuador, to meet with their youthworkers, talk about youth ministry, and plan a youth mission trip and a gathering of youth from both dioceses for fellowship and learning.

My counterpart Carlos Sandoval took me to his tiny mission church in the heart of the barrio in the city of Quito. The church, known as “Christ the Liberator”, occupied a storefront at the junction of two dusty streets, just one short step down from the open doorway. Dogs and chickens wandered in and out at will. A lone, bare light bulb, hung by a wire stretched across the ceiling, out a small window and up to a makeshift splice onto the nearest power line.

Carlos was still a deacon at that time, so he was not authorized to celebrate the Holy Communion. The general shortage of priests in that diocese meant that the people of Christ the Liberator rarely received the Sacrament. But on this day, his yanqui guest would bring it to the people. Armed with my Spanish Book of Common Prayer, I did my best to read the service. And as I did, a very strange and wonderful thing happened. p>You know how it is when you are doing something familiar, something you’ve done many times, like eating your favorite cereal, or folding the laundry, or maybe driving to the post office? Sometimes a part of us begins to operate on a kind of automatic pilot, allowing our conscious thoughts to turn to whatever’s on the radio, or the next errand after the post office. Our brains rely on our familiarity with the route to make the correct turn at the courthouse and then again at the bank. It is only when we pull into the parking lot and see the post office, that we realize we don’t really remember much about how we got there.

So, there I was, in that storefront church in Quito, reading the Communion service in Spanish. I’m far from fluent in Spanish, but I know enough vocabulary to recognize most of the Spanish words in the liturgy, especially because the service follows the form in our own Book of Common Prayer. Exactly the same things happen at the same times, using the same words in translation.

I was saying familiar words, spoken with familiar intent, prompting familiar responses from the people, making familiar gestures, all for a familiar purpose. But because I was doing all this in an unfamiliar language, my brain couldn’t rely on familiarity in quite the same way. Because saying the words in Spanish is not second nature, I had to watch my pronunciation. In order to make the words flow, I must think about their meaning. Thinking about meaning, needing to know what I was saying, not having the luxury of a wandering mind, the words came alive on my lips and in my being and I tumbled headlong into the liturgy, into a new kind of worship, and a sense of joyful awe.

“Dios omnipotente, para quien todos los corazones están manifiestos, todos los deseos son conocidos y ningún secreto se halla encubierto: Purifica los pensamientos de nuestros corazones por la inspiración de tu Santo Espitu, par que perfectamente te amemos y dinamente proclamemos la grandeza de tu santo Nombre.”

Just to read this again in Spanish right now produces the same effect… I hear the familiar words of the Collect for Purity with new ears, a more open heart, transparent before the Holy One who knows me. I long all over again for a cleansing Spirit to wash away all thoughts and intentions that block the flow of my love and devotion and praise for the One in whom I live, move and have my being.

This is why I am so happy this morning. I am happy because we are here together in this place, because being here together has become important to us, a growing tradition, ever since that first Sunday morning when Ian and Caleb put on white robes and went beneath the water and came up sputtering and then we all shared the holy meal and had a party.

We’ve all sat by other ponds, or in our back yards, or underneath our favorite tree and let our minds wander, just like they sometimes wander in church, when our brains rely on the familiarity of the service to help us make the right turns, to say “And also with you” or “Praise to you, Lord Christ” at the right times. Did you ever repeat the Confession and somehow get to the end without knowing how you got there, let alone what (if anything you might have confessed)? By the same token, most of us love to be out in nature, in places like this. But like being in church, like driving to the post office, sometimes we enter the natural world on auto pilot and with absent minds.

Could it be that this emerging tradition, our annual departure from the ordinary, has become important to us because we sense that somehow a part of us comes alive when we move beyond the familiar, when we really have to pay attention to what we’re doing and where we’re doing it?

We come out from behind the four walls of our beautiful church building…and out here, our eyes can see in every direction, the world we are meant to serve. Instead of watching through a window as the trees in the churchyard sway in the wind, out here we feel the breeze on our skin. Here, the waters of baptism spread out before us, not lying still in a stone basin but moving, full of all fish and frogs and creatures, big and small. Sunday after Sunday, the familiar words of our liturgy call us to approach the holy table and lift up our hearts. Out here, we say the same words, but I wonder; do they mean anything more or different to us out here, lifting up our hearts with no ceiling to confine them and nothing but open sky to receive them?

If we will allow ourselves to pay attention to what we are doing and where we are doing it, maybe we will hear the familiar words in some new and different way, help them came alive on our lips and in our being. Maybe our songs and our speech, our thoughts and actions will help us inhabit the familiar Creation in a deeper way this morning. Maybe we will tumble headlong into a new kind of worship and a sense of joyful awe.

As I was thinking about a way to close, this morning, my eyes fell on this passage in my Spanish Prayer Book, the opening words of one of the Communion prayers; “Te damos gracias, oh Dios, por la bondad y el amor que tú nos has manifestado en la creación.” We give thanks to you, oh God, for the goodness and love which you have made known to us in creation.” We give you thanks, oh God, for the goodness and love which you have made known to us in our common prayer. And we give you thanks, oh God, bringing us here, beyond the familiar, where each of these deepens our appreciation of the other, and we are drawn closer to your Mystery.

AMEN