Encourage. Build up. Carry each other’s burdens. Strengthen each other’s faith. All of this, it seems, is rather important to Paul and the rest of the New Testament authors. When we gather as followers of Jesus, the overwhelming vision for the church is about participation—where each of us brings something that stirs life in others and points us to the hope of the reconciliation of all things happening now. Sweetgrass, we learned, is sometimes called kindness medicine. It’s a plant used in ceremony and teaching, a gift from the Creator that helps people remember how to live with grace for one another. As braids of sweetgrass were passed through the congregation, the community touched it, smelled its sweet vanilla-like fragrance and noted its two-sided nature – rough and smooth.

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