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Our in-person worship service starts at 10 am and includes hymns, prayers, scripture reading and a sermon. It usually lasts about an hour and fifteen minute.. During the 10 am service we also offer live-streaming to a nearby room that offers those with compromised immune systems to be more isolated. We also offer a separate space for children, with supervised play and crafts during the 10 am service. Sections of the 10 am service are programed into the 5 pm digital service, which is offered as a "vespers."
We are an inter-generational church and strive to be family-friendly, with an active ministry for children and youth. All ages are welcome in worship. We also offer nursery and child-care, Younger children begin the 10 am service with us and usually leave after about 15 minutes. Older children have the option of leaving for a special sermon time. Junior high and high school youth meet at 9 am and then often sit together in worship. Give us a call at 206-524-2322 for more specifics or email 
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Every year I wait anxiously for the first lamb of spring. It has been twenty years now that this has been my routine. You would think I might get used to it. But there is something about the appearance of new life, in all its vulnerability and wonder, that still holds me.
This year when the first lamb arrived I was gone. It was only a few hours after I had left for a night away from the farm that my friend Lori, who was keeping watch over the flock, texted me.
“They don’t get much newer than this,” she wrote, and then sent a picture of the little ewe lamb, still wet and stunned looking, as her attentive mom was cleaning her.
As soon as that first lamb is born, my anxious vigilance relaxes. It’s not that the perils of lambing aren’t still just as real. It’s that now I am in the middle of it, and I have been reminded that life does indeed find its way.
So last night, when I pulled up to the farm gate after a full day of work and scanned the field to see how the flock was doing, my reaction was almost casual when I saw another lamb, also very new, and also huddled close to her mom.
My friend Meighan, who is building her own house on a piece of property next to my farm, was with me. She had already jumped out of the car to open the gate (it is always nice to have a gate-opener with me) when she spotted the lamb. Her reaction was very different than mine. “A lamb,” she called out, and excitedly went over to the fence to take a closer look.
It was late in the day, and almost dark. I left Meighan with lamb and mom and drove on up to the house so I could change into my farm clothes and go back out to attend to this new life.
By the time I got there, the ewe and her lamb had moved closer to the rest of the flock. The flock had gathered up by the pasture gate as they always do when I get home. They know that I am about to let them out to graze in the nice green yard for just a little while before being herded into the barn for the night.
Ewes about to lamb move off from the flock, and ewes with new lambs stay with their lambs even when the rest of the flock is leaving. I am impressed by this instinct to stay behind that overpowers the instinct to go with the flock. Sheep are at their core flocking creatures. Their survival almost always depends on staying together. The urge to stick with the crowd generally dominates any tendency to strike out independently.
But for ewes with new lambs, another impulse takes over. So when I opened the gate to let everyone out for their evening snack, the ewe with the new lamb took only a few steps in that direction, before she turned back to stay with her baby.
Meighan and I went to the barn and made a little pen, equipped with a bucket of water and a manger of alfalfa. Then I went back to the pasture and picked up the lamb. Carrying her at ewe-eye level, so her mom would follow, I walked her into the barn and settled the new family in for the night. Walking back to the house I said three prayers. One for the casual way this second lamb arrived and for my casual acceptance of that. A second for the joy that Meighan experienced in the wonder of new life. And a third for the two ewes on my farm still waiting to give birth. Spring is indeed a season of new life, vulnerability, wonder and grace.
Ahhh Catherine…thanks for taking me there. Wonder of new life indeed. Beautiful.
Thank Kathryn- it is always fun to take folks to the farm- even if we can’t physically be there.
Beautiful, Catherine. Thank you.
Thank you Karen.
Reading this gave me happiness. Thank you Catherine for sharing your joy.
So glad you could come and actually meet her!
Whatta great story! Now I know Spring is really here! This story reminds me that often it takes a huge event (birthing new life) to make us pull back from the crowd and not do what everyone else is doing. Three cheers for Lamb-birth!
It is mysterious, magical and miraculous.
This post, Catherine, is viscerally personal for me. Thank you for the way you put metaphor out there in the world so we may bring it inside where it affirms decisions we make.
Thanks for coming on the journey.
Catherine, I feel tremendously blessed having read this story. So many delights and so much to be thankful for. The extraordinary in the ordinary.
“The extraordinary in the ordinary.” That says it all. Thank you.
Catherine: I so much loved reading the story about your lambs. I would have loved to have carried the newly born lamb to the little pen that you and Meighan made for her. Years ago, I visited your farm and I was thrilled and blessed to actually cradle a young lamb in my arms. My son, Chris De Maagd, and his family are congregants at UCUCC, I live in Michigan and I hope to get out to Seattle this summer. You are truly the good shepherd for your lambs.
Thank you Cynthia. Come back for another visit. Your family is great. They even took care of my dog Annie a few weeks ago.
Hi Catherine. You and I have never met, but my very dear friend Cynthia Blaine DeMaagd knows how greatly I love birthing season on farms & how I love the Pacific Northwest. I appreciate that she shares your articles with me. I owned an 80 acre farm here in MI, was an Arabian Horse Breeder & witnessed almost ALL (and assisted a few) of the foals BEing born on our farm. I had studied as much as I was able to, *picked the brain* of our very wonderful veterinarian & every season was in Absolute Awe of the Springtime wonders of New Life. I am Always Renewed in my Faith when experience Spring & God’s Natural World ! I appreciate and truly enjoy reading your experiences.
Thank you Lesa. Assisting foaling would be so daunting. And yes, miraculous. You must be an incredible person. The lambs do renew me and my faith every spring.
Thanks for your beautiful post about life & renewal. I’d just read Patricia McConnell’s sad news that one of her beloved Border Collies has died, & your post cheered me up. Cycle of life & lessons on the farm.