Dear Friends in Christ, Last week, I wrote to you about how we travel through Lent together. This week, I want to speak to the individual journey. I know that many of you have adopted your own personal Lenten disciplines—ways of fasting or disciplines of study or service. I want to highlight three…
Dear Friends in Christ, “When you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile.” This quote comes from one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Anne Shirley. (I suppose technically it’s from Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables.) These words may not be biblical, but I think they speak…
Dear Friends in Christ, I want to write to you this week about Federal workers. This is not a letter of pastoral care—although such a letter would be warranted, given the uncertainty and struggles that our Federal workforce faces right now. This is instead a letter of gratitude. I want to name, celebrate,…
Dear Friends in Christ, Last Saturday, your vestry spent the day together. They did some of the ordinary work of parish life, talking about our facilities and our budget. But they also did more extraordinary work—the kind of work only possible when there is time for extended conversation, where there is space for the…
Dear Friends in Christ, Do you remember the first time you came to Grace Church? For some of you, that day was very recent; for others, it has been decades. A very few of you cannot remember your first time because you were a baby carried in someone else’s arms. Most of…
Dear Friends in Christ, C.S. Lewis wrote, “your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” Sunday allows us to live out that truth twice. The first time is at our morning worship, when we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation, more commonly known as Candlemas. The day commemorates when the infant…
Dear Friends in Christ, Sunday’s annual meeting will be held at 10:30 a.m. in the Auditorium. (Remember—it’s the only English-language service we’ll be having that day.) The meeting will be set in the context of our Sunday eucharist. This format was an innovation that Mother Jenny introduced last January, and I have heard from…
Dear Friends in Christ, Two national holidays coincide this year. Monday, January 20, marks both Martin Luther King, Jr’s Birthday and Inauguration Day. This co-incidence forces our attention to our civic engagement. We have to look at this day not only as Americans, but also as Christians. What does it mean to stand…
Dear Friends in Christ, I want to convince you that stewardship season is now. Conventional wisdom in the church world says that fall is the time for stewardship. Every church that I know sets up a pledge campaign in October so that the vestry can make informed decisions in preparing a budget for…
Dear Friends in Christ, How big is your gospel? Growing up at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church over in Springfield, I thought I knew what the gospel looked like. As you might expect, my gospel was populated by a lot of people who looked a lot like me. After college, I moved on…