​Beloved:
    
       This is as insufficient a thank-you note as ever was written and yet, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the privilege of these years among you and the invitation to practice this calling called ministry. 

       I was home and in my sweatpants before I came down enough to be embarrassed by the avalanche of gifts and kindnesses poured upon me last Sunday to mark my first twenty-five years on staff at UBC.  I can’t name names without leaving someone out, so thank you to everyone who wrote and planned and advertised and organized and cooked and decorated to make such a day come together.  To friends all over the country who sent video and letters, I am working through them slowly, and the memories they spark wash my heart with joy.  Thanks to family who came from Cincinnati, Louisville, Franklin and Bedford to be with Carl and me too.  It means everything to me that you are proud of me.  You are my home.  

       I wonder if everyone I knew in seminary still loves ministry as much as I do?  If so, I expect it has something to do with the people with whom they are lucky enough to serve.  Not one of them has been as lucky as me.  For no particular reason I can imagine, the Lord has ever so kind and generous toward me in placing me among the likes of you.  Though maybe it’s less to do that what we’ve done than what we are being prepared to do.  These blessings may not be reward but groundwork for the work to come.  If anything has become clear to me since Sunday, it’s that we are a community unlike any other, a community for which other people hunger.  Maybe it’s time we began to feed them.  I’m grateful to be in the kitchen with you all.  

~ peace & prayers,

pastor annette 

Beloved:

Every year, usually in November, I remember a lyric by singer Cheryl Wheeler about how winter is really the warmest season. I remembered it this morning when the heat came on to make my house smell toasty wonderful. Tazo Earl Grey tea is my current favorite morning drink.  I love being back in socks and sweaters, and I keep wanting to eat soup.  I love the squash one at Panera, and I made one at home that’s also good (see recipe below).  

Warm is the measure for so many things we consider necessary. 
Warmer, safer, drier is the goal of Appalachian Service Project, my husband’s yearly summer mission trip with the Methodists in town. 
Warm relations between countries, warm conversation, warm receptions, warm puppies, warm glow, warm colors, warm bread, warm cookies. . . warm is almost always better than not.  Too hot is terrible, of course, and too cold is not good either.  Warm is what we are after, and I think I maybe might know why.  

I had an uncle who teased his wife she was the only cook who could burn things by cooking them on low forever -- because she loved to visit more than she liked to cook.  She’d turn down the stove to go gossip with her sisters, then run back to the kitchen in the nick of time.

Warm takes slow and steady tending from the beginning to the end, in recipes, relationships, and warmer, safer, drier houses too.  Making soup is a good practice at tending.  And prayer.  Definitely prayer, going back and back and back again to that same relationship for everything we need to tend everything else that needs our hands and hearts these days.  

May the day find you tending things that matter.  
​
~ peace & prayers, pastor annette