How to Use Some Downtime

April 19, 2022

Beloved:
          What a beautiful weekend of High Holy Days’ worship and fellowship.  So many thanks to Rob, the choir, and Fan for leading us through the Good Friday service, as well as to the Fellowship Committee for their beautiful work on Sunday’s Easter Feast.  It’s my favorite church season by far.  I also love these weeks after Easter when the Church works her way back toward the Ordinary Time of worship, fellowship, and service in our life together.  This spring feels especially and wonderfully ordinary as we approach our one-year anniversary of post-pandemic in-person worship for nearly a year!  (Yes, I remember the winter set-back . . . but let me be excited!)  I am looking forward to adding more programming back into our schedule as we move into summer and next fall.  
          For now, I have the week off preaching, and I’m using the study time to read Thomas Merton’s No Man Is An Island.  So far I’m finding something to love on every page, like these thoughts:

• “This is to be saved, to find myself as I exist in Christ, as Christ intended.  There is my true home, my freedom, my final escape from loneliness.”
  
• “Every demand upon us is an invitation of God to lose ourselves in charity.”
  
• “We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.”
  

          Another book I just finished and loved is bell hooks’ All About Love, A New Vision, which I picked up for the simple reason that I wanted to read something by her.  I couldn’t have chosen a better first book.  I’d love for a group of us to read either (or both!) of them together sometime and discuss.
          In the meantime of this day, may the Risen Christ be ever close to you as you live out his calling in this place and time. 

~peace & prayers, 
pastor annette