Featuring Anne’s sermon from Sunday, a new recording from the Chapel Street Band, a poem from Anne’s sermon, information about Star Words, as well as links to all our content!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, a second showing of our annual Christmas Pageant, a full listing of our Christmas services through the Epiphany, a writeup from our recent collaboration with Home For All and their Pop-Up Care Village, as well as links to all our content!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, a second showing of our Service of Lessons and Carols, a note from Anne, info about Blue Christmas Service this Thursday, a full listing of all Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany offerings here at St. John’s, and information about the Vigil for the Longest Night, as well as links to all our content!
Featuring Aaron’s sermon from Sunday, a new recording of an Advent favorite from the Parish Choir, an invitation to attend the Ordination of Steve Falci, the full schedule of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany offerings at St. John’s, plus links to several of our content clearinghouses for all your SJC content needs!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, an exciting new anthem for Advent from the Parish Choir, a full listing of all Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany offerings here at St. John’s, information about this Sunday’s St. John’s Selects concert featuring Joel Spears, and links to all our content!
Fiscal responsibility and accountability to empower our mission. This week, we will be looking back at this tumultuous year with key members of our leadership team. Today is the third of this week’s annual meeting offerings. Please RSVP for our community zoom on 1/31 at 9am.
Fiscal responsibility and accountability to empower our mission. This week, we will be looking back at this tumultuous year with key members of our leadership team. Today is the second of this week’s annual meeting offerings. Please RSVP for our community zoom on 1/31 at 9am.
Fiscal responsibility and accountability to empower our mission. This week, we will be looking back at this tumultuous year with key members of our leadership team. Today is the first of this week’s annual meeting offerings. Please RSVP for our community zoom on 1/31 at 9am.
Once I accepted this little bat for what it was, I was able to close my eyes and sleep! I slept that night better than I had in a long long time. Every night until I left, I would hear the little bat come into my house, I would say a little greeting to it, then drift into a pleasant and restful night.
The state of our society today, however, seems to thrust this familiar verse into our everyday lives in a new and more immediate way. The patterns of our lives have been disrupted and short term concerns and worries crowd out seemingly all else. We perceive novel challenges at every turn. We have hopes for positive outcomes, but assurance seems very hard to come by. Do we have faith? Can we have faith?
"How do you stand it ?"a close friend asked me not long ago. It is not always easy. Some days my tears flow freely, especially during the holiday season. I know I am not alone So many, maybe most of us, have suffered great losses of one type or the other during this time of the COVID-19 and in our lives. Through all our sufferings, God is with us. I have experienced this reality many times in my life. This I, with
certainty, know.
The psychologists who work with resiliency point to a range of other resources that contribute to resiliency, many of which involve ways and degrees of connection and community, apart from the attributes of the individual. When those can be strengthened and enlarged, both the individual and the community are more resilient. I pause at this – doesn't this echo strongly a message we hear so often at St John's, that the work of the church is community?
At the age of 89, she was carried out of the fire at her retirement home on the shoulder of a firefighter and declared ‘My, my, I will never forget that if I live to be a hundred!’ Nannie didn’t quite make it to one hundred, nearly though, and I was so blessed to have known her into my young adulthood.
The passage is central to my understanding of God and to my call as a beloved child of God, a unique work of God’s hands, molded in divine love. It tells me that as a created, thinking being, I am not yet fully formed. It helps me to understand that NOT knowing all of the answers to my big questions Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? That it is more than fine, it fact it’s may be my destiny to not fully understand the nature of God. To continue to play and wrestle with that understanding throughout my lifetime is a mission in itself.
Christmas is season and today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas – probably the highest profile day of the Christmas Season other than Christmas Day itself. At one time, the festivities of the Eve of the Epiphany rivaled those of Mardi Gras which might have been a reason for Shakespeare naming his play of romantic mayhem and disorder ‘Twelfth Night’.
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, as the song goes, a gift of twelve drummers drumming was given.I have been collecting Christmas ornaments depicting ‘a partridge in a pear tree’ and all the other Twelve Days giftsover the years.One of my favorite sets of ornaments comes from Louisville Stoneware.
My very favorite set of Twelve Days ornaments came from the old Strawberry Banke shop which some years ago stood on the site of the restaurant Mombo. I love these needlepoint ornaments and have great joy in bringing them out each year.
The celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and the Feast of Epiphany are not as much a focus in the US as in some other countries and I am always a bit sad to see a Christmas tree out on the street on December 26. But however you approach this season, it is what comes next that matters most. In his book ‘The Mood of Christmas’, Howard Thurman offers a prayer that reminds us not to forget the reason for the season as we pack away our beloved Christmas treasures. As this Christmas season draws to a close, I offer you The Work of Christmas and encourage you to wonder with me how we might respond to this invitation.
The Work of Christmas
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.
