Featuring our guest preacher The Rt. Rev. Mark Beckwith’s sermon from Sunday, information about the upcoming St. John’s Selects concert with Capella Alamire, info on our next Outside the Box coming next Sunday January 25, info on this year’s Elinor Williams Hooker Tea Talks from the Black Heritage Trail of NH, and links to all our content!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, another fabulously spirited recording from Star Festival, information about the upcoming St. John’s Selects concert with Capella Alamire, an introduction to Nancy Garnhart’s new Community Meditation Group, and links to all our content!
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!
Jeremiah 29: 4-5,7 These verses from Jeremiah have stuck with me since we read them in church on October 13th, the Sunday before Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I’ve been thinking about what it means to be part of a larger community and how we understand our presence, here, now, in this city, on this land.
Solitude. It’s what Jesus sought after he went to the wilderness after being baptized in the River Jordan. It was what shaped the spiritual lives of the desert mothers and fathers and drew people to them. It’s often where God is able to meet us, where we encounter the love that we cannot earn, but receive through our returning and rest, quietness and trust.
More recently I was introduced to the Daily Prayer book from the Corrymeela Community and among the wonderful offerings in their prayer book is The Prayer of Courage https://www.corrymeela.org/news/126/the-prayer -of-courage. The Daily Prayer Book includes 31 brief Scripture readings – a verse or two – and a prayer for that day.
What are your three things today? This question causes me to pause. This pause is so important. Many of my days are frenetic and full to the brim with need and activity. The practice of pausing to consider and remember what I am grateful for is perhaps my most helpful spiritual practice while navigating a frenetic life in general and specifically this Fall Season at SJC.
I invite you to pause for a moment and examine how you practice the presence of God. The tendency that I hear, see and experience is that people, (myself included), look for God “somewhere out there.” Brother Lawrence reminds us that God is nearer than we might think. Psalm 139 expresses this reality well when the psalmist asks ..
Parallel rows of tobacco stretched to the edge of my sightline, their giant sagging from the in-tense heat of the day. In front of me were two circles of chairs nestled between two double-wide trailers. . We grabbed plates of food and took our seats in the circles. The thirteen young folks who gave a week of their summer to travel to North Carolina on a Mission Trip interspersed with the mi-grant farmworkers who had invited us into their home.
I had completely forgotten how overwhelming life is in a household with a new baby, especially if the baby is the first baby born into that household! I write from London where I am spending time with my lovely new granddaughter, Ada, and her terrific parents (very true, even if I am biased!). Ada is five weeks old, and life is a bit more settled, until it isn’t.
