Dear friends,
With the start of October, the colors of the leaves changing, and fall routines in the groove, things are also afoot at church that I want to be sure you take notice of both in the news below and on Sunday:
Feast of St. Francis/Animal Blessing tomorrow at 5pm on the Elm St. porch. Please join us with your non-human friends. Please have all animals restrained appropriately. If it rains, we will bring the festivities indoors.
Outreach has created multiple wonderful opportunities for us to gather and put our faith into action over the coming months; please mark your calendars and plan to join your friends at Trinity in these important efforts.
The original plan for our Adult Forums has had to change a little bit due to the ongoing work and commitments of our Strategic Target Groups, so the co-leaders have asked me to give them one more month to plan for what they can share with you all during those forum times. I am happy to adjust to give our leaders ample time to prepare and plan. For that reason, you will see the forum plan has adjusted ever so slightly to move up our forums on Anglican (Episcopal) Identity and Spirituality, beginning this Sunday, and the STGs will present in the weeks of November.
Tomorrow is the first Sunday of the month, which means a few things to note: We are continuing with the practice of worshipping, at the 10am service, all together, pausing formation in the undercroft. We will be working with our children and youth who desire to have a more active role in the liturgy beyond 1st Sundays, but in the meantime, this service is designed to have all of us together for the whole service. All voices, squeaks, and wiggles are welcome! If your children would be better served having something to occupy their hands during the service, there are bags at the entrances of the big church with books, drawing pads, and coloring tools. For Safe Church purposes, we are not able to allow children to roam freely without adult supervision. The Nursery will continue to be open for all of our youngest Episcopalians (age four and younger) and staffed by two of our vetted and trained staff.
Speaking of liturgy, you may have noticed that in August and September, during the 10am service, we used a different offertory sentence and blessing at the end of the service. Now that it is October, you will see that they have changed once again. I do this because I am attempting to lift up different aspects of this portion of liturgy and what it is doing. The offertory is a specific part of the liturgy, and these sentences highlight the different theologies our denomination holds around the act of Eucharist with our time and talents. I invite you to notice if it helps you see that part of the liturgy differently. Likewise, I like to change up the blessing from time to time to lift a different experience with the Divine. Some folks will identify with a loving father, mother, or creator imagery. Others will need more space from earthly identifiers. You will notice that throughout our sacred text there is a multiplicity of ways in which God is referred to, and God’s blessing pronounced. Indeed, within our approved resources through the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, we have great flexibility (as the clergy of the parishes) to help honor these different experiences with the Divine. I prefer to have these aspects in writing in the bulletin so that if you are moved by it (either in a positive or negative way) you can make note of it and spend time reflecting on where that reaction was coming from, as a spiritual practice. Good news is, those pieces will only change once a month or season (more frequently during the long season after Pentecost). I typically only change the Eucharistic prayer and service music settings at seasonal changes. I want you to be able to reliably predict when something may shift, like the seasons are marked out of doors with the colors and weather patterns; our liturgy shifts with time too.
I hope you enjoy this week’s edition of the Window and we’ll see you in Church!
In peace,