Join us October 3 at 5pm for an outdoor Blessing of the Animals. Animals on leashes or in carriers are warmly welcome, as are stuffed animals and photos.
“It feels like this is something of our last Sunday of the school year, before we shift into summer mode next week with one 9am service. It’s also like we are at this societal moment of pivoting out of COVID-19 restrictions and more or less going back to normal – if there ever was such a thing. What’s been a bit disorienting for me was the radical abruptness of reopening. It was like the CDC and our civic leaders just got tired of the gray zone of semi-regulated communal life, and rather than slowly undimming the lights, they just decided to flick the switch on, and many of us, accustomed to the dark and coziness of quarantine, are squinting a little bit, trying to acclimate to the bright lights of normal.”
“Imagine a Portrait Gallery approached you and wanted to capture your image for posterity. How would you like to be portrayed? What picture of yourself would you like others to see? And do you think that picture ties up at all with the pictures others have of you? How would you be in this portrait? Where would you be? What emotion, position, look would just capture you?”
“Human beings take around 650,000,000 breaths in their lifetime;
About 25,000 a day. How many of those are we aware?
My Apple watch rings once an hour with a reminder to Breathe.
It’s kind of annoying:
What does it think I’ve been doing for the last hour?
It doesn’t give me a reminder to tell my heart to pump blood
Or to my intestines to digest food.
Why does it suppose I’ve neglected my breath?”
“We continue to make our lectionary march through the parables as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew, these strange stories that Jesus uses to explain the political economy of this Kingdom of Heaven of which He speaks.
The Kingdom of Heaven – the term He uses for the radical changes in human society and human behavior he exhorts his followers to join. A Kingdom, he promises, that is very near to all of them. A kingdom, He often tells those of His followers who have done something which He finds particularly exemplary, to which they are very close.
The rules and norms of this Kingdom as demonstrated by these parables must have sounded profoundly revolutionary to a poor people subjected to the heavy hand of Roman occupation and its collaborators.”
“There’s a story that during the 1948 Texas US Senate race, a group of campaign workers for Lyndon Baines Johnson found support from some new voters – who were already dead. Johnson and his aides were out one night, illegally registering voters in a cemetery, when they came upon a worn tombstone, moss had grown up around the grave; the name was barely readable. The worker at the stone took a quick look and then moved on to the next. The leader of the expedition called out: “No, no, no, go back and register that person. He has as much right to vote as anyone else in this cemetery!”
Christians believe in the communion of the Saints, a belief that says the dead who are now with God have a right to vote. Or rather they cast their vote with the way they lived. They have cast their lot with God, and in the lives of the saints we know the love of God more clearly.”
Our annual Memorial Tree Lighting will take place on December 6 at 4:30pm. We meet by the Memorial Tree at the top of the driveway for a brief prayer service, and then we hang ornaments on the tree in memory of loved ones. Join us for this moving event.
The Blue Christmas service will take place afterwards at 5:30 via Zoom. This quiet service is for people who feel sadness during the holiday season.
November 15: Episcopal Relief & Development
November 22: Places in the Heart — Belonging (Jon Small and Mike Balin)
November 29: Places in the Heart — Hope (Tricia Crockett, Walter Colsman, and Deb Howe)
December 6: Moth Radio Hour (Gary Poisson))
December 13: Moth Radio Hour (Gary)
December 20: Places in the Heart — Light (Mary Kitses, Carole Enright, and Elizabeth Cherniak)
This year’s stewardship theme builds on last year’s: Go Together. In these trying times we are reminded how important community, commitment, and connected-ness to our church and our shared faith journey really are.
We hope this moment can be a celebration of what St. Anne’s has done in this challenging time as well as a recommitment to our shared hopes and dreams for the days ahead. We don’t know exactly what the coming months will look like, but we know we need St. Anne’s. We know the world needs St. Anne’s. And we know how much St. Anne’s needs each and every one of you.
Our annual Advent Wreath-Making event will certainly be different this year. Instead of gathering in Flint Hall during Coffee Hour, staff has prepared take-home kits for parishioners to pick up at designated times before the first Sunday in Advent. Kits will contain a wreath form, three purple candles, one pink candle, candle holders, a tray… and a special surprise! You need only to collect greens from your own yard to complete your Advent wreath.
This fall, we offered St. Stephen’s Youth Programs (SSYP) individual school supply kits for B-READY, the homework club on site at St. Stephen’s. Thanks to all who generously gave pens, markers, scissors, and special-addition-this-year: earbuds. Additionally, we are participating in the new groceries gifts program serving SSYP families on Fridays, named B-LOVE. As always, your thoughtful contributions to the families in the South End and Blackstone Elementary neighborhood of St. Stephen’s are appreciated!
We have all experienced the frustration of not being able to hear someone who is speaking. Our reliance these days on technology for moments of connection raises the stakes, making any sound quality or volume issues not only a frustration but a loss. St. Anne’s has a team working to ensure consistent, clear sound on Sunday mornings, but it will never be perfect. There are simply too many factors involved.
So here are some things we can try at home if we are experiencing sound issues.
A familiar prayer can be a great comfort, but it can also become rote, so familiar that we do it without bringing our heart or mind to the task. I have been guilty of this lately, so I borrowed Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s An African Prayer Bookfrom our library. The book is separated into the traditional types of prayer, but I preferred to open it randomly and read whatever I found there.
St. Anne’s Reopening Task Force has continued to meet several times a month to consider all aspects of outdoor and indoor gatherings. Much of our attention has been focused on embellishing the outdoor services begun last summer by offering communion at 8am and adding an occasional Sunday afternoon service, complete with fire pit. The first of these was held October 18 and the next is planned for November 22. It may become a regular offering.
I’ve been very busy recently, and I’m delighted to report that we now have a working audio system that allows the choir to sing, and make recordings, from their cars! We celebrated the feast of All Saints on November 1st with perhaps the first Drive-In Evensong in the entire Anglican Communion, and we were featured in the Boston Globe: see the article here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/11/01/metro/choir-learns-sing-one-once-more/ We owe a tremendous debt of thanks to Tom Vollaro, who not only supervised the purchasing of the equipment, but also put it all together. He has even attended every one of our our events to run the new sound system. Thank you, Tom!
Students came to visit St. Anne’s in five different outdoor fellowship events this fall, as well as two Pageant filming afternoons. Atrium groups of grades K-8 meditated in a labyrinth and painted their own for everyone to walk, shared in more chalk art, painted fall trees and votives, hunted for mini pumpkins, learned about the history of voting and wrote postcards to voters, prayed with Garrett, played Bible Pictionary in teen teams, gathered for s’mores, and wrote greeting cards to parishioners. At home, they were offered Sunday School Zooms with presentations, prayer table, and breakout room discussions. All of our kids are working hard in their complicated school lives, so please hold them in your prayers. St. Anne’s will gather them in, at home or in the snowy yard, this winter.
Come one, come all, bring the family….for a “BYOC” fall clean-up day at St Anne’s on Saturday, November 21 at 9am. Nothing is quite the same this year, but know this: There will be an ample supply of Fall grounds clean-up tasks to go with your coffee! And what a nice way to get outdoors and make a difference…..
Of course, our fall focus is leaf clean up at both the Church and the Rectory. But there is a role for ANYONE who wants to participate, regardless of age, skills, physical ability, or energy level. While we hope to have some leaf blowers and chain saw aficionados, cleaning up gardens with rakes and tarps will also be needed.
I was talking to a wise spiritual friend recently and we were sharing the ups and downs of the present moment, particularly how this second wave of loneliness and stress and all the rest is somehow different than the first wave of sickness. You can follow the first wave (read first wave as physical illness) in the newspaper; the second is more subtle, more particular to each person, and, while less physically harmful, so much more soul-depleting. This wise friend said something, well, wise.
The year 2020 has us all registered in the same course, one we might call Impermanence. None of us thought we’d be in this class, but here we are, face to face with change, fragility, and life’s impermanence.
We are living in the midst of what has been called the Twindemic — Covid-19 and also the racial injustices that have been brought to light following the death of George Floyd. In some ways as we are moving closer to the presidential election, you may say we are shifting towards a Tridemic.
How can we survive this moment? What are the lessons this season has for us? How might our traditions of faith and spirituality help ground us in this shaken time? Our Forum series is meant to help us survive this course.
“Love God with all your heart soul and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. On these hang all the law and the prophets.
The Pharisees come at Jesus with a question about which commandment is the greatest. They are trying to trap Jesus. It’s actually a lawyer that asks the nitpicky question. It’s interesting to note that at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry he had 3 temptations put to him by the devil. Now a few days before his execution, at the end of Matthew’s gospel, in the last 3 weeks of readings, he has 3 tests offered by the religious authorities.”
“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s. Or in the more familiar language: render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s.
From its beginnings as a minority religious community in the midst of Roman military rule to its status today as a majority faith in a secular American democracy, the church and state are like the odd old crotchety couple who have been in the neighborhood forever. It’s not at all clear that they should have gotten together in the first place, and it’s very difficult to tell what is really going on in the relationship, but given they’ve been seen together for so long, it’s awfully hard to imagine them not occupying the same space.
Full disclosure that when I looked at the lesson for this Sunday, I immediately made plans to preach the Exodus reading. It is one of my absolute favorite readings, and I’ll say a brief word about it later on, but after being in our Bible studies this week, and hearing the different perspectives on the church and politics I can’t resist the minefield.”
“The Gospel today is one of the harder, or perhaps harsher, ones in our lectionary, and many preachers choose to address it by preaching from the Epistle instead, with its familiar and comforting turns of phrase that seem to be part of the very air we breathe. Peace that passes all understanding. Truth, honor, justice, purity, and excellence as human attributes. We can settle into those words like a comfortable old sweater, or a down comforter on one of these cold mornings.”
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11)
“Those words of Jesus in this morning’s Gospel reading are surely among the most comforting in the entire Bible. Lord knows, they hit me somewhere deep—because my burden this morning is a heavy one.
As your preacher this morning, I’m afraid I’m not here to offer comforting words. Rather, I’m here to tell the truth, as hard as it may be to hear. Because that’s what I owe each and every one of you. Because there is no such thing as any real comfort without facing the truth. I think the Gospel teaches us that.”
