The Epistle:
Turning Together

There is a certain feeling in the air when a community is learning its rhythms again.

Chairs set up outside for pancakes.
Voices chanting prayers we haven’t sung in a while.
Lenten purple appearing where green once was.
Laughter returning to familiar spaces.

We are in one of those seasons.

As Lent unfolds and Holy Week and Easter draw closer, we find ourselves not only observing an ancient liturgical rhythm - we are re-learning our communal one. Shrove Pancakes Sunday, celebrated outdoors in the sunshine, felt like both a tradition and a small resurrection. Syrup and song. Fellowship and fresh air. A simple, holy joy in being together again.

That same weekend, we were grateful to welcome Kathy Wilder, Executive Director of Camp Stevens, which is one of our Thrift Shop partnerships by way of CS’ Equity Grant program. She preached and reminded us of the power of gratitude. 

She reflected on the steady, often unseen work of partnership, in how ministries flourish not through flash, but through faithfulness. Our Outreach Partners continue to serve. Our Thrift Shop continues to thrive. In the midst of the past year and a half, with all its remediation and rebuilding, there has been resilience.

That, too, is a rhythm. Gratitude. Steadiness. Turning again toward what matters most.

Lent invites that kind of turning. The word itself comes from an old English word for “spring” (lencten). Even when branches appear bare, something underneath is softening and growing. Case in point with our beloved wisteria slowly starting to make its appearance again on campus.

Admittedly, we began this season in a very human way. On Ash Wednesday at our noonday service, I realized minutes before the liturgy that the purple vestments I had arranged to borrow weeks ago were still sitting with our siblings over at St. Augustine’s. My whoops...! So Stephen and I began Lent in white.

It was not the plan.
But I’m realizing perhaps it was the point.

Lent does not begin because we have everything together. It begins because we are willing to turn: with humility, with humanness, with honesty.

And we are turning as a parish, too.

In the coming weeks, we will welcome the Rev. Canon Melissa McCarthy as Priest-in-Charge to walk alongside us in this interim season. At the same time, our search committee continues its faithful and steady work, bringing us closer to calling our next rector. We are pivoting again, not in panic, but in trust.

Seasons of in-between can feel tender. They ask patience of us. They ask openness. They ask us to resist grasping for quick certainty and instead to keep showing up. To pray, to serve, to sing, to gather at tables with pancakes and with bread and wine.

So thank you.

Thank you for your patience as we slowly reimagine and reignite our shared life.
Thank you for embracing new rhythms while honoring old ones.
Thank you for continuing to turn... both personally and together.

With Holy Week on the horizon and Easter light not far behind, may we trust that God is at work beneath the surface, both in purple and in white, in transition and in hope, in every steady act of love.

With gratitude for this parish and for each of you, may we continue to turn, turn, turn.

In Joy, KC+

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