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?”
It’s hard to believe that the season is shifting from summer to fall, and as hard to believe that after six months, we are still needing to safely manage and navigate COVID 19 risk in all that we do as individuals and as a faith community. This has been a difficult time for all of us….
But I will go on to say that I feel proud that St. Anne’s has been able to slowly and successfully move forward over the past six months, and I would like to point to a few of our blessings.
Not long into quarantine a friend on a school board shared something she heard the head of school say as they were thinking about re-opening procedures: “We are living at the nexus of persistence and patience as we do our best to plan ahead.” I have very much felt to be at the intersection of persistence and patience. This is a challenging tension to live into – personally, I am much better at persistence. I love a good challenge, or a new opportunity for adaptive thinking. Patience is much more difficult, especially when life throws you into Patience’s classroom and you have no idea when class lets out.
Do you work from home or the coffee shop on Wednesdays? During Lent, come work from home….at church. Free Wi-Fi and coffee provided, and feel free to use our office supplies. Church will be open 8:30-4:30; come any or all of that time. We will have Noonday Eucharist in the side chapel, followed by a soup lunch. This will begin Wednesday, March 4th, and continue through April 1st.
