Kristina DeFrancesco
Prayer for a New Day
Prayer for a New Day
Worship, News
Kristina DeFrancesco
Blessing of the Animals October 3

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.

Blessing of the Animals October 3
Sermon
Kristina DeFrancesco
Pentecost 2 (6/6/21) – Garrett Yates

“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.”

Pentecost 2 (6/6/21) – Garrett Yates
Sermon
Kristina DeFrancesco
Trinity Sunday (5/30/21) – Garrett Yates

“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?”

Trinity Sunday (5/30/21) – Garrett Yates
Sermon
Kristina DeFrancesco
Day of Pentecost (5/23/21) – Garrett Yates

“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?”

Day of Pentecost (5/23/21) – Garrett Yates

Welcome Joe!

Welcome Joe and Shoko!

Our new curate, Joe Kimmell will officially join St. Anne's staff this week, his first Sunday being July 24. We hope you will join us in the Sanctuary for 9 am worship, followed by a welcome coffee hour in Flint Hall.

Joe is originally from Chicago where he grew up in an evangelical church. After college, Joe moved to Lhasa, Tibet as an evangelical missionary. While studying at Tibet University, he met his wife Shoko who was in Tibet for her doctoral research on Tibetan Buddhism from her native Japan, where they were married in 2009. They moved together to the Chicago area in 2010, as Joe completed an M.A. in Clinical Psychology. Then, after moving to Cambridge in 2013, Joe earned an M.Div. at Harvard Divinity School, before discerning a call to ordained ministry as an Episcopal priest.

Now, while Shoko teaches colloquial Tibetan in Harvard's South Asian Studies department, Joe is completing the final year of his Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard in New Testament and Comparative Religion. In addition, he serves as an adjunct professor at Boston College, teaching introductory courses to the Bible. In their spare time, Shoko and Joe love to travel, cook (Shoko), and watch reruns of really old Law and Order episodes (Joe).

Summer Worship: one service at 9 am starting 6/18

Our worship schedule shifts to a single service beginning Sunday, June 18, 2022. At 9 am each Sunday, we will hold a service of spoken Holy Eucharist in the Sanctuary and via livestream.

Our office hours will also change during the summer: we will be closed on Mondays and Fridays, and open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at the reduced hours of 9 am to 1 pm.

As always, if you have questions, please email Jennie Cook, Parish Manager, at Jennie@stanneslincoln.org or leave her a message on the office phone line: 781.2259.8834, x 201.

In-Person Worship Resumes!

We are excited to announce that we have resumed in-person worship now that the building is in the final stages of repair and reconstruction. Due to the end of Daylight Savings Time this Sunday, March 13, we will hold just one service of Holy Eucharist at 10 am; the service will also be livestreamed (to access the link, visit our Home Page).

Next week, on Sunday, March 20, we will hold an in-person spoken Holy Eucharist at 8 am, followed by a hybrid (in-person and livestream) service of Holy Eucharist at 10 am.

Contemplate Lent with our 2022 Lenten Booklet

Once again the St. Anne’s community joined in creating a compilation of poems, readings, and reflections to guide us through the Lenten season. This year’s theme was about finding the “holiness in the ordinary,” which each submission considered in a unique way. We also included each Sunday’s particular collect. Every St. Anne’s family was mailed a hard copy of the Booklet; if you would like one, download it here or email Jennie to send you a copy.

A Message from the Wardens

As you know by now, a ceiling sprinkler head in the hall outside the upstairs kitchen failed the night of Sunday, January 16, resulting in substantial water damage to the core of the building on all three floors. The primary damaged areas are the interior hallways, the copier room, Jennie’s office, and the multipurpose room downstairs. Gratefully, the Sanctuary side of the building was not affected in any way; likewise, clergy offices, the library, the elevator, and other major equipment (except the copier) were unaffected.

The fire alarm system triggered the Lincoln Fire Department, which responded quickly and turned off the water; they also notified church staff. Although the water did not run for long, it was at a high volume. Our multi-talented maestro, Jay, and his wife, Jean, being the only ones able to respond immediately, went over late Sunday night and moved or covered items being dripped on (HUGE thanks to Jay and Jean!).

Insurance claims were filed right away with Church Insurance Group and ServPro’s drying equipment was up and running by Tuesday evening. The cause of the sprinkler failure is still under investigation; it was probably not due to freezing. The affected areas are now completely dried out, and all of the wet materials – carpets, insulation, ceiling tiles, wallboard – have been removed, as has the drying equipment. We expect to be able to start reconstruction very soon.

For now, the building remains closed while we relocate some staff offices and set up construction perimeters. Please assume no in-person activities for at least another week. Some previously scheduled activities may need to be relocated elsewhere in the building or re-scheduled. If you have questions or need anything, please email Jennie at parishoffice@stanneslincoln.org. This coming Sunday, January 30, we will again have one 10 am Zoom service of Morning Prayer, preceded by a 9 am zoom forum on the 2022 budget and a revision of our bylaws. We will let you know as soon as possible about the resumption of in-person services and limited in-person activities. Thank you for your patience and your good wishes!

Tom Shively & Carol Carmody, Wardens

,

Lenten Booklet 2022 Call for Submissions

,

This year’s Lenten Booklet Theme is “Holiness in the ordinary.” We typically associate holiness with our Sanctuary, the Bible, prayer and liturgy and perhaps saints. In observance of Lent and Holy Week 2022, let’s contribute our thoughts and meditations, memories, favorite poems, song lyrics about holiness outside of the church as well. Where have you encountered God? Please submit a page (250 words or less) by February 11 to jennie@stanneslincoln.org. Need help? Contact Joan Perera, Kay Peterson, or Al Rossiter.

Pentecost 2 (6/6/21) – Garrett Yates

Pentecost 2 (6/6/21) – Garrett Yates

“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.”

Trinity Sunday (5/30/21) – Garrett Yates

Trinity Sunday (5/30/21) – Garrett Yates

“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?”

Day of Pentecost (5/23/21) – Garrett Yates

Day of Pentecost (5/23/21) – Garrett Yates

“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?”

Easter 7 (5/16/21) – Kyra Cook

Easter 7 (5/16/21) – Kyra Cook

“I am not a priest—I just poorly play one on Facebook live. My study of the Bible is relatively recent and shallow—I didn’t find my way into regular worship until I met Gene. Sure, my childhood featured Easter Sunday services in fluffy Talbots dresses and two-weeks each summer of Vacation Bible School… but those were less an expression of my belief in God than they were my being easily bribed by flowery dresses and weeks of time at Grandma’s house.

I’m not a rector, but Iama writer. I’ve consumed a lot of stories in all sorts of different media. I love the craft of storytelling, and the tropes and tools we writers use to tell a story right. That’s why I think I love John’s gospel.”

Easter 6 (5/9/21) – Garrett Yates

Easter 6 (5/9/21) – Garrett Yates

“Our tradition provides us two holy books, two sacred texts, to shape our spiritual imaginations. The first text is Holy Scripture – the Old and the New Testaments containing the great story of salvation, providing us the teachings of Jesus, and the examples of the earliest followers. The second Sacred Text is the Book of Creation. We don’t normally think of creation as a text, but all the elements are there. There are characters (both heroes and villains), and landscapes, and family conflicts, and resolutions and more bloody conflicts. And like any text, or book, it’s there for the reader to interpret it. To try and make sense out of it. What’s it about? Can we discern a plot?”

Easter 5 (5/2/21) – Garrett Yates

Easter 5 (5/2/21) – Garrett Yates

“Bertrand Russell, the famous British philosopher, once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said, “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You're very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it's turtles all the way down!

Two millennia ago, while the Stoics, and the Platonists, and the Aristotelians were holding forth about the motions of the planets and the stars and the observable universe, in the back of the room, a little old man stands up, and clears his throat, and says something so preposterous you’d hardly believe it: it’s love all the way down.”

Easter 4 (4/25/21) – David Urion

Easter 4 (4/25/21) – David Urion

“This fourth Sunday of the Easter season is awash in images of shepherds and flocks. This Gospel passage, and the 23rd psalm from which its imagery derives. The original audience listening to Rabbi Jesus would have been more than familiar with the frequent use of images of sheep and flocks in scripture and teaching.

Years ago, when I dropped out of college for a bit of time that was graciously considered by the dean of students as a “leave of absence”, I lived on a farm in the Upper Connecticut Valley in New Hampshire. This farm raised blueberries and trees and was self-sustaining for its own produce. Living there was, quite literally, living off the land. Like most New England farmers, the man who owned the farm was responsive to his neighbors’ needs. Farming in New England is not for the faint of heart and you survive in solidarity with the other resolute souls who try to earn their living out of that stony ground and frequently harsh climate. One of the neighbors kept sheep, and when he would need to leave town for a time, we took care of his sheep. It was thus that I had a very short-career as a not very capable shepherd. The Mediocre Shepherd, you might say.”

Easter 3 (4/18/21) – Garrett Yates

Easter 3 (4/18/21) – Garrett Yates

“Easter Sunday puts a pause on the world’s worries: pilgrims make their pilgrammages; choirs belt out their strong hallelujah’s; the pope says mass for thousands; preachers mock death; the adorned altar proclaims spring, and for a brief shining moment the hope of Jesus Christ risen is tangible. But then the world blinks, as it were, loses its concentration and returns its attention to other pressing matters: COVID variants in the air, a border in disarray, a boiling planet and brutal gun violence. Then it turns to look for this hope again, and it’s gone. An array of forces is approaching us led by the baddest bully of them all: death. Where is that Easter bravado today?

One week after, do you still believe in Easter? How? There was once a man who did not believe in Easter. His name was Thomas the Twin; we might call him St. Skepticus.”

Easter 2 (4/11/21) – Garrett Yates

Easter 2 (4/11/21) – Garrett Yates

Easter Sunday puts a pause on the world’s worries: pilgrims make their pilgrammages; choirs belt out their strong hallelujah’s; the pope says mass for thousands; preachers mock death; the adorned altar proclaims spring, and for a brief shining moment the hope of Jesus Christ risen is tangible. But then the world blinks, as it were, loses its concentration and returns its attention to other pressing matters: COVID variants in the air, a border in disarray, a boiling planet and brutal gun violence. Then it turns to look for this hope again, and it’s gone. An array of forces is approaching us led by the baddest bully of them all: death. Where is that Easter bravado today?

One week after, do you still believe in Easter? How? There was once a man who did not believe in Easter. His name was Thomas the Twin; we might call him St. Skepticus.

Easter Sunday (4/4/21) – Garrett Yates

Easter Sunday (4/4/21) – Garrett Yates

I studied Greek in college. And I have to admit I didn’t choose this major for any high or lofty reason; I have since begun to tell people that I wanted to read the New Testament in the Original; that’s not really true. We had something of a “Major’s Fair” at our Orientation Week, and all the other tables were full and bustling except for the Classics table – so I wandered over, and I was drawn in by a kindly professor and a big plate of Grape leaves. I ate 4 or 5 or maybe 12, and I signed my name on a sheet.

I’ve been thinking back on those early days recently, especially my first classes. The first Greek word I learned was the first person singular present tense indicative verb LUO. I quickly discovered it means “I loose.” You learn it on day one of the Greek class because it’s a short, regular verb that’s easy to conjugate. It’s a particularly useful verb for those who’re in the habit of tying up oxen or releasing mules. Now, as a 18 year old boy from a suburban town I didn’t have a lot of life experience to bring to sentences like “I would have loosed the oxen,” or “They are going to loose the donkeys,” let alone “I would have loosed,” “I used to loose,” and “I was going to have loosed.”

But then comes the great day when you first pick up a copy of the New Testament in its original Greek. And then you enter a new world.