From the Rector

My dear friends in Christ,
 
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!
 
Happy Easter, y’all!  The Great Fifty Days continues, and I hope that this Eastertide has brought you all many blessings and at least a little peace in the midst of these continually “interesting” times in which we live.  I hope that you all were able to connect in some way or another with at least some of our Easter liturgies, and that you experienced our shared worship to be as comforting, as rejuvenating, as inspiring as I did.  If so, then ALLELUIA, indeed!
 
It’s “been a minute,” as we say down South, since I had a chance to connect with y’all via this Newsletter column.  My apologies!  The first part of the calendar year, from a church & ministry perspective, always seems to be pretty intense.  We come off the high of the twelve days of Christmas, and we immediately encounter the Feast of the Epiphany.  For us, just after Epiphany comes our annual parish meeting.  From there, it’s never very long until Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season which brings its own particular kind of spiritual intensity to all the other intensities we already have been experiencing.  Then, before you know it, it’s Holy Week, and then Easter, and it hain’t gwine be (oh, excuse me ~ that’s Southern for “it is not going to be”) long at all before we’re at Pentecost and are celebrating the birthday of God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church!
 
Whew!
 
So in the midst of all that ~ not to mention the complex lives we’re all leading and the intricate web of relationships that tie us all together as a parish family ~ it’s good to pause for a moment and reconnect.  And before too long, we will have more tangible ways to do just that.  There’s already a team of folks planning and organizing a renewed coffee hour for Sunday mornings, to be held outdoors to take advantage of the long-awaited change in the weather and allow us to fellowship more safely, even as the Covid pandemic still refuses to set us completely free.  Our Youth Minister, Erin Wolf, is already planning a number of parish events to bring us together over the summer.  And I will continue to expand our mid-week worship offerings, continuing (and growing) our Wednesday evening healing Eucharist and also (very soon) adding a Tuesday morning Eucharist, as well.
 
It’s an exciting time for All Saints.  If you feel the Spirit moving you perhaps to get more directly involved in this renewing and reinvigorating of our parish life, please reach out to me, directly, or contact the church office ~ several existing Ministry Teams would love to have your ideas, energy, enthusiasm, and service … and there are a number of Ministry Teams that don’t exist yet but very much need to!  There are more ways than ever to get involved now, so let’s do it, y’all!  Here’s to a blessed and beautiful summer ahead.
 
Peace & blessings to you all,
C+

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