Tag: Mother Barbara

Altar & Flower Guild Luncheon

Our Altar and Flower Guild Members are simply the best! They really are. They are dedicated, faithful ministers who understand the holiness of their work. They set the table (altar), wash the linens, fill the candles with oil, polish the brass, set out the bulletins for the altar party, prepare the bread and wine for service, arrange the flowers, and hold the space as sacred– and so much more.

We are very blessed that we have such a wonderful group of people involved in this ministry — and that they do it with joy and kindness. If you would like to join the group, please see Laura Bonanni or Mary Grace Shearer or Mother Barbara.

Each year Mother Barbara offers a luncheon  for these members to thank them for their service. It is a time of gathering, catching up, laughing, deepening friendships, and then to go over the Altar Guild instructions to see if anyone has questions or suggestions on how things can work more smoothly.

Thank you, Altar Guild Members. You really are the best!

Mother Barbara elected President of Standing Committee

At the Diocesan Convention, Mother Barbara was elected to the Standing Committee, and then re-elected as the President of the Standing Committee at a meeting following the Diocesan Convention.

The Standing Committee is often seen as “the vestry” of the Diocese, and whose main roles are to “stand with” the bishop while the bishop is in office and “stand in” for the bishop when there is a vacancy in the office.

This past year, the Standing Committee spent time understanding the Canons & Constitution of the Diocese which outline the roles and responsibilities of this group, working with the Commission of Ministry to reconstruct a ministry discernment process which meets the needs of the emerging church, collaborating with the finance committee regarding parish loans for capital campaigns, assisted in the engagement of interviews for the Bishop’s First Year in Review, and listened to and embraced the concept of missional church.

We look forward to continuing this ministry together as a group dedicated to moving the diocese into the next step in their vision of how to join God in God’s work in our communities.

 

Pilgrimage into the heart of Jesus

I am taking the chance of a lifetime and visiting the Holy Land from October 27th through November 7th. As I pour over the guidebooks, I find already a spiritual anticipation and shift beginning within. It’s exciting and scary and soul stretching to think that I’ll “walk in the path of Jesus”. Of course, that’s what we promise to do each week at church, to follow Jesus, so this will be a call to do this literally (walking the Via Dolorosa) as well as opening my heart to follow Jesus more fully with each step I take in my life.

I’ve been reading John Philip Newell’s book, The Rebirthing of God, in which one small sentence has captured my imagination and heart ~ “A pilgrimage is a return to our place of resurrection.” I’ve pondered this since if I go to the Holy Land only to see where Jesus was, but it doesn’t help me live more fully into Jesus’, and thus my resurrection, then I think I’ve missed the point. Resurrection implies transformation and new life. Here we go!

I ask that you hold me and my travel companions (Mother Betsy is one of them) in prayer as we gather to be brought deeper into the resurrection of Jesus by being in the land made holy by his presence.