'Til We Meet Again“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Trinity is hands down the healthiest, most healing church community I have ever been in or even heard about. You are loving, awesome and capable I believe that the Church is the best hope for the world. And you are among its best representatives.
So it is hard to leave you all, even if only for a year. As you know, in September I am off to Berkeley to train as hospital chaplain at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. And while I feel very called to get this training at this time, and very excited about the future, I am sad to be away from you.
Nevertheless. I am completely confident that you will get along and even thrive without me. We have a great new youth leader in Julie Petrone, who has been helping me for the last three years with our youth group. And she has a very able co-leader in Steve Jahr, who also has been helping for the same amount of time.
Many people have been trained as Pastoral Partners and are already serving with great love. Star Rudge, who has been the real driving force behind this ministry, will continue to serve with amazing organization and care.
Fr. Charles will step in to lead the Sunday evening Contemplative Service, and I hope to be there from time to time as well. The Sunday Evening Team is awesome and can practically go it alone, thought they won’t have to.
The new Young Adult Group is being ably shepherded by Kiki and Udochi Okeke. It varies in size but not in spiritual depth. They have already read and discussed Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved and Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. If you are in that age group, please drop in on them Sunday evenings at 5:30.
And as I have been repeating these last months, I am not about to stop being part of the Lord of the Rings group! That ministry began about three years ago with an all day workshop and morphed into a regular on-going study group that has looked at topics ranging from “The Spiritual Journey of Merry and Pippin” to “Aragorn as a Christian King.” We even had a class in writing Elvish!
I am really going to miss our great acolyte corps, ably led and mentored by Karen Keilson. I will be serving a couple of Sundays each month at a church in Moraga that has an acolyte corps of three (including my nephew—who is shocked, shocked, to find out that I require that the acolytes wear black shoes.). Please, for me, don’t stop with the black shoes!
I will also miss all the fun we had on our ski trips, confirmation classes, women’s retreats and even our Vestry meetings—and that is saying something!
“Vayan con Dios”—Go with God,
And “Hasta la vista”—until later. |
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