Hallelujah! A safe, outdoor, socially distant, Sunday Service and Fellowship Time is on the horizon. Thanks to the hard work of our Safer Congregations Team, we are planning to hold our Flower Communion Service outside on Sunday, April 18, at 10:00 am. While we will be following safety guidelines to protect the most vulnerable among us, we will be together to see one another for the first time in over a year. There will be more details closer to the date. I am delighted for an opportunity to be with you in person, even if we won’t be hugging.

As we consider this milestone event, I am thinking of the question we ponder for this month’s theme of Becoming. What does it mean to be a people of Becoming? We are now in the season of Spring, Passover and Easter. I know that my spirits are always lifted as the weather warms up and the flowers and trees come back to life. This year it seems extra special as we begin to visualize life at the other side of this dreadful pandemic. I know that we still have a way to go and that if we shake off the important safety precautions, we could find ourselves right back where we were a year ago. Imagining that things work as we hope, who are we becoming, as a people who have gone through an unimagined experience of loss, fear, hardship, and challenge? What will be the result of our personal sacrifices involving concern for ourselves, as well as one another?

How will we be changed as individuals and as a congregation? The answers to these questions may be revealed to us as we continue to navigate the many changes we are assured of seeing, as we move forward together as Beloved Community.

In Love and Hope,

Rev. Alice Syltie