Hello, Friends!

      I have missed you!   Our two-week lapse in communication through the Epistle has underscored for me the value of all the ways we stay connected.   Over the past five years I have come to view this space as a venue not only for my reflection, but for my engagement, with you,  of all kinds of thinking about our common life as members of the St. Luke faith community.  And we value as members all kinds of folks—some long since transplanted to other locales, others associated by relationship to active participants, and still others who just want to stay in the loop, and find our weekly communiqués helpful on their spiritual path.

       From time to time I’ll hear from one of you I’ve never even actually met face to face, and through an e-mail exchange, hand-written note or phone conversation, a vital connection is made, or maintained.   I’m grateful for those encounters, and I hope for more.

       As many of you know, we now have an excellent website , beautifully maintained by our webmaster Mary Parker.  In time to come I hope we can expand our capabilities to include such venues as a sermon response area, with summations of each Sunday’s message, and space for engagement in dialogue about the week’s scriptures and proclamation.   I’d also like us to expand our prayer capabilities via the web, with space for sharing blessings and needs in a fuller, deeper way, as well as any nourishing gleanings that might benefit others.

      Of course there’s no substitute for the live moment, and there’s no amount of technical wizardry that can come close to recreating or replacing the Spirit energy that blooms in our space s when the faithful gather to worship, and learn, and serve, and create together in person. But all our ways of being and becoming are blessed  with holy human possibilities, and I’m grateful for this space, as one unique channel of communication. I really do consider the channel to be bi-directional—I really do love hearing from you, about whatever thoughts, notions, questions, inspirations, the week’s offerings may have triggered for you.—or about whatever else may be on your mind.

      Our recent experiences with technical difficulties  (still ongoing!) and the temporary obstacles to communication they have posed have served as a significant reminder to me, that I don’t want us to take any of our connections, with anyone, for granted.   I’m newly committed to our faith community’s call to continue thinking, dreaming, experimenting, growing in all kinds of ways of reaching out to touch and be touched by holy wisdom, in the spirit of Christ’s boundless, creative love .

      We are in Eastertide, our loveliest, most hope-full season of the Christian year.   Each week we’ll have the opportunity to touch base with the core truths that bless and challenge us to follow in Christ’s life-giving way—that all creation is blessed by God, that all humanity is beloved of God, and that all our lives are empowered by God, for all kinds of marvelous, loving work.

       I look forward to seeing and being with all of you who choose to be in and around the church house, and to our expansion of all our circles of communication and connection in God, this week, and all our days to come.

Shalom,

Sarah