This year Rev. Mary and I are steering the worship, faith development, and community life programming around an annual theme and monthly themes that deepen our exploration of that annual theme. The annual theme is:
Building Beloved Community through a focus on anti-racism and the practice of coming together again, in person, online, and in covenant.
The September theme was WELCOME, and it was the launch of this new theme and this new church year. We practiced welcome in many ways this month. In worship, we invited in Welcome as the ingathering and water communion on 9/11, and as Rev Mary invited us to Welcome the Breath on 9/18, and I invited us to welcome our whole selves into this community and into praxis on 9/25.
We also welcomed the start of many new religious education programs, with the launch of our 7th-9th grade Our Whole Lives class and an Anti-Racism class for elementary grade children, both on Thursday evenings. And speaking of Thursday evenings, we have welcomed community in for a weekly meal hosted in the Commons, every Thursday 5:30pm.
For those dinners, someone asked me recently if they will always be vegetarian. The answer is mostly Yes, because I believe that is the most welcoming thing to do. When we make our menu plans, we are hoping to make something that will be good and healthy and tasty and accessible by most people. If we aim for vegan food, with maybe a bit of animal product on the side at times, we will meet the needs of most of the people, since an omnivore can eat vegan. And there is plenty of wonderful food to welcome onto our tables, even with that restriction. Come and check out the food, and the good company!
Another event we held this month was to welcome our new Peace Pole. If you haven’t seen it yet, look for it right at the top of the stairs leaning to the main doors facing East End Street. We dedicated the pole and had a lovely potluck dinner together on the 24th.
The energy, enthusiasm, and attendance have all been great this month. In fact, attendance on Sundays has reached a point where we are thinking about the Sunday schedule and how many worship services we need to have. We want to remain a community of welcome! If you are interested in being part of that conversation, you can join Rev Mary and myself this Sunday, Oct 2nd, at 11:30 for a discussion of the Sunday service schedule.
As we leave this theme and move on to Covenant, what aspects of Welcome do we want to carry forward? What or who are you welcoming into your life? When do you feel welcomed? What are the blocks to welcome? How can we be a welcoming community? I would love to hear your thoughts on all of these questions!
