Made by a child who participates in a midweek small group! Dear friends, Happy August! I had the privilege of spending the past two Sunday evenings at Holy Comforter as their pastor, Katie Hamlin, was on vacation. It was so wonderful to worship with them! Will you pause right now and pray for our friends at Holy Comforter in their work of church planting? We could also call this work "seed sowing" or "dough fermenting" or "field buying" in the language of Jesus' parables from

Scenes from recent Wild Wonder weeks after church: felting with Mandy, rocks with Jamie! Dear friends, I hope you are finding ways to slow down, rest, and play this summer. Please make sure to take a blank postcard from the narthex to send the church from your travels (but be warned: postcard mail moves slowly!) — it’s so fun to receive these! Earlier this summer, I invited our congregation to a summer of listening together in prayer. I hope you will all take a copy of the In

The view from our back porch on a rainy morning in Maine Dear Incarnation, I’m back from my vacation and very grateful (as ever!) to our wonderful staff team for capably holding down the fort. Did you catch the staff interview series they kicked off last week? I loved reading TJ’s musings on cold water, photosynthesis, and so much more, and I’m delighted by the opportunity to hear from members of our team over the coming weeks. And I’m grateful to all of you as well, for once

A summer Wild Wonder scene from many years past! Dear friends, Happy summer! School is wrapping up and summer officially begins this Sunday. I’m ready for the long days, warm weather, and relaxed rhythms of summer — how about you? Things relax at church, too. This is Ordinary Time, the longest season of the church year. “Ordinary” is taken from the word “ordinal,” as in the ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc), because that’s how the church counts the long stretch of S

The Widow's Mite (Le denier de la veuve), James Tissot,1886–94 Dear Incarnation, As my tears on Sunday showed, it is often tender to talk about money. At our core, we are all wondering whether there really is a God who has our best in mind, who will actually take care of our needs, whose kingdom is actually one of abundance rather than scarcity. And we often feel those questions most acutely in our money. As you continue to reflect on these tender matters, I have three simple

Sylwia Perczak (Polish, 1977–), “Boga nikt nigdy nie widział, Jednorodzony Bóg, który jest w łonie Ojca, o Nim pouczył” (Polish for "No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known" from John 1:18), 2023. Dear Incarnation, I loved celebrating Trinity Sunday with you! And I had several rich conversations afterward about the trinitarian nature of God, which is a bottomless well of contemplation. During my ser

“Amazed and astonished, they asked…” (Acts 2:7) Dear friends, I always love Pentecost Sunday. The children’s leadership, the languages, the paper airplanes, the candle lighting, the testimonies of God’s Spirit at work, the quiet prayers for gifts. I am often surprised by which of the Isaiah 11 gifts most resonates with me in a given year; this year, I was moved to pray for Counsel (described as, “to listen to God in our hearts; to receive God’s guidance about what should be d

Pentecost by Andrew Wyeth, 1989 (USA) Dear friends, This Sunday is Pentecost, the Feast of the Holy Spirit, one of the biggest celebrations of the church year (annual reminders: wear red and bring something to share for a global potluck!). Pentecost is also the culmination of the year for our children’s ministry, so we adapt our liturgy to mimic what they would be doing in the Atrium on this day. It’ll be more participatory, more visual, more tactile. We’ll also invite the ch

O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (from the Compline service in the Book of Common Prayer) "Gardener" by Janpeter Muilwijk (Netherlands), 2014. I love how the white blossoms mark Jesus' wounds and he is opening the gate around the tree.

A scene from the shadow puppet theater at our shared Incarnation-Holy Comforter Easter Vigil Dear Incarnation, It was wonderful to worship together on Sunday, and I’m so grateful for the beautiful weather for our rescheduled parish meeting! Thank you to everyone who helped us quickly reset the sanctuary and set up the playground with the all-important sound system, coffee, and snacks. You all are the best! On Sunday night, I headed over to Holy Comforter for their parish meet

Il Buon Pastore (The Good Shepherd), Arturo Martini, 1925 (Italy). I took a photo of this sculpture at the Vatican Museum last summer because I loved the shepherd's happy expression! Dear Incarnation, My sermon on Sunday was on the instructions for relating to governing authorities in 1 Peter 2:13-25; a challenging passage, and a difficult one to preach the morning after yet another act of political violence. I’ve gotten a LOT of responses to that sermon, and I appreciate all

We gave TJ LOTS of baptism experience this winter! Dear Incarnation, I was sad to reschedule our parish meeting on Sunday, although it wouldn’t be Incarnation if we weren’t flexing around something unexpected! I wanted to share one of the updates from that meeting in this week’s letter. You might recall that at our parish meeting a year ago, we announced that TJ Ono would be serving at Incarnation as a deacon. Every deacon needs a church in which to serve, and our bishop had

Comic #10 in a 30-day series on the resurrection by Madeleine Jubilee Saito. See the entire series on her site here . Happy Easter, friends! Easter is a whole season, not just a single day, 50 days (longer than Lent!) of celebrating the resurrection and all that it means for our lives. Jesus' resurrection shows us that God's salvation of the world is happening through the material world, not in spite of it; through our human bodies, not in spite of them. One simple way to c

The Resurrection of Lazarus, Julia Stankova, 2006 (Bulgaria) Dear friends, Our Lenten season of preparation is nearing its end. Holy Week begins this Sunday! You can see all of our services on the Holy Week page of the website. This is the first time we've ever been settled in a single building for the duration of Holy Week, without needing to teardown and setup between every service. As a result, we're trying a few things we haven't done before. And I invite you to try some

Healing Of The Blind Man by Michael Buesking Dear Incarnation, On Sunday, I preached about the fourth step of the Prayer of Examen: Face your shortcomings . Honestly name what has gone wrong in your day and in yourself. Saint Ignatius understood that this can be a daunting step, one that can inadvertently lead us away from God and into self-absorption, even self-loathing. That’s why it comes so late in the Examen, after laying a solid foundation of God's presence, illuminat

Jamie Floyd, one of our former worship leaders, recorded this calming version of Eat this Bread (Taizé) for us during the pandemic. It is one of the most-viewed videos on our YouTube channel. Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. (James 5:13) Dear friends, We are about halfway through our Lenten journey. We’ve spoken often of “journeying by stages,” borrowing language from our Old Testament passages the past two weeks. Like our spiritual ancestors, we journey by stag

The Sower by James Tissot, 1886-94 (France). Part of a series on the Life of Christ. Dear friends, On Sunday morning, in response to the unsettling news of strikes in Iran, we began our service with an additional prayer for peace. I am always grateful for these old prayers that carry us even when we can't yet form prayers of our own. This is the prayer from Sunday, taken from the Occasional Prayers section of the Book of Common Prayer: Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no

Jesus Offering the Light (Arathi) by Jyoti Sahi. 2004, India. Collection of the Artist. Dear Incarnation, Welcome to the season of Lent. The forty days of Lent are a traditional time for the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (acts of charity). As a community, we will spend this season practicing a particular form of prayer called the Examen, which I introduced in Sunday’s sermon ( listen here ). The Examen was created about 500 years ago by Saint Ignati

Dear friends, During my sabbatical last summer, I visited Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Though it is most famous for the stained glass interior, I found myself drawn to the stone carvings surrounding the arched exterior door. My two favorites are above: the creation and temptation of humanity. The figures are surprisingly tender for hundreds-years-old carved stone: God's loving gaze at the person he calls from the dust. God's gentle hand on the shoulder and arm of Eve, drawing he

Hiking in the Italian Alps last summer Dear Incarnation, This Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday, the final Sunday before the season of Lent. Our scriptures tell mysterious, evocative stories of mountain traverses, radiant light, descending clouds, and a divine voice. These are stories of heaven meeting earth; God’s divine life breaking into our creaturely life and our material world. It’s also an Acapella Sunday, when we’ll particularly attune our ears to the simplicity and po