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