Beautiful and Beloved Friends,
As we embark on a new journey together, new because our relationship is just beginning, and new, mostly, because each day within the Holy samsara of life is as if a lifetime. Beginning and ending, starting and stopping, and ever continuing, we are invited during this Lenten season to enter, or re-enter, rather, our own lives through one of its interior doors, one that is typically inaccessible to us.
As we walk a well-known shared story of times from ancient past, we will be asked to open those doors, to meet ourselves in places best kept silent and secret. We will be encouraged to find the grace of the budding blooms around us to relinquish that which has held us captive to the sadness and pain of loss, of grief, and fractured living. Because our words always fail to fully illustrate or bookend the human experience, I will share with you in the listening, in the receiving and in the contemplation of this lovely and powerful season that stretches from flesh and bone to heart and Spirit.
To best support you on this journey, many opportunities have been created and shared in the 2017 CUCC Lenten Guide (copies are available on our website: communityucc.org). Please participate as you feel led. Beginning this Sunday, I invite you to join me in the “Grounded” conversation at
9:30am in the Vaughan Fellowship Hall where we will discuss what it is to be part of the “ground-up” spiritual revolution of our time. You can purchase the book from amazon or have it special ordered from area bookstores.
May the Spirit continue to lead the way,
Rev. Jenny Shultz-Thomas