 St Alban’s Episcopal Church Bolivar, Missouri Tuesday-Wednesday, November 9-10, 2021 The new website Covid vaccine for kids The “end” times before Advent  The New Website stalbansbolivar.org It is up now and active although not all the pictures are posted yet – and some of the articles are not complete. However, I urge you to go take a look. Fr. Jos Tharakan and Becca Cox have worked hard to get this up, and it contains a good deal of information already. Across the top of the page you will see these tabs: About us, Are you new?, What’s Happening, News and Events, and Contact. “About us” is a short history of St Albans. “Are you new?” briefly introduces both visiting Episcopalians and newcomers from other churches to our particular way of being Church in Bolivar. What’s Happening? will take you to a series of articles – about Share your Christmas/bell ringing, our land use projects, how we share our building with other groups and two therapists to serve the community, and a section specifically about children and families at St Alban’s. We still have photos and more information to add to each of those. Right now the contact information tab does not include any photos or names of leaders in our church – but that will be up this week And below that you will see the latest newsletters, with the old ones archived; which can give browsers a quick sense of what we are like. And at the very bottom of the page are tabs to The Diocese of West Missouri news, to the National Episcopal Church site, and to St Alban’s Facebook page – Those might even be interesting for you who are already active at St Alban’s. The Church is bigger than our little congregation. Let us know what you think – what we need to add, re-word or explain better. Directory I am trying to update the directory, including graduates who have moved away but are still connected to us by love – Please, everybody, make sure I have your correct address, phone number, email – and also your birthdays so that we don’t forget to celebrate you. Just send information to me (Cathy+) at Susanna601@aol.com, or by text. If you tell me in the hall before Church I won’t remember it. I guarantee that. Bread, Wine and Roses We did get wine, after running out last weekend! I would like to invite you to bake bread for a Sunday. I’ll put up a signup sheet in the parish hall. It can be anything simple – a round loaf of white or wheat bread, or pita, or tortilla style, anything. It is good to encourage children’s assistance with the bread-baking. It is another way for them to see that everything IS holy: that the ordinary bread they bake also becomes for all of us the “Body of Christ and the bread of heaven” – always it is both-and. COVID vaccines for kids 5-11 Finally, you can get your child vaccinated at the Polk County Health Dept. anytime – without an appointment. Elijah got his yesterday morning before school, and both Joy and Raven got theirs after school. Selah will turn five in a few weeks and will gets hers then. The more of us who are vaccinated, the safer it is for the littlest ones – Cora, Will, RB, Lindsey, and Eleanor who cannot yet be vaccinated. We might not be exactly returning to normal life yet, but we’re getting there!  Share Your Christmas Those of you who took “angels” please be sure to purchase the gift and return it to us unwrapped but with the angel label attached before December 12. There are still some available if you didn’t get one.  The End is Near We are moving into the End Time of this liturgical year. The mandorla in which you see Christ sitting is a shape made by overlapping two circles. Where opposites meet and overlap like this, a third and sacred space is created – where elements of both opposites meet. It is the place of religious experience. We are made of both earth and spirit, and are both-and all the time. You can see the hint of a third circle, a rainbow where Christ is enthroned – He, too belongs to both earth and spirit, to time and to eternity – and is both the Alpha and the Omega. We do not do well to try to divide the weeds from the wheat, the good from the less good, our human longings from our spiritual ones. Let God do whatever winnowing needs to be done in us; trust that God will. And in the meantime, let us embrace with joy the wholeness of life, messy at it often is, and live as well as we can in that both-and space. In the Church of England, although less commonly here, these few weeks from All Saints Day, (November 1), until the beginning of Advent (November 28 this year,) are called Kingdomtide. It is still “ordinary” time -but with a difference. And it culminates with the feast of Christ the King, which anticipates the End of All Things – (and the great beginning!) where Christ will be all and in all. Immediately after that, we begin the year anew with four weeks of preparation for the December 25 celebration of Jesus’ Incarnation/ Christmas. |
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