Menu
Dear Saints of God,
It has been seven long months since we closed the church to in-person ministry due to COVID-19. These months have been challenging ones for our nation, our neighbors, and for each one of us. It has been particularly difficult for people of faith to be physically separated from the very communities to which we turn for support in times of trouble.
As your priest, I am honored and privileged to be invited into the joys and sorrows of your lives. Having listened to so many of you in these months, I can assure you that wherever you are in your journey with COVID-19, and Christ, you are not alone. Though our circumstances differ, your brothers and sisters in Christ each face their own challenges during this pandemic. And, as always, our crucified Christ is with us in our suffering.
If you are at all like me, you long for a return to in-person worship. Though we all know church will look and sound different when we physically gather again, we yearn for the Spirit to stir among the church assembled like She did that first Pentecost. And yet, circumstances necessitate the delay of our return to in-person worship.
As you know, our beloved Sanctuary continues to undergo seismic retrofitting. The project is progressing with competence and confidence. Currently, insulation and drywall are being installed! Based on the current construction schedule, we anticipate Armstrong Associates, our general contractor (GC), to complete their work around year-end. Once Armstrong’s work is complete, All Saints’ leadership can begin further preparations to the sanctuary that are beyond the GC’s scope of work. We prayerfully anticipate a return to in-person worship in early 2021. The completion of construction and return to in-person worship is good news, yet I imagine this timeline may feel a world away.
I want to assure you that I and parish leadership have been in many conversations about the viability of holding worship services outdoors. While we desire to make a way for in-person gathering, the public health guidelines (from both the County and the Diocese) and the limitations of our campus, made more complicated by construction, make holding in-person worship unfeasible at this time. I am grieved by this reality, and I trust the discernment of the faithful leaders of this congregation, myself included. No one could have foreseen that we would face a global pandemic during our Sanctuary Preservation and Readiness Project and Sojourn in the Parish Hall. Yet, that is the reality facing us. We have no choice but to face this reality with courage and faith.
In the meantime, we continue to hold each other in prayer; gather on Zoom to visit, pray, learn, and meditate on the Word of God; worship virtually together (did you see All Saints’ FANTASTIC Virtual St. Francis Day service?!); and write and call one another. The task force charged to prepare for our return to physical presence continues to plan and work. And we continue to be the Body of Christ, even as we are physically separated from one another.
I have been praying a prayer written by the Christian theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr; I offer it to you below, that it might be a means of grace for you in these times.
God’s peace be with you all,
Rev. Aimée
A Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
