May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be always with you!
It was lovely to "see" so many of you last night at our Ash Wednesday service. We are now into the season of Lent - a 6 1/2 week journey towards the cross and on to Easter. This is a season where we are given an opportunity to deepen our faith and grow in love. At the service last night, I used the analogy of "Spiritual Spring Training" - it is a chance to develop the spiritual strength that we will need to travel with Jesus through Holy Week, or to travel through all of the challenging times that we face in our lives. That is going to be the theme that we will be following over the 6 Sundays of Lent - Lent as a season of preparation when we can deepen our faith.
Today, I wanted to talk a bit about PIE Day. If you are a math geek like me, you are probably already familiar with Pi Day (3.14 or March 14). Often on Pi Day, people celebrate with pie (got to love a good pun!). For the past couple of years, Affirm United has adopted Pi Day to celebrate PIE Day - as an Affirming Community of Faith, we are called to be Public, Intentional, and Explicit (PIE) about our welcome and inclusion of all people into every aspect of the life of our church. PIE Day gives us an opportunity to practice being Public, Intentional, and Explicit.
Our Two Rivers Affirming Team has been meeting for a couple of weeks to plan out what we might do on March 14 to celebrate PIE Day. We have a couple of different plans in the works:
1) We encourage you, on March 14, to post about PIE Day on whatever social media you use (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok etc.). You might include a picture of the pie you are eating and write about what it means to be affirming. You might create a video of yourself eating pie, talking about why it is important that we are an Affirming church. You have a couple of weeks to think about what you might want to post on March 14.
2) We will be doing a Facebook Live video that evening at 7pm on the Two Rivers Pastoral Charge Facebook page. Facebook Live allows me to invite "guests" to join me - we would appear side-by-side, even though we would be in different places. I would then do a short interview with you (3 minutes?) and invite you to share why you think that being Affirming is important. Right now, I am recruiting "guests" who are willing to speak with me in that video for a couple of minutes. In order to be a guest, you need to:
- have a Facebook account (or have access to someone else's Facebook account!)
- have a computer, phone, or tablet that has a camera
- be excited to talk about being Affirming
(Don't worry if you don't feel very "tech-y" - I will walk you through the process, and we can even do a practice run ahead of time with no one watching.)
If you would like to be one of our guests for this Livestream, please get in touch with me so that I can start putting together a schedule!
There was a computer glitch that delayed printing the paper copies of the Annual Report, but that has now been resolved, the report has been printed, and copies are available at both Long Reach (on the table in the River Room) and at Westfield (on the buffet in the hallway). Mother Nature seems to be conspiring against me getting over to Summerville on Tuesdays this month, but as soon as I can get over there, copies will also be available at Summerville! Thank you again to everyone who submitted reports, and to Elaine for her patience in formatting then printing the report.
We have started our congregational reading and discussion of "Faith on the Move" in the Westfield United Church Facebook group. (This group is open to everyone in our congregations - you don't need to be a member at Westfield to join.) Each day I am posting the discussion prompts from the devotional, and opening up the comments section so that you can share as much or as little as you would like.
And I think that is it for today. I will be sending out Sunday's bulletin closer to the time (probably on Saturday), and I look forward to "seeing" you in worship!
Blessings to you and yours, today and always!
Kate.
Rev. Kate Jones
Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
(506) 757-2201 (office)
(506) 343-1307 (mobile)
Pronouns: she/her/hers
"Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?"
Jesus replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "You must love your neighbour as you love yourself."
(Matthew 22:36-39)