Episcopal Church of St. Anne

Dear Friends in Christ

As we celebrate the last week of the Easter season, we look forward to two great feasts of the church:  Pentecost and Trinity Sunday.

Pentecost celebrates the experience of being a church. Trinity celebrates the nature of the God who set all things in motion and is the author and progenitor of the church.

Catherine of Siena, living in the 14^th Century wrote this prayer:

You, O eternal Trinity, are a deep sea, into which the more I enter the more I find, and the more I find the more I seek…

O eternal Godhead what more could you give me than yourself? You are the fire that ever burns without being consumed; you consume in your heat all the soul’s self-love; you are the fire which takes away cold; with our light you illuminate me so that I may know all your truth.  

She combines deep knowledge of the nature of God with images of fire and light.  Often, we think about fire as what will destroy us when have done those things which we ought not have done.  In Catherine of Siena’s prayer, fire becomes the eternal passion that God has for God’s creatures and is the way by which we can draw more closely to Him. The light which emanates from the fire helps us see and understand the God that we worship.

Happy Pentecost and Trinity Sunday:  days that celebrate both fire and light!

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

I am using a different mailing list than the one I have been using – so some of you might be receiving this for the first time.  Let me know if you want off the list.

I am leaving for vacation on Wednesday, May 20 and will be returning on June 2.  The Rev Edward Dondi will be filling in at St Anne’s and Pastor Barry Vail will be filling in at Zion.

Morning and Evening Prayer on ZOOM will be on hiatus from now through the month of August.  We will resume in September.

Coming up are our summer activities for kids

Grandma’s Garden, St Anne’s version: 

·      June 15 -26: 9 am – noon

·      Lark’s Ascending Concert on June 24 @ noon

·      Art Show and Celebratory Lunch on Friday, June 26

Grandma’s Garden, Zion’s & Primera Iglesia’s version 

·      Wednesdays in July 9 am – noon

·      All our favorite activities will be back

o   Petting Zoo

o   Water Fun

o   Painting 

o   The Fire Truck

We will also be singing, learning Bible verses and worship God using the Group Ministries Rainforest Falls Curriculum

Registration Forms are available at the St Anne’s and Zion’s Parish Offices and will soon be available on the websites of both churches

Dear Friends in Christ,

The bishops are coming!  The bishops are coming!

Bishop Jeff will be at Zion on Sunday, August 9, to worship with us and join you for coffee hour.  He wants to connect with us and get a sense of how the synod can be of help to the congregation.  He has heard plenty about Zion’s past.  Now he wants to be a part of Zion’s future.  (Last year, the ELCA supported Grandma’s Garden with a $4,000 grant.)

Bishop Greg will be at St Anne’s on Sunday, September 20.  This will be his second visit with us – this time he comes as the bishop and not a carefully scheduled candidate.  In the various fora at which I have interacted with him, he seems to be more interested in hearing what we have to say.  He is less interested in telling us how he plans to lead the diocese.    I am sure we have lots to tell him.

I will be on vacation Wednesday, May 18 – June 2  (Pentecost and Trinity Sunday).  Ellie, Eric and I will be visiting friends I the Northeast and spending time on Martha’s Vineyard.  Jim has some pressing church business to attend to – so he will still be in residence while we are away.  He will make sure that the garden and the chickens will be in fine form for Grandma’s Garden (June 12 – 26).

At Zion

·      Pastor Barry will be presiding and preaching for both services

At St Anne’s

·      The Rev Edward Dondi will be covering Pentecost (May 24).   We will have special music for Pentecost and maybe some other special happenings as well..

·      The Rev. Lynn Morlan will be covering Trinity Sunday (May 31).

Our staff for Grandma’s Garden, St Anne’s version is in place.  Our curriculum is getting there.  Our age bracket this year is preschool through 6^th grade.  If a child needs to come with a older relative, that person is welcome as well.

Grandma’s Garden, Zion version will be 5 Wednesday mornings in July.  This is a Zion/Primera Iglesia collaboration.  Registration forms coming soon.

Next week will be our last Evening and Morning Prayer until the fall.  Wednesday Mornings at Panera will also take a break until September.  I look forward to starting up these moments of connection in the fall when the summer crazies have come to an end.

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

Dear Friends in Christ

Today, I am flustered and in a hurry.  

Holy Week begins on Sunday with Palm Sunday and envelops us – you, me, Zion, St Anne’s, the whole church – all of next week.  AND today is our daughter’s, Ellie’s, birthday. 

As she looked forward to a visit from a friend, Emily Dickinson spoke of brushing the summer by, of winding the balls of time to make time move more quickly because it was hard to wait for her friend to come

I have been knitting Ellie a sweater, so the winding and unwinding (sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally) of balls of yarn are opportunities for reflection closer: 

 I find that I am reflecting on how long ago Ellie was born,  on the many Holy Weeks I have observed, the congregations I have served and the ones I am serving now.

I am aware of the importance service, community, the sacrifices we make for one another, and God’s sacrifice of his son.

Reflection and prayer are all jumbled up together.

So here is a little piece of George Herbert’s poem, Prayer, to keep you and me moving toward Holy Week.

Prayer is….

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today, Friday, March 20, 2026, is the Spring Equinox; 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness.  The words, equilibrium, equanimity, equal come to mind.  When we use these words in conversations about our churches, our communities and ourselves, we are either experiencing or hoping to experience a sense of balance and a sense of peace.

Anxiety and exhaustion, the bugbears of our modern lives, are always lurking: always ready to disturb whatever equilibrium we have established or were hoping to establish.  Anxiety and exhaustion get in the way of the confidence and hope we need to face each new day.  Anxiety and exhaustion are the enemies of peace.  

Jesus knows that anxiety leads to unproductive exhaustion.  When we are anxious and exhausted, we are not our best selves. 

To counteract all that anxiety and exhaustion, Jesus gives us the image of a field of wildflowers waving joyously in the wind (Matthew 6:28).  

May we be blessed every day with the knowledge of God’s promise of a gentle and joyful equilibrium, grateful for God’s presence in our world and ready to live out the peaceful promise of each new day.

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

Dear Friends in Christ,

I read in the newspaper that there is an unprecedented bloom of wildflowers in Death Valley.  In the San Joaquin Valley, it is a delight to experience the natural world take a deep breath and grow as the sun warms our still damp soil.

Michael Kleber-Diggs suggests in his poem Lupines in a Yard in San Antonio, Texas

The flowers speak to us. They say—
existence and persistence are the same thing.

Our religious traditions remind us that Lent means spring.  As we move through Lent we, prepare, once again, to experience springtime in our souls.

Kieran Bohan, the director of the Open Table Network says we are asking the wrong question in our churches:

We must move from the question, ‘Who is worthy?’ to the question, ‘Who is missing?’.

With God’s help, may we

Set an extra place at the table

Stay in a difficult conversation

Pray for someone whose theology differs from our own

Ask, ‘What has my faith cost me?’

For at Christ’s table, we do not guard the feast – we receive it.  And having received mercy, we learn to practice it together.

 When we ask these questions and act on these invitations we will see what new life will look like in our church.

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

Dear Friends in Christ

One of my daily tasks when I lived in the village of Matebeng in Lesotho was to go to the spring to get water.  The spring was a quarter of a mile away – up hill and down and then into a ravine by a path that was slippery from the many wet feet that went up and down that path every day.  Out of necessity, I learned how to lift the bucket full of water, up onto my head and then balance it there as I made my way back to my house.  

Ever since then, when I read this Sunday’s Gospel about Jesus and the woman at the well and encounter the woman’s reluctance to draw water for Jesus, I am right back in that space where the daily toil of existence was the totality of women’s lives.

This Gospel is a dialogue between two exhausted people: Jesus and a Samaritan woman.  Jesus is tired.  The Samaritan woman is tired.  We are tired.  I know that there are times when I need to do just one more thing and what I end up doing is falling asleep in my chair.

Nothing would be better than a glass of cold water served to us by people who care about us.

As Jesus and the Samaritan woman are drawn into conversation with each other, each of them is energized by what the other one is saying.

The gifts of kindness that we receive from each other give us space to be tired and to rest. The compassion we show to each other and the time we spend with each other keeps us going.

May we continue to the find the Sabbath rest and Gospel energy we need to continue to live our lives in Christ.

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

Dear Friends in Christ,

No matter what our politics might be, the media we consume leaves all of us anxious and worried about what might happen next in our country and the world.  Jesus and the disciples also lived with worry and anxiety:

[Jesus and his disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee.]  A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And waking up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Be silent! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? “And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Mark 4:35-41

When we ask, as the psalmist does:

From whence cometh our help?

The answer is:

Our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

Here are some words from the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, to help us keeps things in perspective and remind us that

When the wind and the waves are rocking the boat, I am reminded that what I need to do is to focus on Christ, who calms the waters and stills the wind. we seek to be what the Church has for so long been: a stable presence in an unstable world.

As we at Zion and St Anne’s continue to celebrate the Eucharist and share our lives with each other and our partner churches, here are some more words from the Rt. Rev Mullally to encourage us:

[Our ministry needs to be one] of hospitality and of breaking bread; that together we can learn to be good guests and good hosts; that we might create places where people can grow towards one another in trust, where difference is held with grace; where we offer deeply of ourselves and value the gift of one another; where we are accountable for one another’s flourishing and where healing is possible.

And I pray that our practice of hospitality may be offered as a model to a polarised world, speaking into the deepening divides in our society with the possibility of hope and of healing. Our calling is to live out that hope in a fractured and anxious world. And so, we must bridge the gap, for those who have no experience of church, to encounter by offering spaces of belonging, dignity, and conversation, where the love of God is encountered and the world is changed.

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

Dear Friends in Christ,

During Lent, our Sunday readings are opportunities to revisit familiar readings and learn from them.  The intention is not to make us feel bad but to help us grow closer to God through the wisdom and grace that these stories offer.

This Sunday, we encounter two stories about temptation.  The first is the serpent tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  The second is the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness.

Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest who lived in the second half of the 20^th century, helps us understand the temptations that Jesus encountered in the context of our own lives.

Nouwen suggests that when the devil invites a hungry Jesus to make bread out stones, we are learning about the temptation to be relevant; to be the ones who fix things, who make sense of things when others cannot.  Nouwen offers the thought that it would be better to acknowledge the world as broken than pretend we can fix it. It is better to be in solidarity with those who are suffering than promise we can heal them when we cannot. 

When the devil invites Jesus to jump off a tall building and show the world that God will protect him so that he will not be hurt as he falls, Nouwen tells us that Jesus did not come to be a stunt man.Nouwen reminds us that we all want others to watch us do what we do and be impressed.  We all want to be relevant and important.  The temptation of relevance leads us away from the quiet, selfless work of being good members of our communities and putting the needs of others before our own.

Finally, as we read that the devil tempted Jesus with the power to rule the world, and we are tempted ourselves to grab that power, Nouwen observes that

“it seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life,”

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

Dear Friends in Christ,

In-between now and the next Friday Letter, five things are happening

·      Valentines’ Dinner  @ Zion’s Grace Hall: A Four Church Collaboration supporting Grandma’s Garden: Friday, February 14, 2026 (tomorrow)

o   5 pm for To-Go Plates

o   6 pm for Eat-in

o   Bring your tickets or your email receipts from buying your tickets online

o   You will be entered for a lovely door prize basket.

Thank you to everyone who is helping and thank you to everyone who has bought tickets!

·      Sunday worship!

·      Morning Prayer on Zoom @ 7 am on Tuesday and Thursday

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86490904123?pwd=7qY5CxoAoxb9OinZPq41vDKLSIZlVP.1

One tap mobile

+16699006833,,86490904123#,,,,*228992# US (San Jose)

+16694449171,,86490904123#,,,,*228992# US

The liturgy that we use is located at the bottom of this letter. [See Daily Devotions section]

(Evening Prayer at 9 pm on Mondays and Wednesdays will begin on February 23)

·      Shrove Tuesday Pancakes

o   6 pm @ Zion’s Grace Hall

o   Free will offering accepted

o   Thank you, Zion’s Fellowship Committee and the Men of Zion and St Anne’s

·      Ash Wednesday:

o   Noon @ Zion: Music, Ashes, No Eucharist

o   2:30 pm @ St Anne’s Parking Lot:  Simple Prayers, Ashes, No Eucharist

o   7 pm @ St Anne’s: Music, Ashes, Eucharist

Together we engage in fellowship, worship and public worship and service. Blessings on us all as we prepare for a Holy Lent.

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca

Dear Friends in Christ,

On the podcast Cultivating Place, Tanja Hollander spoke of planting a garden along both sides of the river that separated the towns of Lewiston and Auburn Maine. 

The people of Lewiston and Auburn, though they lived in separate towns, shared the faded prosperity of their industrialized past and the ravaged landscape of their post-industrial present.  

They also shared the trauma of a mass shooting that had happened in 2023.  

Tanja is not one to quote scripture, but her story reminds me of what Paul writes in his letter to the Romans: 

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together

As a way of acknowledging shared pain, Tanja helped Lewiston build a garden that was a gift to the people in Auburn.  In Auburn, she and her helpers built a garden for the people of Lewiston. 

As Jesus suffered on our behalf, so are we invited, as Christians, to share the pain of others and stand with those who must discover the resilience they need to live another day.

What gift can we give to those who are suffering in this troubled world of ours?  Our prayers, our attention, our concern?

How can we, out of our own pain, create beauty for others?

Faithfully yours,

Rebecca