Spring comes to the Southern California desert
Saint Andrew's-in-the-Valley
Thursday MEMO
January 27, 2011
Services for this coming Sunday, February 20th and the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, will be at 8 and 10 AM with coffee hour following both services. We hope you will join us for worship and fellowship.
A hearty and appreciative thank you to Lisa Thompson and Tom Reinfuss for their leadership of Morning Prayer last Sunday in my absence, and to Robert Stiefel who preached and presided for the eucharist. Duane and I had a wonderfully satisfying and restful week in California visiting our son Chris, which included several walks amidst desert flowers bursting into bloom, and a visit to the Huntington Gardens and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. And now it's good to be home.
Combat Cabin Fever with a Pot Luck Supper and Game Night this Friday evening, February 25th! Thanks to the Parish Life Committee for hosting is. Gather at 6 o'clock with a dish to share for the pot luck supper. We'd like to make the clean-up a breeze so please bring your own dishes and utensils. We'll follow our meal with games for all ages and abilities. Lots of variety! If you have a favorite, bring that along as well! No charge, just good fun, and feel free to bring a friend. If you need a ride, please call the office by Thursday.
Mark your calendars!
Invite your friends!
Prepare for Lent this year
with Mardi Gras festivities on Friday, March 4th!
An invitation from the Tamworth Nurse Association: Pizza Party at Chequers Villa on Sunday, February 27th to benefit TCNA. It costs $12.00 and will be an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet from 11:30am-2:30pm. TCNA has a deficit budget this year (-28,000) and this event will help. Everybody loves pizza so we’re hoping for good attendance.
Notes from our February 6th Parish Outreach and Mission conversation are available by clicking here:
https://docs.google.com/
Readings for Sunday: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18, Psalm 119:33-40, 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23, Matthew 5:38-48
Food for thought on Christian Community from Henri Nouwen (prompted in part by spending this past week in a Buddhist monastic community):
It is important to remember that the Christian community is a waiting community -- that is, a community that not only creates a sense of belonging but also a sense of estrangement. In the Christian community we say to each other, "We are together, but we cannot fulfill each other. We help each other, but we also have to remind each other that our destiny is beyond our togetherness." The support of the Christian community is a support in common expectation. That requires a constant [alertness to] anyone who makes the community into ... a cozy clique, and a constant encouragement [within the community] to look forward to what is to come.
The basis of the Christian community is not the family tie, or social or economic equality, or shared oppression or complaint, or mutual attraction ... but the divine call. The Christians community is not the result of human efforts. God has made us into his people by calling us out of "Egypt" to the "New Land," out of slavery to freedom, our of sin to salvation, our of captivity to liberation. All these words and images give expression to the fact that the initiative belongs to God and that God is the source of our new life together. By our common call to the the New Jerusalem, we recognize each other on the road as brothers and sisters. Therefore, as the people of God, we are called ekklesia (from the Greek kaleo = call; and ek = out) -- the community called out of the old world into the new.
As members of the Christian community, we are not primarily for each other, but for God. Our eyes would remain fixed on each other but be directed forward to what is dawning on the horizon of our existence. We discover each other by following the same vocation and by supporting each other in the same search. Therefore, the Christian community is not a closed circle of people embracing each other, but a forward-moving group of companions bound together by the same voice asking for their attention.
From Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, 1975.
See you in church!
Blessings, Heidi+
