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| Icon of the Transfiguration, the Gospel for this coming Sunday. |
This
coming Sunday, March 2nd and the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we will have ONE service only at 9 o’clock followed
by a coffee hour hosted by the altar Guild. We hope you will join us for
worship and fellowship. Please bring your dried palms from last year to be
burned for Ash Wednesday ashes.
Your attendance is particularly important,
because a very brief Special All-Parish
Meeting to elect new Vestry member and alternates to Convention will take
place at announcement time.
Readings
for this Sunday:
Exodus 24:12-18;Psalm 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21;
Matthew 17:1-9.
"Ways to Actively Participate in the Lenten Season at Saint Andrew's-in-the-Valley" is now online. Click Here to open it. Printed copies are available in the Parish Hall, on green paper.
Pick up your Lenten Meditation booklets and Journey through Lent calendars from the Parish Hall table.
"Ways to Actively Participate in the Lenten Season at Saint Andrew's-in-the-Valley" is now online. Click Here to open it. Printed copies are available in the Parish Hall, on green paper.
Pick up your Lenten Meditation booklets and Journey through Lent calendars from the Parish Hall table.
On the menu are pancakes (both plain and with blueberries) with real maple syrup, sausage, and beverages. Wear your beads and masks or even a costume! Activities available for the young and young-at-heart. The modest cost for all this is $5 for each adult or teen and $2 for children 12 and under.
And by participating in this meal you will also
be helping to support some great causes; 50% of all funds raised through the
Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper go to organizations that provide help to others
in the local community and around the world.The following day, March 5th, is Ash Wednesday.
9 AM: Service of Morning Prayer
Noon and 7 PM: Imposition of ashes & Holy Eucharist.
We will be burning last year’s palms to make ashes immediate before the evening service.
We are in need of volunteer coffee hour hosts. Have you hosted recently? Sally DeGoot, our hospitality chair, would be happy to work with you. Thank you.
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:2
And what exactly is
Shrove Tuesday?
It’s the last day before Lent begins.
The word shrove comes from the verb to shrive, meaning “to impose penance
for a sin and grant absolution to a penitent.” It is the church’s custom that
the faithful prepare for Lent by making their confessions and receiving
absolution. The intent of the merry-
making associated with Shrove Tuesday (and Mardi Gras) is to get the “wild and
crazies” out of your system and kick up your heals a bit before entering the
more austere season of Lent. Eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday has its roots in
the middle ages. During Lent there were many foods that most Christians
would not eat: foods such as meat and fish, fats, eggs, and milk. So that no
food was wasted, families would have a feast on Shrove Tuesday, and eat up all
the rich foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent without spoiling. The
need to eat up the fats gave rise to the French name Mardi Gras, meaning Fat
Tuesday. Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish
that could use up all the eggs, fats, and milk in the house with just the
addition of flour, and benefited from lots of butter and sweet syrup! In
England and Canada, Shrove Tuesday is still fondly known as Pancake Day.
A group gathered last Sunday to hear about the possibility of embarking on a ministry of letter writing with women at the Goffstown State Prison. If you are interested, please talk to Rev. Heidi for details. Thanks go to Elizabeth Wiesner for seeing the possibility of this ministry and for inviting Beth Richeson to join us last Sunday.
Food for thought, reflection, and prayer…
Last Sunday, February 23, the Rev. Beth Richeson (yes, this is the correct spelling) joined us as guest preacher and discussion leader. Beth is the chaplain at the state prison for women in Goffstown. In her homily she preached passionately on the first chapter of the Book of the Prophet Hosea, reflecting on the incredible power of naming, as she lifted up stories of how damaging the negative names we may have received can be. One example came from a woman named “Mary” at the prison: “Her mother named her Unwanted. Her father named her Tramp. Her husband named her Punching-bag. Her 11-year old son named her Mom. Her younger child had no name for her at all. Society named her Prisoner, inmate, murderer, monster. But her name is Mary, which means God’s Beloved. This is what God named her in her mother’s womb.”
The fact is that God knows each of us as
“Beloved” – treasured daughter or son. Beth invited us to ponder what naming
was like in our own families – to think back on the “names” by which each of us
have been known. Knucklehead? Klutz?
Bubble-brain? Trash? Dummy? … Sweetheart? Champ? Pumpkin-doodle? Precious? Do
those old names still resonate, constraining you or empowering you?
Naming or renaming happens in relationship.
Often we may feel that those old names “name” us for life. What difference
might it make for you to intentionally recognize the names that we have been
given – or the new names that we might choose to take – that will lead us into
wholeness and fullness of life. This Sunday we will hear again the familiar
names that Jesus heard at his baptism, then again on the mountain at his
Transfiguration: “You are my beloved. With you I am well pleased.” That is how
Jesus was named, a name the empowered him to live the life he was called to
live. It is the name by which God names each of us, his beloved children, as
well while still in our mother’s womb: Beloved.
The-one-with-whom-I-am-well-pleased.
“Holy God, Open wide in each of us space for
your holy Word to rumble around and to root and grow into understanding or
peace or even action according to your will…Amen.”
See you in church.
Blessings, Heidi+
Blessings, Heidi+
