I hope many of you will join us at 5:30 this evening for the Celebration and Blessing of the Marriage of Parrish Rarick and Kaia Monroe. Then, at 6:00 stay for St. Thomas’s potluck supper.
 
This Sunday, we are excited to hear the Junior Youth Choir sing at 10:00 am. This will be their last sung service for the summer. Sunday is also Children’s Liturgy; please feel free to e-mail Mother Mo and volunteer for any age-appropriate liturgical task.
 

This Sunday—the feast of Pentecost—wear your most outrageously and brightly colorful clothes: bright hats, shirts, skirts, and shoes. On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon a band of followers gathered at Jerusalem: fire and wind marked the presence of the Spirit. As part of the service, we will baptize Jillian Christine Cicero and Jayden Philip McGuirt Perna. Do be present to participate in this great celebration and welcome these, our newest members, into the family of St. Thomas’s Church.

Last Sunday was an amazing celebration of our continuing Fifty Days of Easter. Mother Mo, just recovering from her week-long summer cold, was a forceful and touching preacher. The Junior Youth Choir sang a beautiful and musically-challenging Gradual; the Senior Youth and Adult Choirs sang the Epistle (a reading from the Revelation to John the Divine). Christian Clough and Christopher Worthley returned to St. Thomas’s for the weekend to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their committed relationship.

We clergy are sometimes asked, “Do I have to come to church?”  “No,” I often reply, “but you GET to come to church.” It is hard to believe, in the freedom of our own culture where worship is mostly made difficult by the many diversions begging our attention -- the many demands on our own fragile time and relationships -- that some brothers and sisters of faith actually brave worship, to their own peril. What they wouldn’t give for the freedom we enjoy daily!