We invite you all (Preschoolers through High Schoolers, Teachers, College Students, Grad Students, & Professors) to bring your backpacks and schoolbags to Trinity on September 1. Bring them empty or full. Invite a friend! Adults, even if you’re done with school, you are welcome to receive a blessing for your work. If you’d like in on this, we invite you to bring your briefcases, tote bags, or backpacks as well. The priests will bless the bags during the 10 a.m. service, to honor all the hopes, dreams, and fears that accompany the new school year, and to ask for God to strengthen, sustain, and encourage all our children as they learn and grow throughout the year.
Sing, My Soul, His Wondrous Love
Sing, my soul, his wondrous love,
who, from yon bright throne above,
ever watchful o'er our race,
still to us extends his grace.
Heaven and earth by him were made;
all is by his scepter swayed;
what are we that he should show
so much love to us below?
God, the merciful and good,
bought us with the Savior's blood,
and, to make salvation sure,
guides us by his Spirit pure.
Sing, my soul, adore his Name!
Let his glory be thy theme:
praise him till he calls thee home;
trust his love for all to come.
https://youtu.be/865z0idLQf8?si=gFs_XTJRjT-TvJXJ
The author of this hymn text, published first in 1800, is unknown. I find it to be a tremendously beautiful reflection on God’s goodness to us. Life is complicated, and sometimes it’s difficult beyond measure. This text reminds us that the bedrock under all that is the love of God, and the beauty to which that love gives birth.
As we approach kickoff Sunday (just a couple weeks now - it’s on September 8 this year), I find myself thinking about why I do what I do, and why church matters. For me, the core of this is recognizing the beauty and goodness that God gives us, and how we express that as God’s people. Music is often spoken about as a “language beyond words” and there is truth to this.
Choral music has a particularly effective role in communicating meaning because it pairs art forms together. With choral music, we have the combination of “pure” music with poetry. When finely crafted words come together with music written specifically to amplify their meaning, we get a 1+1=3 effect. I think there is a parallel here to the effect God’s love has on our lives. This is what happens when we welcome God’s love and share it within community: the cumulative impact we have becomes greater than that of the individual efforts we put in.
As we embark on this coming program year, with all its gifts and also with the challenges it is sure to bring, I hope we can dwell in the abundant goodness of God’s love, and use every opportunity before us in turn to share it. Each week, as the choirs of Trinity Church sing in our liturgies, know that our music is given as a gift, both to our community and to God, as the very best reflection we can manage of the beauty of God’s love.
Here’s a link to a setting of the above poem by Sarah MacDonald, which the choir will sing on kickoff Sunday this year. I hope you enjoy it!
Looking forward to all that this year holds,
Meg
Seniors' Fellowship Group starts August 28!
Who are seniors? Can’t define them! We are those who have done it! We retired from our paying work, and we are at leisure? Well, not really…but we can go out for a longish lunch if we want to. So here it is. Let’s start a lunch group at Trinity for those of us who want more community with our fellow parishioners.
We will have a first meeting on Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at noon in the Parish Hall. Bring a sandwich or whatever you’d like to have for lunch. Dessert and drinks will be provided. It will be very informal…yes, we will have name tags. We want to be able to remember the name of that person you met the following Sunday!
We will brainstorm about: the right time to meet? How organized should we be? What will we call the group? Do we want to do this? Do we prefer a restaurant meal?
For more information contact Kara (sladek@trinityprinceton.org) or Sylvia Temmer (sbjornberg77@icloud.com).
School Supply Drive: You Did It!
You did it! Thanks to your generosity and the hard work of our Outreach volunteers, Trinity Church filled ONE HUNDRED backpacks with school supplies for HomeFront of Mercer County. We are profoundly grateful to everyone who donated, and to everyone who helped unpack the boxes and pack the bags.
Saying Yes to God
This week, the church calendar invites us to focus on Mary, the mother of our Lord. On Thursday, we observed the feast of Saint Mary with a wonderful Eucharist in the chancel. Forty-three (!) people came out to hear the story of Mary’s “yes” to God, to sing, and to pray. But on Wednesday, our focus was drawn to Mary as well. That’s because on August 14 each year, the Episcopal Church commemorates Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a young seminarian who became a martyr during the civil rights movement in Alabama.
You can read more of his story here, and I hope you do. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Daniels) He was valedictorian of his class at Virginia Military Institute, and after some struggles with his faith and sense of vocation, he began attending what was then called Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During an Evensong service in Boston, he clearly heard God’s call to an active role in the civil rights movement. He writes,
"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." I had come to Evening Prayer as usual that evening, and as usual I was singing the Magnificat with the special love and reverence I have always felt for Mary's glad song. "He hath showed strength with his arm." As the lovely hymn of the God-bearer continued, I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled "moment" that would, in retrospect, remind me of others--particularly one at Easter three years ago. Then it came. "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things." I knew then that I must go to Selma. The Virgin's song was to grow more and more dear in the weeks ahead.
Jonathan Daniels traveled to Selma to help register voters and stayed for a semester. He was shot on August 20, 1965, at Varner’s Cash Store in Hayneville, AL, while protecting an African-American teenager named Ruby Sales. His murderer, Tom Coleman, was acquitted by an all-white jury.
The lives of the saints, including martyrs like Jonathan Daniels, are stunning portraits of what a “yes” to God looks like. My friend Rob MacSwain OGS of Sewanee argues that the lives of the saints are a kind of proof of God’s existence, because these are the kind of lives that would not make sense otherwise. And Mary’s “yes” to God stands as the paramount example of saintly life. Without Mary’s “yes,” the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ and the salvation of the world would have been impossible. (Whether or not God had a backup candidate in mind is an interesting question best left to speculative theologians!) Her response to God is also a pattern for the Christian life. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes,
Only three human individuals are mentioned in the Nicene Creed, Jesus, Mary, and Pontius Pilate: Jesus; the one who says yes to him; and the one who says no to him. You could say that those three names map out the territory in which we all live. Through our lives, we swing towards one pole or the other, towards a deeper yes, or towards a deeper no. In the middle of it all stands the one who makes sense of it all, the one into whose life we must all try to grow, who can work with our yes, and can even overcome our no.
I pray that as the summer draws to a close, you will find new ways to say yes to God, as God’s invitation to us comes new every morning.
Yours in Christ,
Kara
Special St. Mary’s Day service
Join us at noon on Thursday, August 15 as we observe the feast of St Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There will be music at this service.
An Inside Job
At this time of the summer in Year B of the Lectionary, we hear Gospel lessons that seem to say the same thing again, and again, and again. This month, we hear different parts of Jesus’ discourse in John 6 where he tells his followers that he is the bread of life. For the preacher this can create something of a dilemma: is there that much to say about bread? It may create the same dilemma in the hearer.
But these saying of Jesus are so important, so central to our faith, that they bear reflecting on over a period of time. Indeed, they bear reflecting on for our entire lives. What a great mystery, what a miracle, that God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us in such a profound way. God is not aloof; God feeds us and sustains us with this bread that leads to eternal life.
Brother Seraphim is an Eastern Orthodox monk at Mount Tabor Monastery in California. On the monastery’s blog, he writes about the traditional clay ovens used to bake flat breads. These ovens, called tandoor in India or tannur in Iran, are used throughout South Asia and the Middle East. They are traditionally buried in the ground, and the bread is baked on the walls of the oven above the fire. The bread is pulled out of the oven with a hook at the end of the baking process. Baking in this way, he writes, is an “inside job,” carried out within the earth and sometimes hidden from view - just as our own transformation in the sacraments is carried out by what we Anglicans call an “inward and spiritual grace.”
Baking bread with a mostly-buried oven: that’s an “inside job.” Eat the body and drink the blood, in Holy Eucharist, in the consecrated Bread and Wine, and He will be doing an inside job on you. The dough has to be heated and baked. We have to endure some sufferings and hardships; Jesus did so, for us. That is how the dough develops into wholesome bread; that is how we develop into purity that can see God…and into closer union with our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ. The bread may be poked by that hook tool; we may be poked by the crosses we carry, to follow Christ. The bread rises. May we rise, too, into everlasting glory with our Savior and all the holy angels and saints.
May the God who has begun such a marvelous “inside job” in all of us continue to draw us ever closer, as we are fed with that wondrous bread from heaven.
In Christ, and in Christ alone,
Kara
Change
To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
(Pete Seeger, based on Ecclesiastes 3)
Life is changing again.
Here we go. Are you ready?
It has been said that August is the Sunday night of summer. I think that’s especially the case for teachers and students who are starting to count down the remaining weeks of freedom. Although we still have another month of summer weather, many of us are feeling the season grind to an end. We’ll transition from the lazy days of summer to a tighter schedule, and earlier wake-up times.
Some of us are preparing to send young adults off to college. Some of us are about to become empty nesters. Some are awaiting the birth of a child or grandchild. Others are watching and waiting as loved ones fade away. Some are facing the challenge of a worsening health condition or are scheduling intimidating medical procedures. Still others are hoping for good news regarding employment status or a resolution to financial concerns.
As a nation we face major changes in the next few months. Some are frightened of the possibilities, while others are encouraged. On a global level, we are witnessing tragedies and anxiously await resolution. Things are also changing in our parish, in our families, and communities.
How do you deal with change? Do you embrace it, running toward the next phase of life? Do you stiffen your upper lip and brace yourself? Are you afraid, seeing change as a bully forcing you into the fight of your life?
Some of the changes will be joyful, some bittersweet, still others will elicit sorrow and pain. We prefer having control over our circumstances, but that is generally an illusion. No matter the outcome, we know that still water becomes stagnant. Change is a necessary part of life. But we can take comfort in knowing that our faithful God is unchangingly present, walking with us, providing “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.”