Dear Friends in Christ—
What’s on your calendar?
Historically, mine has been full—too full. I use a paper calendar, and not only do I write
appointments in it, I stick post-it notes with aspirations on various dates, and I clip to-do lists to
the pages.
Two years ago, of course, it all got erased. Literally and figuratively. I entered into this limbo of
radical contingency that we have all come to know too well. For a long time, I had nothing to
write. When I did start making plans last year, I quickly learned how tentative they had to be.
That sense of contingency is beginning to change.
It’s not an about-face, of course. But I am making plans in my own life, as I suspect you are,
too, with increasing confidence that they will come to fruition. I am (in the metaphor of a
favorite professor of mine) starting to buy green bananas again.
We are doing this work at Grace Church, as well. Your new vestry will go on retreat tomorrow,
and part of our work will be to plan for the year ahead. We do it with a humility that perhaps
none of us had in 2020. And I think we do it with a sense of thanksgiving to and dependence on
God, as well.
The two-year anniversary of the pandemic (which many date to this week) is a time for
mourning our past. But it is also a time for healing our present and envisioning our future. I
encourage you to reach out to your vestry and let me know what feels important to you right
now. What is exciting and life-giving? What matters?
The bad news is that we don’t get to go back to the life we had two years ago. The good news
is that we don’t have to go back to the life we had two years ago.
So what will we pencil in for our future?
Yours in Christ,
Anne+