Dear Caldwell,
With the arrival of Ash Wednesday tomorrow, we enter the season of Lent. This is a season of reflection, preparation, putting down or taking up and whatever else can frame our faithful journey with Christ to Jerusalem. I hope you’ll come to worship tomorrow night at 6 p.m. for a reflective taize service full of music and personal meditation. Ashes will be dispensed in several ways, including a no-touch option. Come and prepare with us all for the 40 days ahead. You can also view it online on a regular watch live link.
This year, we are pleased to offer a devotional resource that invites us to carve our own path to Jerusalem. “Making the Road: Walking Through Lent” comes from Teri McDowell Ott, the Editor/Publisher of a 200-year old independent magazine (now we call it a news platform) called The Presbyterian Outlook. Teri points out that this Lent will be like no other. We are emerging out of the pandemic into a world, a church, a community of faith that are changed in many ways.
Much is new here at Caldwell, too, new members, new missions, new relationships, new buildings, new possibilities. With so many things new, we will, she says, need to make the road as we walk it, including rethinking and recreating our Lenten practices. If you did not get a copy on Sunday, please view or download it by clicking here.
For THIS SUNDAY: We invite you to think about what practices help you make the road needed for you to grow in your faith. In worship Sunday, we will invite you to share that, if comfortable, on a notecard. Over the next 6 weeks, notecards will be gathered and posted along a winding road in the sanctuary
A Day of Celebration
How glorious it was to see so many in worship and then to proceed to the dedication of our gorgeous new community hall.
We recognized our benefactors, Sarah (posthumously) and Sally Gambrell and the Gambrell Foundation, along with Clancy Theys, our general contractor, architects Weinstien Friendlein and the MANY Caldwell folk who played key roles in completing this transformative gift. We’ll be calling for help very soon as we go through some existing furnishings to place in the hall, set up the kids’ Sunday School classrooms, the kitchen and more. PLEASE come and help.
If you did not get to share in the occasion, you still can below:
- An 11 minute slide-show lovingly prepared by Robbi Walls that takes us from the earliest ‘dreaming’ meetings 3 years ago to completion of construction. Click here.
- A fast, time-lapse review of the entire construction project. Click here.
- Sunday’s dedication, march and ceremony in the hall. Jump to minute 1:10 on the worship video here.
The session will be gathering ideas for names for the hall soon. Another next step for the hall will be to constitute a committee, to be led by Congregational Life Chair Rachel Eldridge and Buildings and Grounds Chair Bob Atkinson, that will define the process for reserving the hall for functions and the responsibilities of those who use the hall to leave it in good shape. If that’s an interest of yours, feel free to contact Bob or Rachel.
If you want to experience the hall, Missions and Justice will be showing a film about those experiencing house-lessness this Sunday at 2 p.m.
What’s Next With Our Safe Return?
As the numbers of COVID diagnoses fall and various official bodies revisit their policies about the use of masks and other safety protocols, your Safe Return Ministry Team will meet next Monday night to review our protocols. We will communicate their opinions and recommendations after the meeting.
If you have concerns, opinions or input, feel free to email to me and I will relay.
How Do We Pray?
A common refrain in these painful days is how surreal it is to witness Russia’s willful war against the people of Ukraine. Words can’t really capture the agony we feel nor how inspired we are by the Ukainians’ courage and patriotism. Words may not come to us for how to pray to our Lord of peace. Saturday Night Live featured a Urkainian chorus singing their national anthem, a stirring performance you can watch here. If you feel so called and would like to come to the sanctuary to pray, contact me or another member of the staff. As to what words might suffice, here is a prayer from the Church of Scotland.
Lord God,
We ask you to hold the people of Ukraine deep in your heart.
Protect them, we pray;
from violence,
from political gamesmanship,
from being used and abused.Give, we pray,
the nations of the world the courage
and the wisdom
to stand up for justice
and the courage too,
to dare to care―generously.Lord, in your mercy,
take from us all
the tendencies in us
that seek to lord it over others:
take from us those traits
that see us pursuing our own needs and wants
before those of others.Teach us how to live in love
and dignity
and respect―following your example.
In your name and for your sake,
Amen
―Issued by Lord Wallace, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and the Very Rev. Dr. Susan Brown, convener of the Faith Impact Forum, Church of Scotland
I hope to see you tomorrow at 6 for the Taize service.
In Christ,
John