Dear Friends,
All I want is to trumpet our Annual Meeting and make jokes about how spicy we are and encourage us all to celebrate all the “hot” things we’ve done in the past year. And there is SO much to celebrate!
But I am also aware that this past week has been a particularly violent one in our too-violent country: three mass shootings, two within as many days in California. We have had 40 mass shootings so far in 2023—more shootings than days. We have all prayed and written to our elected officials and voted and, yet, gun violence persists. As a nation we seem unwilling to act for peace, and many of us grow weary, even hopeless, as we hear about the next shooting, and the next, and the next . . .
One of the many things I love about All Saints, though, is our irrepressible spirit, our conviction that God calls us to act for justice, to find a way when there seems to be no way. I love that even in the face of sorrow we know how to laugh and dance and love one another. It is those very qualities, combined with faith, and the power of God that keeps us from giving up hope, that keeps us stretching towards God’s dream of justice and God’s that one day the lion will lie down with the lamb and swords will be beaten into plowshares.
So, come on Sunday and luxuriate in the Annual Meeting, take joy in our community. For as Sojourner Truth said, “Life is a hard battle . . . if we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.”
See you in church, Beloved.
Faithfully, Suzanne+