Together. 

It’s the first word of our mission statement: Together, we follow the call of the Spirit and the teachings of Jesus to learn, love, serve, and seek justice and joy for all. 

It seems simple now, but it was the hardest word in that whole statement to come up with, the last part we figured out.

This was a few summers ago, and the committee assembled to draft the new mission statement had been trying to make this part complicated: We gather together…? We come together…? We join our hearts together…? Finally someone at the table said, “Just ‘together’! We don’t need anything more complicated than that. We can just say ‘together.’” And we all nodded around that table; we realized, that’s right. 

Of course, this past year, like the one before it, presented continual complications to our “together.” We dipped our toes in at first – in April, we invited folks to prayer stations in the courtyard, to explore the grounds with a virtual egg hunt, and to bring flowers to add to the cross, outside. In May, we had cupcakes in the courtyard to celebrate our 154th anniversary, but we heard and joined in the song written for the occasion from our own living rooms, along with the virtual service. In July, we gathered at the coast for our annual campout but were careful about food-sharing. That same month, after months of planning, we opened the doors again to in-person worship, with ribboned-off pews and a designated traffic pattern. We didn’t sing together until it was time for Christmas carols. We tried a drum circle as a covid-safe way to make music. Our traditional coming-together continued to look very different this year.

And, we grew more adept at new ways of gathering: hybrid trivia, online book groups, a socially-distanced movie in the sanctuary, grabbing to-go dessert bags in the candle-lit Gathering Room after a Christmas concert featuring both live and recorded acts. And so much more.

All of this stretches and deepens our experience of “together.” It is still strange to look out into the sanctuary and know that the people whose faces I see are part of the congregation, not the whole thing. It is still clunky to give directions for an activity to folks who will be participating in the sanctuary and to folks who will be participating in the comments. It is still sometimes a challenge to remember to wait for my cue from the sound booth before I say “welcome” or begin a prayer, because the volunteers back there (thank you!) need time to adjust a camera angle or a setting for the livestream. 

And wow, wow, wow, is it a gift. 

It is strange and clunky and challenging and to be honest, sometimes just really sad, but it is such a gift. 

Two years in, and you all haven’t given up on together. You haven’t shied away from learning new technologies. You haven’t grumbled about necessary new expenses. You come masked or you log on and you indulge a worship series about delight and play and joy even in juxtaposition to all in our world that says ‘no’ to that right now. You take communion as bread-and-juice or oreos-and-milk or muffins in memory of a lost saint of the church or whatever you happen to have in your fridge or on your counter. And you call it holy. And you let yourself imagine – you let yourself trust – that together we are tasting something of the goodness of God in these makeshift moments.

I don’t want to romanticize this pandemic that has brought so much struggle and pain for so many. But for all that it has taken away, it has given us this assurance: we are community bound to one another in multiple ways, and when one of those ways is challenged, we remember, or we reinvent, other ways. Physical presence is part of what deepens our bonds. But learning, loving, serving, seeking justice and joy – those commitments aren’t bound by our bodily presence. (Faith, after all, is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.) Our prayer and our care exist in some realm that’s not dependent on our being in the same room. This year, when we rejoiced, and when we mourned – which we had too many chances to do – we did it together. Even if we didn’t gather together. Even if we didn’t come together. We were together.

So this “report” is really a note of gratitude – for your creativity; your flexibility; your patience; your compassion; your generosity; your commitment; your faith in the staff and this church and in one another; and most of all, for your presence. Thank you for showing up, in the varied and wonderful ways that you do. Thanks for offering your gifts and your time and your energy and your spirit so that this church can thrive – as evidenced by the stories that the numbers in the rest of this report tell. Thanks for being part of all that’s made possible when we are together.

Wishing you peace, 
Erika