Category: Newsletter

In this week’s newsletter, Mother Liz celebrates Earth Month alongside Eastertide, noting how resurrection speaks not only to humanity but to “the groaning of the whole creation” and God’s determination to make all things new. She observes that when Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Christ for a gardener, we glimpse the deep interconnection of all beings—and when we touch creation’s wounds with reverence and compassion, we meet God. Quoting Robin Wall Kimmerer, the rector reminds us that “when we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us,” and invites us to deepen our love and commitment to our fragile, beautiful planet.

This week, the rector reflects on the road to Emmaus, where two grief-stricken disciples walk with a stranger who listens to their trauma, reframes their despair, and reminds them that God works even in brokenness. Only when he breaks bread with them do their eyes open and they recognize the risen Christ. Mother Liz asks when we have encountered the Risen One—in deep listening, unexpected hope amid trauma, familiar liturgy, or the faces gathered around the table—inviting us to notice where Easter life continues spreading among and through us.

In this week’s newsletter, Mother Liz offers heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to a beautiful Holy Week and Easter at Ascension—from Passion readers and lay preachers to those who kept the Maundy Thursday watch, prepared altar flowers, served at Easter brunch, and made the liturgies flow with grace. She gives special recognition to the choir and Dr. Dennis Keene for his “astonishing 45 years of love, artistry and dedication,” noting the congregation’s standing ovation after the Widor Toccata on Easter Sunday as more celebrations of his ministry continue before his Pentecost retirement.

In her message this week, the rector connects Palm Sunday’s ancient story to present-day witness, planning to join Saturday’s No Kings March calling for democracy, justice, and peace. She explores how Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was itself a public protest: a humble prophet on a borrowed donkey contrasting sharply with Pilate’s simultaneous imperial procession through another part of town. The tension between these two visions of power and authority plays out throughout Holy Week and history, asking where we will put our bodies, feet, and hearts as we follow Jesus’ way of vulnerable, self-giving love.

In this week’s newsletter, Mother Liz draws inspiration from Archbishop Sarah Mullally walking the 87-mile Becket Camino pilgrimage from London to Canterbury, traveling at “slow, human speed” as she prepares for her new role. The rector connects this ancient practice to Holy Week, when we follow Jesus step by step through his final days—using our bodies and imaginations to walk the Passion story together. She invites us to enter Holy Week’s liturgies fully, starting with next week’s Palm Sunday observance, finding in this deliberate, embodied pilgrimage “strong medicine, nourishment, strength and healing for our profoundly challenging times.”

This week, the rector explores the gospel story of the man born blind—a dramatic, often hilarious narrative in which Jesus heals with mud and spit while religious authorities grow increasingly certain the healing is impossible or illegitimate. At the story’s pivot, the healed man offers simple testimony: “I don’t know if he is a sinner. One thing I know. I was blind and now I see.” Mother Liz asks what we know from our own experience that challenges assumptions or contradicts what authorities insist is true, inviting us to follow the blind man’s path: pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.

In this week’s newsletter, Mother Liz reflects on the devastating escalation of war in the Middle East and shares a powerful pastoral letter from Archbishop Hosam Naoum, whose Anglican Province spans every nation now engaged in combat—from Iran enduring bombardment to Cyprus, the Gulf states, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The archbishop’s words help us imagine what it means to shepherd congregations on all sides of the conflict, refusing to see neighbors as enemies “whether they be in Tehran, Tel Aviv, or the military bases of the Gulf.” Mother Liz calls us to join his urgent threefold appeal: unceasing prayer, Christian love across divisions, and keeping the doors of reconciliation open as we work courageously for peace.

In this week’s newsletter, the rector explores the gospel story of Nicodemus, a religious leader who comes to Jesus under cover of night, seeking yet fearful. Jesus speaks mysteriously of being “born from above” and compares the Spirit to wind that “blows where it chooses” — confounding Nicodemus but stirring something deeper. Mother Liz invites us to notice where the Spirit-wind is blowing in our own Lenten journey, making space for uncertainty and tentative steps toward transformation.

This week, the rector offers a Lenten prayer by Jan Richardson that embraces the spiritual wilderness as a place of self-discovery rather than escape. The poem acknowledges the inner wildness, hunger, and thirst we encounter in desert seasons, while asking not for removal from the journey but for “tough angels, sweet wine, strong bread: just enough” to sustain us through this time of transformation and unexpected grace.

In this week’s newsletter, Mother Liz reflects on the recent clergy and vestry retreat at Holy Cross Monastery, where leaders found spiritual renewal through monastic rhythms, winter walks along the frozen river, and deep conversation about the parish’s future. She invites parishioners to consider their own Lenten practices—whether through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, or acts of connection and care—as pathways to deepening awareness of God’s love and grace during the season ahead.