Requiem

We are holding a Requiem service this coming Sunday June 23rd at 6 pm.
I want to take a moment to reflect on why we are doing this.

We are a small community that mainly gather's together on Sunday evening, on the edges of American Christianity.  We seek to create a space that is ecumenical and in being ecumenical allows for exploring Christian faith and growth in Christian faith without needing to identify with a particular denomination or tradition within the Great Tradition of the Church.  One aspect of Christian faith and ritual practice we, as a small and currently young adult and middle aged congregation, have little chance to connect with is the theology and rituals around death and grief.

Also, being a small congregation, when deaths do occur within our extended network, the funerals do not take place in our worshiping community.  People go home, or to another church, or if the deceased wasn't religious, go to the funeral parlour.  In the past year three of our members had parents die, with no way for our community to ritually mark and grieve together.

These two things have come together and lead  to us deciding to have a Requiem Service, or perhaps more accurately an All Soul's service, a commemoration of the dead and celebration of the hope of the Resurrection.  We do this so that we may remember together those who have passed recently or not and sit together with our faith and our hope in the Resurrection as aspects of the Christian Tradition that embraces us.

As we the pastors have prepared this service we each in differing ways have had to sit with our own struggles and grief and face what the Christian Tradition presents us with in the face of death and grief.  we have found challenge, but also healing and comfort and hope.  We hope those who come to worship this Sunday will find all this as well.

All are invited to attend this special service at 6 pm this Sunday June 23rd.  Note that this is not our regular worship time of 5 pm.