Dear friends,
There’s so much going on at St. John’s this week, and I want to tell you about all of it, but everyone’s already written such great blurbs about their own ministries, so if you want to hear about any of those wonderful things, please refer to the rest of the newsletter. I’m going to tell you about the return of Sunday Worship @ 5.
First, though, I need to tell you that I have not always been a fan of evening church. In fact, it took me a full year to start going to my college’s Episcopal Campus Ministry, simply because they met at 6 p.m. and were accompanied by the priest’s guitar rather than an organ. It took an entire year of either taking the metro to the cathedral downtown or attending mass at the Catholic Student Center for me to decide that enough was enough and I would probably still be able to find God after 11 a.m.
It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my college career. I met dear friends, found a meaningful community, and even started the process of discernment that led me here! I found hope and meaning during years that were turbulent and exhausting, and, beyond my imaginings, I learned to love evening church. In the warmer months, we worshiped in a converted garage, strung with canvas lanterns, and throughout the fall months I could see night fall earlier and earlier as we said our prayers, and in the spring we could watch the light return week by week. In the winter we all gathered in the living room of the chaplaincy house and passed communion around the circle because there wasn’t room to stand and approach the altar. The service was joyful and warm, and was the perfect closing note at the end of a long week.
Now, here at St. John’s, we have no guitars and no canvas lanterns. If you join us, and I hope you will, you’ll find us in the Sanctuary. Monique will accompany us on the organ, Fr. Ed will preach, and I’ll lead the evening prayer service out of the Book of Common prayer. Still, some things will be different, if you join us in the evening, and we may find God somewhere between the familiar and the new.
Whether you’ve been waiting months for SW5 to return or you’ve been curious but never gotten around to it, I hope you’ll join us there.
See you @ 5!
The Rev. Eva Dalzell
Curate of The Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist