This summer at COS has being anything but a staycation! Even so, it has been very refreshing. Pictured here is the fresh summer sign that welcomed old and new members to worship and community.

In June, the pews in the sanctuary were moved into the parish hall and then moved back into the church in a more functional and pleasing configuration. In July, the long awaited refinishing of the parish hall floor kept us busy moving all the furniture out of the hall into the church and then back into the hall when the floors were dry. Soon new carpeting in the church will be installed and I think you can guess what has to be done. Thanks to the brave and brawny COS members who showed up to make it possible. Thanks to all whose pledges and gifts support such necessary improvements. We will all enjoy the fruits of this summer as we worship and gather in these fresh new spaces.

The House will likely be taking up budget vetoes on Tuesday, July 14, so we are planning a State House call-in day for Tuesday.

Please spread the word and mobilize those you know to call their Representatives and Senators on Tuesday, July 14th, to support maintaining health coverage for 30,000 Commonwealth Care members whose coverage is in jeopardy.

Find the phone numbers (and e-mail addresses) for your state legislators here: http://www.mass.gov. Making just two phone calls will probably take less than 10 minutes, total. If you can’t call on Tuesday, please call any other day early this week. Most legislators also have voice mail–you might be able to leave a message. And staff members often work late–don’t assume that calling after 5 p.m. won’t work. Please try.

That which my brother sought to show me gradually came in to view as we walked along the sand. The emerging image was that of a small neighborhood of homes nestled on a narrow peninsula between Bridgeport Harbor on one side and Long Island sound on the other. What began as a remote outline of shapes in the hazy distance now stood in hard and silent relief against the late winter sky.

The neighborhood was abandoned. Walking off the sand of the beach path onto the hard, broken blacktop of what was once a main street, we entered a world of silence and sadness. Sadness because there were no longer any people to enjoy the beauty and tranquility of the nearby ocean. The now empty homes stood ransacked and disheveled by time and neglect. Turning to Jay I asked the simple and obvious question “What happened?”

In 1996 a fire destroyed the only bridge that made this area accessible by car from the mainland. Since then, the only access to the area is via the long walk made by my brother and me along the barrier beach. Without adequate access to the mainland for emergency vehicles and services, the town of Stratford concluded that the neighborhood was not safe for habitation. Failing to secure the money necessary to rebuild the bridge, the residents of the neighborhood were forced to abandon their properties. This lovely community, once home to families, an amusement park and a summer theater company were left simply to decay and die, an anachronism of a seemingly simpler time.

Perhaps not. There is talk among residents and political leaders in the area to either invest in and renovate the land for local use or sell the land to the federal government. Either way requires rebuilding the bridge to the mainland. The usefulness of this beautiful area for people is contingent upon its accessibility to people.

Your vestry is actively engaged in a similar process. Right now, there is active and engaged discussion of how we can make our church more accessible. Not just to people with disabilities, but everyone, without exception. And it is more than just talk. As a first step, we on the vestry are working diligently to install a ramp so that accessibility to the church is not limited to those who can negotiate stairs. Factors of design, placement and installation of the ramp are all being carefully weighed and considered. Ensuring that what is conveyed visually by the installation of the ramp preserves what is important to us all as a community are all hugely important in our deliberations. The installation of this ramp is long overdue and, like the rebuilding of the bridge to the beach community in Connecticut, is vital if the Church of Our Saviour is to continue to be a place where God is accessible and useful to the people of the community which it serves.

Lent, I think, is at least in part about the same sort of thing. It is a time when we are called to abandon the clutter and clatter of busy lives that have a tendency to cut off our access to God. The journey of Lent is often like a long walk along a path of sand. The steps we take are often heavy, weighed down by the pain of grief, loss, and those whom we must release when once mutual paths diverge, leading each in separate directions. The footprints we leave in the sand say much about where we have been. The long walk of Lent allows God to gradually come in to view and restore our access to God thus allowing us a glimpse of what is to come in the celebration of Easter.

– Allen Whitaker, Co-Warden

The celebration is Monday, January 19th at Town Hall: 6 pm potluck Tapas dinner (please bring finger food or dessert to serve six); at 7:30 the featured speaker is Professor Hassel McClellan, Associate Professor of  Statistics and Management at Boston College. A free-will offering will benefit the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, DC, the African American Society Scholarships and the Arlington Public Schools.

Amy Carman remembered driving along a country road, when it has been overcast or rainy.  Suddenly, you may see sunshine in one or two places, streaming down from the dark clouds above, to fields below.  It doesn’t take too much imagination to connect this vision with the heavens sending a message to us, even if only to notice this lovely field.  In our house a stream of sunshine starts with Martin Luther King Jr. and ends at a 7 year old girl.  She has a strong connection with this man and his words.  A fierce flame of righteousness burns in her.  She reminds us often to be thankful, . . . and mindful.

Chris Wilbur said: Saturday I just had to see the whistle-stop train.  So I found myself flipping on CSPAN, where they sometimes let the camera rest on a scene with no commentary, and found myself at a station in Maryland with maybe a hundred others, people of all types, in the camera’s wedge, with a low wall behind them in front of tracks.  Though the light was somewhat somber, the crowd I could see was exuberant and relaxed. You could hear people chattering and laughing, one shouting, “No more Bush!,”  But I realized that I certainly was not relaxed at all watching this, that in some way I had not been relaxed for some time.

The camera stayed fixed on the scene and suddenly the train arrived on the left with a rumble and loud whistles.  The crowd cheered.  The engine passed.  The passenger cars rolled slowly by the camera, car after car, which seemed to take a long time as the train had evidently slowed to a crawl.  Then an old-fashioned coach which must be the last one, and sure enough, now the end of the train and just Barack and Joe standing on the tiny platform and waving.  My eyes fixed in on Barack, who continued to wave, at us and perhaps not just us.

He looked relaxed indeed, a friendly, delighted expression on his face as the end of the train angled away on the right side of the screen (the camera never moved).  As he disappeared I realized again how un-relaxed I was watching this, how I wouldn’t be able to breathe well until high noon on Tuesday, Inauguration Day.

And I felt with some sadness how hard it has been sometimes to breathe well in a racist society.  But whatever may happen later on, I said to myself, things will be better indeed come Tuesday noon.

Rose Udics said: In one of the scripture readings for this day, Samuel did not recognize the voice of God calling him to become a prophet. What does the voice of God sound like to us today? I believe God’s voice is in the kind of call that groups like the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization make-to help us recognize our God-given power when we work for Justice and Truth on behalf of our brothers and sisters, in Boston and elsewhere. I hope that we, as a faith community and as individuals, can heed that call. Though we may be tired after a long day of work and not want to use precious free time to lobby at the State House with hotel workers and personal care attendants for better working conditions, we can still sign a petition or make phone calls, or simply “be there”: show up at a meeting where having a crowd present sends an important message. When we do these things together, we are the inspiration, the “breath of fresh air” we all hope to find-the power of the Spirit at work in and among us.

Jim Gomes said: Rose and I adopted our daughter Elizabeth from South Korea when she was an infant. She became an American citizen when she was three years old. When Elizabeth was about eight or nine, she was studying the American Revolution in school. One evening, in telling us about how some of the colonists were part of the rebellion and some were not, Elizabeth casually remarked, “We were all British then.”

I was struck by how totally this little girl from half a world away had taken ownership of more than two centuries of American history. Only later did it occur to me that Rose’s and my families had not migrated to America from various corners of Europe until the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and that therefore all of the Paul Revere/Thomas Jefferson/Abraham Lincoln stuff was just as “adopted” for us as it was for Elizabeth.

For all the mistakes the U.S. has made throughout its history, the fact remains that it, more than any other nation, has aspired to bring together people of all races, religions, and countries of origin into a nation based on ideals rather than tribe. This week, with Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency, we will do something that is unimaginable almost any place else on earth. That is reason enough to be hopeful for the future.

We were all British then; we are all Americans now.

According to McClaren, the book asks two essential questions: What are the world’s top crises, and what do the life and message of Jesus say to those global crises?  He believes many young people see Christianity as a failed religion because it fails to address systemic injustice, poverty, and dysfunction.  He thinks we can do better.

You may have an opinion on one or the other of these questions.  The group continues in February on the first two Thursdays, 7:30-8:30.  No need to read in advance-just come and join the conversation.