Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

            The calendars all say that a new year begins in January. The Church’s traditional “liturgical” calendar says that it begins sometime after Thanksgiving with the first Sunday of Advent. But if you ask me, a new year begins in September, right after Labor Day. That might come from having spent almost twenty years of my life going to school, followed by parenting children for over 26 years, one of whom still is in school. But, regardless, a new year begins in September.

            And that’s reflected in our life together as a community of faith. For the second year in a row, Pastor Deborah and I will be using the Narrative Lectionary to organize our preaching on Sunday mornings. A lectionary is an assigned cycle of readings. Unlike the Revised Common Lectionary, which has that odd liturgical starting date on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and then proceeds to jump around in the Bible, the Narrative Lectionary starts on the Sunday after Labor Day and moves through the Bible chronologically, from Genesis to Revelation. On September 11, we start a new year with the Narrative Lectionary.

            And there will be other new things at Central as well. One of the most obvious will be a new entrance from the Elm Street driveway that is handicap accessible. We will be welcoming officially our new Parish Associate, the Rev. Noelle Kirchner, who is developing a television series on parenting in cooperation with Hometowne TV.. There will be a new time for our informal WAVE worship service when it moves to Sunday evenings in October. And in October, we will give you a new opportunity to learn about Islam in much greater depth in a series of Wednesday evening classes with Dr. Ali Chaudry.

            And so, Happy New Year! For no matter what others might tell you, a new year begins at Central in September, and we hope that you will make it your resolution to renew your commitment to this community of faith.

Rev. Don Steele

God at 5000 Meters

If you watched much of the recently completed Olympics, you are left with quite a few wonderful memories, However, the one that still sticks out for me came during a qualifying heat in the women’s 5000 meter race when Nikki Hamblin from New Zealand and Abbey D’Agostino from the United States collided on the track, both of them tumbling to the ground. D’Agostino was the first one up, encouraging Hamblin to get up and to finish the race, but it was D’Agostino who was the most seriously injured, collapsing back onto the track moments later. Hamblin returned the favor, the two of them helping each other to finish the race. They came in last in the standings, but in my eyes, winners in ways that really count.

In interviews afterwards, D’Agostino attributed her reaction to God. “Although my actions were instinctual at that moment,” she said in a statement, “the only way I can and have rationalized it is that God prepared my heart to respond that way.” And that’s a wonderful way to rationalize what she and Hamblin experienced on the track—that it was an experience of God.

Indeed, it is my belief that is exactly the sort of thing that God does. That is, it is my belief that God gets us to take the focus off ourselves, and God gets us to focus on others around us who need some compassion, some encouragement, some help. It’s the job of religious practice to make that shift in focus almost instinctual. And any religious practice that doesn’t do that basic job is, at best, pointless, it seems to me—at worst, far worse.

“By far the best part of my experience of the Olympics has been the community it creates, what the Games symbolize,” D’Agostino went on in her statement. “Since the night of the opening ceremonies, I have been so touched by this—people from all corners of the globe, embracing their unique cultures, yet all uniting under one celebration of the human body, mind, and spirit. I just keep thinking about how that spirit of unity and peace is stronger than all the global strife we’re bombarded with and saddened by on a daily basis.”

No matter what the sport, if you want to point your kids to an athlete whose performance they should emulate, I can’t think of a better direction to point than towards Nikki Hamblin and Abbey D’Agostino—God at 5000 meters—winning in the way that really counts.

--Pastor Don Steele