CHRISTMAS EVE

Saturday, December 24

4:00 pm Children’s Celebration and Holy Communion

10:00 pm Candlelight Service and Holy Communion

CHRISTMAS DAY

Sunday, December 25

10:00 am The Feast of the Nativity



Join us in person in the Nave or online

All are very welcome!

God’s dream

For weeks, we have been carefully keeping time.

Carefully lighting Advent candles week by week.

Carefully watching and waiting.

But suddenly, the story begins to get away from us.

Things start happening quickly,

too quickly to really keep up with.

Even before the birth of the baby,

everything has changed.

We are on God's time now

and we will never be the same.

We like to smooth out and sand off the edges of the Christmas story

but the story is a rough one, a scandalous one.

This coming Sunday we will gather around the story of Jospeh and Mary.

They are engaged – but she is pregnant.

Nothing could be more of a scandal and Joseph decides to dismiss her

but he doesn’t do it.

"The Triumph of Parental Love in all Species: Or "Mares eat Oats and Does eat Oats, and Send their Love Across the Ages"

At the end of my Chekhov essay, I left the old sled driver, Ionych, alone with his "petite mare" in a cab driver's barn after a rough night's work in a near blinding St Petersburg snowstorm. Ionych has recently lost his son, and has found no one with whom to share his loss. Only, that is, his loyal "friend" the mare, who, as he feeds her the last of his oats in the manger, seems to respond in her fashion to his expression of a father's love for his deceased child. While he talks, she slowly chews her oats, in counterpoint, through instinct and emotion, listening to his story, and remembering her mother's "story" of love, while rhythmically filling her oats. This sets up a kind of dual understanding between man and horse. She listens to her music of the past while she eats, as he tells her of his son's life. Thus a genuine communication takes place between the two of them. Earlier Ionych has spoken to her about their shared pasts growing up and living in faraway farmlands, he with his family, she with her foals. And we sense that in her act of eating those oats it must certainly evoke for her a time when she was young on that farm and eating to nourish her young.

ADVENT

By Susan Garsoe

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”

- The Dalai Lama

“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in that action.”

- Mother Teresa

“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”

- Abraham Lincoln

These three quotes live above my desk, and I move them to different places so that they do not become an unnoticed part of the landscape. I aspire to live this way, but I need to be reminded many times a day. Jesus understood our need to be reminded, particularly so when Peter asked about forgiveness.

Advent simply means, "coming."

The season of Advent is all about preparing for the coming of Christ.

Advent is also about taking stock and leaving behind everything that keeps us from fully participating in the life of the Spirit that comes with the coming of Emmanuel.

We will spend the next four Sundays of preparation praying together that God will forgive us of all of the ways that we have fallen short of God's intentions for us.

The Reign of Christ

This Sunday is the final Sunday of the church year.

Believe it or not, the next Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent.

We will gather this Sunday to celebrate the reign of Christ and his victory over death, and yet, we await the coming of Christ again in glory.

Over the past couple of Sundays, with photographs and handwritten bits of colored paper, we gathered up the names of all of those who have loved us, taught us, believed in us, nurtured and fed us, blessed us and loved us.

We made such a beautiful piece of communal art that we decided to leave it up in the Nave for this Sunday too!

If you didn’t get a chance to add a name or two, you are in luck. We will continue to add names this coming week and next as we continue to give thanks for all those who have gone before us.

Sharing the Saints

We had a great All Saints Celebration this past Sunday.

With photographs and handwritten bits of colored paper, we gathered up the names of all of those who have taught and believed in us, nurtured and fed us, blessed us and loved us.

We made such a beautiful piece of communal art that we decided to leave it up in the Nave for the next couple of weeks!

If you didn’t get a chance to add a name or two, you are in luck. We will continue to add names this coming week and next as we continue to give thanks for all those who have gone before us. Join us this Sunday as our eucharistic prayer says, “in that chorus of praise that rings through eternity.”

For all the saints

I was lucky enough to know all four of my grandparents.

One grandmother was a generous and prolific cook. There were always too many delicious things to eat at her house. Her kitchen was perpetually cooking, and the AM radio perched over the sink was always singing country hits to keep the mood light.

“Y’all come on” was her sung invitation to the Sunday afternoon dinner table.

My other grandmother was too busy to cook.

The preacher’s wife burned toast and swore by the economical merits of powdered milk. She drove all over town with a bag full of prosthetic breasts that filled the hatchback of her 1976 Toyota Corolla. A survivor of breast cancer in a time when surviving was rare, she spent most of her time after that life-changing event encouraging other women on the road to recovery.

God's extravagance

As we met for morning prayer yesterday morning here in the parish house, there was considerable skepticism among the participants that the forecasted snow would amount to much.

As we said our final Alleluias, the first flake began to float past the beautiful windows of St. Mary Chapel. Pretty soon there was a light powder sugar on the ground.

Ha.

Things don't always turn out the way we think they will.

That's the wonder and promise of this Sunday's Gospel reading. Luke is the only of our gospel storytellers who takes up the story of Zacchaeus, the hated tax collector, the ultimate outsider, who gets swept right up into the middle of Jesus' saving action. Jesus sees this scorned and wealthy man, invites himself over for lunch and Zacchaeus has a sudden and total change of heart.

Losing our memory

The fall weather has the amazing trees on our church grounds in their full glory. They are totally different than they were just a few days ago. God is doing a new thing.

It reminds me of a great question that the preacher Barbara Lundbladt asks.

“What if we could lose our memory long enough

for God to do a new thing with us?”

We have begun partnering with the Mindfulness and Positivity Project. Begun here a few years ago at Cheyenne Mountain High School, Meg Frederick and the other leaders of this work have created a local workshop that helps participants increase their overall sense of well-being by quieting the mind, overcoming challenges and increasing positivity in daily life.

Recently, 60 folks who work in school district 2 gathered in our parish house for a retreat day led by the Mindfulness and Positivity project. The participants all work in supporting roles in the public school as teacher’s aides, janitorial staff and kitchen workers.

During the lunch break, everyone spilled out of the parish house and onto our wonderful grounds. One of the participants, knowing that I am the pastor here, came to me and said, “Pastor, please pray for the kids in our school. They are really struggling now.”

Faith Formation for Children

As adults, we each have our reasons for coming to church on Sunday morning. Perhaps it’s out of habit, the draw of a loving community, a call to deepen our faith, or a combination of all three. One of the beautiful things about Chapel’s Children’s Ministry program is that it gives the children of our congregation their own reasons to walk through Chapel’s doors each week.

Children’s Ministry has turned church on Sundays from a weekly obligation (“Mom, can’t we just stay in our pajamas??”) to genuine enthusiasm for kid-focused faith formation. My kids feel proud to have a place in church to call their own. They adore their budding community of friends and “Godly Play,” which includes story time, crafts, singing, and snacks. Bottom line, my kids feel like church is a place where they belong…

A Deeply Spiritual Practice

Our Stewardship Season began on Sunday, October 2, and will continue until our Ingathering Sunday in November. Please pick up a pledge form in the narthex this Sunday and start a conversation.

When I was a little girl, I knew that Jesus loved me. There was a painting in our Sunday School room, with Jesus and the children. One of the children had her hand on Jesus’ knee. I knew that that little girl was me. I also knew that the adults in my church loved me, and that they were hovering in the wings of my life, to support me in safety and love…

A Simple Commandment

I participate vicariously in the Thursday morning book study through my wife Cathy. She is an active member of that group, gets and reads the books, and we often discuss the insights that spring from them as she prepares for each session. We chuckled over an observation by one author that rabbis have the frustrating habit of always answering a question with another question. When the author asked a rabbi why this was so, the rabbi replied “What’s wrong with a question?”…

Going for it.

I am really excited about the fall y’all!

Chapel of Our Saviour is buzzing with all kinds of wonderful ministry. I hope that you sense that the Spirit that is alive among us every time we gather for worship. When we pray together and sing together and break bread together it is so obvious that the Spirit of the Lord is very surely in this place. Sunday visitors feel it right away. They always remark about what an amazing community of faith this is. This is a very special part of God’s church and I am grateful that every one of you is a part of our common prayer here…

THOUGHTS FROM THE SENIOR WARDEN

In one of the stories in Acts, Paul baptizes Lydia and her household. And the first thing Lydia does after her baptism is to invite Paul and the others to stay at her home. “And she prevailed upon us.” The act of hospitality. John 14: 23. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” David often refers to the people in his life who love him: family, friends, mentors, aunts and uncles – the gathering of the beloveds. Home.

Several years ago, in a Sunday morning class, we read “Why Don’t People Come to Church?” The gist was that the people inside the church don’t make people feel welcomed. That the programs and service and hymns won’t make any difference until the people inside the church “live out the things we proclaim on Sundays.” I like to think about “why people do come to church,” and it’s the flip side of that coin. That we make people feel welcomed, and loved. That we want them to sit with us in the pew, just as they are. We all want to be welcomed and loved, just as we are. Home…

We are just learning about the death of Queen Elizabeth.

It is easy to wonder, "What in the world do we do now?" What words can we possibly say? What prayers can we possibly pray?"

Luckily we belong to an ancient tradition that helps us know exactly what to say.

Even when our grief leads us out to places where we have no more words, our sturdy and time-tested liturgies can lead us through the initial shocks.

We can quickly turn to the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer and find ancient words of prayer that seem written exactly for this moment.

We join with churches throughout the world who pray this beautiful and ancient prayer of the church…

My husband, Mike, and I and our sons, Jabari and Joseph, moved to Colorado Springs in late June 2021 from Bryan, Texas after Mike was offered the position of lead chaplain at Penrose Hospital. Outdoor enthusiasts, we immediately felt at home in gorgeous Colorado Springs and after visiting every Episcopal church in the area, fell in love with Chapel of Our Saviour and decided to stay.

Mike, while finishing his last year at the Iona School of Ministry in Texas, began a chaplain field placement position at Chapel of our Saviour until he was ordained as a deacon this past June. I started working on a new website for Chapel of Our Saviour last Fall and began leading our children’s program this past January…

PRAYING

by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

God is present among us

One of the bedrock claims of our faith is that when we gather together and pray, God is present. It only takes two or three of us, and God is there.

As we continue to enjoy these beautiful summer Sundays together, we are already beginning to plan for an exciting fall season here at Chapel of Our Saviour.

Plans are underway for the celebration of the Annual "PigNic", newcomer gatherings and a 4-week small group offering called, "Life, Community and Faith." These are simple opportunities to come together and share in the fellowship and presence of God and each other…