Good morning, I must start off with the story of how we ended up here at Grace in Brunswick, Maryland, of all of the places we could have landed. As English writer and philosopher G.K. Chesterton once said, “Coincidences are spiritual puns.” This story starts back in January of 2013. I was leading a Celtic Morning Prayer service at our parish in Delaware and we had a drop-in visitor, a priest from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, Mary Jayne Ledgerwood. After the service we chatted and invited her to our home for dinner. Fast-forward a couple years. Last August we decided to sell our home in Rehoboth Beach, DE, and move to Lovettsville, VA, with our daughter and son-in-law, Bekah and Sean. We had looked at the web pages for the Episcopal churches in Leesburg and Purcellville. Leesburg was a possibility, but a little far. Purcellville didn’t appear welcoming. Then I had an idea…I know a priest in the Diocese of Virginia, I’ll ask her! So on August 23 of last year I sent a private Facebook message to Mary Jayne and asked her for recommendations for a new church community in Virginia. Mary Jayne immediately told us to cross the Potomac and come to Grace and there we would meet her friend Anjel. She let Anjel know we were looking and within minutes I was receiving messages from Anjel inviting us to try out Grace. We checked the website—“Serving Christ and Welcoming All”, a Believe Out Loud Community, and BONUS, “We are Orthodox and Celtic” in our spirituality. Our first visit to Grace was at the Kirkin’ o’ the Tartans a year ago. We knew we had found a new home. There would be none of the dreaded “church shopping.” One of the writers I read this year in EfM expressed this sentiment, “Judaism and all other western religions are suffering from having become over-verbalized and under-experienced. At Grace I find so much is experience, the kind of experience you get from using all of your senses and doing hard work together as a family. I experience the holiness of the ground we walk on and the presence of the saints in the touch of these beautiful walls. I experience God’s presence in the people here and the way we care for each other, in the chant of the Psalms, in the singing of the Eucharist, watching the children in our Pray Space, and in the breaking of the bread. We praise God in song, smoke, Icon, and in our caring for the least of God’s sheep. I am refreshed and give myself anew with hymns, kneeling, standing, bowing, proclaiming the Word, and coffee hour friendship. Grace is where I turned to after the massacre at a Florida nightclub and while I was overwhelmed with grief I found comfort in the loving presence here and the abundance of hugs. Our Thursday morning Bible Study with Anjel is not only a place for learning history and context, but also a place for exploring and connecting. We call it the “rabbit hole”. What I have experienced here at Grace is not something that is confined to Sundays or even within these walls. I have celebrated, gardened, carried furniture and refrigerators, visited the sick, handed out Christmas gifts, prayed, and served up hotdogs, all part of our family life. We have a common mission here at Grace, to seek and serve God in all persons. Teri and I are Netflix junkies, watching entire seasons of our old favorite shows. This month we are watching Cheers. You all know the theme song: Be glad there’s one place in the world Where everybody knows your name, And they’re always glad you came; You want to go where people know, People are all the same; You want to go where everybody knows your name. I’m glad you came. Thank you. Comments are closed.
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Ministry MinutesEach year during our Annual Giving Campaign, members of Grace Church tell their stories about why they love Grace Church and why they are involved. Each story is different in details but all reflect the love of Christ which is found in this community of faith. Archives
October 2017
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