Dear Friends,
In the kitchen of our home in Indianapolis we had our sons stand next to the pantry door and we would mark their height as they grew. We “measured” them.
165 years ago our congregation gathered for the first time (before the Civil War began). Cars were invented after we began. Two world wars (and lots of other wars, throughout the world through today). The telephone. The mobile phone. The atomic bomb. Indoor plumbing. The internet. The world has changed a lot. And it has not.
And through it all, through two pandemics, through 9-11, through crisis after crisis, we have continued to meet, to read scripture, to sing, to pray, through assassinations, through civil rights, through marriage equality, to find our way to welcoming the stranger. Many, many difficult years in those 165. And the way we survived and thrived was imagination, hope, and love holding us together.
During those years there were many times it felt like dreams died. But dreams never die.
We have even changed physically; a new sanctuary in 1960; a new organ in the living memory of folks here. Perhaps the only constant is change. You’ll notice some changes in Advent this year as well.
I look at those marks on our building, the changes we’ve been through in our life together, and I don’t know what the changes will be in the future, but I know there will be changes. We can count on it.
And we should look at all of this and exult and also exult as we continue to find ways to live into a new moment, rooted in the past 165, and recognizing the next 165 will be quite different, but the same spirit.
Keep tellin’ the Story,
Mike
On YouTube there are often videos of people in everyday life dancing to music. They are taking a piece of art and reinterpreting it for the moment. This is what we are doing in the life of our church. Taking the art of the people of the last 165 years and re-interpreting it. Let’s dance! (This is people at Boston College dancing to Pharrell Williams hit “Happy.”)