April 22, 2022

Can you guess what the following have in common?

• a crock pot

• lyric sheets from Encanto

• a now-crisp palm leaf

• a large, smooth, river rock

• green vines

• a Last Supper coloring page

• a stuffed ostrich

• a glow-in-the-dark-beach ball

• a flying dove kite

• half a plastic egg

If you guessed the remnants from a beautiful, rich, full Lent and Holy Week, you would be correct. I smiled to myself as I walked around church this week, picking up bits and pieces of our Lenten Wednesdays and our Holy Week services, scattered throughout the church. With We don't talk about Bruno-no-no running through my head (again!) I came across a stray palm from Palm Sunday, a river rock and coloring page from Mandy Thursday, vines from our first-ever immersive Garden of Gethsemane, pieces of the visual reminders of our ancient stories as told at the Easter Vigil, and a bright pink plastic reminder of a glorious Easter Morning.

Our Great Story doesn't end here - we are just beginning! again! - but this post-Easter week was a chance to reflect on all of it, and on what a sacred thing it is to be in community with you. Thank you to everyone who helped make Holy Week unfold smoothly, and helped make it so vibrant. There are far too many to name, but I am grateful. And thanks be to God for each of you out there, and all of the ways you all show up as the Body of Christ for me, for one another, for your other communities, and for the world. What a gift it is to walk with you, share with you, learn from you, grow with you.

My prayer for you this week is that you are able to see the way the light of the risen Christ shines so brightly in you. The way you are an integral part of the living, thriving, here-and-now Body of Christ. Yes, you.

Palm Sunday

Greetings on the cusp of Holy Week; the heart and soul of our sacred story.

One of my favorite aspects of Holy Week is the deep connection our great story has to the natural world in all aspects. On Palm Sunday we celebrate Jesus by waving plants: the source of oxygen that allows us breath itself. On Good Friday, we grieve the wounds inflicted on Jesus' very human body and mind. On Holy Saturday, after our stories tell us Jesus descends into the depths, battles death, and defeats it once and for all, our Easter Vigil service begins in the dark, symbolizing the darkness of the world just before the dawning of Creation. We then recreate that dawning by lighting a sacred fire. The date of Easter itself is set according to the moon cycle: the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox. Yes, the moon, a sign of constant change and yet complete consistency, a symbol of enlightenment and illumination - and a little bit of mysticism and mystery - sets the stage.

The mysticism and mystery is what pulls and tugs at my heart. I invite you to let it pull and tug at yours, too. Let the moon illuminate new aspects of this story for you this year. Let your breath rise and fall with Jesus' breath this coming week. Let yourself feel the earthy darkness of Good Friday, the rawness of Holy Saturday, and the sacred fire of Easter Vigil. And let the spark of the Divine rise in your heart on Easter Morning like the very first sunrise, over a world that is always being made new.

Your Worship Team and Altar Guild, along with some pretty amazing support from this pretty amazing community have many ways for you to engage with Holy Week this year. I invite you to attend as many as you're able. Whether you participate in community or at home, I am sending Holy Week blessings to each of you.

April 1, 2022

Saint Anne's Creation Care Team has some exciting plans to share!

In support of the highly endangered Whippledee bird, Saint Anne's roof will be painted pink this summer. As most know, the Whippledee was discovered by Bishop Whipple and is a special bird to Minnesota Episcopalians. The Whippledee migrates through Minnesota only once every-other decade, and its natural nesting habitat, fields of pink flowers, once abundant, are now as rare as the bird herself. But the Whippledee Society of Minnesota has discovered that roofs painted pink also serve the Whippledee and has asked that all who are able provide habitat for this rarest of all of God's creatures. Saint Anne's Creation Care Team is honored to comply. The attached photo is a mock-up of what we can expect the church to look like this summer. We will be holding a dance-a-thon fundraiser to support this effort. Stay tuned for details.

For more information, click here

March 25, 2022

With tremendous thanks to Jon Rexeisen, we have a completely revamped Saint Anne's website! The address hasn't changed - you can enjoy marveling at the clean and easy-to-navigate new look, right here: https://www.saintannesmn.org/

Jon spent a good deal of time going over the analytics of our site to determine who is using it and what information users seem to find helpful. As we live into our new site there may be additions to it, but this cleaner, less-is-more, approach is intentional. It's easier for people to find what they are looking for when we've cleared some space for it.

I find myself returning to the new site again and again now, just to delight in its simplicity. When Jon and I discussed these changes, he suggested that starting with a blank slate and adding back only what we needed is easier than starting with the old site and attempting to remove items. "It's too easy to hang on to things just out of habit", Jon said.

This practice invited me to think about the things in my own life I hang onto that may have served a purpose at one time, but don't actually serve me well any more. Some are actual, tangible, things and some are old habits or patterns of thinking. If it were all wiped clean, what would I bring back and what would I let go? It isn't always easy to let go of stuff - and it's definitely not easy to shift my patterns of thinking. But it iswhat Lent is all about, so I'm trying. Jesus had the desert. I have Goodwill, head-clearing walks in my neighborhood, and deep breaths.

How about you? How does it feel to imagine starting with a blank slate: just you and God on the morning of Creation, only adding in what you need in your life. Only the things that will serve you well, bring you delight, and bring you closer to the Divine? When you think about what you might not bring back, what surprises you? How does it feel to imagine letting go of some life-clutter? What stands in your way?

Our sleek new website invites you to continue your Lenten journey. I do, too.

March 18, 2022

Dear Ones,

I don't know if a mucky, muddy, brown patch of wet mud has ever looked so beautiful. On one of our warm sunny days this week I arrived at church in the morning to the front-lawn-full-of-snow we've had for months, and almost watched it steadily disappear throughout the day. When I walked out to my car in the late afternoon, I was greeted by the sights, sounds, and smells of early spring.

"Mud Season" is what my friends who live on farms or in rural areas call this time of year. Not needing to drive heavy equipment over the ground or attempt to get fields ready for planting, I call it "glorious". And when I stopped at the store on my way home, everyone in the check out line was talking about the weather - it was too exciting not to share!

This year, especially. It feels as if we are maybe, possibly, could-it-be, finally moving out of what has felt in some ways like a two-year long winter, and into the most welcomed spring ever. Even so, the mud reminds us that even the most holy of transitions are rarely pristine and rarely without some messiness to deal with. Our upcoming Holy Week reminds of us of the same. It all feels especially sacred this year.

My prayer for you this week is sturdy boots to get you through the mud and muck, hope in your hearts as you watch what was transition into what will be, and the joy of sharing it all with one another as companions on the journey.

Blessings,
Jennifer