Dear Parish Family,

This Advent issue of Posta has a dual theme: Stewardship and New Beginnings. God is the Creator and Giver of all that we are and have. Stewardship is nothing more or less than returning to God in loving gratitude what has been so generously and freely given.
Gratitude is the bedrock of stewardship. While on retreat at Julian House last week I read two articles I want to share with you. Their authors say it better than I can.

First is Father Robert Llewelyn, the former chaplain of the Julian Shrine in Norwich, England, who wrote a little book called Our Duty and Our Joy. It is about our need to praise and give thanks to God in all things. The prologue quotes from the 15th chapter of William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.

As Thankfulness is an expressed acknowledgement of the goodness of God towards you, so repinings and complaints are as plain accusations of God's want and goodness toward you. Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most, it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God's goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it.

All prayer and devotion, fasting and repentance, meditation and retirement, all sacraments and ordinances are but so many means to render the soul...conformable to the will of God and to fill it with thankfulness and praise for everything that come from God. This is the perfection of all virtues, and all virtues that do not tent to it or proceed from it are but so many false ornaments of a soul not converted to God.

If anyone tells you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it...turn all that it touches into happiness.

Second, is an article in St. Paul's Printer by Melody Beattie, the author of Codependent No More. She writes: Gratitude and acceptance are two magic tricks available to us in life. No matter who we are, where we are, or what we have, gratitude and acceptance work. Then, after going through a list of unlikely circumstance for gratitude she writes: Say thank you until you mean it.

Thank God, life and the universe for everyone and everything sent your way. Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a strange into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. Gratitude makes things right.

Gratitude turns negative energy into positive energy. There is no situation or circumstance so small or large that it is not susceptible to gratitude's power. We can start with who we are and what we have today, apply gratitude, and then let it work its magic. Say thank you until you mean it. If you say it long enough, you will believe it.

Today, I will shine the transforming light of gratitude on all the circumstances of my life.

What better time than Advent to make a new beginning of more intentionally giving thanks to God for all God's gifts? There is no better time! May God bless us as we prepare to celebrate the giving of God's greatest gift, Jesus.

Faithfully yours,

Mother Tina+


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HOW TO PLIGHT ONE’S TROTH

When it comes, will it come without warning,
Just when I’m picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

-from W.H. Auden, “Tell me the Truth about Love” (1938)

We await our Lord’s coming and the consummation of all things, with all the hopeful expectancy of a young person who wonders when and how love will happen to him or her. Love, like the child in the game “hide and seek,” has a habit of “coming ready or not;” we say it sweeps us off our feet, it is something into which we fall; it can make us giddy or sick, and before it happens - in whatever fashion - for the first time and the next and the next time, we wonder if it is possible for it - whatever it is - to interrupt us, to burst into our everyday banal lives, with our bad mornings and worse habits, our distraction and boredom, our business, our worries and our routine pain. What will it be like to be in love?

And so we wonder about heaven too, or death, or the coming of judgment and bliss. Will we be picking our nose when the Bridegroom calls out? Will we be panic-stricken trying to find some oil for our lamps which have gone out? How on earth can we be ready if the point is that He will come unexpectedly? We come week by week to the holy sacrament, and even when we know when we can expect this encounter, and even when we try particularly to prepare ourselves to receive Our Lord’s Body and Blood, there is a sense in which the Love that “came down at Christmas,” the “Love all lovely, Love divine,” who gives himself to us in the sacrament, in the midst or our ritual still crashes in with heaven, all unexpected as a knock at the door at 6 in the morning.

It is because of this Love which we both await with a teenager’s hopeful longing and which we have already received in part, and only because of the Love that we must pledge. We must “plight our troth” as was once said in the marriage rite - that is we must solemnly pledge in a way that means an engagement of one’s own self, one’s truth with all of the trusting vulnerability that we see in the nuptial vows.

What I mean is, if we pledge our money because we think that tithing is a sure sign we are good Christians, we will have done a good thing, but our giving will be wasted. If we pledge our money purely because we want to make sure that our institution keeps serving us, we will have done a good thing, but it will not be enough. If we pledge our money as a sort of payment or subscription, or a means of exercising a little control so that the Church is on our pay-roll, we will have done a good thing, but our giving will make us very poor indeed. If we pledge our money because we feel a niggling sense of guilt if we don’t, we will have done a good thing, but even lavish donations amount to a pittance.

For this is not the way we give and pledge our goods and our selves to the people we love: neither can it be the way we pledge ourselves and our goods to the Church through whom we come to meet Love Himself.

We love, because God first loved us: and so we must pledge, but we must pledge in love, and then lovely Love will knock on our door when our hair is in a mess, He’ll step on our toes on the bus one day, He’ll catch us picking our nose, or licking the spoon, He’ll be courteous and rough, He’ll come like the first snow fall, He’ll sweep us off our feet, and our lamps will be bright.

Holy Trinity is collecting women’s and children’s hats, mittens, gloves, and scarves to decorate a Mitten Tree during Advent. The winter garb will be donated to Saint Margaret’s House. Please place your donations on the Mitten Tree at the back of the church.

The Saint Margaret’s House Wish List also includes socks and underwear for women and children, toiletries (deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, & body lotion), blankets, towels, and disposable diapers. They are also collecting Christmas gifts for children, teenagers, and women. These items can be left in the back of the church—near the Mitten Tree—and will be delivered to the house.

Holy Trinity continues to accept non-perishable food items for local food banks. Donations can be placed in the basket at the back of the church or in the boxes in the parish hall.