This past week was full of fabulous experiences for this DLRE! After the Coming of Age trip to Boston last weekend, the ministers and I headed to Hamilton for a Minister(s)/DRE retreat. When the retreat ended, I headed directly to Syracuse for the Spring Gathering (formerly known as District Assembly). Both events provided wonderful opportunities for networking, self-reflection, sharing of ideas, and learning. I was able to attend several workshops, listen to some outstanding speeches, and mingle with many ministers and DRE’s. Time well spent! Much gratitude to all of you for your generosity in supporting my professional development!

A thought-provoking reading and exercise I wanted to share from the retreat:

“Set in Stone” by Victoria Safford

In a cemetery once, an old one in New England, I found a strangely soothing epitaph. The name of the deceased and her dates had been scoured away by wind and rain, but there was a carving of a tree with roots and branches (a classic nineteenth-century motif) and among them the words, “She attended well and faithfully to a few worthy things.”

At first this seemed to me a little meager, a little stingy on the part of her survivors, but I wrote it down and have thought about it since, and now I can’t imagine a more proud or satisfying legacy.

“She attended well and faithfully to a few worthy things.” Every day I stand in danger of being struck by lightning and having the obituary in the local paper say, for all the world to see, “She attended frantically and ineffectually to a great many unimportant, meaningless details.”

How do you want your obituary to read? “He got all the dishes washed and dried before playing with his children in the evening.” “She balanced her checkbook with meticulous precision and never missed a day of work – missed a lot of sunsets, missed a lot of love, missed a lot of risk, missed a lot – but her money was in order.” “She answered all her calls, all her e-mail, all her voice-mail, but along the way she forgot to answer the call to service and compassion, and forgiveness, first and foremost of herself.” “He gave and forgave sparingly, without radical intention, without passion or conviction.” “She could not, or would not, hear the calling of her heart.”

How will it read, how does it read, and if you had to name a few worthy things to which you attend well and faithfully, what, I wonder, would they be?

After this reading, we were asked to consider and write what we’d like to have carved on our gravestones. Food for thought.

This Sunday, April 22, religious education will be our religious

education classes in Waters House and the RE Hallway, with the exception of the Coming of Age participants who have the week off and may attend the service.

The Nursery is available for children three and under. As always, all Children and Youth are welcome to attend worship services.

Please pick up Children up from their RE classes by 11:50am.