Written By Rachel McMillan
A few months ago, I was gifted the privilege of taking a trip down bookish memory lane. A few of us, including Rev Lori, went to town attempting to organize the TEMC library. On that first day, we weeded and organized and sneezed through the dust of books that had sat untouched for many years.
If you have ever been inside the library, you know it is a bookish haven by virtue of its design alone. There is a cozy window… Read more
Friends, if you’ve been in our sanctuary recently, I hope you’ve noticed our heritage cabinet on our eastern wall, not far from the entry to the atrium. There, our own Charles Sweetman has been gathering mementos, photos, articles, and memories from our history. He has done this with seasonable appropriateness: first Christmas, then Valentine's, then St. Patrick, then Easter, and perhaps more that I missed. His displays have been beautiful, poignant, funny, and profound.
These displays show us a church that is… Read more
Lent is a season for giving up good things to remember the ultimate. It’s a season when the church refrains even from saying “hallelujah.” That’s an Easter word. Lent is a preparation for the cross, and a time to reflect on our own sins that send Jesus there.
I found myself giving up something during Lent last week, but not intentionally. It was greeting you all before and after our service. I’ve had a virus (not covid, not even strep), and didn’t want anyone else to join me in the purgatory of illness. But I hated missing this time together. It’s… Read more
“Hey Jaclyn, we want to do something fun, what should we do?”
I noticed this sort of request to our own Jaclyn Didiano early in my time at TEMC. The staff would be gathered at the church or elsewhere. We’d have time to kill. And Jaclyn would alleviate our boredom. Soon we would be playing some game or icebreaker, something Jaclyn accrued from her years in camping or recreation. Ice would be broken. Laughs laughed. Tears shed. Humans humanized.
You probably know Jaclyn… Read more
Friends, TEMC’ers and beyond: we are doing a brave thing this weekend. We’re launching a new ministry initiative. We don’t even know what to call it yet. But we know it needs your prayer and well-wishes and support.
It’ll be launched by our own Nupur James-Araujo, our beloved minister for children and youth, who now has “young adults” added to her portfolio. We don’t know exactly what a young adult is, but we figure it’s around 18-35 years old. Nupur and her husband Aaron have had a hankering for a version of church… Read more
Friends, I want to share with you an encouraging note I got the other day. Here it is:
We were talking about this the other night - how the church has become one of our most important communities. We are just at that stage of life where we can lean into it as a family, and it's a real joy. We haven't even gone to our place in the County once this fall, because we just feel we ought to be around on the weekends at the church. It's our turn, I suppose. Like countless other families before us, it's… Read more
One of the pilgrims on a recent outing of your church’s council said, when he heard me call this a field trip, that he felt he needed a permission slip signed by his parents.
Our church council did an unusual thing recently and met off-site. Rev. Jenny Andison of St. Paul’s Bloor Street was kind enough to show us around her beautiful sanctuary. That church and ours have a historic relationship, punctuated by the quarter century friendship of her predecessor, Barry Parker, and mine, Andrew Stirling.
I was talking with one of you about habits. Good habits. Like eating vegetables, going to church, exercising, going to church, saving money and, well, you know, going to church.
And you said this wise thing, noting how easy it is to grow out of good habits, especially with the 2+ years our world has struggled with COVID-19.
You said, “I can’t do it by myself.”
This is the genius of Christianity. Lots of faiths, especially… Read more