Volunteers are still needed for set up and clean up, as well as people to bring cookies for our homecoming picnic this Sunday. Please contact Ann Zultner (ann@azercpa.com) or Carol Brooks Thomas (carolbrooksthomas@gmail.com) to sign up.
Kick-Off Sunday
Dear Good people of Trinity Church,
This Sunday, as you well know, is kick-off Sunday! With the celebration of Labor Day, summer is “officially” over yet we long to hold on to it. School buses are back on the roads, football season is underway, and fall is just starting to make its presence felt. All of this signals that it’s time for us to come together, to recalibrate, and to prepare for the year ahead. It’s a moment to open ourselves to the possibilities of what God may have in store for us as the people of Trinity Church.
As we live into this new year, I am reminded of the words of the Celtic teacher, J. Philip Newell, who writes, “At key moments of transition in the history of Christianity, inspired Christian teachers have asked, ‘Who is Christ for us today?’” We now find ourselves in such a moment—a significant time of transition not only within the Church but also in our nation and the world. Newell goes on to say, “What are the brokennesses of our world today? What are the battlefields among the nations and the gaping wounds of creation’s body? What are the discords in our communities and the struggles in the most important relationships in our lives?” There is work to be done, Good News to be proclaimed, and love to be shared!
As we embark on this new program year, what will be our role and responsibility in this season? Who is Christ for us today? The ability to articulate clearly and embody fully the answer to that question will determine who we are and what kind of church community we will be.
I so look forward to seeing you on Sunday!
It’s good to be home.
Let’s go!!
Peace and Blessings,
Paul
Sabbatical Reflection
Dear Good People of Trinity Church,
What an incredible few months it has been! My sabbatical has been a time of profound renewal and joy. It has given me the precious gift of time—to reconnect with my own soul and to share special moments with my family. I’ve traveled more extensively and flown more miles than ever before in my life.
What has made this journey so wonderfully liberating was the knowledge that I have a home and a community filled with love and support. As John O’Donohue beautifully writes in To Bless the Space Between Us, “Home is where the heart is. It stands for the sure center where individual life is shaped and from where it journeys forth.”
The certainty of our home in Christ and within our beloved Trinity Church community frees us to fully embrace the adventures that life presents, wherever they may lead. We find our grounding and assurance in life’s uncertainties because we are always anchored in God’s love, no matter where our path takes us
Well now the time has come for my travels has come to an end and blessedly the journey has brought me and my family safely home. It’s good to be home!
I look forward to being with you all on Sunday, September 8th as we Kick-Off our program year and open possibilities of where God will lead us this year!!
Peace and Blessings to all!
Paul
Blessing of the Backpacks
We invite you all (Preschoolers through High Schoolers, Teachers, College Students, Grad Students, & Professors) to bring your backpacks and schoolbags to Trinity on September 1. Bring them empty or full. Invite a friend! Adults, even if you’re done with school, you are welcome to receive a blessing for your work. If you’d like in on this, we invite you to bring your briefcases, tote bags, or backpacks as well. The priests will bless the bags during the 10 a.m. service, to honor all the hopes, dreams, and fears that accompany the new school year, and to ask for God to strengthen, sustain, and encourage all our children as they learn and grow throughout the year.
Sing, My Soul, His Wondrous Love
Sing, my soul, his wondrous love,
who, from yon bright throne above,
ever watchful o'er our race,
still to us extends his grace.
Heaven and earth by him were made;
all is by his scepter swayed;
what are we that he should show
so much love to us below?
God, the merciful and good,
bought us with the Savior's blood,
and, to make salvation sure,
guides us by his Spirit pure.
Sing, my soul, adore his Name!
Let his glory be thy theme:
praise him till he calls thee home;
trust his love for all to come.
https://youtu.be/865z0idLQf8?si=gFs_XTJRjT-TvJXJ
The author of this hymn text, published first in 1800, is unknown. I find it to be a tremendously beautiful reflection on God’s goodness to us. Life is complicated, and sometimes it’s difficult beyond measure. This text reminds us that the bedrock under all that is the love of God, and the beauty to which that love gives birth.
As we approach kickoff Sunday (just a couple weeks now - it’s on September 8 this year), I find myself thinking about why I do what I do, and why church matters. For me, the core of this is recognizing the beauty and goodness that God gives us, and how we express that as God’s people. Music is often spoken about as a “language beyond words” and there is truth to this.
Choral music has a particularly effective role in communicating meaning because it pairs art forms together. With choral music, we have the combination of “pure” music with poetry. When finely crafted words come together with music written specifically to amplify their meaning, we get a 1+1=3 effect. I think there is a parallel here to the effect God’s love has on our lives. This is what happens when we welcome God’s love and share it within community: the cumulative impact we have becomes greater than that of the individual efforts we put in.
As we embark on this coming program year, with all its gifts and also with the challenges it is sure to bring, I hope we can dwell in the abundant goodness of God’s love, and use every opportunity before us in turn to share it. Each week, as the choirs of Trinity Church sing in our liturgies, know that our music is given as a gift, both to our community and to God, as the very best reflection we can manage of the beauty of God’s love.
Here’s a link to a setting of the above poem by Sarah MacDonald, which the choir will sing on kickoff Sunday this year. I hope you enjoy it!
Looking forward to all that this year holds,
Meg
Seniors' Fellowship Group starts August 28!
Who are seniors? Can’t define them! We are those who have done it! We retired from our paying work, and we are at leisure? Well, not really…but we can go out for a longish lunch if we want to. So here it is. Let’s start a lunch group at Trinity for those of us who want more community with our fellow parishioners.
We will have a first meeting on Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at noon in the Parish Hall. Bring a sandwich or whatever you’d like to have for lunch. Dessert and drinks will be provided. It will be very informal…yes, we will have name tags. We want to be able to remember the name of that person you met the following Sunday!
We will brainstorm about: the right time to meet? How organized should we be? What will we call the group? Do we want to do this? Do we prefer a restaurant meal?
For more information contact Kara (sladek@trinityprinceton.org) or Sylvia Temmer (sbjornberg77@icloud.com).
School Supply Drive: You Did It!
You did it! Thanks to your generosity and the hard work of our Outreach volunteers, Trinity Church filled ONE HUNDRED backpacks with school supplies for HomeFront of Mercer County. We are profoundly grateful to everyone who donated, and to everyone who helped unpack the boxes and pack the bags.
Saying Yes to God
This week, the church calendar invites us to focus on Mary, the mother of our Lord. On Thursday, we observed the feast of Saint Mary with a wonderful Eucharist in the chancel. Forty-three (!) people came out to hear the story of Mary’s “yes” to God, to sing, and to pray. But on Wednesday, our focus was drawn to Mary as well. That’s because on August 14 each year, the Episcopal Church commemorates Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a young seminarian who became a martyr during the civil rights movement in Alabama.
You can read more of his story here, and I hope you do. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Daniels) He was valedictorian of his class at Virginia Military Institute, and after some struggles with his faith and sense of vocation, he began attending what was then called Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During an Evensong service in Boston, he clearly heard God’s call to an active role in the civil rights movement. He writes,
"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." I had come to Evening Prayer as usual that evening, and as usual I was singing the Magnificat with the special love and reverence I have always felt for Mary's glad song. "He hath showed strength with his arm." As the lovely hymn of the God-bearer continued, I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled "moment" that would, in retrospect, remind me of others--particularly one at Easter three years ago. Then it came. "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things." I knew then that I must go to Selma. The Virgin's song was to grow more and more dear in the weeks ahead.
Jonathan Daniels traveled to Selma to help register voters and stayed for a semester. He was shot on August 20, 1965, at Varner’s Cash Store in Hayneville, AL, while protecting an African-American teenager named Ruby Sales. His murderer, Tom Coleman, was acquitted by an all-white jury.
The lives of the saints, including martyrs like Jonathan Daniels, are stunning portraits of what a “yes” to God looks like. My friend Rob MacSwain OGS of Sewanee argues that the lives of the saints are a kind of proof of God’s existence, because these are the kind of lives that would not make sense otherwise. And Mary’s “yes” to God stands as the paramount example of saintly life. Without Mary’s “yes,” the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ and the salvation of the world would have been impossible. (Whether or not God had a backup candidate in mind is an interesting question best left to speculative theologians!) Her response to God is also a pattern for the Christian life. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes,
Only three human individuals are mentioned in the Nicene Creed, Jesus, Mary, and Pontius Pilate: Jesus; the one who says yes to him; and the one who says no to him. You could say that those three names map out the territory in which we all live. Through our lives, we swing towards one pole or the other, towards a deeper yes, or towards a deeper no. In the middle of it all stands the one who makes sense of it all, the one into whose life we must all try to grow, who can work with our yes, and can even overcome our no.
I pray that as the summer draws to a close, you will find new ways to say yes to God, as God’s invitation to us comes new every morning.
Yours in Christ,
Kara