The Joy of Beauty

It’s that most wonderful time of the year here in Princeton, when the leaves begin to turn, the weather gets cool, and the radiance of fall is all around us. This time of year lends itself well to quiet contemplation, to thinking more deeply about our world – which is in the first instance God’s world. For me, it’s a time to revel in the beauty of creation and the joy of being a creature in relationship with God.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about beauty and the role it plays (or doesn’t play) in our culture, especially after reading a marvelous interview between Peter Wehner and the novelist and nonfiction writer Marilynne Robinson. Robinson is, I think, our greatest living chronicler of the dignity of humanity as God’s creatures – a humanist in the classic sense.

Here’s a link to the article, which I commend to you enthusiastically. (I hope the gift link doesn’t die…) 

Our contemporary culture, Robinson says, has fallen into a functionalist and materialist aesthetic sensibility, so that anything that points at beauty and the soul is seen as somehow untrue or – at best –an unnecessary luxury:

“It’s like we have made beauty into something falsified. Calvin says there is not a blade of grass that God created that was not meant to ravish us with its beauty. The idea of the beautiful is a signature of God, I think for Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and many other people. This distillation of the joy, the sensory joy, of being among things in the world.”

Despite any cultural claims to the contrary, we live in an enchanted world, shot through with the glory of God and the fellowship of human souls both living and in that “great cloud of witnesses” who rejoice in God’s nearer presence. The spiritual aspects of life are as real (or more real) than the material. As Robinson puts it, the enchantment of the world is “reality clearly perceived.” She continues, “I think God enchanted things and it is for us to acknowledge the fact.”

In this beautiful season of the year in our community, I pray that you will find time to slow down, take a breath, and look for those signatures of God in the enchanted world all around us.

Yours in Christ,

Kara+

A Warm Welcome to All Visitors & Newcomers.

A warm welcome to all visitors & newcomers.

At Trinity Church, we believe God’s love is expansive and unconditional and that through Christ, God has called us to love one another as God loves us. We welcome all people regardless of gender, race, age, culture, ethnic background, sexual orientation, economic circumstances, family configuration, political affiliation, or difference of ability. We celebrate the worth, dignity, and gifts of every person as a child of God.

We warmly welcome the presence and participation of children.

They are a blessing and gift to our worship experience.

Dear Good People of Trinity Church,

I want to bring your attention to two important updates to our bulletin.

The first is a small but significant change to our long-used words of welcome. After prayerful reflection and meaningful conversations with several Trinity members, I have added “political affiliation” to our litany of welcome. I never thought such words would be necessary, but in this season of intense political division, I believe they are. As followers of Christ, we are called to be a community that welcomes all. Trinity Church will not be a “Left” church or a “Right” church, but rather a church that imperfectly yet faithfully strives to follow Jesus Christ and live out the Gospel message for the healing and transformation of the world. This is not easy work. It is work that will not be completed in our lifetimes. Yet each day, in small but meaningful steps, we move closer to God’s dream for our broken world.

The second addition is a welcome directed especially to families with children. Children are essential to the life and vitality of the Church. While their sounds and movements may at times feel distracting, without them there is no future for the Church. These movements and voices are signs of young believers beginning to find their way into the sacramental life of the community we call Trinity. We know how much effort it takes for parents and caregivers to prepare children for worship—and how much energy is spent helping them participate once here. Their efforts deserve our deepest encouragement and our warmest embrace. We must support them with open hearts, open minds, and open arms.

We are especially blessed in this season to have Anne Thomsen Lord, Catherine Breed, and Donte Milligan guiding and nurturing our children and youth. Please reach out to them—or to me—if you feel called to help grow this vital ministry.

I close with the prayer I offered at last Sunday’s forum, a prayer I hope will remain before us as we continue the work of being Trinity Church:

Quicken, O Lord, we pray, all members of your church, that we may be alive to the opportunities and responsibilities of our times. Save us from complacency and from fear of new ways; inspire our minds with the hope of your kingdom; give us joy in what lies before us; and stir our wills to pray and to work until your will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Peace,

Paul+

Let’s Talk… and Listen!

Dear Good People of Trinity Church,

I invite you to join me this Sunday for our Adult Forum time, which will serve two important purposes.

First, we will kick things off with an update on our Comprehensive Campaign. We are steadily closing in on our $7.5 million goal to secure the future of Trinity Church. Our dedicated co-chairs, Jeannie Garner and David Schneider, will share the latest progress and outline the steps ahead as we work together to cross the finish line.

The majority of our time together will be devoted to reflecting on the current state of our country—particularly the ways we speak and listen to one another. In light of the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, we are once again reminded of the divisions, hostility, and intensity that characterize our national life.

As Christians, we are called not to withdraw from this reality, nor to wield our faith as a weapon to dominate others. Instead, we are called to enter the conflict with humility, courage, and love.

A friend recently shared with me the book Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division by Robert P. George and Cornel West. This conversation models civil discourse and robust intellectual engagement around vital questions of truth. Along the way, they remind us that truth-seeking requires conditions such as freedom of speech, and virtues such as intellectual humility and courage. To their call to be “truth seekers” and “truth speakers,” I would add this: we are also called to be truth listeners.

Too often, we speak in order to persuade or to win an argument, rather than to share honestly from our own hearts. Likewise, we listen not to understand, but only to prepare our rebuttal. This cycle keeps us locked in hostility and division.

This Sunday, I invite us into something different. Let us practice speaking with honesty and humility, and listening with openness and grace. When we do, we create the possibility of genuine understanding and deeper unity.

I look forward to being with you. Let’s talk… and let’s listen.

Peace and Blessings,
Paul+

Make Our Life Together a Sign of Christ’s Love

Dear Good People of Trinity Church,

Just before the 5:30 Eucharist on Wednesday, my phone buzzed with news: Charlie Kirk had been killed. A conservative political activist and a deeply polarizing figure—followed by millions, despised by millions—his death was immediately met with words of horror, outrage, and disgust. The airwaves filled with the usual rhetoric about political violence, gun control, and the deep divides in our society.

I walked into the chapel for worship and offered a reflection—disjointed, raw, unrefined. Today, on 9/11 of all days, I am trying to write something more thoughtful. As a priest, people expect me to offer a word: grounding, hope, faith. What follows is simply my heart and mind in this moment. Yesterday my words were different; tomorrow they may be different still.

First - why are we shocked? We live in a world steeped in violence. Every day, people are shot and killed. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in 2023—38% were murder. That is nearly 18,000 murders in one year. Someone gets angry, picks up a gun, and takes a life.

But violence is not only personal—it is systemic, national, global. Governments plot and plan wars. Entire populations are sacrificed because of power, anger, greed, and fear, but under the guise of something good and noble, necessary and courageous. Violence is not an occasional interruption in our world; it is all too often the normative reality.

And the violence of our world is not only about guns, not by any means. There is economic violence, relational violence, sexual violence, emotional violence, “tribal” violence, religious violence – violence contaminates the very fabric of our being. Some is public, graphic, and on display. Some is quiet, subtle, cunning, and seductive—yet just as destructive, just as damning.

Second - on Sunday, I said that Jesus warns us: following him will get very real. Because the world is broken—broken in a uniquely human way with envy, fear, jealousy, and hate. Since the beginning, we have continually responded to that brokenness with violence.

So, what do we do as followers of Christ? We cannot stand on some imagined moral high ground, as if we have special clarity because we “follow” Jesus. No—we fall to our knees and pray. We beg for forgiveness. We search our souls, honestly confronting the truth of our own violence—sometimes hidden in the shadows of our hearts, sometimes shockingly exposed. And we trust in God’s love and grace. Only then can we begin to live differently, see differently, speak differently, act differently—not adding to the darkness, but bringing even the faintest light. And this we believe: the darkness cannot and will not overcome the light, even when it shines dimly from our fragile human souls.

Finally - I do not know if these words bring any comfort or clarity, but I offer them in faith, as we seek our way forward together. My dear ones, there will be more violence - there always is. But, there will also be more love, more hope, more life. There always is!

I leave you with a prayer from the wedding liturgy, written for couples beginning their life together, but just as fitting for us, as we continue on this sacred journey.

Make [our] life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world,
that unity may overcome estrangement,
forgiveness heal guilt,
and joy conquer despair. Amen.

Peace and blessings,
Paul+

Get Ready...

Dear Good People of Trinity,

This Sunday, we gather for Homecoming Sunday and begin a new program year together. I always love the excitement, energy, and possibilities this season brings. It is a time of life and abundance as we look forward to the ways God will work through the people of Trinity Church in the coming year. Trinity now enters our 192nd year of ministry, rapidly approaching our bicentennial.

As we prepare to gather this Sunday, I pause to reflect on the thousands of families and individuals who, over nearly two centuries, have found at Trinity Church a place of grace, service, prayer, and praise.

When the first families gathered at Trinity, Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. Since then, the people of Trinity Church have gathered for worship through the Civil War and abolition of slavery, the Industrial Revolution, World War I, the birth of the Soviet Union, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, World War II, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King, the moon landing, Watergate, the fall of the Soviet Union, September 11, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the explosion of technology and emergence artificial intelligence—and that is only part of the story!

Through it all, God’s people have gathered here: to sing and pray, to serve and love, to learn and grow in faith. In and through it all, we strive to make our broken world a little more like the image and likeness of God’s hope for us. We know there is still much work to be done.

Get ready …our journey continues! Forward in faith! There is love to be shared, people to be welcomed, and Good News to be proclaimed.

I look forward to welcoming you home this Sunday.

Peace and Blessings,

Paul+

It’s Good to Come Home

Earlier this week, I was blessed with an invitation to visit a dear friend on the coast of Massachusetts. It was a quick 24-hour trip, but filled with conversation, laughter, and the kind of renewal only friendship and the sea can bring.

When I arrived, my friend and his sons were still out on the ocean after a morning of deep-sea fishing. When word came that they were headed back, his wife and I went down to the dock to meet them. We stood looking to the horizon. “There’s their boat,” we thought as a tiny speck appeared in the distance. We watched it draw closer and closer until finally, it tied up to the mooring. The crew climbed into the dinghy and made their way to shore.

On the surface, nothing about it seems particularly extraordinary. But as I reflected, I realized how often we stand on the dock—whatever our “dock” may be—waiting for someone to come home. Maybe from an exciting adventure or a season of challenge. With our eyes fixed into the distance, we see a faint outline, a small figure, and we ask ourselves, Could it be? Is it them? And when we finally know for sure, our hearts race, joy fills our souls, and we breathe a prayer of gratitude: They’re home. They’re safe. Thank God.

And maybe, just maybe, it was the same for my friend and his sons. At some point, they must have looked toward the shore, wondering, Can you see the house yet? Will someone be there waiting for us? After hours of waves and wind, they were ready to return—to share their stories of fishing and laughter, of salt air and adventure—with the people who loved them.

There is something sacred about coming home. And there is something equally sacred about welcoming others home.

That’s why this year, instead of calling September 7 “Kickoff Sunday,” we are going to call it Homecoming Sunday. It will be our chance to gather again after the adventures of summer and the journeys of life, to welcome one another back to the home we call Trinity Church. A place of grace, love, and encouragement. A place where we return again and again to be reminded of God’s presence and each other’s care.

So, dear ones, whether you find yourself standing on the dock waiting for someone to come home, or whether you are the one returning after a long journey—it’s always good to come home.

Peace and Blessings,

Paul+

If We Love One Another!

Dear Beloved of Trinity Church,

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:34–35

Earlier this week, I was speaking with a Trinity member who shared a heartfelt concern: What about those among us who may be in need but don’t know how to ask for help—or who are afraid to? Her words lifted up an essential truth: life brings challenges, and none of us are meant to carry our burdens alone. At some point, each of us will need help, and each of us is also called to offer help. That’s what it means to live in Christian community—caring for and loving one another as Christ has loved us.

I once heard someone say that we are either coming out of a storm, in the midst of one, or heading toward one. Storms are a part of life, but the good news is that we don’t face them by ourselves. Through the ministry of pastoral care, we walk alongside each other, sharing God’s love in very tangible ways.

At Trinity, our pastoral care ministry and clergy are here to support you. But we can only respond if we know of the need. That’s where you come in. If you or someone you know could use care, please reach out. We have people who make home visits, who bring the Eucharist, who pray faithfully, who deliver flowers, and who show up with presence and compassion. We can also help with transportation needs, or even connect people with resources during financial hardship.

So, let this be a gentle reminder: if you have a need, or know someone who does, please let the clergy or pastoral care team know. And if we cannot provide the help directly, we will do our best to connect you with resources that can. Together, we embody the Gospel truth: by this everyone will know that we are Christ’s disciples, if we love one another.

Peace and Blessings,

Paul+

What a Story!

Dear Beloved of Trinity,

It’s good to be home!!

This summer in Michigan, I heard the most wonderful story. A dear friend of ours, who is 94 years old, said: “You’re never going to believe what happened to me about a month ago.”

His daughter had received a phone call from a woman who began with: “I think you might be my half-sister.” Instead of shock or anger, the news was met with curiosity and kindness. The woman, now 72 years old, explained how she had always felt a bit different—like she didn’t quite belong in her family. She knew she wasn’t adopted, yet something always seemed off. After her parents passed away, she decided to take a DNA test. What she discovered changed everything.

Through the miracle of DNA, she learned that her father was not her biological father. Long ago, some 72 years earlier at Yale, her mother had shared a romance with my friend. When her mother returned home, she never told him she was pregnant. He never knew he had a daughter.

This news came at a profound time in his life. A year or two ago, he suffered a serious heart issue and nearly died. He has been struggling to regain his health. With tears in his eyes, he said, “Now I know why I’m still alive. My daughter was looking for me, and I didn’t even know I had a daughter.”

His daughter, now accomplished and well known throughout the country, had already found financial, cultural, and societal success. Yet what she longed for most was not achievement—it was to know who her father was, to know where she came from, to know the rest of her story.

This September, they will finally meet in person. They’ve already spoken over Zoom, marveling at their similarities—their gestures, tone of voice, even their facial expressions. Her half-sister said without hesitation: “She is certainly Dad’s daughter.”

Digging a little deeper, for many people, there is a restlessness in the heart, mind, and soul. They may find success, recognition, or status, yet it can still feel as though life is lived in shoes that don’t quite fit, in a sweater that itches, or through glasses with the wrong prescription. Something feels off. Something is missing.

Through God’s love, however, things are made right. We discover who we are and whose we are. We remember that the soil from which we came is sacred. Our DNA is holy. We belong to God, who has given us a home, a family, a place of belonging and love.

It calls to mind the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John:

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

In a world that often feels unsettling and uncertain—when we feel out of place or unsure of where we fit—God reminds us that we have a true home. We have a place, a belonging, and a being that is grounded in love.

And that … is the best story ever told!

Peace and Blessings,
Paul