People sometimes ask me what a year at St. Dunstan’s looks like, usually while balancing a coffee cup at coffee hour, and I never know where to start, because the church year is a circle and circles don’t have starting lines. But since you asked, and since I’m the associate and fielding good questions is roughly half my job, let me try.
The official beginning is Advent, the four quiet weeks before Christmas. While the rest of the world sprints through December, the church, contrarily, slows down. We light candles one at a time, we sing in minor keys, and we practice waiting, which nobody is good at, which is why we practice. Advent is the season for tired people, and by December that is all of us.
Christmas arrives with the bell ringing out into the cold and the loft full of descants. Then winter settles in, then Lent, forty days of honest self-examination, not to make anyone feel terrible but to clear some room. And then Easter. This year Rev. Marsh preached “Alleluia Anyway” on Easter morning, which is about the best three-word summary of this parish I can offer. A week later I got Thomas, the disciple who wanted evidence before he believed; I called that one “Doubt Comes to Dinner,” because around here doubt has a seat at the table and usually asks for seconds. So, incidentally, do you.
Spring belongs to Rev. Marsh. She is a gardener down to her bones, and this spring she helped dedicate our new memorial garden, a quiet green place for remembering the people we love. The photos are on the website. The roses are already doing better than my sermon average.
Summer, in all its glitter
In July, which is to say any minute now, Vacation Bible School descends on the parish hall like a small, holy weather system. For one week there are songs with hand motions, craft tables, juice boxes, and glitter in places glitter has no business being. I hold a doctorate, and every July a seven-year-old asks me a question about God that I cannot answer. This is good for me. The Parish Office handles registration, and yes, we can always use snack volunteers.
Threaded through every season is the first Sunday of the month, when the Neighbors Fund sets a long table for the Community Meal, five to six-thirty, free supper, no sign-up, no questions asked. It is the most straightforward theology we do: people are hungry, so we cook.
August brings three things in quick succession. On the Sunday before school starts we hold the Blessing of the Backpacks, when students and teachers haul their bags to the front and we pray over zippers, pencil cases, and the year ahead. One Saturday we pull on gloves for the Lakeshore Cleanup with our community partners, because loving your neighbor includes the lake you share with them. And in late August the choir returns to Thursday evening rehearsals in the loft, our beloved and slightly wheezy organ warming up alongside them. There is no audition. Bring whatever voice you have; “Joyful, Joyful” has room in it.
Through all of it, the bell rings. Every Sunday at ten we celebrate Holy Eucharist, the old word for the meal of bread and wine at the heart of our worship, and everyone is welcome at that table. Before the service begins, the bell in the tower calls out across the water, the same note in Advent as in August. Then the red front doors swing open, and whoever walks through them belongs.
And if you found this page looking for a way in, consider this your map of the year. Start anywhere on the circle. There’s a place for you at every point of it.
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