Please read the Executive Order issued by the Governor yesterday closing unessential businesses and ordering further
physical distancing rules by following this link: EO 20-12
Trinity staff is doing as much as we can
from home, and coming in only sporadically and for short times for the
few essential things we cannot do from our home computers and phones.
These messages may not longer be daily, given the challenge of getting
in to the office for the large email distribution lists here. But they
will continue regularly.
For those of you who missed last Sunday's service, a recording of it has been posted on my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/the.rev.dr.anthony.hutchinson/posts/10221780472956657 (open to the public)
Click
on this about 5 minutes before the service begins. It sometimes takes a
little time to login and find the feed, in the main feed as you scroll
down.
MEDITATION:
Times
of fear and turmoil bring multiple distractions that emotionally and
mentally lead us down many a strange rabbit hole. We may be so drawn to
find information that we watch social media feeds or cable news
endlessly, or even in the middle of the night when we wake. As
important as it is to keep up to date on what is going on, we need to
pace ourselves and not become obsessed with quick updates or addicted to
the titillation of bad news. Stay informed and follow the most
up-to-date medical and public health instructions. But also learn to
focus on the essential, to center yourself in the calm and respite this
enforced isolation can bring.
On Christmas
Eve in 1513, just as the glories of the Italian Renaissance were fixing
to unravel under the pressure of the Reformation and wars of religion,
an Italian Humanist (possibly the Franciscan friar,
architect, and classical scholar Fra Giovanni Giocondo) wrote the
following
letter to a colleague:
"I salute you. I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is
nothing I can give you which you have not got. But there is much, very much,
that while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our
hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is
not hidden in this present little instance. Take peace! The gloom of the world
is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy! Life is so
full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty . . . that you will find earth
but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it, that is all! . . . And so I
greet you, with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and
forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away."
The
gloom of this world is indeed but a shadow, and as we prepare to
celebrate Holy Week in new ways during this physical distancing, we must
remember that the day will break, and the shadows flee.
Be well, stay safe, wash your hands, stay at home, and
Accept Grace and Peace.
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