Summer in full swing - Rector's Rambling for July 6. 2025

     Our warm summer continues, and I am grateful for everyone’s understanding that we are doing our best, opening windows overnight, etc., to keep the church temperature tolerable.  If history is any predictor then at the worst we will have 3 or 4 more very warm Sundays.  We have become people accustomed to being air conditioned this time of the year, but here we have to adjust with comfortable, looser fitting clothing, and to being in the breeze path of a fan’s oscillation to help to keep us cooler during the worship. 

Today we begin in earnest the long Trinitytide Season.  This ‘ordinary’ season lasts until November 30th when we reset the church liturgical year with the beginning of Advent.  The color appointed for the season is green, which is an appropriate choice for this long season of growth in the faith of Jesus Christ. 

We also give thanks this weekend for the 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, when we formally began our separation from England to become an independent nation.  I say ‘began’ because between July 4, 1776, and the formal adoption of our US Constitution on September 17, 1787, there was still a lot of blood shed on the battle field to gain that independence, and a failed attempt at self-governance in the Articles of Confederation.  We are grateful for God’s continued Providence for our nation, as well as His Mercy, as we have strived to live as one nation under God with varying degrees of successes and failings. 

This afternoon the St. Michael’s Conference for  Youth begins, my 27th year on staff at the Midwest Conference after 2 years on staff at the East Coast Conference.  Lovingly referred to at Anglo-catholic bootcamp, the students and staff live a week of intentional and intensive prayer and worship, study, and recreation.  It is a great blessing to the students AND the staff!  Please keep us in your prayers this week as we seek to glorify God and deepen our relationship with Him.  The Conference ends on Saturday.  I look forward, God willing, to being with you here next Sunday exhausted but elated from a good week!