A Message from our Rector
The haunting advice from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet is often quoted—you may know it. Rilke, an accomplished poet, received a letter from a young man who asked for help in the craft of writing and in life. This began a correspondence between the two, and in one of the letters Rilke wrote:
“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” 1
Try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now.
Something I relish about my work at Saint Andrew’s is being in community with fellow seekers who grapple with questions, with complexity and uncertainty, that is, with how to live and how to have faith. A few weeks ago I received a question that I love—and a question that I strive to live. The question was this:
“When we talk about having ‘faith in God’ what does that mean?
Any answer I gave then—or would give today—is no more than one data point among many in my own effort to grow toward the Holy One and toward the path laid before us. Any answer, in other words, is my own efforts to love the questions, to rest in the questions, and to remember that an instruction manual of answers will not, after all, answer the questions.
This morning as I prepped Sunday’s sermon, I came that same question in a different format. Debie Thomas claims that one of the great gifts of Christianity is that “it is steeped in paradox…[inviting] us to occupy holy in-between places, places of hard but life-giving ambiguity…we want simple, black-and-white clarity in our lives…Despite our preferences, God gifts us with rich and rigorous contradiction.” 2
What does it mean to believe in God? Thomas answers the question by naming glorious contradiction and paradox that are the heart of what it means to have a lived faith:
God is One, and God is Three.
Jesus is God and Jesus is human.
The Bible is God’s Word, and the Bible is authored by flawed humans.
Creation is good, and Creation is broken.
To give is to receive.
To die is to live.
To pardon is to be pardoned.
To be weak is to be strong.
To serve is to reign.
We’re saved by grace, and faith without works is dead.
We are in the world but we are not of the world.
The kingdom of God is coming, and the kingdom of God is here, within us.
These paradoxes—all biblical, all theologically sound, all central to our tradition—are the questions we can live into, that guide us, that keep things real in this messy, contingent, ever-shifting life.
May you live the questions.
Jen+
1This rendering of Rilke’s words is from Krista Tippet, https://onbeing.org/programs/living-the-questions/
2 Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus webzine, 12 July 2020. https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2694-let-them-grow-together
Connect With Us
Rector’s Office Drop-In Time
Rev. Jen has set her office drop-in day as Wednesday of each week from 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. for anyone who would like to stop in and visit. You are always invited to make an appointment for a time convenient for you. Mondays are her Sabbath day.
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
In-Person Sunday Morning Service, July 19, led by Rev. Dr. Jennifer Oldstone-Moore,10:15 a.m.
You can stream the service via St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Greencastle, Indiana Facebook Page. Click on this link to view the Live Stream. We will start the Live Stream 5 minutes prior to the start of the service.
Click here for the service booklet for this service.
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CCLI License #22315781
The Latest Updates
Mary Mountz and Peggy Angleton funerals– Funerals for two long time parishioners, Mary Mountz and Peggy Angleton, will be in July. The service for Mary Mountz will be Saturday, July 18, at 11.00 am. Peggy Angleton’s funeral will be Thursday, July 23, at 1.00 pm. Please let Michelle or Jen+ know if you can coordinate or contribute to post-funeral hospitality for these two events. Peggy and Mary were both long time parishioners, and both deeply committed to the Non-food Pantry.
Stretch for Health Thursdays, 10.30, Hamilton Hall
Lee Stewart, long-time member of the community and a fellow pilgrim on the Saint Andrew’s 2024 pilgrimage, will share his routine for therapeutic stretching that has been at the core of his therapies for managing Parkinson’s disease. This stretching routine is a great benefit to general good health as well. Stretching can be done on a chair, on the floor, or while standing. We will meet for 30 minutes in Hamilton Hall; bring a yoga mat if you prefer stretching on the floor. All are welcome!
PRAYERS FOR OTHERS
If you have prayers that you would like offered on Sunday–prayers of thanksgiving, for those in trouble or sickness, or those who have died and those who grieve, please call in or send an email to Michelle. The names will be said aloud on Sunday for four consecutive weeks and then cycled off. If you would like the prayers continued, please tell Michelle and the names will be added to the long-term prayer list.
HYMN NAMES IN THE BULLETIN
In the coming weeks, you may notice a change in the way that hymns are designated in the service bulletin. The information at the bottom of the hymn includes a hymn name in capital letters. The hymn that begins “Jesus Christ is risen today” is set to the tune Easter Hymn. The tune for “Come, Thou Fount” is Nettleton. “Let all mortal flesh” is set in our hymnal to the tune Picardy, and both “Love divine, all loves excelling” and “Alleluia! Sing to Jesus” are set to Hrfrydol.
Our reasons for this change are simply pragmatic: the hymn names are shorter than the first lines, and fit better into our bulletins. But there is also a certain skill—and pleasure—to identifying tunes as well as words, in part because it highlights the artistry of the person who wrote the music. Be sure to look this week for this new feature to our bulletins.
BOOK AND BIBLE GROUP– ***on a break until after summer***
We will be taking a break through the summer from our Tuesday afternoon gatherings. Keep your eyes peeled for announcements for occasional gatherings of Pub Theology when we will gather to share snacks, a cold drink, and conversation. Evening Prayer will still be celebrated at 4.00 pm on most Tuesdays.
EVENING PRAYER
Join us for Evening Prayer in the sanctuary on Tuesdays at 4:00. Evening Prayer is a wonderful service to wind down the day and move into the evening hours.
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
On Wednesdays at 1:00, we gather for about a half hour in quiet contemplative prayer. A leader introduces the prayer and a bell is chimed; we sit in prayer for twenty minutes until another chime sounds and then close with a spoken prayer. Feel free to come in any time between 1:00 and 1:20 to pray in silence in a lovely sacred space.
ALTAR FLOWER CALENDAR
An altar flower calendar is posted in Hamilton Hall. Sign up to sponsor the altar flowers to commemorate a birthday or anniversary, remember a loved one, or in thanksgiving for an important event. We ask a donation to help offset the cost of the altar flowers and other worship expenses. Be sure to tell the office your dedication so that it can be printed in the bulletin. Please make checks payable to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and in the memo field please put this information: Altar Flowers, person’s name, occasion, Sunday date you’d like for the flowers to be on the altar.
VESTRY MEETING MINUTES
If any of you are interested in what your Vestry is doing, there are two copies of each month’s minutes on the music stand in Hamilton Hall. Feel free to read and return!
SHOPPING LIST FOR NON-FOOD PANTRY
Please see the Non-Food Pantry Latest section of the newsletter for items most in need for this month. Meals and conversation in Hamilton Hall are going well. Patrons are now able to pick out items they most need. Your contributions help our budget go farther in helping meet the needs of those in Putnam County. Please scroll down to view the distribution dates and latest updates. If you can help with this ministry in any way, please contact Harriet Moore or Carl Huffman.
KROGER COUPONS
If you have any unwanted Kroger coupons, please bring them to Hamilton Hall and place in the window ledge near the “Little Library”. We would like to make them available to our Non-Food Pantry recipients so that they might be able to take advantage of them to help extend their food budget. Thanks in advance!
FREE DAILY DEVOTIONAL
We have some large print Day by Day daily devotionals in the sanctuary that you are free to take home for your personal devotions–and if we know that people would like copies, we can order the right amount. Many of you may also appreciate the on-line version of Day to Day. Click here.
Non-Food Pantry Latest
Saturday, July 25
• Noon to 2:00 p.m.
There will be a distribution in Hamilton Hall and light lunches will be served inside. We are grateful for all those who have worked so hard to obtain supplies for the Non-Food Pantry. Items are having to be purchased from a variety of sources making it much more expensive. Donations to help offset this extra cost will be gratefully accepted!
Top 3 Needed Items
Your prayers are asked for:
Haile Bane, grandson of Joanne Haymaker
Beth Benedix, friend to many at St. Andrew’s
+Tom Breidenthal
Jennifer Clarke, friend of Patti Harmless
Cindy Crawley, cousin of Karen & Jim Mannon
Diane * Judy * Angela Evans
Arielle Hirt, daughter-in-law of Karen & Jim Mannon
Tom Kaiser, friend of Jen+ & Chris
Lynda, friend of Sarah Finlay-Black
Teresa Masten, friend of Karen & Jim Mannon
Trevor and Christy Moore, friend of Karen and Jim Mannon
Sally Motsch, friend to many at St. Andrew’s
Gene Shaw, brother-in-law of Patti Harmless
Elizabeth & Natalie Sheffler, daughter & granddaughter of Page & Narda Cotton
Deloris Smith, friend of Emily Knuth
Jenny Smyth, niece of Patti Harmless
Luke Smith, son of Mark Smith
Skip Sutton
Eugene Swanger, friend of Jen+
Larry Taylor, former member of St. Andrew’s
Donald Voermans, father of Nick Voermans
Edwina Vose, friend of Jen+
Catherine Waggoner, friend of Jen+
Dwight Ziegler, uncle of Stephanie Gurnon
For the departed:
Mary Mountz
Diocesan Cycle of Prayer: St. Stephen’s, New Harmony and Rev. Mary Bargiel
Our companion dioceses: The Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil: The Most Rev. Mauricio Jose Araujo De Andrade, Primate of Brazil and Bishop of Brasilia. The people and Diocese of Haiti and Saint Andre’s Parish and school in Mithon.
Anglican Cycle of Prayer: Province of the Episcopal Church of Sudan
Birthdays: Debi Prather, July 16; Silas Glessner, July 20
Anniversaries: Warren and Connie Macy, July 20
Special Events and Services
