For children to include others they need not to be afraid. Talk with them. Answer their questions. Start with a good story. As you know, you’ll probably learn a lot yourself!

Author Lorna Miser has produced a lovely book, Faith, Hope, Love, Knitting consisting of stories of the people who have touched her life because she had knitting in her hands. Each story is a self-contained meditation on someone who has nourished her faith, hope, and love. Lorna believes each person has crossed her path for a reason and as she reflects on the meaning of each encounter, a knitting project is inevitably involved. Accompanying each story is a pattern for something she was either knitting at the time, or inspired to knit later. The twenty projects are beautifully photographed and the aesthetics of the book are worthy of the author who has contributed so much beauty through her exquisite hand-painted yarns. The stories of her encounters will inspire you and get you to thinking about people who have touched your life while you knit. Worth breaking the usual boundaries between church and yarn, just this once!

That which my brother sought to show me gradually came in to view as we walked along the sand. The emerging image was that of a small neighborhood of homes nestled on a narrow peninsula between Bridgeport Harbor on one side and Long Island sound on the other. What began as a remote outline of shapes in the hazy distance now stood in hard and silent relief against the late winter sky.

The neighborhood was abandoned. Walking off the sand of the beach path onto the hard, broken blacktop of what was once a main street, we entered a world of silence and sadness. Sadness because there were no longer any people to enjoy the beauty and tranquility of the nearby ocean. The now empty homes stood ransacked and disheveled by time and neglect. Turning to Jay I asked the simple and obvious question “What happened?”

In 1996 a fire destroyed the only bridge that made this area accessible by car from the mainland. Since then, the only access to the area is via the long walk made by my brother and me along the barrier beach. Without adequate access to the mainland for emergency vehicles and services, the town of Stratford concluded that the neighborhood was not safe for habitation. Failing to secure the money necessary to rebuild the bridge, the residents of the neighborhood were forced to abandon their properties. This lovely community, once home to families, an amusement park and a summer theater company were left simply to decay and die, an anachronism of a seemingly simpler time.

Perhaps not. There is talk among residents and political leaders in the area to either invest in and renovate the land for local use or sell the land to the federal government. Either way requires rebuilding the bridge to the mainland. The usefulness of this beautiful area for people is contingent upon its accessibility to people.

Your vestry is actively engaged in a similar process. Right now, there is active and engaged discussion of how we can make our church more accessible. Not just to people with disabilities, but everyone, without exception. And it is more than just talk. As a first step, we on the vestry are working diligently to install a ramp so that accessibility to the church is not limited to those who can negotiate stairs. Factors of design, placement and installation of the ramp are all being carefully weighed and considered. Ensuring that what is conveyed visually by the installation of the ramp preserves what is important to us all as a community are all hugely important in our deliberations. The installation of this ramp is long overdue and, like the rebuilding of the bridge to the beach community in Connecticut, is vital if the Church of Our Saviour is to continue to be a place where God is accessible and useful to the people of the community which it serves.

Lent, I think, is at least in part about the same sort of thing. It is a time when we are called to abandon the clutter and clatter of busy lives that have a tendency to cut off our access to God. The journey of Lent is often like a long walk along a path of sand. The steps we take are often heavy, weighed down by the pain of grief, loss, and those whom we must release when once mutual paths diverge, leading each in separate directions. The footprints we leave in the sand say much about where we have been. The long walk of Lent allows God to gradually come in to view and restore our access to God thus allowing us a glimpse of what is to come in the celebration of Easter.

– Allen Whitaker, Co-Warden

My sister’s green cotton sleeveless sweater—gorgeous spring yarn—last spring! It had been sitting since Thanksgiving when my mother sewed up the side seams. All it needed was for me to pick up and knit the neck and armhole bands. I had never done that before so I was stalling. One night, bam! Picked up those stitches, purled a row and cast that puppy off. Next day blocked it. Done! Finished! The baby surprise jacket that same mother had closed the shoulder and sewn buttons on was nearly done. It needed a little collar. Picked up those stitches, blasted through a few rows of garter, cast off. Bam! Done! Finished. (Need a baby for it but that’s not something I can finish.)

The first lace effort, a scarf in the gorgeous hand-painted mohair and silk from Blue Hill—most expensive yarn I’ve ever bought? It had about four inches to go. Bam! A few episodes of Glenn Close and the Cheers bartender being evil-doers on “On Demand” TV and it was done. Finished. Don’t know who it’s for but it’s done! Soft, variegated, grey, silky soy on its way to becoming a honeycomb scarf? Its journey has ended! And of course, the sweater. Gorgeous blue-violet merino. Easy stitch that was quite interesting for the first 1000 or so rows. Almost done but needed several more inches on the sleeves, which were being knit together on one needle. A snowstorm, a school cancellation, and bam! Cast off those sleeves. Collar on the way. Nearly done. Will it fit? We’ll see. It’ll be done! It’ll fit somebody.

Why? What has prompted this fit of finishing? Could it be that are a few other things that I would like to be done with and cannot be? Things that are not yet finished and will go on for awhile—much longer that I had asked for or imagined? They are moving at their own speed and I cannot rush them or even speed them up very much. They are going to take the time they take. If only I could cast them off. So I suppose it is quite satisfying to finish what I can, be done with some things I could control and have beautiful, useful woolies to show for it. A consolation. A sign. Maybe it only feels like forever and if I just keep at it, eventually, I can cast off and move on.

– Pearl Tinker

We meet a colorful array of odds and sods who might be cousins of the Vicar of Dibley’s crowd. They each read whatever book they were assigned and then offer rather startling opinions on the classics. There is Isola, who has a home-made potion for whatever ails you, and is disgusted by the way those Brontë girls were always cleaning up after their dissolute brother. Eben is a a fisherman who loves Shakespeare and Will Thisbee is a rag-and-bone man who created the famous potato peel pie. When Julia goes to Guernsey to meet them in person, she discovers a community knitted together by the profound care of community as they endured the privations and hardships of wartime. It is a graceful, redemptive story, well told and thoroughly entertaining.

Says Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, “I can’t remember the last time I discovered a novel as smart and delightful as this one. Treat yourself to this book, please—I can’t recommend it highly enough.” But more importantly, the Rector spotted it on a parishioner’s side table, right next to Team of Rivals. Read that, too, but you’ll smile more with the Potato Peel Pie people.

We meet a colorful array of odds and sods who might be cousins of the Vicar of Dibley’s crowd. They each read whatever book they were assigned and then offer rather startling opinions on the classics. There is Isola, who has a home-made potion for whatever ails you, and is disgusted by the way those Brontë girls were always cleaning up after their dissolute brother. Eben is a a fisherman who loves Shakespeare and Will Thisbee is a rag-and-bone man who created the famous potato peel pie. When Julia goes to Guernsey to meet them in person, she discovers a community knitted together by the profound care of community as they endured the privations and hardships of wartime. It is a graceful, redemptive story, well told and thoroughly entertaining.

Says Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, “I can’t remember the last time I discovered a novel as smart and delightful as this one. Treat yourself to this book, please—I can’t recommend it highly enough.” But more importantly, the Rector spotted it on a parishioner’s side table, right next to Team of Rivals. Read that, too, but you’ll smile more with the Potato Peel Pie people.

Week Two, with Karen King, March 12: Martyrdom in the early Church
Its historical context, and a look at some of the writings of and about the earliest Christian martyrs. What does it mean for us now to embrace a faith whose creed and biblical canon was shaped by and fixed during a time of violence, and the possibility of martyrdom.

Week Three, with Karen King, March 19: Resurrection Faith
How do Jews, Christians and Muslims talk about resurrection? Karen will have recently returned from a seminar in Jerusalem in which Jews, Christians and Muslims, themselves living with the ever-present threat of violence, religiously approach life and death.

Week Four, March 26: The Holy Week Story
Who are the many characters in the events of the Holy Week and how did their choices reflect their best effort to be faithful to God and to one another in a time of crisis?

Week Five, April 2: Wrap Up
What are we prepared to say about Jesus’ choices in his ministry and especially during Holy Week? Which of those choices are we called to imitate? What does it mean for us, in 21st century America, to “take up our cross” and follow?

We will meet each week from 7:30-9:00. Child care will be provided.