Dear Epiphany,
Our monthly Women’s Retreat Group met Oct. 1 at the Christie Library from 9-11am. There were 10-11 women in attendance. We fellowshipped a while over Coffee, tea and treats. (Grapes, apricots, orange slices, crackers with goat cheese and Just Jack cheese, shortbread and ginger snap cookies and orange/cranberry muffins).
Ann Beck opened our meeting by praying for several people in our parish as well as prayer requests given by the attendees. Then Ann read the wonderful devotion of God’s love for us which is freely given and we learned phrase “This is Crazy” that is what Ann’s grand-nephew, a toddler, has been saying with exuberance and delight when he realizes something new. We shared in the delight of young people in knowing the joy of being loved. Afterwards Ann lead us in a lively discussion from the Forward Day by Day passages in Psalm 107, Hosea 11, Acts 22 and Luke 6. We know God loves us like He did the Israelites who strayed from God, just as we do. God loves us with an everlasting love and desires us to return to Him. So we ask ourselves “How do we respond to God’s love?”
After a 10 minute break, when most women went outside to visit the “Blessing of the Animals” and enjoy the beautiful weather, we returned to hear from our guest speaker, Laura Sargent, Epiphany’s Music Department Coordinator. Laura emphasized how Blessed we at Epiphany are to have such wonderful music, probably the best in the country. We are fortunate to have Zach Hemenway as director of music and Dr. Wyatt Smith as associate director of music and dean of the Music Academy. Laura informed us that the choir is made up of 20 paid professionals and many volunteers. They not only sing at church services but also Sunday and Thursday Choral Evensong. We were told of the Music Academy, the upcoming Handel’s Messiah (Dec 9 & 10) and the Baroque Christmas Pacific Music Works (Dec 11) and the newly formed Chorister Program for ages 8 and up. We were encouraged to spread the word of this new Chorister Program in order to grow this ministry.
We ended in prayer.
In Christ,
WRG