The Reverend Susan E. HillMerry Christmas!This is a season of new beginnings. We are in Christmastide (remember we celebrate the birth of

As you know from the email we sent recently, this week’s parish prayer list has been revised. Our goal is to simplify the previous format, as well as to make the list easier to maintain. All this rests on one big hope: that you don’t simply see the email in your inbox and click delete. Or look at it briefly to see if anyone you know is on the list. Or maybe even just read the meditation, and then delete the list! The hope that we have instead is that you spend time with the list and say a prayer for the people and issues on it....

This past Monday, October 29, was the feast day of St. Simon and St. Jude, who were named as apostles in the gospels. We don’t know much more about them than that, at least from the scriptures. Tradition has it that they were martyred while missionaries together in Persia. There are various theories about them -- for example that Simon had been part of a radical Jewish independence group called the Zealots, and that Jude might have been one of Jesus’ brothers -- but little is known for sure....

This past Sunday, we kicked off our fall Christian Education series “Foundations of our Faith” with a whirlwind session discussing the history of the Episcopal Church. In order to pare down the information, I relied heavily on Christopher L. Webber’s Welcome to the Episcopal Church: An Introduction to Its History, Faith, and Worship -- a useful primer for new church members. I did have a significant problem, though, with the material presented in the opening chapter on History -- an issue that those present at the forum picked up on pretty quickly too. Although I understand that the purpose of Webber’s volume is to be as inviting as possible to newcomers, I was surprised and disappointed to notice that in a chapter that focused heavily on the church’s history in America, there was no mention of the church’s involvement with slavery. Since I did not do enough to counter that omission on Sunday, I thought I would write a few sentences here to clarify....

I had dinner recently with a friend who I only see a few times a year. It was a late dinner, at the end of a very long workday, and I was very tired on my there. I was worried that I wouldn’t be a very good dinner companion. But as we talked, I began to feel better and better, and I realized that the improvement in my mood was due to a gift that my friend has -- he is excellent at being an active listener. He was truly interested in what I had to say, asked insightful questions, and didn’t jump in immediately to redirect the conversation back to himself. The experience was a great reminder that being a good listener is a real gift that we can give all the people in our lives....

Over the past nine days, the 79th General Convention of the Episcopal Church has been taking place in Austin, TX. Held every three years, General Convention is the national legislative body of our denomination. The Constitutions of both the United States and the Episcopal Church were written around the same time and so you may not be surprised to learn that the governing structures have some similarities....