~ a column from our Minister,

Time to roll our eyes as the perennial exercise and dieting promotions recycle on TV.  The ads are as predictable as cold weather in January.  But crash diets are as dangerous as driving around without seatbelts or entering the Baton Rouge Marathon on the spur of the moment.  As with physical fitness, a spiritual discipline is practiced for the sake of the practice itself.  The axiom for spiritual practice is not that practice makes perfect.  Rather, practice makes a life. 

My marathon brother ran until he could not run anymore.  Running did not end his life.  No spiritual practice, rightly engaged, will kill us; however, if you did not start conditioning for the BR Marathon last year, don’t enter it now.  Just start by jogging lightly.  Start with a small course.  Do something else aerobic.  Or, start a dream journal.  Get back to a discipline that has been meaningful in the past.  And return to church if you’ve been away.  Attend not only for your own needs but attend for the purposes of being in community.  That, too, is a discipline. 

Be thinking about an obstacle to your spiritual wellbeing that you might privately write down on a small slip of paper at our January 8^th services.  We intend to incinerate the paper slips over hot coals symbolizing  “where there’s a will, there’s a fire.”

Year 2012 is likely to be an adventuresome, visionary year for our church.  It is clear that our 47-year-old parking lot needs more than Botox.  Our chancel redesign and facelift brings features that we’ve longed for (better lighting, better projection, and an elevated chancel to see our children when they address us) and it appears we won’t need to relocate our worship while the improvements are going on.  There are other plans. Please attend the Congregational Meeting on January 29 at 12:45 PM to approve the 2012 operating budget and to hear a report on the Strategic Plan. 

When this newsletter went to press, there were still several members we had not heard from regarding their financial commitment.   Please fill out the form online or call Allison Veitch at the church office.

January light, akin to January stillness, slinks through deciduous trees, revealing, unlike no other time of year, a naked exposure.  Clear nights, cold though they may be,

Reveal stars reminding us of our goldilocks planet:

Not too cold, not to hot. Diverse cosmologies declare it:

A just right condition for life.  Indisputably no argument.

But which of you are more amazed by it all? Those who say this piece of real estate was tailor-made? Or, those who say, 

“By accident of time and circumstance this planet exists.”?

Who gets the grand prize for being most amazed and delighted?

Which one of you is more awe-struck than the other?

And after the awards ceremony,

Will the rest of us walk gently and love the planet,

Without posturing, pretense, or longing for a prize?