Archive for 2020
“Hitting the Wall” by Father Daniel Simons | May 20, 2020
This past week I noticed that in many of my conversations around the parish, and in the wider community, people were describing a new level of fatigue, or crankiness, or anxiety, or frustration. As I listened, I looked inward and found the same within myself. It reminded me of what endurance sports language calls “hitting […]
Continue ReadingMay 1, 2020
Dear People of St. Paul’s, I’m writing to you today looking out at the river and at the woods beyond it, where the buds are just beginning to pop. I’ve watched this procession of spring come up from the Norwalk coast — first in the St. Paul’s churchyard, then creeping up the Newtown turnpike mile […]
Continue ReadingApril 18, 2020
Dear People of St. Paul’s, The early Easter Christian community was finding its way in a world similar in many ways to the one we are living in: their lives had been irreversibly upended, and there was no clear roadmap to follow as they carried on. What became the confident voice of the Gospels started […]
Continue ReadingApril 7, 2020
Dear People of God, It may feel like we’ve been in Holy Week for an age already, but as we begin this year’s sacred “week of weeks,” I invite you to walk it with particular attention. The mystery of suffering is that when we embrace the unavoidable — willingly entering into it rather than trying […]
Continue ReadingMarch 31, 2020
Dear St. Paul’s Parish Family, It seems much longer ago than it actually was that we were all together in church (Lent 2), beginning to practice safe distance by elbow-bumping the Peace and receiving only bread at the Eucharist. Much has happened since then that we couldn’t predict, and much more that we still can’t […]
Continue ReadingAn Online Holy Week
Thank you for worshiping with us online throughout this Holy Week! Read Fr. Daniel’s Easter letter to the congregation, available here: Easter Letter 2020. Palm Sunday, April 5th (click for leaflet) Tenebrae, Monday-Wednesday, April 6th-8th Tenebrae I, April 6: click here for the worship leaflet and here to watch the livestream Tenebrae II, April 7: click here for […]
Continue ReadingMarch 24, 2020
Dear St. Paul’s Parish Community, Another week has brought us rapidly to another place in our collective and personal lives. I have written previously of the heavy loss we are feeling at the death last night of our long-time parishioner Mary Roman. We also mourn with another parish member, Frank Kimball, for the loss of […]
Continue ReadingMarch 19, 2020
Dear St. Paul’s Parish Community, In the fast-changing and increasingly challenging situation the Covid-19 pandemic places us in, many of us are expressing a wide range of conflicting emotions. This may include a sense of helplessness to do more than follow directives to distance ourselves. I’m writing now to talk about some collective and individual […]
Continue ReadingMarch 12, 2020
Dear St. Paul’s parish community, As COVID-19 health precautions continue to evolve in our region, one essential practice to help flatten the curve of the virus’s spread is “social distancing” – suspending non-essential gatherings until we are past the height of transmission, which is still ahead of us. To do that at St. Paul’s, here […]
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