From Our Co-Ministers

June 2006

Ministering with you these last ten years has been our joy, our privilege, our continuing education, and here with you is where we have invested our time, our money, our hearts, our lives.

Thank you for all your gifts to us. We are most appreciative of remembrances and photographs, assembled by Kay Fairwell into a beautiful scrapbook, time at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, contributions for our heart’s desire, and a lovely reception. Thank you to the 1995-96 Search Committee and the past and present Committees on Ministry for leadership and for the presentation in the Sunday service, marking this tenth anniversary of our time together as congregants and ministers.

Reviewing and highlighting the congregation’s 115 year history reminded us that this last decade, and all of us, are part of an ongoing, glorious story. People have labored lovingly for years to make this congregation. There have always been trials and errors, disappointments and great accomplishments. Throughout it all, lives have been touched and transformed, hope has been rekindled, and the community has stood and acted for justice, compassion, and love.

For all of us, this congregation is our common workshop. What all of us are doing, all the time, is religious education. When we have a goal and we fall short, we can step back and say, “What are we learning now about disappointment, about failure?” When someone is critical and it feels personal, “What are we learning about self-esteem?” When despite differences, we move forward together, “What are we learning about community, forgiveness, letting go?” When we know accomplishments, “What are we learning about combined effort, about joy?” We are always trying and trying again. Together here we are life learners, love learners.

We are life learners, love learners, and justice apprentices, working as a community to bring our values into the world.

We celebrate the one year anniversary of your calling the Rev. Christopher Craethnenn as Minister of Religious Education. We.re grateful for our team ministry with Chris, for the ease of working together, the shared energy, enthusiasm, mission, and hope.

Over this decade, you’ve learned our shortcomings and limitations. We’re grateful for the ways you encourage our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses. Together so much has happened and so much is possible.

The congregation’s first minister Rev. Edward Payne believed, “The work [of religion] is to help fill the world with virtue, justice, good will, peace, happiness and song….It is to find and learn and bring to light the grounds for relation to Reality….Its horizon is the universe, its spirit optimistic, its guide Truth, its goal the Good. Its great watchwords are Light, Liberty, Life, and Love.”

Let us go forward together, continuing to learn, filling the world with virtue, justice, good will, peace, happiness and song.

Barbara and Bill
Revs. Barbara and Bill Hamilton-Holway, Co-Ministers