Going once! Going twice! Sold to the generous person helping our youth go to St. Louis! We are talking about cakes. Bring your favorite cake and bring your generous spirit to this year’s Festival of Cakes on Sunday, March 3, featuring a Mardi Gras theme, good food, yummy desserts, and a great cause—supporting our youths’ faith formation! With a simple catered lunch (love offerings gladly accepted to help offset the cost) and fabulous cakes provided by bakers in the congregation and the community, it’s sure to be a fun-filled time to eat and fellowship together! Please let Jeff Miller or a member of the Membership committee know if you plan to bring a cake!
Nursery helpers
We are looking for volunteers to be with the little ones during worship for a few Sundays. This is a temporary opportunity until we hire an additional nursery worker. Please get in touch with Katie to coordinate schedules. Thank you!
Ash Wednesday
The season of Lent, a time of fasting, prayer, and repentance, begins with Ash Wednesday on March 6. While we each observe this season in our own ways—giving up things like plastic or social media, or taking on things like daily acts of kindness or skipping lattes and giving the money to groups fighting hunger—many of us appreciate the opportunity to come together on that first day for a time of prayer. We let ourselves be marked with the sign of the cross, stark symbol of how profoundly fractured our relationships are with God, with one another, and with our fellow creatures, yet at the same time the emblem of our hope. The ashes are what is left of the palm branches we waved with joy and expectation when Jesus entered the city. Enthusiasm, commitments, and intentions gone up in flames. We are earthlings after all, creatures, not lords of creation. But our God knows how we were made; our God remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14). This is our hope: the memory and boundless love of God. We gather in the sanctuary for prayers on March 6, at 6:30 p.m.
Lent study: Laudato Si'
Thomas Kleinert will read Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, during Lent this year, and he would like to meet weekly with fellow readers who are fellow travelers on the Lenten journey. He hasn’t set a time yet, but wants to create a meeting schedule with them. Are you interested? The encyclical is easily available online, including as a pdf, as well as in print. Just let him know (thomas@vinestreet.org or 615-714-9718). James Martin, S.J wrote, introducing a solid summary of the document, “Until now, the environmental dialogue has been framed mainly with political, scientific and economic language. With this new encyclical, the language of faith enters the discussion—clearly, decisively and systematically.”
Changing some of the light bulbs in our building requires a boom lift. But there are plenty that only require a ladder or a step stool. We want to put together an email list, the bulb brigade, of volunteers we could ask to tackle small property maintenance jobs like that. Please ask Katie to be added. Some of you may also be able to replace a worn o-ring in a dripping faucet or the flapper in a leaky tank.
Bulb Brigade
Changing some of the light bulbs in our building requires a boom lift. But there are plenty that only require a ladder or a step stool. We want to put together an email list, the bulb brigade, of volunteers we could ask to tackle small property maintenance jobs like that. Please ask Katie to be added. Some of you may also be able to replace a worn o-ring in a dripping faucet or the flapper in a leaky tank.