Dear Friends,

I want to welcome you back! Back to a new church year, and back to church after way too much time both apart and figuring out how we can come together. I’m excited about the new version of our Covid plan because it offers us a lot more choices on how we can be together. Unless Dane County goes back to a “high” community risk level, we can sing together, share food, and have an in-person coffee hour! Our small groups can choose to remove their masks when y’all meet indoors – with explicit consent from everyone, of course.

Here’s this week’s question and response. Remember that you can listen to the questions and responses from the August 28 question box Sunday service here.

We hear every week at our services “Come, let us enter our time of worship.” What does “worship” mean to you in terms of our Sunday services, and of congregational life at Reeb? I go back to the roots of the word to start- the Old English means “significant, valuable, of value.” So for me, worship means to celebrate something significant or of value – and in the case of worship at Reeb, it means to celebrate our beloved community, our connections with each other and all that surrounds us, our spiritual journeys, our work in the world, our individual joys and sorrows, and lots of other things! I also often talk about doing this celebration “in the space we make sacred together, with our presence and intention.” This grounds worship for me – it means that we don’t just show up into a space “designated” as holy. Instead, we participate in creating a container for the celebration, by centering ourselves and allowing our hearts to open to what’s about to happen – to invite the possibility of shared worship and of transformation.

In faith and love,
Karen