Dear One's of St. C's,

In 2025 we got to enjoy the fruit of so much of the hard earned labor we did as a community to rebuild after COVID.  Remember when as church we couldn’t meet inside for a whole year?  While, I am so proud of the ways we stayed church and continued to care for each other and our neighbors during that time, some ministries did lose there way a bit.  We had some re-building to do.  

And in 2025 we saw many of those ministries thriving, the most recent one that got resurrected in 2025 was the flower garden, a few others that we have been rebuilding over the last couple of years were adult formation, the just garden, and the flower guild.

And then there are the new things that we started after we returned to meet in person that continue to connect us to God, each other and our neighbors; robotics, science Sundays, one parish one prisoner’s support and care for Jermaine, second Sunday service days, and the 5 rounds of feminism classes that we have offered throughout the last three years.  I can see the ways that the feminism classes are impacting the way we are able to discuss challenging topics as a community and how we speak of invisible labor that happens in our church.  These classes have also deepened so many relationships through this mind opening and vulnerable study. 

The food bank while always strong throughout the pandemic was having funding issues as the cost of groceries increased in early 2023, but in 2025 it has a surplus of funds.  Our bees have completely recovered from the robbery a couple of years ago.  I think one of the last ministries to recover from the pandemic was growing flowers again in our Memorial Garden.  Sonja Everson and Lisa Ruppel took this project head on this year and the result could not have been more beautiful.  There are so many people who keep the Memorial Garden looking orderly and beautiful.  It is so comforting to know that such a consistent group of people are tending to it, especially when it comes time to inter someone’s ashes.  The Bishop’s Committee has been hard at work looking into signage and bench options for the garden.  We hope to have this completed in 2026.   

In 2025 we also mourned together a lot through many waves of the Trump Administrations choices that will ultimately harm the most vulnerable- like gutting the department of education, greatly reducing allowing refugees to settle in the US, passing a bill that reduced snap benefits and medicaid and allowed medical subsides to expire, and giving ICE billions of dollars that has led to ICE agents having over reaching power that has already lead to at least 9 deaths in 2026. This administrations ideology around gender also led to our beloved, Music Director, Susan Bloomfield to move to the Netherlands because they no longer felt safe in the US.  

It was heartbreaking to lose Susan and the reason why saddened me even further.  Before Susan left they shared how much this place had come to feel like home and how loved they felt here.  They were such a blessing to us and I am so glad we were able to bless them back.  

Shortly after Susan left, we welcomed Lacey Brown as we discerned what was was next for our Music Program.  Lacey discerned she could only be with us twice a month so we are trying a different way of doing music ministry at church with also having two other very talented worship leaders lead music on the other Sundays.  Lacey, Fred, and Paula are such a blessing to us.  They bring slightly different styles, while understanding our unique musical style at St. Columba’s. 

The rest of our wonderful staff stayed the same in 2025.  Val, our youth and children coordinator, continues to bring her intuitive and hard earned ways of knowing how to make sure every kid belongs in our community.  Val has strong values that drives everything she does.  She also just simply and wholeheartedly loves our kids at St. C’s and is such a gift to me and our community.  Jennifer, our bookkeeper, has such attention to detail, a willingness to slog through tasks that should be easy but for some reason someone on the end of the call or email are making difficult, and a love and care for this church that really makes the administrative work we need to do together enjoyable and fun.  Yadira and Norma, our childcare workers, continue to bring such care to their work and are always on top of brightening the godly room and keeping it tidy.

On Sunday mornings I can feel the deep love and care that is present in this congregation.  I am so thankful for all the ways you all continue to show up.  The musicians who are so faithful each week, the preachers who preach on my behalf, the men’s fellowship group, the senior stewards lunch, the walks with the vicar, the fellowship gatherings that Callie and Hazel host, the soup suppers during Lent, those who attended Dinner Church in 2025, and all the hands and feet that make worship happen each Sunday.  In order for community to work, you have to show up and in order for liturgy to happen you need faithful people to participate.  You all have done this work time and again, truly forming yourselves in the way of Jesus. 

It is my great joy and honor to cultivate this space with all of you and to grow in faith, hope, and love together. To invite people into this beautiful, holy, worship space and to sit in quiet, to pray, and to sing together.   To build a place that continually works to draw a wider circle.  To be a part of a place that feeds the poor, lends land to the refugee to grow food, rents space to two different refugee communities for worship, supports someone released from prison, takes care of our beloved dead in the Memorial Garden, grows food to give away, and plants flowers to add beauty and the natural world to our worship space.  It really is remarkable everything each of you do to allow this place to become the welcoming and loving place that it is.  I really want you to take a moment and look around at what we have built here, all we have accomplished; what both your hard work and your big hearts have created.  We always have more work to do to in making that circle of belonging wider, I am honored to have another year to figure out how we are going to do that with all of you.  Thank you for making my job fun, my life burst with meaning, and giving me glimpses of the Kingdom of God that is here among us, today and always.

with gratitude,

Meghan