SLYC Invites Christ Church to its Christmas Cafe this Saturday, December 7 Please consider attending the “Christmas Cafe” to be held by St. Luke’s Youth Center ( SLYC ) from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 9. The location is the Church of the Good Shepherd, 1401 Carrollton Ave., Towson, MD 21204. If you wish to ride in a carpool that will depart Christ Church at 2:15 p.m., tell us no later than Friday in an email to outreach@christchurchcolumbia.org . The annual celebration includes food, music, and a chance to meet and interact with SLYC children, parents, and volunteers. SLYC is a collaborative group of West Baltimore families that provides youth with critical resources, life-enriching experiences, and a safety net of support. Its leaders visited Christ Church on July 28, when they met with parishioners during a presentation recorded on Zoom . SLYC thanked us for ongoing support, including $1,500 for youth to attend Camp Imagination , as described in the Outreach Blog of July 11, 2024 . Inviting You to Join Our Monthly Outreach Meeting on Monday, Dec. 9 Learn many ways to help others by joining us remotely for the Outreach Commission meeting on Monday, Dec. 9, at 7:30 p.m. Our mission has a local, national, and international scope, and there are many in need, especially during this winter holiday season. Email us at outreach@christchurchcolumbia.org for the Zoom details. We look forward to seeing you! Angel Tree Gifts Due by this Sunday, December 8th, to Grant Wishes for a Dozen Children Parishioners rapidly filled up the list for our annual Angel Tree tradition, buying gifts to brighten Christmas for a dozen children aided by the Howard County (Central Maryland) division of The Salvation Army . See the Christ Church 2024 Angel Tree SignUp to view choices and find instructions . The deadline to bring unwrapped gifts is 4 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 8. Please put these in the Parish Hall teller’s office. Thank you!   Any monetary gifts go toward purchasing a pair of shoes for each child. To help, consider a contribution to Christ Episcopal Church made online through Realm , by check, or by putting cash in a marked envelope in the collection plate. Designate "Outreach/Angel Tree" on these donations, including a note online in the memo section. Help the Homeless on Monday, Dec. 9, by Preparing a Dish for Grassroots’ Emergency Shelter or Serving a Meal at Its Day Resource Center On the second Monday of each month, Christ Church provides a hot midday meal for the homeless at the Day Resource Center (DRC) and drops off dinner for 50 to 70 residents at its Emergency Shelter, formerly called the Live-In Facility. We last participated on Nov. 11th (above images) . Both are operated by the Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center . A team led by Outreach member Shahra Toth makes side dishes and desserts that we serve in person after carpooling to the DRC. To join us on Monday, Dec. 9, please check our DRC online signup form , which describes their midday meal procedure. Drop-off time is 12:45 p.m. in the parking lot near Old Brick for DRC’s side dishes. Later, parishioners who cook or shop for the evening meal at Grassroots’ shelter arrive in the Old Brick parking lot between 3:15 and 3:30 p.m. Get details in our Grassroots online signup form . Grassroots staff serves the evening meal. It’s efficient to provide for both venues on the same day. Your donations and Vestry-approved funds pay for the fried chicken entrees.   Recently, your generosity helped ease life for some of our homeless neighbors, who rely on sundries from the DRC pantry in Jessup. In response to staff requests, the Outreach Commission approved spending $161 for six packs of men’s underwear. These were purchased with funds donated to the church by parishioners who give to “General Outreach” or specifically to DRC or Grassroots. A heartfelt thanks to those donors!  FISH Asks for Volunteers As Well as Groceries and Toiletries in its Bin and Basket  FISH of Howard County is calling for new volunteers. If you are interested, ask parishioner Andy DeLong, who is FISH treasurer and a newly-elected board member of the nonprofit, which provides committed support to Howard County residents. Please continue to put non-perishable foods and toiletries in the FISH basket at the altar or in the marked yellow bin on the breezeway between Old Brick and Parish Hall. The neighbors you help are grateful for all you do in their support. Columbia Community Care Plans Holiday Activities, Ways to Help Kids Columbia Community Care (CCC) plans holiday activities to help children and their families, including CCC’s annual giveaway of children’s presents. That distribution of toys and gifts for kids 2 to 16 will take place on Saturday, Dec. 21 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. during a celebration at Wilde Lake Middle School (WLMS). The deadline is Friday, Dec. 20 to donate items at WLMS or at Cozy Cafe, 8006 Main St., Ellicott City, MD. C heck the CCC Facebook Group for updates. To volunteer, go online to “Support CCC” .   Those who need help are urged to go to “Get Help” on CCC’s website. Please keep collecting diapers, baby wipes, sanitary and personal care items and adult diapers. Put them in the yellow bin, marked “CCC,” inside the Parish Hall. Our point of contact is Leigh Smith, who monitors the bin and delivers its contents. DreamBuilders Has a Few Upcoming Events in 2025 Join us for our General Meeting on Sunday, January 12th, at 3 p.m. at Temple Isaiah - Come hear about all the work we will be doing in 2025! We have a spring project with the ARC of Howard County in April, and we are talking with Bridges to Housing Stability about renovating one of their properties as soon as January! And we’ll be returning to Kentucky in June for another blitz build. We’ve got a great video to show of our 2024 Kentucky team, featuring our own Christ Church missioners, Jasmine, Alexander and Kiona along withl their team mates.    And mark your calendars! The annual DreamBuilders Spaghetti Dinner and Silent Auction will take place on Saturday, March 8th at Temple Isaiah. This is our biggest fundraiser of the year, and we’re going to need your help! We will be organizing donations for the silent auction soon. Blitz Builds are expensive, as we fund building materials as well as housing, food and transportation for our missioners.    To learn more, visit https://dreambuildersmd.org/ In general, if you have suggestions about ways to help the community, if you want to get involved, or if you need assistance, please email Christ Church Outreach at outreach@christchurchcolumbia.org . Your help is greatly welcomed and appreciated. Thank you.

Poems for Advent , by Pamela Pruitt, returns for Advent again this year. She has created a poem for each weekday during Advent and leading up to Christmas. We are so grateful for Pam and her willingness to share her art with us. As more poems are published this season, you can view them all on our website at https://www.christchurchcolumbia.org/poems-for-advent #adventpoem #adventpoems #adventinspiration #adventseason #tistheseason #tistheseason #hocomd #episcomd #Jesusisthereasonfortheseason #jesusisthereasonfortheseason

Get your silly and sassy seasonal Christmas sweaters out of storage and prepare for a fun FWF to cap off the year. We'll provide the main dish, but please bring side dishes and desserts to share and enjoy. Of course, this event wouldn't be complete without an Ugly Sweater Contest and a little Christmas Bingo will liven up the gang, so be sure to gather with us tonight at 6 pm. in the Great Hall!

Giving Tuesday is a global call to radical generosity that invites us to give to a charity of choice. Christ Church is inviting you to be radically generous with your kind support. With a simple click on our Online Giving Form , you can help us grow Christ Church's Music Ministry. Every gesture - no matter what size - will help us deepen and strengthen our parish and community. Music is such an important part of our worship experience. It can uplift us, comfort us, and help us to pray and praise God. At Christ Church, we are blessed to have many musically gifted members who share their time and talents with us. For some services, though - especially those around Advent and Christmas - we hire professional musicians to enhance our services and highlight this special season. These professionals are paid for their services, taking into consideration their travel time, practice time, instrument upkeep, and musical training. Please consider a donation to the Christ Church Music Ministry on Giving Tuesday this year and help us continue to make a joyful sound. And if you have any questions, please reach out to Larissa on Sunday morning at church, or you can email her . Whether it's by introducing new instruments to our church, and enriching our worship experience... ...or by sharing our experiences and teaching the youngest members of our parish family the value and beauty of music... ...or by joining in parishioners' days of celebration with gorgeous choral pieces... ...each of us is immeasurably blessed to have the Christ Church Music Ministry in our lives. Thank you so much - we are incredibly grateful for your generous and giving spirit.

Advent Compline Presented by Mother Marcia Davenport Each weeknight at 7:30 p.m. on YouTube and Facebook Beginning on Monday, December 2 A new feature of Christ Church's Advent season celebration, Mother Marcia presents a unique compline livestream every weeknight leading up to Christmas. Gathering inspiration from many different Christian texts, she shares stories that are both familiar and new, personal reflections, and beautiful prayers that will assist us all in maintaining a sense of calm and peace during this busy season. You can find these on our YouTube and Facebook pages at 7:30 p.m., and we hope that you'll join us and make this a special part of your Advent journey.

Come join us at 10 a.m. for the Thanksgiving Day Eucharist in New Brick. We welcome everyone to gather with us, but we will also livestream the service on our website, YouTube, and Facebook pages so you can worship and give thanks from wherever you are. The YouTube livestream video is here , and the service leaflet is here.

Taizé: Rosemary for Remembrance This Sunday, December 1st at 6:00 p.m. in the New Brick Sanctuary The weeks leading up to Christmas can be a pressured time, and frazzled nerves can cause us to get beside ourselves. In addition, the impact of losing a loved one has been felt by all of us at one time or another. To comfort us all, we encourage you to gather with us for our combination Taizé / Rosemary for Remembrance service, worship that’s created to support those who have experienced loss this year, as well as those dealing with an added amount of strain or stress during the holiday season. It’s a quiet, reflective worship that helps us slow down and recover ourselves, as fellow parishioners gift us with songs, reflections, and poems as we all pray together in worship and support. It’s a comforting and meditative service that inspires us to lift up all of those loved ones who have left us and help each other through the hectic season ahead. Don’t miss it.  If you cannot gather with us in person, you can worship using the livestream below. The service leaflet can be found at https://tinyurl.com/Taize-RfR .

First Sunday of Advent with the Rev. Marcia Davenport and the Rev. Canon Dr. Kristofer Lindh-Payne 8:00 a.m. in Old Brick 9:00 a.m. Family Worship in New Brick 10:30 a.m. Holy Eucharist with music in New Brick Collect for Today: Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Today's Readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 Luke 21:25-36 Psalm 25:1-9 Sermon for Today: The Rev. Canon Dr. Kristofer Lindh-Payne delivers today's sermon, and you can view it once the 10:30 worship has begun. Holy Eucharist Livestream: Our service livestream begins at approximately 10:20 a.m. this Sunday. The service leaflet for this worship service is here .

One of the people I have come to know over the past couple of years always has this refreshing response to the everyday question of 'How are you?', especially after the excruciatingly tragic loss of a beloved son. More than a year ago, this woman lost one of her three children to suicide. The young man was in his youthful prime, full of energy, promise, and potential.   I didn’t get the chance to meet him, but from what I heard about him, there was no doubt that the future looked incredibly bright and inviting. But amid all that the future had in store for him, the ugly side of life happened. In fact, the ugly side of life often leaves us with scars too deep to cover up, or even overcome.     From a distance, I saw this woman grieve the untimely death of a beloved son. Coupled with her grief was the challenge of running a complex organization with clients who can, at times, be unforgiving and less charitable.   But whenever I saw her and asked how she was doing, she would respond with these words: ‘I’m still standing.’ She never said, 'I am doing great' or 'Doing just fine,' but I’m still standing . It felt that this response of hers echoed the grace and gift of resilience. Resilience is not about being unbroken, unhurt, unchallenged, with no sad feelings, no difficulties, no discomfort, no sorrows, and no scars.   Resilience grounds us in such a way that when we read these words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians: "Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus” for we are emboldened to embrace all of life in its total and complete fullness.   Resilience leads us to accept that life is not about never being knocked down but about getting up when you are knocked down. Resilience teaches us to get back up. When we stretch its components a little further, resilience can even be about what Friedrich Nietzsche once referred to as amor fati -which translates to ‘A love of one’s fate.’ This means an acceptance of whatever happens to us our fate, part of our life.   Hear his words in Ecce Homo: My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it it…but love it.   This thought is not only incredibly profound, but it can be cruel. Nietzsche doesn’t want us to differentiate or distinguish one impactful event in our lives from another. Whether joyous or sorrowful, life-giving or tragic - whatever it is, Nietzsche wants us to love it. He exhorts us to, in fact, love the very thing which may have caused us the greatest harm or pain imaginable. How is that even possible?   But long before Nietzsche coined Amor Fati, the Stoics had spent tons of hours on this very aspect of the human story. Epictetus, who himself had experienced disability, wrote this: Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.” Again, the question is, how is this even possible? How can we not wish that the things we want to see happen, happen? And then be happy even when they don’t happen the way we want them to happen.   Quite honestly, this is all about our mindset. A mindset that commits itself to total surrender to the will of God. A mindset that is grounded in faith, and simply because of that, believes that God is even in the darkest moments of our lives. And then, counts it all joy even in those dark moments because they can still stand. Are you standing?   Resilience is the point where despite all our personal struggles, we can still say, with confidence, I’m still standing . In other words, I may not like what I may be going through, but I give thanks, nonetheless. For me, this is what makes the act of giving thanks superbly humble, self-emptying, and gratifying.   And so, this Thanksgiving, I give thanks for the life of someone whose attitude towards life has been quite an inspiration. I give thanks for the blessing of knowing this person who reminds me of the gift of resilience - this is someone for whom amor fati is a fulfilling and lived experience.   If I may ask, who and what are you thankful for this Thanksgiving? There’s no doubt that you are thankful for your family. I am thankful for mine; I am thankful for the community here at Christ Church, whom I love dearly and can’t get enough of serving you. I am thankful for the many friends and mentors who shepherd me in unimaginable ways. And I am thankful for the gift of life, for there’s nothing more valuable than this precious gift that we all have.   I am thankful for those who, like John Steinbeck, believe that “To be alive at all is to have scars .” But the scars are not enough because they simply reveal to me the extent to which God has held me, protected me, shielded me, guided me, and surrounded me with a love so pure and undefiled.   What scars do you carry with you? Are they enough to make you feel despondent or to even lose your faith in God? If you were to change your mindset, can you find in those scars the presence of God and the active participation of God in your life? You and I have a lot to be thankful for, not only do we see the scars as evidence of living life, but we see them as evidence that we are still standing, we live a lifestyle of amor fati.   As I wind down the last weeks of what has been a glorious sabbatical break, I know that I cannot thank you all enough for being graceful and understanding during this period. I am thankful to each one of you for being a blessing to me.   Heaven knows that I long to be with you. I want to share in your thanksgivings over the scars that we all have. I long to worship with you, pray with you, laugh with you, cry with you, and share in both our moments of joys and sorrows. And so, until I see you, I hope you can keep standing.   I wish you all a Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving. May this be the best one yet - and while at it, please remember to keep standing.   Manny + revmanny@christchurchcolumbia.org