A New Season has Begun at Living Table
As I was driving to New Branches one day this week, I noticed a neighbor’s maple tree had turned fully red. Most of the other trees are still mostly green with small patches of yellows, oranges, and reds. This one tree, though, announced the season change.
Like many of you, I didn’t need to see the red maple leaves to know that summer is over. My calendar is suddenly more full than it’s been in recent months. RAT has begun planning Advent (which is only a couple months away), the Gardeners have begun to prepare the grounds for winter, and Council has had conversations about stewardship and sustainability.
We also had an exciting Recovenanting Sunday with the fire alarm going off. In spite of that we have a great new covenant for this program year. New Branches staff have begun to talk about the holiday worship schedule and what we will share together. There’s even the possibility of a Winter Concert put on by New Branches talent.
Amidst all of this gearing up and settling into fall rhythms, you may have experienced some difficulties with our website or email this week. Please know that these are a result of working with free hosting and domain registrar services. Although such things are free in a monetary sense, they do require hours of skilled intervention and troubleshooting in order to keep them functional. This week’s event involved very old DNS and MX records, from years ago, being linked back to the livingtable.org domain, and interfering with our email deliverability. Erika was able to fix these issues for us as a donation, beyond the normal work she does for us maintaining and securing our online tech stack and email services.
A big thank you to Erika for getting us literally back on-line! Also much gratitude to all of you have contributed to sustaining the vitality of our community. In the weeks to come we will explore together how we can continue to sustain our presence and ministry into the future.
In the meantime, I hope you all find time to enjoy the beauty of the season as it unfolds. May we also all experience the joy and power of being a part of such a lively community of faith.
About Rachael Keefe
Rev. Dr. Rachael Keefe is the pastor of Living Table United Church of Christ. She was called to Living Table in 2015 after serving in many varied ministry settings since her ordination in 1992. She holds graduate degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Seminary at Yale (formerly Andover Newton Theological School). Her ministry and leadership often center around advocacy and accessibility. Her writing has been published by Chalice Press, The Christian Century, Red Letter Christians, Working Preacher, RevGalBlogPals, and others. She is grateful to be in ministry with Living Table today.
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Thank you Erika for your work on the website!
Thanks Erika. Also, Pr. Rachael are you sure it just wasn’t a red maple?
Yes, Barb, I’m sure. There’s a red maple right next to it.
We are really blessed to have Erika’s gifts of talent, time, and energy. THANK YOU!!!!
We will help bring the community Jesus calls us to be into reality if/when we live in to our covenant.
Sandy, that’s the key, isn’t it. Living into the covenant is a challenge. It’s also the reason why we have a Sunday each year to remind ourselves of what we are attempting to do and be.
Thank you, Erika, for keeping the website going through thick and thin.