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Dear Friends,

Thanksgiving is early this year – almost the earliest it can be in November. I suppose that will make it a good year for retailers since there will be a few more “shopping days ‘til Christmas.” Thank goodness a few stores have backtracked on the recent practice of opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day. I’m grateful that they’ve opted to give employees the day off.

Terry and I will travel to New Hampshire – a trip planned long before I knew I would be coming to Toledo. Daughter Kate and her husband, Mike, moved to Litchfield a year ago September, and I have yet to see their home. She has gently reminded me of this, so I need to remedy the situation. Our kids are spread out from east coast to west, so it’s just not possible for us all to gather in one place for turkey and pie. FaceTime and phone calls will have to serve as substitutes for being together in person.

We’ve hosted many gatherings in our home over the years welcoming “all sorts and conditions”: foreign students from Denison who weren’t able to go home for the holiday, truck drivers who hauled mobile broadcast equipment to Columbus for the Ohio State-Michigan game, and a few folks whom we knew would otherwise be alone for Thanksgiving on a day when gathering with others is what it’s all about. Whether you are traveling or staying put, I hope you are part of a gathering somewhere.

Billy Collins, the former Poet Laureate, captures the feeling of the day perfectly in his poem, “The Gathering.” You may already know it, but if not, here it is:

Outside, the scene was right for the season,
heavy gray clouds and just enough wind
to blow down the last of the yellow leaves.

But the house was different that day,
so distant from the other houses,
like a planet inhabited by only a dozen people
with the same last name and the same nose
rotating slowly on its invisible axis.
Too bad you couldn’t be there

but you were flying through space on your own asteroid
with your arm around an uncle.
You would have unwrapped your scarf

and thrown your coat on top of the pile
then lifted a glass of wine
as a tiny man ran across a screen with a ball.

You would have heard me
saying grace with my elbows on the tablecloth
as one of the twins threw a dinner roll
across the room at the other.

Whether you have your elbows on the table or are dodging throwed rolls, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. I have many, many things to be grateful for this year, but I’m especially grateful to be serving as your Interim Rector.

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

The 207th Annual Convention of the Diocese of Ohio convenes this evening in Wooster with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist at 5:30 pm. The convention banquet will follow. Tomorrow morning, the convention’s business session will begin and then wrap up later in the afternoon. This convention is the first at which Bishop Anne Jolly will preside. Trinity will be represented by three lay delegates, each of them with seat, voice, and vote – Mary Beroske, Hugh Grefe, and Jolene Miller. As your Interim Rector, I will be granted the courtesy of seat and voice, but won’t have voting privileges since I’m a priest in the Diocese of Southern Ohio. George Benson, our Director of Community Engagement, will also attend the convention as an observer, providing him the opportunity to learn more about how the diocese supports the ministries of its various parishes and congregations.

Diocesan conventions are a time when lay and clergy delegates from each congregation in the diocese gather for worship and fellowship, and to discuss and make decisions about the budget, resolutions, canons, and other issues. You can learn more about this year’s meeting by going to the convention website here: https://www.dohio.org/convention.

The Diocese of Ohio occupies 48 counties in the northern half of the state. It was the first diocese of the Episcopal Church to be established outside the original 13 colonies. At present, there are 95 parishes – some large, others small, and still others somewhere in between.

Shortly after Ohio was admitted to the Union, the first Episcopal church, St. John’s, was established in the state at Worthington in 1804. (Fun fact – I served as interim at St. John’s from 2019-2020.) Philander Chase, a graduate of Dartmouth, was called to be St. John’s first rector in 1817. A year later, he was elected the first Bishop of Ohio, and immediately began founding congregations and organizing the diocese for mission. A force to be reckoned with, Bishop Chase established Kenyon College and Bexley Hall Seminary. To give you some idea of his energy, between June 1820 and June 1821, he preached 200 times, baptized fifty people, and confirmed another 175 while traveling 1,279 miles on horseback!

Your interim and lay delegates won’t have to travel to Wooster on horseback, but we will still appreciate your prayers. Here’s the prayer For a Church Convention or Meeting from the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with those who take counsel in the Diocese of Ohio for the renewal and mission of your Church. Teach us in all things to seek first your honor and glory. Guide us to perceive what is right, and grant us both the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

“Oh, when the saints go marching in. . .”

For those of us of a certain age, it’s impossible to read the opening line of the traditional Black spiritual without hearing the jazz great Louis Armstrong singing it.

This Sunday, November 5, we’ll celebrate All Saints’ Sunday. It’s a way for us to remember that we are part of a large community of people, both living and dead, who form “the communion of saints.” But just who are the saints anyway?

Often when we say the word, “saint,” we mean an official holy person – someone who has been recognized through canonization for holiness. The Roman Catholic Church has a well-established process that must be followed if someone is to be declared a saint. The Episcopal Church has no such official process, although we celebrate and remember “Holy Women” and
“Holy Men” who have had made exemplary contributions to the life and work of the church.

Because people believe that saints are close to God and accessible to us, the saints’ help is often sought for a variety of reasons. For years, Terry drove with a St. Christopher medal pinned to the sun visor of our old Volvo station wagon as a way of invoking Christopher’s protection for our children and her during their travels. And we all know at least one person who has prayed to St. Jude, known as the “patron saint of the impossible.”

Sometimes when we talk about “saints,” we are talking about a person who has died and gone to heaven. It’s helpful to imagine that the veil that separates us from those we “love but see no longer” is a thin one, and that when the congregation joins “with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven” in praising God, parents and grandparents, spouses and friends are just on the other side of the communion table from us.

But the way the New Testament speaks of saints has always held the most appeal for me. When St. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he addressed his first letter to “those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints…” He was speaking to a group of people whose behavior would never be associated with the way we think saints out to behave. In fact, Paul took members of the Corinthian congregation to task for a variety of bad behaviors – everything from sexual immorality, to infighting, to refusing to share food at the church’s pot-luck suppers following the Holy Eucharist.

However, Paul was on to something when he called the Corinthians “saints.” He understood that being a saint was the result of something God does, not something we do. A “saint” according to Paul, is someone who is “sanctified in Christ Jesus.”

Come join your fellow Trinity saints this Sunday, November 5. Remember to turn your clock
back one hour before retiring. And, if you haven’t already done so, bring your 2024 pledge card as we wrap up the Annual Pledge Drive with an ingathering.

I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in. How about you?

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

Many years ago now, David Joslin, who served as the bishop of Central New York, wrote a little pamphlet for Forward Movement Publications (the folks who bring us the “Forward Day by Day” bible reading helps), called “An Apostle in our Midst.” He wanted people to understand the role and ministry of a bishop and the link between every Episcopal bishop and the Apostles. I wish I could find the pamphlet, but I suspect it was a casualty of a library housecleaning I performed several years ago.

The gist of Bishop Joslin’s piece was that bishops were not only linked to the apostles through the long chain of the laying on of hands at ordination, the chain referred to as “Apostolic Succession,” but are also linked to the apostles by their being sent by Jesus Christ to bring the gospel of God’s love to the world.

This Sunday, October 29, the Rt. Reverend Anne Jolly, the Bishop of Ohio – she’s happy to be called Bishop Anne – will preside and preach at the 10:00 am service. We’ll have the opportunity to have a conversation with her at the reception following the 10:00 am service, and then the Vestry will meet with her.

During Bishop Anne’s visitation we’ll welcome Matthias and Kai Kefalas Siu into the household of God through the Sacrament of Baptism. Irene Ballmer, George Benson, and Kimberly Kefalas from Trinity, and Timothy Krukowski from St. Timothy’s, Perrysburg will be received into the fellowship of this communion.

Please join me in welcoming our Chief Pastor – an Apostle in our midst – to Trinity this Sunday.

Blessings,
Stephen Applegate