Pastor Note for
October/November 2023

These months of waning sunlight call us to long thoughts. As we walk the streets in these months, we smell those fires burning around us as the labor of daylight ends early in the early advent of evening. Maybe that’s why there is more time for pondering our place in this vast world.

I happen to think that our deepest insights into the mystery of God happen in the long shadow of twilight and eventual starlight by the flickering glow of a fire in the hearth at this time of the year. We start to settle into a rhythm in these months of connection and commitment. Gone is the busyness of a month ago in the stability of this time only upset at its end by the beginning of a season of holidays. While there is a sense of conclusion in our natural surroundings, this offers for us a time and intention of celebration of God’s blessings for what has been, as we also prepare for what will be. In the opportunities of these pages are options of such encouraging us to deepened connections to each other. I hope as you sit by hearthside on a quiet night, you will flip through all those ways that we are experiencing the bounty here at Christ Church as we are also called to a time of nurturing and growth, a dreaming for what will come next.

As a faith community seeking to live our vision of “making connections and offering opportunities in faith, love, and service,” this is the perfect season for those long thoughts and the beginning of planning to follow where they are leading. Perhaps this is in renewed commitment and participation in ongoing ministries, trying something new like our exploration of faith & film with a showing of E.T., or maybe it is just gathering with others to dream together, meeting over a cup of coffee to discuss our hopes. Whatever and wherever, I pray you might let your thoughts wander over the opening hillsides and toward those dreams of an earth that reflects heaven as we seek to live and embody God’s love to the world in Christ.

Yours in Christ, 

Rev. Daven Oskvig