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Estelle's Thanksgiving
Well, Estelle's thanksgiving was a fabulous affair. We ended up with around 65-70 people stuffed into our house, and I was beginning to wonder at one point why on earth we'd thought having it in our house was a good idea. But the space did seem to absorb all the people and having so many created a lovely buzz.
Estelle was well and truly blessed by all and sundry, the kids had a wild time jumping on the bouncy castle (in November...?!) and the spread of food was astonishing.
Anyway, the point of this entry is to post the short liturgy that we wrote for the occasion. I thought that there may be some who would like to read it(again, if you were there and carelessly discarded your copy!), so if that's you then you can download it from this page.
We took inspiration from several sources. Sarah particularly loves our rediscovered heritage in Celtic Christianity, so we took important section from the Northumbria Community's book Celtic Daily Prayer
Also, since the Anabaptist tradition is so important to me I wanted to truly emphasise the reasons behind calling our event a thanksgiving, rather than a christening or dedication. And we wanted to emphasise our beautiful daughter's naming - Estelle Peace.
So, we also drew thoughts from a section in the Anabaptist liturgical resource, Take Our Moments and Our Days: An Anabaptist Prayer Book: A Four-Week Cycle of Morning and Evening Prayers for Ordinary Time, which I've since discovered can be downloaded for free from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Cool.
As Sarah and I prepared our liturgy for the ceremony on Friday evening I read the liturgy inTake Our Moments for the Sunday evening of Week 2 and knew that's what I wanted to make the kernel of our ritual and fortunately Sarah agreed! I cried most of the way through it as I read it to her. Maybe you'll find it stimulating, too.
[UPDATE]
Just added the permission for anonymous users to download the files - sorry if you were confused about not seeing the file.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Thanksgiving Liturgy (PDF) | 64.38 KB |
November 15, 2006 - 12:29am
Hi Joe and Sarah
I cried too as I read the liturgy. God bless you all richly and fill your lives with peace.
Love
Lloyd
November 15, 2006 - 8:55pm
I just about managed to hold it together on the day - my voice cracked on the last paragraph that I read, but I don't think anyone noticed!
Shalom, my friend.
Joe
December 27, 2006 - 3:07am
Joe and Sarah, the litany for Estelle's Thanksgiving was truly lovely! Thanks for sharing it on your website... I almost felt like I was there with you! :)
Blessings!
January 3, 2007 - 3:54pm
Gay, thanks so much for your comments. Glad you found it helpful.
Happy New Year to you and all our friends in Franconia Conference.
Shalom,
Joe
January 11, 2007 - 12:20am
Greetings, Joe and friends at Peace Church! Happy New Year to you!
I continue to be blessed by my very brief visit with you and it feeds into and influences much of my work and thinking these days.
I've posted a new blog on our Franconia Conference website entitled, "Can We Embrace Both Peace and Evangelism." It's something that I see you doing so well, and we're struggling with. Just curious if you have any comments or perspectives to offer from your ministry.
Right now that blog is on our home page (www.franconiaconference.org), but just in case it gets moved off for something else, you will be able to find it at: http://www.franconiaconference.org/blog/category/staff-blogs/
Blessings and love to you all!
~Gay
February 1, 2007 - 3:59pm
Where did he get that image from? As a community I don't see us doing much of either! It is a good discussion as to whether those concepts have any interrelation but he seems to have us up as a model - or is he referring to others who call themselves anabaptist in this country? Just got bit confused with the picture of Joe and Sarah on their website in relation to this. I suspect many of us would want to really question the 'e' word especially when on the conference site link it is described as 'bringing souls into the Kingdom' - be great to actually discuss what that means as that was conversations I had in evo land!
Tim
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