This has been a quiet month.  Pastoral care has been ongoing with several people, and I have had the chance to sit down with a few people and hear about their journeys to becoming members of the meeting. But it has also been a sad month because four people have left the meeting, and my heart hurts for them.  I feel empathy for those of you who have worshipped with them for years now, and I know this is even harder for you. I know we will move forward, but it is important to be honest about our feelings of pain in losing them to our community.  It’s important to continue to band together and nurture one another as we nurture our unity as a  whole.

            Carl Andrews has been playing accompaniment for the meeting and doing a fine job.

 Attendance has been up on unprogrammed worship Sundays compared to the past, but as is par for summertime, we have had a smaller gathering to worship during the month of June.  It has been an unusually hot month as well.

            Because we had five Sundays in June, I was able to preach more messages: Positive Energy, Values and Goals, and Helping Build Community with One Another.  Today’s message was on Edward Hicks and his want to share art with the Quakers he loved.  We have had a Circle of Friends to discuss among ourselves who we are and what we want to become.  Another is upcoming in two weeks.   We have had a book group on Living Buddha, Living Christ in which I participated.

            The pantry has moved to be consolidated with the Lutheran Pantry so that now it is the Interfaith Food Pantry and includes four churches: ours, the Unitarian Universalists, and both Klamath Lutheran and Grace Lutheran churches.  I have attended one board meeting and will attend another this week.

            I have read a few books, one that has been quite helpful is Parker Palmer’s On the Brink of Everything: grace, gravity and getting old, written in 2018.

            Joe and I were able to attend the Annual Session for the Yearly Meeting and I clerked the Epistle Committee, made up of Paul Parker, Janet Groves, and Joe Tolton and myself. The epistle is an agreed upon document of the sense of the meeting and its sessions including all transformations and important discussions. This is my second and last time of being with this committee.  I will read the epistle from the annual session so that you can get a gist of what the yearly meeting was like.  It was quite transformative. Several people from Klamath Falls Friends attended, including Kate and Sarah.  Karen Little filled the pulpit while we were away.

            Joe and I have met twice with the supervisory committee overseeing our job performance.  This will continue through the month of July to be followed by a less intensive job review in August. 

            I have worked on two Illuminate Sunday School Lessons: one on Daniel and one on Revelations for Barclay Press. They have been submitted and accepted. One has been published.