Dear friends—

I am writing you with a very full heart to tell you that I will be retiring from ordained ministry this summer. Elaine has decided to retire as of May 31, and has informed the Church of the Ascension that this is her decision. Our finances and our domestic life won't work unless we both retire in roughly the same timeframe, since our hope is to move to a warmer climate. (Elaine's rheumatoid arthritis has been worsening over the last few years, and we hope to be moved before another Cleveland winter closes down.) Advice on real estate suggests that this is the right time to put our house on the market—and so, my last Sunday at New Life will be August 5.

I hope you all know what a privilege for me it has been to be part of life at New Life—in fact, for years before I had the enormous grace to become your rector. You know that I think you are a remarkable congregation—energetic, caring, welcoming to all, and willing to share everything God gives you. I hope you all know that I think you have a future at least as full of God's light as your present is.

When I came, you said you wanted to take more risks and to turn the focus of the church from inward to outward. I think we have done much of that over the last four years: concerts, blessings, invitational events, advertising, a renovated building, an incredible amount of outreach for a church this size, and new emphases on foreign missions and advocacy. And I think we have continued to build community as we have done all these things, drawing closer among ourselves and to the parishes of CEMAC, and making a difference in the Diocese as well. I believe that a new clergy leader will help you respond to new and different "holy nudges," and that you have excellent vestry and parish leadership in key areas to manage this transition.

And what of the transition? Many of you will remember with some anxiety the last search, which seemed to take a long and a difficult time. The Rev. Canon Percy Grant has made the vestry a suggestion that may provide an alternative to a long search. The vestry will be looking into that possibility over the next few weeks. Wardens Larry Mackey and Joe Epner—and all the vestry—will keep you well posted about their decisions.

During the next months, my intention is to keep working with you as energetically as ever on what's immediately ahead of us, and to say goodbye to all of you personally. As for what this ministry has meant to me, I can't say it better than the Letter to the Ephesians does:

"Now that I know of the faith you have in the Lord Jesus, and the love you bear all God's people, I never cease to give thanks for you when I mention you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you the spiritual powers of wisdom and vision, by which there comes the knowledge of him. I pray that your inward eyes may be illumined, so that you may know what is the hope to which he calls you, what the wealth and glory of the share he offers you among his people, and how vast the resources of his power open to us who trust in him (Ephesians 1:15-19, passim)."

Thank you all for everything you have been and done for me.
Love!
Pat

Dear friends—

The day of resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad!

The passover of gladness, the passover of God.

And so we have come through Lent and into Easter, the greatest of the church's holy days—the one that makes all the others significant and possible.

Believe it! Jesus the Nazarean carpenter, Jesus the son of Mary and the Son of God, was seen to die at the hands of Pilate's soldiers. And he was seen to be alive after that, seen to eat and drink, and even cook, while bearing the marks of his crucifixion. He was the person he said he was. He was raised from the dead by the power of God, to show us that death is not the end of us. What he shows us is that if we will repent and follow his Way, if we will displace our own selfishness and live as he lived, we are living in eternal life now. And eternal life now means that with God all things are possible! Alleluia.

But remember this. The "all things" that are possible AREN'T all the things that I want. Darn! They're the things that God wants. And what are those?

• That we should know and love God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind (Luke 10:27)
• That we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Luke 10:27)
• That we should love one another as God in Jesus has loved us (John 15: 12)

These three mission statements for our life as Christians are huge, but they're not rocket science. They're hard, but they're not incomprehensible or un-do-able.

They require me and you and all of us who profess a real faith in Jesus resurrected to choose to do, and to "stand for" what Jesus did: healing all; feeding and clothing and knowing and caring for everyone among us who suffers; forgiving even the people who hurt us most while at the same time refusing to be manipulated by them; being a real and active part of a community that puts what Jesus did first; casting out the demons that would possess us—our selfishness, our moral blindness, our unwillingness to be involved with others in ways that might cost us money or time or energy, our refusal to forgive, our unwillingness to pray.

As I said, that's huge and hard, but it isn't beyond us. We need a loving and praying and supportive community to do it—and that's why God the Father and Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit, whom we meet and learn to follow in the church, in one another as we see people we know healing and feeding and forgiving and praying—doing what Jesus did.

Welcome to life, eternal life, in a world with resurrection in it. The world WE live in, where (despite what we often think when we look around us) with God all the tings God wants for the whole creation are possible—if we will get with God's program, and live in the way that makes them be.

And Love! Pat