Dear Friends,

I’m truly eager to reunite with you all this Sunday! My sabbatical has been a richly blessed time for me—reconnecting with family, friends, favorite places, and parts of myself that had been waiting in the wings for attention.

I began this journey with a beautiful send-off from all of you in the Parish Hall, complete with the gift of a journal sprinkled with Mary Oliver’s poetry and encouraging notes from one of you. A particular line from Oliver’s poem “On Not Mowing the Lawn” struck me and guided the rest of my sabbatical:

Let the path become where I choose to walk,

and not otherwise established.

What a gift, to be able to choose my path as the spirit moved me! A path which has taken me to California to visit family, Ohio for my niece’s graduation, Manhattan for adventures with my youngest son, Alexandria, Virginia, for a three-week residency for my Doctor of Ministry degree, my sister’s seaside cottage in Maine, London, and Amsterdam (again with my youngest son), and finally, to the Black Rock desert in Nevada for Burning Man.

I’ve explored the fire trails on Mt. Tamalpais, the running paths in Central Park, the walkways of Hyde Park, and the shaded paths of Vondelpark. I wandered through a dozen art museums and galleries and attended diverse theater productions—from a neo-futurist LGBTQ+ troupe in the West Village to a lively Broadway musical, Shakespeare at the Globe in London, and improv comedy in Amsterdam. Along the way, I’ve walked, trained, bussed, flown, and floated. I’ve laughed, prayed, thought, studied, and written papers (oh, those dreaded footnotes). I discovered the best vegan restaurants in every city and developed a taste for Aperol spritzes!

Throughout it all, I’ve held you in my heart with deep gratitude for those who have 'held the fort' in my absence, including Rev. Robin Teasley, our vestry, and our dedicated staff. I now have a renewed appreciation for the person I’ve become through our seven years of ministry together and an even greater excitement about the abundant possibilities our future holds as we continue 'becoming' together.

I want to leave you with a thought from this year’s Burning Man theme, “Curious and Curiouser,” as we anticipate our reunion:

It’s in those timeless moments of not knowing, when we’re consumed entirely by curiosity, that we experience our most profound learning, growth, and creativity… Sometimes we need to fall down a rabbit hole or step through a drawing-room mirror to encounter the magic that was right there all along, just a tornado-ride away in Oz or three wishes over in Faerie… where everything is its opposite and nothing is impossible.

In Christ,

Amelie+