Weekly Reflection - 6/8/2022

St. Mary's Reflection: Nancy Clark, Sunday School Director

Thank you Wonderful Sunday School Teachers!

It’s June. Have you been to any graduations? Nursery school, middle school, high school, college, graduate school? The answer is probably yes and if not this year, certainly many many in years past…..except for those Covid pandemic years when pomp and circumstance ceased and Zoom loomed.

How many times have we been asked to ponder the very words ‘graduation’? and “commencement” If you dozed off, graduation is merely the handing over of a diploma, a formality, to mark the end of an educational experience. “Commencement” is loftier harking back to its Latin derivative “beginning”. For sure, all those students of every age and grade who graduated or commenced were at a new starting place, facing challenges and possibilities.

But this is a church “reflection”, so where is this leading?

We don’t have graduation or even commencement at St Mary’s and yet over the long years of our parish life, hundreds, probably thousands of young people have gone to Sunday school ‘religiously’ for hundreds of Sundays in their young lives, and multitude, legions of our young people have confirmed their faith at Confirmation, the closest rite of passage to graduation or commencement. Though we don’t hand out diplomas or grant degrees, we show by our actions and commitment of resources that we are committed to education in all its forms—spiritual education, education for goodness, education for justice, education for philanthropy for environmental stewardship. We have very many teachers of those subjects in our midst. Look around. They are all around us every Sunday. You may be one of them.

This year, as we emerged from the cocoon of Covid, we had a corps of loyal Sunday school teachers nurturing the spiritual and ethical development of our children. Many of them have long careers in our St. Mary’s classrooms. We give special thanks and praise for their loyalty, creativity, expertise and commitment:

Todd and Lisa Reynolds, Donna Davidson, Lisa Carey, Nancy Svendsen, Cynthia Harper, Gabby Taylor, Phil Woodworth and Mike Stafford.

You have faithfully persevered through the strange circumstances of this past year to continue to invite the children and youth in our midst to grow in their knowledge and love of God. THANK YOU!!

Nancy Clark

Sunday School Director