July 2023 Newsletter

Hello all!

Good day all! Provincial Synod was quite memorable. I have included a report on Synod in this newsletter. What I want to share with you here is about the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life this past week

You may not know this, but my parents met at Moravian College. They started dating in my mother’s sophomore year. There is a picture in the Moravian Yearbook of my mother sitting on the front alcove of Comenius Hall and my father looking lovingly at her. Both are dressed very well and are young and in love. I remembered this picture on my morning walk on the very last day of Synod. I remembered it as I walked toward Comenius Hall to this very alcove where they posed for a picture in 1958. As I got closer to the front steps of the Hall, I noticed something on the top step. It was a wedding bouquet, all white roses, fresh, simply lying on the steps. I bent to smell the roses. My parents were married in Bethlehem at the small chapel behind Central Moravian Church. I felt the overwhelming presence of my mom and my dad and it was very good. Who leaves a wedding bouquet on the steps at 6:30 am in the morning? The Holy Spirit?

A second story is like it. This happened the first day of Synod. I was invited to preach at the opening worship for Synod. It went well, but it was huge relief when it was over. I felt a deep need to go on a walk with my mom. That is something that my mom and I did together, some of my earliest memories are going on walks with my mom. As many of you know my mother died in 2014, my father in 2017 and my little brother in 2021. But I went outside to find my mom. I was walking past the library on campus when I heard the cardinals. I knew it was my mom and dad (I don’t think they are really in the birds, but they could be maybe, I don’t think so, but when I see birds, it makes me feel closer to my dead loved ones). I thought there were just two cardinals--my mom and my dad. And it made me feel happy and peaceful. But then I realized there were 5 cardinals and they were acting crazy and hanging out all around me and letting me get too close and I thought who did mom and dad bring with them? David, my brother, for sure, but the other two? Then it dawned on me– it was Uncle Don and Aunt Zoya. Not my real aunt and uncle, but that is what I had always called them. Don and Zoya Cottom, a Moravian pastor couple from Madison, Wisconsin, from when I was little, with whom we shared Thanksgiving every year. All there, all acting crazy. Zoya the most.

So a wedding bouquet of white roses and 5 crazy cardinals! My heart was filled this Synod week; the Holy Spirit was busy satisfying my soul. I am grateful.