~ Special New Year's Issue ~
A Message from Joy
Dear Ones,

At Christmas I hoped our watchword could be gratitude. For New Year’s, might it be compassion?

There are so many scenes outside our windows. Day by day I’m trying to take them in, as they vary and as they stay the same. The sun rises in a slightly different place, its bright glow spotlighting something I hadn’t noticed before. In the city, light might gleam on a new building, home to hundreds or office for thousands. How are all those people today? Most trees in the Public Garden are emptied of their leaves, but the dogs being walked there have found new smells to snuffle into, connecting with another animal who ran past sometime before them. How are all those earth creatures today? How is the ground, that anchors the trees and still tends them through the winter? How are the bulbs, nestled somewhere beneath, dreaming of spring? 

At this year’s end, our instinct is strong to shove out the old and welcome in the new. But I learned from Krista Tippet this week, the producer of On Being, that many wise ones are urging a different valedictory for 2020: something more akin to looking out the window, in a time of quiet, and deeply noticing life. Take the time, they counsel, to name what our lives lost and gained this year. Bear with this naming in order to craft a farewell of compassionate learning, about ourselves and our world. Because the real question ahead is who we are and who we wish to be, based on what we learned deeply this year. Getting back to normal is too paltry a goal.  

For Tippet herself, the losses were great – we are social creatures, designed by our God of Love to be with one another physically, and COVID made our very bodies potentially lethal for others. Beloveds died or we discovered how uneven the deaths were, to our shame. The flame of truth was smothered out often, and in the pandemic fear our country was both its most vicious and most kind. Which were we? Krista Tippet finds most hope in the “softening” among us that she noticed in early June, when we saw with new eyes the murder of George Floyd, and across the globe people cared about what has long gone on for persons of color.  

If we look at ourselves and 2020 with compassion, how did we grow closer to the amazing God we worship - a God of boundless compassion? What’s our dream for new growth in 2021? 

Blessings of love to you all, 
Joy
First Sunday Coffee Hour
Sunday, January 3 at Noon

Join us for our First Sunday Coffee Hour of the new year! A time to gather and visit with old friends and meet new ones, host Alison LaRosa will gather us this month for a festive time! Please join us at noon via Zoom. Advance registration is necessary to join. 
Reading Group Monday Evenings in Januarysponsored by the Adult Religious Education Committee 

Monday evenings from 5-6PM in January, plan to join David Waters and Kent Wittenburg via Zoom in a reading group to explore the spiritual side of environmental justice and the relationship of humans and the earth through the literature of Joy Harjo, current U.S. poet laureate and member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Here is a taste of her work, an excerpt from the poem "humans aren't the only makers of poetry":
The young banana tree is making poetry; I see how it translates the wind. The need to make songs is inherent in all life.
I've watched plants hungrily drink rainwater. They are grateful and are more likely to sing if it is rainwater they are receiving....
It's not just humans who sing for rain, make poetry as commentary on the meaning of life.
We aren't the only creatures, or the most likely to succeed.
Environmental Compassion and Justice at King's Chapel: Guest Preacher in January

A reminder that Fred Small, cited by Bill McKibben as "one of the key figures in the religious environmental surge," will be preaching at both Morning Light and Morning Prayer on January 10. The title of his sermon is "Radical Hope": Any contemplation of global climate change, its frightening consequences, and the tardiness and timidity of nations in response is necessarily a meditation on hope. When the earth and its peoples are in such distress, where do we find hope?

He will also offer a workshop on the afternoon of Sunday, January 24 on spiritual support for environmental activism. More information to come.
Uncovering and Confronting Our Past: January History Program Series on Slavery

As both an historical organization and an active faith community, King's Chapel is committed to uncovering and confronting the institution's difficult history with slavery and racism. King's Chapel, of course, is not alone in this endeavor, as the institution of slavery played an integral role in the founding, growth, and wealth of not only Boston but the American colonies as a whole and the United States. As a continuation of this past fall's virtual programs on slavery, the History Program is opening the new year with a two-part program series Uncovering and Confronting Our History in January, where we will explore and addressing the history and legacy of enslavement and the slave trade on this historic institution:

Thursday, January 7 at 5:30 PM
King's Chapel, Slavery, and the Atlantic World
Thursday, January 21 at 5:30 PM
Costs of Cotton: King's Chapel and New England's Textile Industry
More information coming soon
Holiday Staff Schedule

The year has (finally) come to a close, and the staff of King's Chapel is scheduling a much needed, well-deserved break. All staff will be out of office (even those who work from home) until Monday January 4th. Our services will be held via Zoom, as you will read in another section of this newsletter. For any emergencies you can continue to contact Joy or Gretchen. Merry Christmas to all, and we pray for blessings on the new year.
This week's holiday history content focuses on what 18th and 19th century feasts and treats historic congregants of King's Chapel may have enjoyed over Christmas.

In our latest blog post, History Program Director Faye Charpentier shares her experience making a modern - and vegan - interpretation of a traditional English Christmas pudding, including lighting the pudding on fire. You can read her blog post here.

Communications Coordinator and History Program Assistant Jennifer Roesch, along with her fiancé who is a food and drink historian, also attempted to make a colonial Christmas wassail. You can read about their experience here.

Did you know...Tradition among Anglicans, particularly in Victorian England, calls for making the Christmas pudding the week before Advent begins, on a day dubbed “Stir-up Sunday.” The name comes from the Anglican liturgy in The Book of Common Prayer, which included the line “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.”
Visit our website to learn how to stay connected with
King's Chapel from Home.