St. James Episcopal Church
1170 Broadway
Somerville, MA 02144
(617) 666-1063
The Parson's Letter
January, 2008
Your Story in the New Year
As I was looking over my bookshelves this morning, I came onto a title I haven’t looked at for a long time. It’s Dan Wakefield’s book about writing your own spiritual biography, The Story of Your Life. It is a book about looking at your own life as a spiritual exercise. In a workbook fashion, the author asks the reader to do several exercises that point out the spiritual journeys we are all on.
By looking at our own stories as journeys with God, we see that all the disappointments, failures and dead-ends are really a part of the richness of our own story. While it is easy to count one’s blessings as a kind of tally sheet of God’s favor with us, the whole cloth, both the good, the bad and the mundane make up the story.
As we come once again to the beginning of a new year, it is time to take stock of where we’ve been and to rest assured that God is not finished with any of us yet. Who knows what awaits us? We can never be sure of what paths life will take us down. But we can be confident that God is an integral part of life’s journey…and with God we are never alone. As you look over the story of your life you will find that it is truly your spiritual biography.
May God’s blessings this New Year come both to you and to those you love dearly.
See you in church,
The Rev’d Michael Dudley
Priest-in-Residence