Beginning on Friday, January 14, we at Saint Stephen’s are moving to a new format for our weekly “Friday Reflections,” inspired by our work during Advent. Over the last two years, we have been among the many Episcopal parishes to participate in the Virginia Theological Seminary/Forward Movement “#AdventWord, a project where we would identify one word for each day of Advent and offer a very short reflection on its meaning and significance for Advent and Christmas.

Our participation in #AdventWord helped us discover the rich personal and collective experience that words carry, experience that allows us to see different and often hidden meanings, sometimes providing us with entirely new understandings about a particular word. What we also learned from our participation is that the words an individual chooses and writes about can often be unusually illuminating, both for the writer AND for the readers.

So, our Friday Reflections of the last two years will now become “Words from Saint Stephen’s.” The words will be chosen and written about by those of us who serve Saint Stephen’s. It is our hope that as we get better at choosing words and writing about them in ways that open up new understanding for you, our readers, we will ask some of you to join us in writing about words you have chosen.

At Saint Stephen’s, we have always believed that the written word can be a form of worship and we affirm that belief by moving to our new format, “Words from Saint Stephen’s.” What’s more, in deference to time and medium, our goal is to provide more inspiration and insight with fewer words, as we enrich individual spiritual lives.

— Father Peter & Suzanne Glover Lindsay