Looking ahead, the St. Michael’s Youth Group will gather again on Sunday, January 21, at 5:00 pm. In addition, on February 3-4, 2024, St. Michael’s youth are invited along with other diocesan youth for another Hope & Fire youth event.
On Sunday, January 7, the St. Michael’s Vestry and Team L.I.F.E. invite you to a thank-you gathering for our 2024 Commitment Campaign. Please come to the Parish Hall at 10:15 or so and enjoy a cup of coffee or tea and a piece of pie. Then on the following two Sundays, join us for two important “business” forums covering the St. Michael’s budget and the upcoming elections for vestry and convention delegates.
Happy New Year from the St. Michael’s music program! One exciting upcoming musical event is a recital with Brian Fairbank’s Seattle-based Cathedral Trio on Saturday, January 20, at 5:00 pm. This is the ensemble’s farewell/retirement concert, so all are invited to come and hear their greatest hits, which include chamber music for the unusual combination of flute, harp, and viola.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s word of the year in 2023 was “authentic.” I’m not surprised.
Merriam-Webster publishes the annual “word” from among the most looked-up within a given year, filtering out more common five-letter words that appear in countless games and crossword puzzles. In 2023, with the arrival of popular AI apps (like Chat GPT and Google’s Bard), a surge in charges of fake news, and a rise in “deepfake” photos in news and media, it seems there was a big increase in the interest for what is real, true, and even—if it exists—original. We all have to ask ourselves, more and more it seems: “Is that the real thing?”
I believe joy is integral to our resilience as human beings. It is something essential to our lives, even though at times joy can be difficult for us to access or even accept as being possible.
Bulletins for Sunday, December 24, Advent 4 & Christmas Eve; and for Monday, December 25, Christmas Day
The Rev. SuEllen Pommier will join us as Curate in January, 2024. Bishop Akiyama will appoint SuEllen to a six-month placement as Curate at St. Michael’s next year. A curate is a newly-ordained or soon-to-be-ordained priest who serves a first call in an established parish to work with a mentoring priest. A curacy placement is meant to be mutually beneficial, in that our parish will receive some much-needed clergy support and SuEllen will be in safe and healthy context to learn and grow into her new ministry as a priest.
The choir is split for Advent III on Sunday, December 17. At 9:00 am, the tenors and basses will be featured, singing a beloved arrangement of the 13th century plainsong tune “Of the Father’s love begotten.” At 11:00 am, the sopranos and altos will sing a lively Magnificat by David Hogan.
Sunday Worship Schedule
7:30 – Spoken Traditional language (Rite 2 with no music)
9:00 – Traditional Service with Choir
11:00 – Inclusive Language with Choir
1:00 pm – Misa en Español
© 2025 St. Michael & All Angels
