Calendar News

Visible and Invisible

The microscopic world was a previously invisible and unknown realm of God's creation. In Jesus' time, a couple of the tiniest things people could see were mustard seeds and yeast.  The power of the mustard seed was easily observable because it grew into a huge bush.  The yeast’s work was invisible, however, and caused dough to rise from within. Jesus used these images to teach how small things, both seen and unseen, can accomplish great things in the kingdom.  Yet even before the microscope, the possible existence of unseen microbial life was

suspected from antiquity, with an early attestation in literature from 6th-century BC India. The study of microorganisms began with their observation under the microscope in the 1670s by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur found that microorganisms caused food spoilage. In the 1880s, Robert Koch discovered that microorganisms caused the diseases tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, and anthrax.  Microbes are important in human culture and health in many ways. Microbes are a vital component of fertile soil. In the human body, microorganisms make up the human microbiota, including the essential gut flora.  Microbes like yeast ferment foods, including the wine we drink and bread we eat.  Through molecular studies and modern technologies, science has revealed a world full of sophisticated life forces, intricate, detailed and infinitesimal.  All these bacteria, archaea, fungi, algae, protozoa, viruses, and microscopic animals like rotifers and tardigrades also participate in the cycle of death and new life that is our resurrection story, even if we cannot see it with our own eyes.  The story of the empty tomb and the resurrection of the human being that was Jesus before he was the Christ is a large, dramatic part of our identity. It is huge. The biggest.  And ever so mysterious.

This is a season we look not only at the grand testament of Easter, but also at the smallest, imperceptible, intangible evidence and mystery of new life. Resurrection, seen and unseen.

 

In Memoriam

In sadness and with deep gratitude for a life well-lived, we mourn the loss of the Rt. Reverend  Bruce Caldwell, former Bishop of Wyoming.  Bishop Caldwell died on April 13.  Please follow  this link for more details: 

https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2025/04/15/rip-bruce-caldwell-former-bishop-of-wyoming-dies-at-77/

 

In Gratitude

Thank you to everyone who helped with the Agape Meal for our Maundy Thursday service.  Many hands  prepared and/or bought food items or donated their time and talents to setting up, serving, cleaning up  and encouraging!    It was a very meaningful way to be together, participate in and bear witness to the  journey of Holy Week.  

 

Thomas the Apostle Center Opportunity

Peaceful Getaway Retreat – May 2-May 5, also with options for length of retreat –  We will gather as a group to find a place of settling and contentment amid life's  ongoing weight and heavy to-dos. The hope is to find a moment to be on slower,  welcoming ground curated for your own space and reprieve. Join us in a mountain  west oasis, ready to welcome. Through interactive workshops and guided discussions, participants will reflect on incorporating rest into their lives as a form of spiritual  practice and resistance to overwork and consumption.  For more information, please  visit tacwy.org.  Please also check out the flyer at Coffee Hour.

 

Meeting Around Reading

The book group will meet this coming Thursday, April 24 at 4p.m. to discuss the book,  The Gathering.  Please come even if you have not finished the book.  We meet downstairs at the church.  The last book of the season will be handed out as well.

 

College Student Care Packages

It is hard to believe that the spring college semester is coming to a close for our college  students.  This will be St. John’s third year of celebrating our young adults as things wind  down for them.  Congregational Care will have bags (11 of them!) set up on the back  table in the basement beginning this Sunday.  Each bag will have a student’s name and college on it.  Please feel free to put in any food goodies or other kinds of items you think they might enjoy (no bottled drinks or liquids).  The packages will be mailed or  hand-delivered the week following Easter, April 20.  Thank you all for contributing!

 

Meditation Group

Thank you to all who participated in the Lenten Meditation Group.  We will take a short break before re-grouping again to continue this practice.  Stay tuned for more details.

 

Thrift Shop News

An Ask from The Thrift Shop:   One of our goals at the Thrift Shop is the recycling  of good, usable clothing items.  A way for us to achieve that goal is to transport  clothing bags to Billings, to such places as Goodwill, Salvation Army or other  non-profit organization.  If you are going that way and have room in your vehicle to  transport and deliver a few or more bags we would be most appreciative.   Our shed is  filling up quickly!  If you can help, contact Diana Anderson (307-272-6225) to arrange a  time for pick-up.  THANK YOU!  

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Thoughts and Ponderings for the Week Ahead

“Easter” by Joyce Kilmer

The air is like a butterfly
   With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
   And sings.

 

• April 22 is Earth Day, first observed in 1970 — which makes this year the 55th anniversary.  Inspired in part by Rachel Carson’s work, among many others, the original Earth Day was a  widespread, bipartisan response to the negative impacts of industrial development — and  President Nixon, along with Congress, responded quickly to the popular pressure, establishing  the Environmental Protection Agency that same year, and landmark environmental legislation  followed close behind. With something like one billion people now participating annually,  Earth Day is considered the largest civic-focused day of action in the world.   Jews and Christians, among other religious people, have been involved all the way along in  Earth Day’s history — and no wonder, since Genesis so vividly casts humanity as creation’s  steward in the first creation story; as Eden’s gardener in the second creation story; and as custodian of creation’s biodiversity in the Noah story. And this year’s Earth Day theme — “Our Power, Our Planet” — is both timely and pressing. If the original Earth Day spurred  unprecedented environmental action and coordination, the 55th must do the same!

 

• April 26 is the birthday of French-American ornithologist and painter John James Audubon,  born in Haiti in 1785. His classic book of ornithological paintings, Birds of America, is still  regarded as one of the finest, most ambitious picture books ever made. In response to a critic  who “expressed some doubts as to my views respecting the affection and love of pigeons, as if  I made it human, and raised the possessors quite above the brutes,” Audubon wrote: “I presume  the love of the mothers for their young is much the same as the love of woman for her offspring.  There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is  modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures.”  At the same time, as celebrated as Audubon is for his contributions to ornithology and environmental  protection, he also enslaved African Americans and held white supremacist views. Some have tried  to diminish these aspects of his legacy as products “of his time,” but of course some of Audubon’s  contemporaries were staunch, vocal abolitionists. To their credit, the National Audubon Society has  opted in recent years to highlight and grapple with this dimension of their namesake’s life and work, and use it as part of the organization’s efforts to help build a world of racial equity.