• All 4 of my children were baptized right here at this altar
• How could we have attended services without Sophie and Sophia in the toddler daycare?
• All my children attend Sunday school
• Our family loves to attend Shrove Tuesdays pancake supper
• I sat in these pews many days when the sermon spoke right to my heart
• The clergy consoled me 5 years ago when my father passed away and again in December when my mother passed too
• AND, I'm afraid to let you all in on Trinity's best kept secret, but Compline is amazing

Thank you to everyone who has pledged so far:

• children lead the dismissal at the 9am service, and the process out the transept door and report to their classrooms for Sunday School.
• Rite 13 ( grades 7-8) meet in room G18

• J2A students (grades 9-10) gather in room G09 . 

• Sr. High students (grades 11 - 12) meet in room 111 (aka, the parlor). Please read the story below on the opposite column on our YAC program.
  

This week's combination of readings - whether in the continuous track or the thematic track - seems somewhat random. Both the Old Testament lessons are about women in need of protection and support. The Epistle continues the Hebrews theme of Christ's priesthood, while the Gospel from Mark recounts the episode known as 'the widow's mite'. This is the occasion when Jesus praises a widow woman who has given a tiny sum of money to the synagogue in preference to the wealthy people he had seen give far larger sums.

There is an obvious lesson we can draw from this brief episode. Since it seems so plain that generosity is relative to the resources of the giver, it is indeed odd that human beings are so impressed by 'big bucks'. We always hear about huge philanthropic gifts - from Carnegie, Rockefeller, Bill Gates and so on - even though we know that these have cost them nothing by way of personal sacrifice, while we don't hear much about the small philanthropic gifts that are possible only because the givers have forgone things that they wanted. Generosity can never be measured by the size of the gift, and this is a truth worth repeating again and again.

Still, important though this lesson is, it does not take us to the heart of the Gospel. This impoverished woman is giving all that she has to live on to the treasury of the Temple Jerusalem. She thereby demonstrates the depths to which faith in God can go  -- a sharp contrast to the shallowness of 'showy' religion on which Jesus comments in the preceding verses. Yet the hypocrites he condemns do indeed get worldly acclaim, while the poor widow remains in her poverty. That is why her case presents us, as it did Jesus' hearers,  with a real counter-cultural challenge. Which, in all honesty, do we prefer - the kind of success that the world in which we live undoubtedly favors (and which church going can sometimes help along), or the spiritual depth and simplicity that brings us closer to God?

• In large print on the bulletin board outside Pierce Hall
  
• in leaflet form, available in the reception area
  
• on our website, click here for a special edition of the E-Pistle 
  

• to be "race marshalls" on the course, email Grant Fraser bgfraser@bellatlantic.net

•  to help distribute the t-shirts, food and water, e-mail Annie Thomas thomasa@trinityprinceton.org
  
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• to distribute posters and flyers, please email Alison Roth