Greetings!,
As we move more and more into an age where social and electronic media are our primary means of communication, we at Nativity are assessing just how it is that we make use of technology. As your priest, I am also aware that worship together is our primary means of communication, so I hold that out as well as the most important activity we do together. It has been my experience that while connecting "through the skies" on computer or smartphone creates an immediacy and interconnectedness which we are still trying to live into as modern beings, electronic media does not replace or replicate face-to-face encounter.
Today is a good example of this. We sent out prayers via Facebook and Constant Contact (our email system) yesterday and today in response to the tragedy at the Boston Marathon yesterday. And today, we will gather at 12:30 pm to pray for the victims, for victims of violence everywhere, and for ourselves. So we do both: face to face and "through the air".
We have decided to take our Nativity Notes on Line back to a publishing date of Tuesday, since my electronic partner in crime, Junior Warden Trish Shurtz, volunteers at Nativity on Tuesday, and everything seems to go more smoothly with this workflow. On behalf of Trish and myself, I invite you to submit articles of interest by 9 am on Tuesday for the weekly email.
As well, I would like to go back to calling the email "Nativity Notes Online". We tried "Tidings on Line",. hearkening back to our old Paper Tidings, but it just does not roll off the tongue like NNO.
Please join me in prayer for the people of Boston, and for people everywhere who wake up in fear and anxiety over their personal and corporate safety. Pray for the first responders, pray for the investigators, and for the victims, both deceased and injured. 
With love and prayers,
Stacey
More about Boston from our religious leaders
From Bishop Steven Charleston's Facebook Prayers
Why? Why the pointless cruelty, O God? Why the premeditated evil that comes to bring death, pain and sorrow to innocent lives and leaves us stunned to imagine a heart so cold it could conceive such an act? We cannot understand it, God, we cannot make sense of the senseless. And how should we respond even if we did understand? Tooth for tooth, eye for eye, would it end the madness or return the lost to live again? Come, Spirit of God, come stand with us in this darkness. Hold the fallen in your arms. Heal the injured. Comfort the broken-hearted. And if you cannot tell us why we do this to ourselves, show us how to love more deeply, that such pain will never be the final word, but rather mercy that needs no explanation.
From our Presiding Bishop , the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
The Episcopal Church
Office of Public Affairs
Monday, April 15, 2013
[April 15, 2013] Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori calls for prayer following the explosions in Boston, MA, and offers the following prayer:
Gracious God, you walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death. We pray that the suffering and terrorized be surrounded by the incarnate presence of the crucified and risen one. May every human being be reminded of the precious gift of life you entered to share with us. May our hearts be pierced with compassion for those who suffer, and for those who have inflicted this violence, for your love is the only healing balm we know. May the dead be received into your enfolding arms, and may your friends show the grieving they are not alone as they walk this vale of tears. All this we pray in the name of the one who walked the road to Calvary.