On Sunday, we'll dedicate the mosaic "Welcome" sign that our children made with Emanuel Genovese, another art project in a long line of beautiful liturgical pieces children at King's Chapel have created with Emanuel. It's part of our tradition, carried on now by those youngest and newest to us.

Welcome is another aspect of our tradition. Since the late 1700s, there has been no ideological prerequisite for worship at King's Chapel:  individual conscience is our guide, rather than a required creed. "Believer or doubter, skeptic or seeker, we're all on the journey together," we say today. 

The Biblical underlay for a spirit of Welcome is ancient, too. On Sunday we'll read from Leviticus: "Remember, you were once a stranger in Egypt...." Jews remain very familiar with this phrase: over and over it's repeated in the Hebrew texts, an admonition to treat strangers and newcomers well. Why? Because, says the Holy One, you know what it's like: you were once a stranger in a foreign land. You were once a small tribe forced to leave home because of a famine, forced to travel south to Egypt, forced to beg for food just to stay alive.  Remember, you were once dependent on those from another nation taking you in, sharing the food they'd been wise enough to store up.

You have walked before in their shoes. Remember.

Join us on Sunday, to celebrate "Welcome" with our children.  Greet our graduating seniors, and join in the all-church barbecue, back at the Parish House after our 11 AM service.  All will be welcome!!!!  It's the old, old tradition, we still keep alive.

On Sunday, June 14, the Reverend Joy Fallon will speak on "The Independent Religion of King's Chapel Today."  The lecture will expand on the Anglican and Unitarian religious heritage of King's Chapel and the distinctive religious identity of the church today.  It will focus on the challenging and timely questions of future religious practice at the Chapel, especially in the context of an increasingly ecumenical and secular environment.  The lecture will offer a framework for considering what is permanent and what is transient in religion at King's Chapel and how a legacy of open-minded religious experience can remain relevant and thrive while ancient traditions are preserved.

Joy Fallon was called to King's Chapel as its senior minister in January 2013.  After graduating from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1978 and Harvard Law School in 1982, she became a distinguished attorney in private practice, Chief Legal Counsel to Governor Michael Dukakis, Assistant Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Executive Assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts.  Her career changed in 2002 when she became Associate for Urban and Justice Ministry at Trinity Church and then Chief of Staff to the Cabinet Secretary for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.  In 2011, she earned the M.Div. degree at Harvard Divinity School and was ordained in the United Church of Christ.  The Reverend Fallon is the sixteenth senior minister of King's Chapel.

The theme of the Sunday Forums is The Religion of King's Chapel: A Living Legacy.  The lectures explore how King's Chapel became an independent, religiously tolerant church with strong Anglican and Christian Unitarian roots and continues these traditions in its fourth century.  On April 12, the Reverend Dr. Carl Scovel spoke on The Anglican Religion of King's Chapel.  And on May 17, Dr. Dan McKanan spoke on The Unitarian Religion of King's Chapel.  Audio recordings of the lectures are posted on the parish web site.

Anticipating the next Sunday Forum, "The Independent Religion of King's Chapel," June 14, several parishioners have written statements on their personal faith. The range of expression reflects the breadth of parishioners' beliefs.  The following contribution is by Lee Glenn.

I was born to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. They had both abandoned their official traditions before they met, although to me it was always clear that they lived within the metaphors and values they'd learned in their childhoods. And my father was broad-minded enough to agree to raise my brother and me in the Catholic church, as that's what was required to be able to marry in the church, which my mother wanted to do. They didn't take us to church much, however, and I as a pre-teen wanted very much to join a church, to "know God", so I chose one of my own.

The church of my late childhood and adolescence was All Saints Episcopal church in Winter Park, Florida. I sang in its choir, attended its youth group, was confirmed there and worshipped there every Sunday morning. It was a "high" Episcopal church, with incense, communion every Sunday, traditional hymns and services read from the Book of Common Prayer. I was not particularly theologically inclined at that time, but the church helped me make my life work.  I felt held and cared for by that church and its people even after I left home for college in New England.

I am sure that imprint has stayed with me in my adult search for deeper and more sophisticated understandings of God and for a place in which I could exercise my joy in worship, song and prayer. Had I been raised in the Jewish tradition, I'd probably find deep meaning in the stories and rituals of that set of metaphors. Had I been raised as a Muslim, I'd probably find deep meaning in those stories and rituals. Digging deep into the Christian tradition at King's Chapel allows me to travel on my spiritual journey- reading and hearing its stories, parables and metaphors over and over again, following the church year in the Lectionary, understanding that the New Testament only makes any sense in relation to the Old Testament, feeling both confined and freed by an ordered worship service, guided by a Prayer Book so familiar from my past.

 I've been interested for much of my adult life in theology, the many concepts of God, the intersection of spirituality and psychology (as I am a psychologist), how to understand sin and salvation, how to understand the vast differences in the ways people find and make meaning in their lives. It's an ongoing and fascinating work. God, for me, is an eternal mystery, and Jesus is a "finger pointing to the mystery" (to quote The Rev. Carl Scovel). I pray to God and find help, meaning, understanding and pleasure in this act. I find I cannot pray to a theory or an abstraction, and that my prayers work and I am changed only when I have a personal relationship to a personal God. It's a metaphor which really works for me.

Faith is by definition not reasonable, as love is not, and cannot be obtained through reason. Philosophers have tried and failed. Reason is a wonderful tool for analysis and for "thinking through" the logic and science of assertions. The Enlightenment was great for rooting out the superstition and its terrible sequelae from religious assertions of the time. A sad unintended consequence of that same rooting out is the suspicion with which imagination, metaphor, and faith in the unseen and unknowable have been regarded since that time. Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" is a favorite image of mine. At King's Chapel, feeling free to explore, question and revise my thinking within the repeated ritual of the Anglican liturgy allows me to take a "plunge of faith" over and over again.

For all of the above unreasons, I feel comfortable saying I'm an Anglican at King's Chapel.

Lee Glenn

Today we honor and remember Cynthia Mutti, long-time member of King's Chapel, a former member of Vestry, our Archivist, and an active participant with us for many years. Cynthia died yesterday from cancer.  Her memorial service will be held at King's Chapel on Wednesday, June 10, at 11 AM.