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The Rev. Dr. Marta S. Rivera Monclova
Notes from the Threshold
Each week for these first weeks, I’ll be telling a story, at least until it feels less like we’re all on the threshold and we’ve moved into a new space.
Today, I’ll retell a story I told at the first announcements of the first time I ever came to Trinity church. In March of 2020, just before the world fell into pandemic, the then-chaplain of the Episcopal Church at Yale brought me to the Commons, our diocesan headquarters in Meriden. I was still a contented resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but the topic was interesting to me: Intentional Episcopal Communities.
About 10-15 of us sat around a conference table at the Commons, headed by Bishops Ian and Laura. (Bishop Jeff, of course, was not yet a twinkle in our collective eyes!) Before we got into the business of the meeting, we did a round of introductions, scripture reading, and discussion with the person sitting next to us.
The person sitting next to me was one Everett Post!
He told me that he lived in an Episcopal retirement community near Hartford. I had never heard of such a thing as an Episcopal retirement community before, and started learning about Seabury in Bloomfield. Fast-forward through months of lockdown and all that was that next year and a half, and in the fall of 2021, Sr. Gregory, another person who has since moved on to other projects, and I moved into a cottage on the campus of the Seabury Life Community for my final year of Divinity school, exchanging ministry with the residents there for housing.
If not for meeting Everett Post, I would have been unlikely to end up moving to Hartford. Without moving to Hartford, I would have been less likely to discover Trinity Church. So, here on this threshold of what I hope and believe will be a long and fruitful relationship, I find myself moved to think that this relationship first took root in March of 2020, and has been gently growing towards its full flower ever since.
-Mtr. Marta
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