I invite you this Easter season to turn your face ever so slightly towards Jesus...and if you have already begun to invite and be open to a relationship with Jesus, to try a full 180 degrees, full frontal, face to face encounter.  The Easter seasons challenges us to center our lives more fully in God's commitment to us, and the love and desire for fulfillment God has for each of God's children.

Especially during this Easter Season my hopes for our community are:

• May our capacity to love be increased and our capacity of truth be deepened.
• May we risk the challenge of being the church, rather than playing at it as if nothing important were at stake.
• And may we become ever more willing to take on tomorrow's challenges rather than continue to salve yesterday's wounds.

This is how, day-by-day, we hear and respond to the voice of the shepherd, and learn how to follow where God is leading us, rather than where the world entices us. And those things which seemed impossibly beyond our grasp-- the Reign of God breaks in and-- becomes the transformative reality, life itself becomes truly dear, and a deep-centered, resurrection-hope, wells up among us, that will not go away, no matter what.