From Fr Peter

Fr Peter with parishioners at the 7:45am service.

Fr Peter with parishioners at the 9:00am service. Photo courtesy of Kate Gardiner.

Fr Peter with parishioners at the 11:15am service. Photo courtesy of Kate Gardiner.

Dear Friends,

Many of you will remember Richard Kuns. He was a dear friend and mentor to so many here before his death in 2021. He served on the Vestry and at the altar as a subdeacon.

He didn’t grow up in the Episcopal Church, like many of us, and he found a home at Saint Philip’s after years of searching. Shortly after he and his wife Sue joined Saint Philip’s in the late ’90s, he started a weekly Bible study that met every Tuesday, and he kept this going for nearly two decades.

Richard loved the psalms like no one I’ve ever met. He had a gift for ancient languages. He knew the psalms backward and forward in English and in their original Hebrew. In all his studies of the psalms, his favorite Hebrew word was “hesed,” which means “lovingkindness.”

Hesed is that unconditional lovingkindness of God that transforms us into the people God desires us to be from the foundation of the world.

Hesed is where my mind goes when I think of Saint Philip’s mission statement. “Gathered in love. Transformed by grace. Sent to serve.” What I’ve learned in community these past seven years is the wonderful mystery that we’re made together more than any one of us can ever be on our own. And this is true, as Fr Robert so frequently reminds us in his sermons and other writings, “from generation to generation.”

It has been one of the greatest gifts of my life serving in this parish. I leave grateful for having found with you ways of living deeply into the gospel’s heart that the members of this parish have been about for generations. We‘re part of that larger body of God’s people in this parish who have given themselves to love’s purposes.

What you’ve taught me again and again these seven years of ministry together is that the most important thing of all is the people in our lives, the community that we’re a part of that is bigger than us, and that we help shape by grace for those who will come after us.

I’m thankful that my faith has been shaped in fellowship with you, that my sense of what it means to be a person of faith and a priest of the church is the result of knowing you.

Thank you for everything. And thank you to everyone who helped plan and make possible the going-away party last Sunday. Thank you for being there. The food was delicious, and the opportunity to make a few more memories was a gift.

Yours faithfully,
Peter+