Donuts for Dad was fun, delicious but REALLY messy.   Quick Links Rector's Diary                      Daily Office              All Saints' Episcopal School Summer Explorer's at All Saints   FOURTH OF JULY Celebration at St. Mark's. Read more. See St. Mark's July newsletter, here.

LOOPS    Perhaps you don’t know it, but there is a secret group doing amazing work for you right now. Unseen angels spinning webs you may never see, they are knitting us together in a net that spreads far beyond the range of our sight and hearing.    This is not the précis of a new Stephen King novel. This is real live folks here in good ole St. Mark’s, Beaumont.    I am thinking tonight of the group of ladies (and a guy or two) led by Tamara H., who are knitting furiously to complete the Prayer Shawls that will be blessed Palm Sunday to be shared with all the patients in the Oncology ward at Baptist Hospital during Holy Week. They go to those who are suffering with the prayers and blessings of all our church, but what their loops and mesh symbolize is, to me, of far wider significance that any of us can begin to see. We are the loops, we are in them and they in us.    We speak of the “Communion of Saints” in the Apostles Creed—I hope you say that every day, it is part of our pledge of allegiance to the kingdom of God. The phrase means many things and has been interpreted in many ways through the centuries, but whatever it may say to the theologians and doctors of the Church, it must at least mean to all of us that we are connected, one to another, through time and space and eternity, the living, the dying and the dead.     We who are in Christ are truly one body. That body is not bound by time or distance. It is not a prisoner of the biology of life or the dreadful frontier boundary that is death. It is the communion of the sanctified, those dedicated to God’s purpose and loyal to his ways.    We can do much worse than to see ourselves as part of the warp and woof, the loops and whorls of God’s blanket of love, knit with infinite patience and care through ages too innumerable to comprehend. It is a good image to hold before ourselves as we embrace and serve those near us and yet far into their own suffering and loneliness. We serve in our time and place, in our generation, and we are caught up in a great and starry web of God’s grace, that knows no end. It surrounds us, and fills us, and in it we are truly fitted for eternity. Stay bound to one another in his love, and all manner of thing shall be well. …[hold] fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. Colossians 2:19 (RSV) In Christ, Frank Fuller+   St. Mark's Mission Statement To change lives by proclaiming the love of Christ through worship, education and service. The Episcopal Church: Who We Are The Episcopal Church is a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, with 70 million members in 163 countries. We are a community of Christians bound together by our belief that Holy Scripture contains the very core of all Christian faith. Through the many ancient, as well as modern, stories that connect us to Jesus and his teachings, we discover daily God's hope and call to us in our life together: - Worship and church programs - Reaching out to the community - Sharing our story with others - Seeking God's love together in study and prayer - Giving our means and talents to the greater purpose of God's work