From Rev. Catherine Williams: As I write this note Lent is on my mind. This is the time of the liturgical year I think of death and renewal. The dry, barren woods behind my home remind me that nature is in her own necessary cycle of death and renewal, even as Lent approaches. What images does Lent conjure for you? As a child growing up in Anglican schools the images of this season were markedly somber: fasting, deprivation, denial, meatless Fridays, penitence, confession, and lots of songs in minor keys! It was all about traditional piety back then. As an adult however, I’ve learned to lean into Lent more purposefully. Leaning into Lent means preparing to strip down my faith to its bare essentials. I don’t always succeed but the process always yields a healthier spirituality.
This year our mid-week Lenten meditations invite us into a fresh experience of the wilderness. We can lean into Lent as we take the journey from our cultivated daily landscapes into the uninhabited places of prayer, fasting, study, or whatever spiritual discipline is most meaningful to us at this time.
Our Lenten sermon series, starting February 17, looks at the “I am” sayings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel according to John. Jesus identified himself in these sayings as the Light of the World, the True Vine, the Good Shepherd, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Door, and the Resurrection and the Life. These are powerful nodes of spiritual encounter that invite you and me to fertilize and prune our faith during this season of death and renewal. I hope you’ll take this invitation to heart and join us on this grace-filled journey as the Spirit leads us towards wholeness and healing. As we lean into Lent together, I offer for our meditation this hymn of prayer from Charles Wesley: (UMH #410)
I want a principle within of watchful, godly fear,
A sensibility of sin, a pain to feel it near.
I want the first approach to feel of pride or wrong desire,
To catch the wandering of my will, and quench the kindling fire.
In Lenten simplicity.
Catherine Williams
Polio was a dreaded disease for those who grew up in the ’40s and ’50s, and even in the 1980s the world saw about 1,000 cases a day. Join us for breakfast on Sunday, February 14, at 8 am, when Dr. Julie Ann Juliano speaks how Rotary clubs around the world are fighting to eradicate polio. Sponsored by the 
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
This Sunday, the first Sunday in February, we will observe Holy Communion. JJ Flag will preach. As part of the last in the series of “Healthy Spirituality: Inside Out” he will tie it all together. At the 9:30 service, Cindy Gordon will give the Children’s Sermon, and Tom Shelton will direct the Youth Choir.
in the library, the Contemporary Issues class is reading a book of essays, 
McCarter Theater’s acclaimed August Wilson play, “
When Newfoundland natives hear of big storms in New Jersey, like the one we just had, their joke could be “They call it ‘snowstorm,’ we call it ‘Wednesday.’ ” All women of the church are invited to hear Maria Ivy Blomgren speak on “Newfoundland, the most easterly point in North America,” at the Circle of Friends meeting on Tuesday, February 9, at 10:30 a.m. at PUMC’s Fellowship Hall.
