I am pleased to announce that the Episcopal Church in Vermont will make 15 rooms in the Bishop Booth Conference Center at Rock Point available for runners and their families who are coming to Burlington for the Key Bank Vermont City Marathon on May 26th. These are runners who were not able to finish the Boston Marathon because of the bombings and who have been invited by the Vermont City Marathon organizers to run in Burlington at no cost. There will be no cost to those who stay at the BBCC.

Marathon Organizers from RunVermont have set up a message board for the event and several people are posting messages offering rooms to these runners. Here is a link to the message I posted today: RunVermont Message Board 

We welcome these and all those coming from Boston to Burlington and pray for a safe and fun day. The Episcopal Cathedral Church of Saint Paul will hold an ecumenical worship service at the Cathedral beginning at 7:10 AM (note the change from the original 7:15) to which all are welcome.

+Thomas

Friends of Jesus

I’m thinking this Easter morning about the friends of Jesus, those first followers, not just the twelve, but the larger company of folks who knew him and in some way, or another, shared in his life and ministry. To varying degrees these companions of Jesus lived and moved and had their being with him. I imagine it was quite a remarkable time in their lives. So full of hope; so full of new and marvelous and sometimes confusing, radical ways of thinking about God and their relationship with God; so full of new learning; so full of the wonder of healing; full of adventurous and sometimes troubling encounters; full of risk and even danger; full of the possibility of making the world a better place; so full of promise; so full of life.