Our guest preacher this Sunday, May 5th, is Rabbi Stephanie Alexander. Charleston’s first female rabbi, Rabbi Stephanie Alexander, received her B.S. from Tulane University. She earned ordination, and a Masters degree from Hebrew Union College, and served Temple Beth El in Dubuque, Iowa, before joining historic Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Synagogue in July 2010. Rabbi Alexander is an asset to the Lowcountry’s faith community and will likewise grace our pulpit. She talked to us this morning about our presence in life, and how sometimes just showing up can be the most important thing we do.

Special musical note - the beautiful piano prelude this service was performed by our own young Max Hunt.

Our book this week is a personal favorite, Lifecraft: The Art of Meaning in the Everyday by the late Reverend Forrest Church. Church, who was senior minister at the distinguished All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan, serves up some thoughtful, brief meditations on making life more meaningful. There’s no dogma here; readers will find gentle anecdotes drawn from Western philosophy, music and art, as well as from Church’s own life and experience. He states that life becomes more meaningful when we intentionally divide it up into various projects – the parenting project, the career project, the God project, and so on – and prioritize those based on our own situations. Those situations will change, and we must change with them, Church asserts, citing a touching example of a professional football player who quit the NFL to spend time with his terminally ill preschool-age son. A case where presence was the most important thing. At the book’s close, Church prods those who feel stuck in a rut to simply “turn the page,” much as readers who find themselves reading the same paragraph many times without paying attention need to move on. Church does not offer earth-shattering advice here, but readers will be comforted and perhaps challenged by his call for self-examination.

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