New Obsession

A wonderful, downright saintly member of my congregation who has served as the Clerk of the church for 27 years has done this amazing thing: he has transferred all of the church records since 1642 onto DVD.

It took him seven years of painstaking scanning work. What an invaluable contribution to the study of American religious history, and particularly of Unitarianism.
So now I have over 360 years of church history on my computer at the the office and I'm totally mesmerized by it. I could well go blind reading the spidery hand of former pastors describing the births, deaths, christenings, church services and other observances they deemed worth recording. There is a heart-wrenching series of notations by a predecessor who was fired in the 1950's, chronicling the series of events leading to his painful and prolonged departure.

There is a series of 17th century confessions of fornication, one of which I preached about this past February.

All hail church volunteers who keep the church militant and the church triumphant joined in such tangible ways, such that the stories of all our stories across the generations become one sacred narrative.