Meg and I both grew up in non-religious Episcopal families. I know, that’s a strange sentence. But it’s true. Church was just part of your social training, and a church was a beautiful building with stained glass and an important organ. Despite our upbringing we were married on the beach in this photo, and we lived a kind of hippie life until we entered our 30’s, finally returning to church to raise our children, hoping to find some sense of meaning and belonging. That was forty years ago. But unlike the Episcopal Church of our childhood, Christ Church is not just a beautiful building with the right social club––it’s the Body of Christ––and that’s what matters to us. We give out of gratitude for our life together as a body of believers in a wounded world. We have the sense that God’s people at the church are truly trying to find a way to make a difference—not just for each other but by becoming agents of healing in a time of trouble. Our monthly financial giving is symbolic of that gratitude—and we believe that supporting the staff and the buildings and the programs at CCHW is a first step toward that reality of this church becoming a place of welcome and hope.