Why church?!

As we seek Truth, we encounter Mystery: that is Truth in a process of being revealed. As companions on that journey, we share our wonderings and our discoveries. So much of what we experience is beyond words, so we turn to the ancient religious languages of story, symbol, song, art, gesture, experience, and silence. In the crucible of community, we test and refine our understanding, and we are bound together by the joys, questions, burdens, sorrows and thanksgivings of our lives. This is what it means to practice “church”.

Some people communicate in more than one religious language. At Grace Episcopal Church, we are most fluent in the languages of the Christian people, of which there are many dialects. The ancient stories and wisdom speak their Truth into our own lives and times. Rituals and practices both ancient and modern bind us to our forebears and our descendants, and speak of something beyond any of us, and our understanding grows along with our appreciation human finitude and as well as the infinitude of Mystery.

Why church? Because we’re a community of appreciation, accompaniment, and support for each other, in solidarity with our siblings in God’s created world, we are all in this together. A church is not a building, it’s a people assembled on God’s holy mission of love, life, and liberation.

Because justice

Active in Astoria for over 150 years, Grace Episcopal Church recognizes God’s call to work for the healing of injustices past and present, and to acknowledge the ways in which we have benefited from injustice, despite our best intentions. Together with our neighbors, powerful and marginalized, we are changed as we learn and work and we pray for the day when all people are fed, housed, clothed, and free. When we love one another as God loves us; then, and only then, will we have found God’s realm.

Because Healing

We help each other in hard times, as a community of souls being healed and sins forgiven, in the free gift of God’s life-giving love. Mourning, lamentation, mystery and doubt are part of our experience, right alongside joy and grace.

Because serenity

We live with more love and less fear, knowing that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Because belonging

You don’t believe in God? You are welcome here. Some people belong because they believe, some believe because they belong. You and all your questions belong.