I feel like I have been getting ready for a wonderful wedding taking place this Saturday night!  Food, entertainment, music, what am I going to wear . . . ?  Our 75th Anniversary Gala is finally going to happen and I am SO excited.  For many months the Anniversary Planning Team has worked hard on the details of properly acknowledging 75 years of liberal faith in Studio City.

We are doing so by highlighting all the things we do best, and one of those is of course music.  I can’t wait to hear church member Dan Cragan’s original choral piece “Songs Beyond Imagination” with our amazing choir.

Since we live in the heart of the entertainment industry, there will also be an original film!  Many thanks to Tracy Martinson Bathfield and her wife and son who all helped to professionally produce a  mini-documentary of our past, present, and future.

Our congregation is one that honors and appreciates ministry, and I’m looking forward to welcoming back Minister Emeritus Jay Atkinson, who served here a decade.  He will be in the pulpit Sunday morning, along with Susan Redfern-Campbell (formerly Spencer) who also served as Minister for five years.

But the celebration doesn’t end with the Gala!  The next morning, after the Sunday service, we are also having a brief ritual to welcome a beautiful, flowering Chitalpa tree, that was just planted this morning in front of the Rainbow Room, a beloved area of our building dedicated to religious exploration.  Please join us in front of the church building at 11:15 when Karen Renee will lead us in dedicating the tree that represents our inter-generational church roots and faith in our future.

If this all weren’t enough, our UU Men of Studio City group is serving up waffles and ice-cream immediately following at 11:30!

I am honored to serve this wonderful congregation.  I will try not to cry tears of gratitude and thanksgiving and smear my make-up this weekend as I reflect on how fortunate we’ve been, how blessed we are now, and how full of potential the future lies before us.

See you Saturday AND Sunday!

– Rev. Hannah