On Saturday, I had the honor and privilege in attending what I hope was the First Annual Vestry Retreat of Grace and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Hamden, CT. It was difficult for me to attend. I am running for State Representative, and should be spending every free moment working on the campaign.

Yet I viewed the retreat as an obligation instead of one of several different things I could choose to do on a Saturday in October. As an elected leader of my community, I take the responsibilities that come with it very seriously. I had a responsibility to the members of the Church to attend. I also had a responsibility to take care of myself, and that includes taking time out of our daily grind to focus on underlying key issues.

We often hear about how everything changed on 9/11, how the Internet is changing everything, or many other ways that everything has changed. My thoughts go to Ecclesiastes 1:9, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

The Episcopal Church is being reimagined, recognizing that “We live in an age of networks, yet our churchwide structure has not fully adapted to this organizational paradigm.” My thoughts go to 1 Corinthians 12 and how we, as different parts of the body of Christ are, or should be, networked together.

This reimagining seems to be sending reverberations throughout the church. I have been following the turmoil at General Theological Seminary and have wondered how it relates to the reimagining.

Here in Connecticut, the Diocese is reimaging itself. I went to a diocesan listening tour as part of this process and later wrote about it saying, “It felt disconnected from the real world of suffering, grace, and redemption. It felt too focused on the plans of people, and not enough on God given vision.”

I wonder how much this is the case in the turmoil at General or in the church as a whole.

Yet the vestry retreat was different. We made bread. Literally. The process was interspersed with worship and reflection. We mixed the ingredients. We stopped for prayer and reflection. We kneaded the dough. We stopped for noontime prayer. We baked the bread and discussed various readings. We broke the bread at Communion and shared the Peace.

I thought about when I had visited a Trappist monastery years ago and their simple life of prayers and making bread. I thought of the listening tour and I wished that it could have been more like the retreat.

The appointed Psalm for Sunday was Psalm 19. I thought about verse 14. I’ve often heard it said before a sermon, yet it seems like it needs to be said much more often, on the campaign trail, on Facebook posts, perhaps even in discussions about reimagining the church or dealing with issues at General Theological Seminary.

I adapted it to the twenty first century and posted it on Facebook. “Let the words of my mouth and my posts on social media be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Perhaps there is nothing new and we should learn from the Psalm and from the monks making their bread.