2016 Advent Reflections

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As in 2015, daily posts will be offered here from a colleague group of postulants and candidates for the priesthood. During Advent they will be reflecting on the theme of Hope. You can subscribe to this blog to have these reflections delivered to your inbox each morning. Or simply bookmark this blog. We look forward to sharing Advent with you!

Here are the photos and biographies of the authors who will be blogging. 

Sharon Betts is a postulant from St. Michael's, Naugatuck. She works as a nurse, specializing in pediatrics. She has studied at Regent Seminary and Berkeley at Yale. She has a particular passion for ministry with children with special needs. Currently Sharon is the director of Grace 2 Go, which offers a worship experience for children with special needs.  As a postulant thru discernment and prayer, Sharon is listening and focusing on coming alongside this community of families as their pastor, priest and teacher sharing the Gospel via a sensory learning worship style that may be conducive to their spiritual needs.

Stacey Kohl is a native of St. Louis, Missouri but she and her husband call New London, Conn. their home. She is currently in her final year of studies at Yale Divinity School and is serving as a chaplain intern at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London. Stacey is entering her 3rd year of postulancy, sponsored by St. John's-West Hartford

Madeline Pantalena is a Connecticut born and bred seminarian living in New York City attending Union Theological Seminary to earn a Master of Divinity degree in the spring of 2018. Madeline is interning at St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village this year as well as coming home, when possible, to spend time at St. John's North Guilford. When not in school or in church, Madeline can be found knitting, riding horses, exploring the woods, making jam, and herding (literal and figurative) cats.  

 

Ann Perrott is a Candidate for the Priesthood in ECCT.  Her specialty is Prison Ministry and has facilitated Houses of Healing in four different prisons.  She is currently the Executive Director of the Southeast Connecticut RE-Entry Mission.  She has lived most of her life in Massachusetts and now lives in Niantic.

 

 

Thom Peters is a high school history and philosophy teacher at an independent school whose founder sought to aid in “the building up of hopeful youths for the country in future times.” He has raised two hopeful children in his own family with his wife and with St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Cheshire.  His two dogs, Seabury and Keava, are forever hopeful that he will take them out for jaunts in the woods.  Thom is serving as a ministry intern at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bantam, hoping ultimately to create a hybrid ministry as a teacher, preacher, and pastor, furthering the mission of God.

Benjamin Straley is entering his third year of Postulancy for the Priesthood. He is currently Organist and Associate Director of Music at Washington National Cathedral. Prior to this appointment, he served as a musician at both Trinity on the Green, New Haven (his sponsoring parish) and The Episcopal Church at Yale, and completed his seminarian internship under the Rev. Sandra Stayner at St. Peter’s, Cheshire. Benjamin was received into the Episcopal Church during his freshman year at Indiana University, where he was active in both Trinity parish and the Episcopal Campus Ministry, serving as Student Liaison to the Vestry and Peer Minister for the Campus Ministry.  He entered the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in 2008, and holds both Masters in Music and Divinity from Yale, as well as a Certificate in Anglican Studies from Berkeley Divinity School. In 2010, he became one of the few Americans in the history of the Haarlem Organ Festival to compete in its world-renowned improvisation contest. More recently, he was featured in the May 2015 issue of The Diapason as one of the “Top 20 under 30” young organists in the country.