FROM SENIOR WARDEN QUINN JACOBSON – AUGUST 16, 2015
We are very excited to announce that the Vestry has called the Reverend Salying Wong (pronounced “Sue-Ying” Wong) to be the next Rector of St. Thomas. An amazing effort went into the process by our Search Committee to find a great set of candidates. After interviewing the top candidates, and a lengthy process of discernment, the Vestry unanimously voted to call Salying as our next Rector.
Salying has been serving as the Associate Rector at St. Mark’s in Palo Alto and will be joining St. Thomas in early October. We are all very excited and pleased to welcome her to St. Thomas.
THE REV. SALYING WONG – BIOGRAPHICAL INFO
[su_quote]The Spirit and Bride say, “Come!” Let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come and drink from the water of life.[/su_quote](Revelation 22:17)
This is what I say as priest, as one who stands in the stream of blessing, as one who points to the holy that pours through our lives: if you are thirsty, come and drink. The waters are deep and broad and poured from an inexhaustible source.
I traversed these waters even as I flew across the ocean at 7 years old from my native land of China, even as I grew up around the canals that irrigated the parched farmland of Fresno. I was immersed in these waters when I was baptized at 12 years old at the First Chinese Baptist Church on Easter Sunday. I felt it welling up in me as I studied undergraduate chemistry at Westmont College and graduate chemistry at the University of Colorado–it filled me with wonder for the surprise and beauty of creation. I felt it hold me even as I decided to leave a career in the sciences to go to seminary and enter the ministry. Indeed, it sustains my marriage, my friendship, and my commitments to my family.
God and I are friends, and we’re very interested in each other. In a process of racemization, I explore this world–hidden, fresh, even at times grotesque – and I synthesize my experience into my soul. I am as willing to learn about physics as I am about art. I want to know the stranger and those who are strange to me. I want to know myself. For if the waters run deep and broad, then there is something to learn about God and meaning in many, many ways and places.
As priest then, I point to these waters whenever I come upon them. I say, “Come! Drink. Taste life. Be quenched by living.”
FROM REV. SALYING WONG TO THE PEOPLE OF ST. THOMAS
Dearly Beloved at St. Thomas,
It is with joy and thanksgiving to God, to your Search Committee, and to the Vestry, that I will join your parish as rector. I have been praying for you for awhile now, and I will continue to pray for you as we grow in love for one another. I ask for your prayers for me as I serve this church and its mission to the world that God loves. We will do a good thing for God together.
I call you Beloved because that is what you are. Thomas Didymus was the Twin, whom Christ searched out, whom Christ commanded to enter his very body through his wounds, so that he might know how deeply he was loved. John the Gospel writer calls Thomas the Twin so that we who witness the intimacy of Thomas and Jesus might know ourselves as also twins of love.
And so Beloved, I look forward to walking with you in love as Christ loved us. Peace and blessing till we meet.
Reverend Salying