All are welcome to join our weekly yoga class on Monday mornings, 8:30-9:45 a.m. in the Church Narthax. No previous yoga experience is required to attend, and contrary to popular belief, flexibility is not a prerequisite for yoga! Options or modifications will be offered for every pose to accommodate individual bodies. Please bring a yoga mat (though we have extras if you don’t have one) and dress for ease of movement. 

Our Adult Forum continues this week with our "Episcopal 101" series on Sunday, May 3, 9:00-10:00 a.m. between services in person in the Fireside Room. This Sunday we'll be discussing how we live out our baptismal promises and other vows. Whether you've just recently started worshipping with Christ Church or are a lifelong Episcopalian, you are warmly invited to come and explore questions of faith and practice as we dive into the fundamentals of our tradition. If you've ever asked yourself "why do we do that?" at any point during our Sunday services, then this series is for you! No preparation is required and you don’t need to have attended previous weeks to enjoy and participate in our discussion. All are welcome!

Join Penninsula Cantare on Saturday, May 16th at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Palo Alto (1985 Louis Rd, Palo Alto, CA 94303) for a performance of Considering Matthew Shepard, written by acclaimed composer Craig Hella Johnson, an expansive choral work that reflects on the murder of Matt Shepard in his last year of college in Laramie, Wyoming in 1999. Drawing inspiration from the Passion, the work explores themes of love, death, grief, community, and renewed joy through a variety of musical styles and thought-provoking poetry.

Join Schola Cantorum on Saturday, May 16 at 7:30pm at Valley Presbyterian Church, Portola Valley for a journey through the musical landscapes of Earth’s oldest mountain range. With haunting harmonies, aching beauty, and fierce spiritual depth, Echoes of Appalachia invites you into the heart of a region whose music is as layered and resilient as its history.

Join History San Jose (HSJ), the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project (CHCP), the Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj), and Mosaic America for the South Bay AANHPI Festival on May 16th, from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm at History Park. 

Come for a fun-filled day of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) culture through performances, cuisine, crafts, and discussions, as we come together to honor AANHPI heritage. This event is designed for anyone eager to celebrate and learn about the vibrant cultures that make up the AANHPI community. Free admission.

Our celebration of activities includes free Asian & Pacific Islander-centric games and crafts, community booths and vendors, food truck fare for purchase, ice cream and treats at O’Brien’s, a panel discussion sponsored by the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, open exhibits at the Chinese American Historical Museum (CAHM), and an array of cultural performances sponsored by History San José, Mosaic America, the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project, and the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.

Join us in celebration of the Feast of the Ascension and 20+ years of Episcopal + Lutheran campus ministry on Thursday, May 14 at 7 pm at Stanford’s Memorial Church. Bishops Lucinda Ashby, Jeff Johnson, and Austin K. Rios, along with musicians and a communal choir from local Episcopal and Lutheran parishes will lead us on this special occasion.

Clergy are invited to vest and process. Parking most anywhere on campus except the Oval is free after 4pm but check signs to be sure. There will be hypoallergenic incense. Want to join the combined choir? Great! Contact Matthew Burt at matthewburt@saint-marks.com for details.

AI is reshaping our world. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation on ethics, faith, and the future we’re creating together titled, Voices In The Valley: AI Panel Discussion - Ethics, Religion, & AI.

Artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of our lives, from how we work to how we understand creativity, ethics, and even how we understand ourselves. Join us for a timely conversation with leaders in technology, ethics, and faith as we explore the opportunities and challenges AI presents, and consider what kind of future we are building together.

Guests may register by emailing Chantal at admin@ccpvw.org and are also welcome to submit a question for the panel via the same email.

The panel discussion will be held at Christ Church Portola Valley & Woodside at 815 Portola Rd, Portola Valley on Thursday, May 14 at 5 p.m.

Join us at Landmark's Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto on Monday, May 11, at 7:30 PM for a limited screening event of Gazelle, a story of exile from Turkey.

Yakup arrives in New York with one goal: to bring his family to safety. After being forced to leave Turkey due to political unrest, he builds a fragile life in the United States while trying to reunite with his wife and daughter. When he learns the legal process could take years, he faces an impossible choice: wait, or risk everything. As the pressure of uncertainty grows, the struggle shifts inward. Time begins to blur. Relationships strain. What starts as survival slowly turns into a psychological unraveling.

Gazelle is a deeply human story of exile, identity, and the quiet cost of waiting.

The screening will be followed by a live Q&A with director and lead actor Nadir Sarıbacak. The conversation will explore the personal story behind Gazelle, the psychological impact of displacement, and the experience of rebuilding a life in a new country.

Tickets and more information about the film can be found here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/gazellefilm/2164970

Doors open at 7:00 PM

Fall Campus Work Day

Saturday, May 9, 2026 9:00 a.m.

Many hands make light work! Support our campus and lend a hand at our Fall Work Day, Saturday, May 9, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. The Ventana School and Christ Church community will come together to tackle a list of landscape campus projects ranging from weeding to planting. This is a great opportunity for members of the school and the parish to work side by side on our shared campus. We plan to do some planting and are looking for donations of drought-tolerant, non-toxic, native California plants. Questions please contact Diana (dianah@ventanaschool.org). All are welcome, there will be something for everyone, children included. Please use RSVP: HERE‍ ‍if you can help as it will help us with planning. When you arrive that day, come to the Parish Hall to get assigned a job.

Join members of the parish choirs from Christ Church Los Altos, St. Bede’s Menlo Park, St. Mark’s Palo Alto, and Christ Church Portola Valley Woodside for a series of Evensong services. The fourth Evensong will be on Sunday, April 26, at 5:00 p.m. at Christ Church Portola Valley & Woodside (815 Portola Road Portola Valley, CA 94028), and will celebrate the season of Eastertide on Good Shepherd Sunday. The service will feature pieces from composers including Herbert Howells, Randall Thompson, Angela Kraft Cross, and Alice Parker. There will be a reception after the service. All are welcome! Mark your calendars for the final Evensong at Stanford Memorial Church on Ascension Day (May 14).

Please note that we will have a large birthday party taking place on the Lower Lawn on Saturday, April 25th, and the driveway to the upper parking lot will be blocked the evening of Friday, April 24th and part of Saturday during preparations. If you need to come to campus on Saturday the 25th, please use the lower parking lot. Thank you! 

Explore a fascinating chapter of the Chinese American experience in California through Echoes of Eureka, a multimedia program melding opera and film, followed by an illuminating panel discussion on the making of the show, the history and its contemporary reflections, such as citizenship, immigration, and reparations. Christ Church’s former Director of Music Eric Tuan’s opera Echoes of Eureka, performed by the 40 voices of the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, tells the true story of the 1885 expulsion of the Chinese community in Humboldt and their subsequent fight for justice and dignity. The opera is paired with Chisato Hughes’ powerful film Many Moons, in which Chinese community members search for those who may have survived Humboldt’s 1885 expulsion and 60 years of enforced exclusion – the only known survivor being Charlie Moon, whose descendants are Native tribal members. Moon's story is one of those told in Echoes of Eureka. A panel discussion featuring Tuan and Hughes will illuminate the genesis of the opera and film and explore this little known facet of California’s history.

Please join the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project, the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, and Christ Episcopal Church on Sunday, April 19, at 4:00 p.m. to explore this little known facet of California’s history. This event is free and will be held at Christ Episcopal Church (1040 Border Road, Los Altos). Your RSVP here will help us plan for the event and reception to follow.

All are welcome to a free speaker event on Tuesday, April 14th at 10:30 a.m. at Christ Church Portola Valley & Woodside featuring Emmy Award-winning sports broadcaster Ted Robinson. From his early days at Notre Dame to a career covering 15 Olympic Games, Wimbledon, and the French Open, he will share personal stories, professional insights, and reflections on a remarkable life in sports, travel, and storytelling. All are welcome! Address: 815 Portola Rd, Portola Valley, CA 94028.

On Sunday, April 12, 12:00 p.m. -1:00 p.m. , the Outreach Committee will meet to discuss outreach ministry donations and service projects for 2026. We’ll gather in the Sapphire Room (located just behind the bank of restrooms outside of the parish hall). Anyone interested in learning more about this ministry is welcome to attend the meeting!

Something profound happens when trust breaks. You feel it when a person, an institution, a system, or a community fails you. Betrayal creates a distinct kind of pain. As we move through the Lenten season, the Gospel readings around Easter confront this reality directly. Join members of Christ Church Los Altos, University Lutheran Church, Los Altos United Methodist Church, and Foothills Congregational Church on Wednesday, April 8 at 7:00 p.m. at University Lutheran (1611 Stanford Avenue, Palo Alto), when together we will ask how Christians respond to moments when trust collapses. We will consider what our tradition offers when individuals and communities face deep hurt. We will reflect on how the story of Holy Week and Easter reveals a God who meets us in wounded places and works toward transformation. All are welcome to come, listen, and reflect. Join us for dinner afterward!

Join us after our Easter Services for an Epic Easter Egg Hunt on the Lower Lawn. Bring your basket and search for eggs, children can jump in the bouncy house, enjoy some food, music, and social time together! We’ll have a special area for younger kids and a big hunt for older kids on the Lower Lawn.

Join us Easter Sunday for our 10:15 a.m. festive Eucharist celebration with choral music and guest musicians. In person in the Church and live stream via Zoom. There will be no 8:00 a.m. service on Easter Sunday.

To attend a Sunday service via Zoom, you must register in advance, your regular Sunday service registration will work for this service. If you have not registered for a Sunday service before, please send an email to sundays@ccla.us and, once verified, a registration link will be sent to you. We strongly encourage you to send your request email before 3:00 p.m. on Friday for the following Sunday's service. 

The service bulletin will be provided closer to the service date.

Celebrate the dawning joy of Easter with our Holy Vigil. In this hauntingly beautiful liturgy, we enkindle the new fire, offer the soaring Exsultet, and proclaim the first Easter Alleluia. Come experience this familiar service anew, either in person in the Church or via Zoom.

To attend via Zoom, you must register in advance. The regular Sunday services link will not work for this service. Please send an email to eastervigil@ccla.us before 3:00 p.m. on April 3.

• Download the bulletin here

This Good Friday at 7pm, all are welcome to attend What Comes After, a multi-disciplinary collaboration imagining the future of the #MeToo movement through choral music, liturgy, and conversation. Collaborating with Rowena Chiu, a surprise guest, and All Saints Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, the event is anchored in the Seven Last Words of Christ and will reflect on stories of survival and resilience and asks what collective transformation might look like beyond today. Reserve your free ticket here. Donations are invited but optional! The event will be held at All Saints Episcopal Church in Palo Alto (555 Waverley St, Palo Alto, CA 94301).

Enjoy a beautiful remembrance of the Last Supper and institution of the Eucharist. This service starts with dinner and foot washing celebrated in the Parish Hall, followed by Holy Eucharist and the stripping of the altar inside the church. After the service, the sanctuary will remain open until 10:00 p.m. for a silent vigil of prayer, in remembrance of the time that Jesus spent in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. 

For our shared meal in the parish hall:

If your last name starts A-H — please bring a side dish to share.

If your last name starts I-O — please bring a dessert to share.

If your last name starts P-Z — please bring a main dish to share.

This service will be in-person only.

Christ Church offers a simple Eucharistic service each month usually on the 4th Monday of the month at 11:00 a.m. in the Gardenia Room in The Forum’s Health Center. This month it will be on Monday, March 23. Although this is held in the Health Center, it is open to all residents of The Forum. It’s a simple service with music and a bread-only Eucharist, and those who attend enjoy it greatly. Come join us if you can!

All are welcome to a family-friendly weekly community dinner on Wednesdays at 6:00 p.m. in the Parish Hall. Next week Teacher Jenny will join us to celebrate the beginning of spring and decorate wooden ornaments. We’ll have pizza and hope you can join us! Note that we order the food Wednesdays before noon, and while we do plan for a little overage your RVSPs using this Google Form are important in helping us plan for enough food.

Linden Tree Books is incredibly excited to welcome bestselling author Stacey Lee to celebrate the launch of her fantastic new novel, Heiress of Nowhere, a historical gothic mystery about an orphan racing to uncover a killer—who may have come from the sea—when she and her beloved orcas fall under suspicion. Stacey will be in conversation with bestselling author Stephanie Garber. This event will be held at Christ Episcopal Church and will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. This is a free event, but you must RSVP as space is limited. We recommend using this form to pre-order books which will be available for pickup at the event. Additional copies of Heiress of Nowhere, as well as Stacey and Stephanie's other books, will also be available for purchase at the event.

In this tender and urgent moment, faith communities around the South Bay will gather to hold our transgender and nonbinary youth in love, grief, and fierce protection. On Sunday, March 15 at 4:00 p.m., the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (505 East Charleston Road) will host an interfaith prayer vigil called Sacred Lives: An Interfaith Community Vigil for Remembrance and Solidarity. We come together across faith traditions to affirm that trans lives are beloved, holy, and worthy of safety and joy. We gather together to pray, to remember, to listen, and to commit ourselves to building a world where every trans child knows they are cherished. All are invited to join in: people of faith, people of doubt, families, youth, neighbors. Whether you come grieving, hopeful, angry, or unsure, there is space for you here. Join us for readings, reflection, candle lighting, and a collective commitment to surround trans youth and their loved ones with unwavering love. Rev. Cal will be one of the speakers at this event. All are welcome to this service and reception afterwards!

All are welcome to a family-friendly weekly community dinner on Wednesdays at 6:00 p.m. in the Parish Hall. Next week we’ll be treated to breakfast for dinner from Scout Troop 30. For many years, Christ Episcopal Church has chartered Scouts Troop 30 and their annual Pancake Dinner is a way to give back and thank the Church and our larger community. Think pancake breakfast with all the fixings and various sides for dinner. We hope you’ll join us! Your advance RVSPs using this Google Form are important in helping the Scouts plan for enough food.