Wine Tasting Prayer

Used at our 7th annual Wine Tasting, adapted from various sources:

Most merciful God, we celebrate with great delight your good gifts this evening. We delight in this community gathered to taste of your bounty. We thank you for this wine before us. The beauty of the color, the aroma, the fragrance, that engages our senses and speaks of your beautiful, fragrant, colorful presence in our lives. We thank you for the food paired with the wine, for all the loving hands that have gone into making this bountiful tasting tonight. Renew us with the beauty of your life, refresh our spirits and souls and fill us with your delightful presence that we may be a fragrant offering of such joy and love to others. Amen.

Challenging Violence - ECW Sermon by Bishop Curry

Bishop Jim Curry gave an outstanding sermon on challenging violence at our ECW Lunchoen on May 1.

You can find it here:  http://www.ctepiscopal.org/News/customer-files/BishopJamesCurrySermon_ECWMay2014.pdf

A small excerpt:

In Connecticut there are well over 1000
Christian Churches – and scores of
synagogues and mosques. And most of them are islands
of good works and faithful
people that are insulated and
isolated from one another.
I know that is true among
Episcopal Churches. If we truly believe in
Jesus Christ - if we
believe that he has
created in himself one new humanity – then we
as his disciples have to act out of the
power which is ours in Christ. We need to
reach out to one another for our common good.

The cross that I wear was made for me by an artist from the country of
Mozambique. It is made out of pieces of
destroyed automatic weapons – AK47’s --- that
were used in their long and bloody civil war. For over twenty years Mozambique has
been at peace. And a great reason for that is
that the churches came
together after the war
to encourage people to turn in
their guns and weapons of war
in exchange for instruments
of production in their new society. Over
the years nearly a million guns have been
collected and destroyed. Mozambican artist
s have taken these destroyed weapons and
made them into art – objects of beauty and imagination. 

This cross tells the story
of our faith. Weapons of war and instruments of
violence have been broken apart and reshaped
into the greatest sign
of peace and hope the
world has ever known. On the cross, God took the worst that we humans can do to one
another – to torture and kill each other – and
in Jesus’ love for us – broke the violence
and reshaped it into the greatest sign of hope and peace for all time.  

In God, with Christ, and in
the power of the Spirit we have the ability to challenge
violence. You and I are people of
the cross of hope and disciples of the Christ who is our
peace and who has broken down all dividing walls. Today, let us renew our common
work to end violence in every community - remembering those who have died
(Marcelina, Ben, Charlotte, Shane, Taijhon
and Torrence and those we name now aloud
or silently) and remembering those who live with
the scars of violence (Takira, Tyrek, the
parents of Hartford, New Haven, Milford and Newtown and so many more). May God
give us strength and courage and singleness of heart to do this work

Forgiveness Challenge

We invite you to join us in the #ForgivenessChallenge. When each of us makes this decision to choose forgiveness instead of choosing to retaliate or to simply hold onto our anger we can change our lives. But when more people make this choice we can have a much greater impact on our communities, our countries and our world. So use the resources here to encourage your friends and acquaintances—perhaps even your enemies—to join the Challenge. Together we can change the world!

With love,
Desmond and Mpho Tutu

Sign up, and starting May 4th you’ll receive a daily inspirational email from the Archbishop and Mpho Tutu, with a link to join their online forgiveness community. Inside, you’ll get:

• Daily exercises to teach you how to forgive anyone for anything.
• Extraordinary stories from ordinary people who have been transformed through forgiving or being forgiven.
• Interviews with the world’s top forgiveness experts, great spiritual leaders, and well-known celebrities, including Alanis Morissette and Arianna Huffington.
• Community support from people just like you who are trying to live a more forgiving life.
• And it’s free!

Go here: http://forgivenesschallenge.com/

“Often when we are suffering from loss or harm of some kind, forgiving can seem too overwhelming, too complicated, to even consider.  How do we forgive if there has been no apology or explanation for why someone has hurt us so? How do we think of forgiving when we feel the person has not done anything to “deserve” our forgiveness? Where do we even start?
Forgiving is not easy, but it is the path to healing.” ~ Desmond Tutu