Important Words on Living in the midst of Death

Go over to this blog entry by Richard Beck:

The William Stringfellow Project: A Second Birthday

Stringfellow has much to say to us and Beck beautifully puts it before us.

What is an Episcopalian?

Some reflections from the youth confirmands:

"Being an Episcopalian is just being a person in one big family trying to make a difference...as followers of Jesus Christ...and we believe in the Father, Son & Holy Spirit.  We strive to love our neighbors and respect the dignity of every person."

"Being an Episcopalian means caring to everyone...means we are accepting of others...means we believe in one God and have a set of beliefs that affects me every day.  I look to God in times of need...the shooting at Newtown was hard to deal with...I leaned on my faith to help me come to terms with it.  Without my beliefs I don't know what I would do."

Book Recommendations: Open Heart & Lamb

'Open Heart' By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, underwent emergency open-heart surgery at the age of 82.  Open Heart is his reflection on that event and the events of his life.  The result is a slender volume in which he considers the power of memory and hope in his life.

"I belong to a generation that has often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind," he writes. "And yet, I believe that we must not give up on either. … We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it."

 'Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal' by Christopher Moore

While Christopher Moore watched a PBS Frontline special called From Jesus to Christ, which talked about the life of Christ, what we know and what we don't, including the missing years from twelve to thirty in the Gospels; Moore thought, "Someone should write that story. And since I know nothing about religion or history, I should be that someone."

It is a comedy.  It is fiction.  And as Moore states at the end, "I like to think that while he carried out his sacred mission, Jesus of Nazareth might have enjoyed a sense of irony and the company of a wisecracking buddy."

I recommend both books for the good of your soul.

Faith of Teenagers

There have been three recent articles that caught my attention on the faith of teenagers:

Sticky faith:  What keeps kids connected to church?
May 17, 2013 by Jen Bradbury

Why I Made My Teenager Go to Church
by Mallory McDuff 05-06-2013

Why Congregations Shouldn’t Work So Hard to Keep Their Young People
May 6, 2013 By Rev. Heidi Haverkamp.

Read them all and think about how we engage our youth today.

I also just found these blog articles about Discerning Ministry with Teens:

http://www.buildfaith.org/2013/05/21/discerning-ministry-with-teens-part-1/

http://www.buildfaith.org/2013/05/22/discerning-ministry-with-teens-part-2/

CT Episcopal Media: Camp Washington intro

Great introduction!

License & Background Check

I am still not sure why it is unreasonable to ask those who want to purchase a weapon (gun) in the United States to undergo a background check and be licensed?

The second amendment states:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

We should regulate who can purchase it and make sure they are licensed.  We do that for drivers and cars?  Why not guns?

A prayer for our times...

O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Episcopal Church focuses on gun violence March 25

Stations of the Cross in Washington DC

On Monday, March 25 at 10:30 am Eastern, more than 20 Episcopal bishops from throughout the church will lead hundreds of clergy and lay people in praying the Stations of the Cross in Washington, DC, as they process along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the US Capitol to challenge violence, especially the epidemic of gun violence that claims so many thousands of American lives each year.

The service will begin outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square, at the corner of 16th and H Streets, Northwest, across from the White House, and conclude on the west lawn of the U. S. Capitol some two and a half hours later. The specially written Stations of the Cross focus on the tragedy of violence. Bishops, priests and deacons in the procession will wear cassocks or other clerical attire, and worshippers will carry a wooden cross, as they make their way along Pennsylvania Avenue, stopping in front of memorials, government buildings and works of art to offer prayers for an end to violence, the culture of violence, and the social and economic conditions that spawn violence. (visit: www.ctepiscopal.org/Content/Holy_Week_Witness_Liturgy.asp)

Bishop Ian T. Douglas of Connecticut, along with Suffragan Bishops Laura J. Ahrens and James E. Curry, organized the service immediately after the killing of 28 students, teachers and individuals at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. They worked in cooperation with Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of Washington, and a team from her diocese. Clergy and lay involved in the Diocese of Connecticut’s response to the killings in Newtown will participate in the service.

“The death dealing realities of violence are brought home to us as Christians when we recall the crucifixion of Jesus on the Cross this Holy Week,” said Bishop Douglas. “Walking the Way of the Cross invites us, compels us, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.”

Many of the bishops who will participate in the event are part of Episcopalians Against Gun Violence, an ad hoc group of bishops, clergy and lay people of Episcopalians who are working, collectively and individually, to curb gun violence. Learn more at www.facebook.com/EpiscopaliansAgainstGunViolence and on Twitter at @TheCrossLobby.

Prayer – “Grieving our Lost Children”
O Lord, another brutality, another school killing, another grief beyond telling . . . and loss . . . in Colorado, in Wisconsin, among the Amish, in Virginia and Connecticut. Where next?

We are reduced to weeping silence, even as we breed a violent culture, even as we kill the sons and daughters of our so-called ‘enemies,’ even as we fail to cherish and protect the forgotten of our common life.

There is no joy among us as we empty our schoolhouses; there is no health among us as we move in fear and bottomless anxiety; there is little hope among us as we fall helpless before the gunshot and the shriek and the blood and the panic; we pray to you only because we do not know what else to do.

Loving God, we beseech you to move powerfully in our body politic. Move us toward peaceableness that does not want to hurt or kill; move us toward justice so that the troubled and the forgotten may know mercy; move us toward forgiveness, so that we may escape the trap of revenge.

Empower us to turn our weapons into acts of mercy, to turn our missiles into gestures of friendship, to turn our bombs into policies of reconciliation; and in this deep work of transformation, hear our sadness, our loss, our bitterness.

We dare to pray our needfulness to you because you were there on that gray Friday, and watched your own Son murdered for ‘reasons of state.’ Good God, do Easter! Here and among these families, here and in all places of brutality. Turn our Good Friday grief into your Easter joy. We pray in the Name of the one crucified and risen, who is our Lord and Savior. Amen.

(adapted from Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008), 61-62.)