The Presiding Bishop's Lenten Message, from Walking With Integrity

Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori speaks to us, the Church during this holy Lent:

I greet you at the beginning of Lent.

In this year I’m going to invite you to think about the ancient traditions of preparing in solidarity with candidates for baptism, to think about the old disciplines of prayer and fasting and alms-giving and study, through the focus on those beyond our communities, in the developing world, who live in abject poverty.

I invite you to use the Millennium Development Goals as your focus for Lenten study and discipline and prayer and fasting this year. I’m going to remind you that the Millennium Development Goals are about healing the worst of the world’s hunger. They’re about seeing that all children get access to primary education. They’re about empowering women. They’re about attending to issues of maternal health and child mortality.

To read all of ++Katharine's message, please go here.

Sacred Practices: A Lenten Reflection from Arizona by Kaze Gadway

Kaze Gadway is Youth Minister at Episcopal Diocese of Arizona. She lives in Goodwater, Arizona and is from Chicago, Illinois. She is at work with the emerging leaders of the Episcopal Church within the Native American community of Northern Arizona. They are youth of promise from twelve to twenty. Her blog, Infaith's Practices, is a treasure cache of wisdom and insight into spiritual life. Read more of her "lessons" on her blog. Her latest post is here:

Julian of Norwich “Pray inwardly, even though you find no joy in it. For it does good, though you feel nothing, see nothing, yes, even though you think you cannot pray.”
Lent is not like Advent. Advent is a preparation of the celebration of God with us, God walking among us. Although Lent comes before Easter it is a season not like any other. It is forty days of intensifying holy practices.

All religions have holy practices. They are ways in which we discipline ourselves to be immersed in activities that expose us to the sacred. It may be putting money in a jar to give to the poor. Or depriving ourselves of food or pleasure to remind ourselves of what is really fundamental. Or writing down our faith responses in a journal. Or meditating on Holy Scriptures in a different way. Or spending time in contemplative silence. Maybe it is a walk in which you observe such awesome particulars such as a leaf. Or it could be intentional prayer.

I pray all the time. Usually it is in response to something. I am concerned for someone or someone asks me to pray. During Lent, I pray in a cycle to include all those who usually get left out of my conscious prayer life. I pray for those in danger, for those nations who are in social upheaval, for those crushed by the economy, for those disenfranchised in decision making, for those paralyzed by grief or loss, for those bruised in spirit in shame and guilt, and for those who have lost their way. How I feel doesn’t come into it. I go inward to hold up those that are disconnected and fragmented in their daily joy. I don’t usually have an outcome, like I hope everyone gets a job. I hold them up as significant to the God who dwells within us.

“What are you giving up for Lent?” asks a child who has heard this on TV. “Nothing,” I reply. “I don’t believe in giving up something like candy that I shouldn’t be doing for my health anyway. I do add things.” And I give her an abbreviated context of holy practices.

“I’m going to give up fighting with my mother,” says one youth proud of himself.
“That’s great,” I reply. “What are you going to do instead?”
There is a thoughtful silence in the small group. He says, “Maybe I should help around the house more. That’s what we fight about.”

Another youth who has been with us for a long time says, “Maybe you should clean a different part of the house every day. That would make it a spiritual practice, wouldn’t it?” He looks at me and I tell the story of Brother Lawrence again of finding the sacred in even the smallest of kitchen chores by doing it intentionally with reverence and dedicating it to God.

“We do that in Native ceremonies,” an older youth comments. “Every implement we use, everything we undertake is lifted up and prayed over.”

We talk about that in general terms in order not to reveal the particulars of confidential sacred ceremonies. They have all participated in some kind of intentional sacred practice, including helping at the altar in Church.

One of the youth confesses, “Sometimes I am only praying by rote. I don’t really feel anything.”

I assure him, “Feeling is not necessary but intentionally holding up some person or issue to God is. Like when we pray for Haiti. We’ve not been there but we can take the time to hold up that country to God. That puts it into our minds and it also declares that we believe that God holds this as important and worthy to be cherished.”

So we each make a list of things that we normally do not pray for and each holds up one thing. The responses are amazing—being bullied, car crashes on our interstate that goes through our town, stores that depend on the tourist trade, people dying without family present, forgotten birthdays, violence in homes, and neglected animals. Our prayer life is enriched just by listing these things. We decide to check in and see what happens when we do something every day that exposes us to the Holy.

It is an exciting season.

Blessed Lent everyone.
In faith,
Kaze

The image is of Rainwater Canyon in northern Arizona

Ash Wednesday: "Takin' it to the streets..." Will we?

Maybe it is time we took the Church to the people, out in the streets, sidewalks, parks, no matter the weather...will we be so brave, so bold to do what other churches are doing around the country? Let's go meet the need...Catherine+

Episcopal churches to take Ash Wednesday services into the streets

By Jim Naughton | February 16, 2012

[Canticle Communications] More than 40 Episcopal parishes in 11 states will take to the streets on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22, marking the beginning of the holy season of Lent by giving “Ashes to Go.”
In Chicago, St. Louis, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Baltimore, Newark, Erie, Austin and other cities and suburbs around the country, priests and lay people will visit train stations, subway stops, coffee shops, and street corners to mark the forehead of interested passers-by with the sign of the cross, and invite them to repent of their past wrongdoing and seek forgiveness and renewal.

“Ashes to Go is about bringing spirit, belief, and belonging out from behind church doors, and into the places where we go every day,” said the Rev. Emily Mellott, rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, Lombard, Illinois, who is organizing the initiative in the Diocese of Chicago, where more than 20 churches are expected to participate. “It’s a simple event with deep meaning, drawing on centuries of tradition and worship to provide a contemporary moment of grace.”

Mellott learned about Ashes to Go from the Rev. Teresa K. M. Danieley, of St. John’s Episcopal Church, St. Louis, Missouri, who began conducting a street corner service with the distribution of ashes in 2007.

“On the street corner, we encounter people who have been hurt by previous experiences with organized religion and who, through Ashes to Go, take a tentative step back towards attending church,” Danieley says.

Diocese of Chicago Bishop Jeff Lee is an enthusiastic supporter of marking Ash Wednesday in the streets. “My most memorable experience last year was with a woman who told me that she had left the church years ago,” he says. “She received the ashes and our prayers gratefully and then she looked up and with tears in her eyes, she said to me, ‘I just can’t believe you would bring the church out here to us.’“

Lightbearer...

Lightbearer

Jesus, I call upon the power in Your name
to see the way my path must surely lead,
to heal the sick, to tend and feed your flock.
Christ, you are the Lord who calls us to make peace,
to strive for justice daily in your world,
to use your gifts of wisdom, patience, hope,
to be the servant-bearer of the Light.
Spirit, we worship you in truth and holiness.
We seek new ways to make the message clear,
to praise, confess, forgive and show your love
in breaking bread and sharing of our cup.

~~Chuck Shamel


This was written by Chuck Shamel, a member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Corpus Christi, TX.

Hillary Clinton: Human Rights are Equal Rights

Go here to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton deliver an amazing and inspiring speech on LBGT rights as human rights: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2011/12/06/lgbt-rights-human-rights/

A Clearer, Less Divisive Anglican Covenant?

by Savi Hensman, November 15, 2001 on Ekklesia.

Attempts to bring in an Anglican Covenant which can be used to define Anglicanism and discipline member churches have run into difficulties.

Many are uneasy with this development. In November 2011, it became apparent that the province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia would reject it.

In the words of a diocesan resolution, one of its clauses contains ‘provisions which are contrary to our understanding of Anglican ecclesiology, to our understanding of the way of Christ, and to justice’.

Perhaps it is time to abandon such efforts and build on the foundations laid six years ago by the Anglican Consultative Council, when it agreed a very different Covenant for Communion in Mission.

A confusing and divisive Covenant

The Anglican Communion is an international family of churches, in which there is considerable theological diversity and no central authority. However there are periodic gatherings and other connections. In recent years some Anglican leaders – including Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury – have urged member churches throughout the world to adopt a Covenant. This is supposed to strengthen unity in the face of divisions, especially over human sexuality, but has proved highly controversial.

In an attempt to win wide support, earlier drafts have been revised, to the point that some feel it is too weak. In 2010 the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) primates declared that “the current text is fatally flawed and so support for this initiative is no longer appropriate”. However, many other Anglicans still see it as too punitive, damaging the autonomy of member churches and likely to result in a divided Communion, with an inner circle made up of provinces which have signed up, while others are marginalised.

There is now widespread confusion about what the Covenant means and how it will be used, even among its supporters.

According to a Pentecost letter from Williams in 2010, “the Covenant is nothing if not a tool for mission. I want to stress yet again that the Covenant is not envisaged as an instrument of control.”

Likewise Gregory Cameron, Bishop of St Asaph in Wales and formerly Deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, claimed in early 2011 that “A view has been expressed in some quarters that the covenant has been designed with narrow purposes: to squash any consideration of the place of gay and lesbian persons in the life of the Church, and to punish The Episcopal Church with expulsion from the Communion because they had made moves in that direction... that was not what the Lambeth Commission had in mind when they proposed the idea of a Covenant in the Windsor Report, and, I believe, such an understanding of the covenant is deeply flawed... the covenant itself is quite clear: it is about processes and not exclusion”.

Yet in May 2011, the Province of Southeast Asia signed up to the Covenant for the very reason that it was about control and exclusion. To quote the Preamble to this province’s Letter of Accession:

Read the rest of Savi's article here.

Clergy, laity support nonviolent protests at Occupy Wall Street

By Sharon Sheridan, October 25, 2011


Episcopal News Service] In the early stages of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the Rev. Michael Sniffen and some clergy colleagues from the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island traveled to Manhattan's Zuccotti Park to observe what was happening. He's returned regularly since, talking to protestors and offering pastoral care.

"I see myself as part of the movement," said Sniffen, 31, priest-in-charge of theEpiscopal Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Brooklyn, New York. "I really feel like this is my generation's plea for a just society. I think the Gospels make it quite clear in Jesus' teachings that there can be no justice without economic justice."

Sniffen is among a number of Episcopal clergy and laity who are visiting and lending support to protesters at the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) campaign. Begun Sept. 17 and inspired by the Arab Spring movement, OWS protests against greed and economic inequality have spread to more than 2,100 locations across the country and around the world, including other major cities such as Denver, Miami, Berlin, London and Tokyo.

On Oct. 23, the Episcopal Church's Executive Council issued a resolution affirming "that the growing movement of peaceful protests in public spaces in the United States and throughout the world in resistance to the exploitation of people for profit or power bears faithful witness in the tradition of Jesus to the sinful inequities in society" and calling upon "Episcopalians to witness in the tradition of Jesus to inequities in society."


Read the rest here.


Protesting greed
The Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton of Delaware said she heard a distinct message when she spent the 25th anniversary of her ordination to the priesthood at Zuccotti Park on Oct. 18.

"Everybody is really, really clear that what they're protesting is greed. It's not about luxury, it's not about capitalism," said Kaeton, who is canonically resident in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. "People are really angry about greed, and I think that's absolutely right. … That's what made Jesus turn over a few tables in the temple, was greed and corruption. That's the moral problem that I think the church needs to speak to."


Read the rest here.  You can also click on Elizabeth's name above and go directly to the story also on her blog.


-- Sharon Sheridan is an ENS correspondent. ENS editor/reporter Lynette Wilson contributed to this article.