Last Sunday (Easter 5, Year B, May 3, 2015)
May 8 – 4pm -5pm, Shred-it! at St. Peter’s
May 9 – 8:30am ECM at Horne’s
May 10 – 10:00am, Godly Play (preschool through 2nd grade)
May 10 – 11:00am, Easter 6 Eucharist (Rogation Sunday) . UTO spring ingathering final collection.
This Sunday at St. Peter’s – Servers, Readings
Continuing – Easter Tide
National Day of Prayer, May 7 in Fredericksburg at Market Square
Rev. Joe Hensley of St. George’s Episcopal introduces leaders of three religions, left, Sheikh Rashid Lamptey from the Islamic Ummah of Fredericksburg , Rabbi Jeremy Weisblatt of Beth Sholom Temple, and Pastor Larry Haun of Fredericksburg Baptist Church. Each leader spoke for 10 minutes on the concept of covenant in their faith finishing with a prayer. Weisblatt reading and singing from Deuteronomy offering words of guidance. He cited Adam and Eve as the common strand between us and that those who are the most righteous are closest to God.
Sheik Rashid emphasized the need to come together to bind our community together in respect and dignity offfering chants and words from the Koran. Pastor Hahn cited the common ancestor of all – Abram who in Genesis Chapter 12 became the father of the multitude. God blesses us to work together to bless and sustain the world. God provides a larger truth than we can know individually and thus the case for the diversity of the three faiths represented here. After these words was a time for silent prayer.
Flash!
Bring it to the Streets
Thanks to Andrea Pogue this is the 4th anniversary of this event!
•Use this opportunity to securely dispose of those out dated, sensitive documents and financial records that you have accumulated over the years; and
•Use this occasion to clear out old file cabinets, boxes, folders and envelopes containing pay stubs, tax records, bank statements and receipts that have amassed over time.
• Did you mother ever chide you growing up for the clutter in your room ? Honor your mother this week on Mother’s Day by cleaning out your paper clutter.
Bring them to St. Peter’s TODAY! Friday, May 8 between 4pm and 5pm and watch the action. Suggested donation per bag $5.
This is a fund raiser for community enrichment and charitable outreach efforts. We also need to pay for the shredder. Please a consider a generous donation to this cause.
Whether for the environment, to help St. Peter’s or to rid your home of excess papers, come down and bring your stuff on May 8
Fill Those Boxes! – UTO Blue Boxes due May 10
Link – UTO Spring Ingathering
We believe that when daily thanks is given and money is placed in the Blue Box, the money becomes an outward and visible way to say thanks. It is a way to take our Baptismal covenant seriously ~ to love God, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
The United Thank Offering program culminates each year in the May In-Gathering, when the offerings of each parish family are collected … offerings that are combined with those of Episcopal parishes everywhere to support projects worldwide for missions and ministry. You can put the offering in the box or simply write a check with "UTO" in the memo line.
Want proof of the magic ? It was reported on April 27 United Thank Offering has experienced a record year of generosity, marking a 2.14% increase for 2014-2015 over the previous year.
According to Rev. Heather Melton, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society’s United Thank Offering Missioner who put the report together:
- Noting that requests for grants often outnumber the amount available, the United Thank Offering was able to fund 35% of requests in 2014.
- 38 dioceses of The Episcopal Church increased their Ingathering amounts in the past year.
- Six of the nine provinces increased their overall Ingathering amounts. Melton added that Anglican Communion donations also increased over last year.
- For 2014-2015, the total amount available for grants was $1,558,006.85
- Of the Ingathering, a remarkable 79% was derived from the Blue Boxes.
The Next Village Dinner- May 20- What we need ?
We are collecting tuna fish and peanut butter for the next Village Harvest in particular, though any canned goods are welcome. Please bring them to the church by May 17.
We can also use workers for May 20 to help fill the bags. Many thanks for all who provide assistance for this vital ministry.
Recap: Shrine Mont Retreat May 1 – 3, "Stations of the Resurrection"
The Garden at the Tomb
In the book Faces of Jesus, Frederick Buechner said that “Over two thousand Easters have taken place since the women visited the empty tomb—two thousand years’ worth of people proclaiming that the tomb was empty and the dead Christ alive among people to heal, to sustain, to transform. But if we are to believe in his resurrection in a way that really matters, we must somehow see him for ourselves. And whenever we have so believed in his resurrection, it is because in some sense we have seen him. It is not his absence from the empty tomb that convinces us but the shadow, at least the shadow, of his presence in our lives.”
Cooking fish by the sea
“The Resurrection is no metaphor; it is the power of God…Jesus alive and at large in the world not as some shimmering ideal of human goodness or the achieving power of hopeful thought but the very power of life itself.”
At our Shrine Mont retreat with Christ Church, Spotsylvania, we sought our Resurrected Lord as we went with the disciples to find our Risen Lord in the garden, by the sea, along the road, in the breaking of the bread, and in the gift of the Holy Spirit. In order to do this, we re-created the following stories and found ourselves in the stories; with Mary in the garden on Easter morning; with the disciples having breakfast with Jesus by the Sea of Galilee; with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus;and at the commissioning of the disciples on the mountain. We imagined what it would have been like to be present for the Ascension, and finally, we experienced a hint of Pentecost.
Walking the Road to Emmaus
Carl Jung said that “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” Jesus said that “Where two or three are gathered together, there I am in the midst of them.” So during our time together at Shrine Mont, we sought the Risen Lord, not only in the stories we heard, but here there among us, in our very midst.
Want to see more ? Here is the gallery with the Stations of the Resurrection described above and other pictures of the retreat – eating, playing games, hiking to the cross on the mountain, watching the sunrise and worship. Thanks to the 10 who went on the retreat with Christ Episcopal.
Laura Long in the Free Lance-Star, May 5
Links:
1. Article in the Free Lance-Star
2. Booth Tour in Port Royal on April 25 with Laura’s Sarah Jane Peyton reenactment.
3. Laura’s Sunday at St. Peter’s on Easter 3, April 19
ECW Spring Meeting, May 30, 2015, Christ Church Spotsylvania
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1pm to 5pm exploring "Saying Yes to God". Meeting agenda is here
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Free childcare provided. $20 fee for women over 50, free for women 50 and under
- Payment by check or cash will be accepted at the meeting.Scholarships are available if needed
- Register online here . Register by mail. Deadline May 26
It’s Mother’s Day, May 10
Links:
1. Surprising history of Mother’s Day
The American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. Jarvis had originally conceived of Mother’s Day as a day of personal celebration between mothers and families. Her version of the day involved wearing a white carnation as a badge and visiting one’s mother or attending church services. But once Mother’s Day became a national holiday, it was not long before florists, card companies and other merchants capitalized on its popularity. Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar.
2. Mothers’ qualities in the Bible.
What does the Bible says about teaching, training and discipline, all things that Moms deal with ?
3. Examples of Moms – Eight Blessed Moms in the Bible
Eight mothers in the Bible played key roles in the coming of Jesus. Which ones would you choose ? Compare your list to those in the article.
Four Great Feasts in May
Four Sundays of May – commemorating agriculture, the Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday – are four feasts of great importance in the life of the Church. They are distinctively "named" Sundays.
Rogation Sunday goes back to prayer and fasting in early Christian times for protection for crops from disease. It was also a reflection of the Roman holiday of Robigalia at which a dog was sacrificed to propitiate Robigus, the god of agricultural disease. In Christian years it involved fasting and abstinence in preparation for celebrating the Ascension
The Ascension is usually described as marking the completion of Jesus’ ministry on earth as he returned to Heaven. But it is far more than that. It marks the exact moment when Jesus, Son of God, commissioned his disciples to begin the gigantic task of converting the whole world. As recorded in St Mark’s Gospel, Jesus said: "Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned."
Luke tells us that Pentecost occurred a short time after the Ascension, and marked the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise, at his Ascension, to send the Holy Spirit on the disciples.
The gift of the Holy Spirit electrified these fearful followers – who only weeks before had run away when Jesus was arrested, and were still hiding for fear of those who had been responsible for their Lord’s death – and transformed them into men and women willing to lay down their lives for their faith, as many of them did.
The feast of Holy Trinity, though logically linked with the other two, was established much later. Although its existence was clearly stated in the New Testament, and early recognized as a doctrine of the faith, it was only when the Arian heresy – which denied Jesus was God – was spreading in the fourth century, that the church Fathers prepared an Office with canticles, responses, a preface, and hymns, to be recited at Mass. From these, the feast we now celebrate as Trinity Sunday gradually evolved.
Together, these latter three great feasts mark the promise which Jesus gave to his disciples, and its fulfilment in the Church on earth. As recorded by Matthew, the very last words Jesus said to his Apostles before going up to Heaven, were: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of time."
Rogation Sunday, May 10, 2015
Rogation Sunday, a time of celebration and prayer, is a time set aside to appreciate and recognize our dependence upon the land for our food and most importantly upon our dependence of God for the miracles of sprouting seeds, growing plants, and maturing harvest.
The Rogation Days, the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day, originated in Vienne, France in 470 after a series of disasters had caused much suffering among the people. The Goths invaded Gaul. There was an enormous amount of disease; there were fires; there were earthquakes; there were attacks of wild animals.
Originally, the Christian observance of Rogation was taken over from Graeco-Roman religion, where an annual procession invoked divine favor to protect crops against mildew. Archbishop Mamertus in 470 proclaimed a fast and ordered that special litanies and prayers be said as the population processed around their fields, asking God’s protection and blessing on the crops that were just beginning to sprout. "We shall pray to God that He will turn away the plagues from us, and preserve us from all ill, from hail and drought, fire and pestilence, and from the fury of our enemies; to give us favorable seasons, that our land may be fertile, good weather and good health, and that we may have peace and tranquility, and obtain pardon for our sins."
The Latin word rogare means "to ask", thus these were "rogation" processions. The tradition grew of using processional litanies, often around the parish boundaries, for the blessing of the land. These processions concluded with a mass.
The Rogation procession was suppressed at the Reformation, but it was restored in 1559. The poet George Herbert interpreted the procession as a means of asking for God’s blessing on the land, of preserving boundaries, of encouraging fellowship between neighbours with the reconciling of differences, and of charitable giving to the poor.
The tradition of ‘beating the bounds’ has been preserved in some communities. In the latter a group of old and young members of the community would walk the boundaries of the parish, usually led by the parish priest and church officials, to share the knowledge of where they lay, and to pray for protection and blessings for the lands. Others maintain the traditional use of the Litany within worship. In more recent times, the scope of Rogation has been widened to include petition for the world of work and for accountable stewardship, and prayer for local communities, whether rural or urban.
The Sunday before the Rogation Days came to be considered a part of Rogationtide (or "Rogantide") and was known as Rogation Sunday. There is Rogation 1, Rogation 2 and Rogation 3 for the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afterwards. The standard practice in the Episcopal Church is to pray for fruitful seasons on Monday, commerce and industry on Tuesday, and stewardship of creation on Wednesday.
Organic Suburbs- Rogation re-defined
The Smithsonian in the May, 2015 issue writes about a new trend in planned living involving farm life. Housing is connected not to golf courses or lakes but to gardens and farm land. Interconnectively is the key concept. In some developments, apartments and homes are wedged together to make use of limited space and encourage social interaction.
There are already dozens of agritopian developments and, fueled by the local-food movement. There is highly planned housing together with an environmental focus. Waste water, for example is filtered in a biological treatment system and reused for irrigation. There is much focus on providing bike and hiking paths as streets. Parks become common meeting grounds.
Serenbe is perhaps the country’s most popular and profitable “agritopia,” outside Atlanta. It tries to combine what it would term the “good life.” – arts, agriculture, education.
At Serenbe, there is a 25-acre organic farm. Plus there farmlands all of which produce enough vegetables to supply a number of restaurants, a farmers’ market and a Community-Supported Agriculture program.
Their website provides an attractive description “Year-round cultural events include outdoor theater from Serenbe Playhouse, culinary workshops and festivals, music events, films and lectures, boutique shopping, art galleries, a spa and trail riding, plus a robust Artist in Residence program featuring dinners and talks. “ Currently there are 400 homes
Links 1. Serenbe 2. Smithsonian article
Genetically Engineering our Food?
This TED talk makes a case for using genetic engineering in the fight against devastating effects of weather, diseases affecting plants and issues involving malnourishment. Still many people are cautious about its use.
Ms. Ronald’s explanation: "I explained the genetic engineering, the process of moving genes between species, has been used for more than 40 years in wines, in medicine, in plants, in cheeses. In all that time, there hasn’t been a single case of harm to human health or the environment. But I say, look, I’m not asking you to believe me. Science is not a belief system. My opinion doesn’t matter. Let’s look at the evidence. After 20 years of careful study and rigorous peer review by thousands of independent scientists, every major scientific organization in the world has concluded that the crops currently on the market are safe to eat and that the process of genetic engineering is no more risky than older methods of genetic modification. " See this Ted Talk. Some amazing examples are shown.
This is a playlist of TED Talks on a variety of relevant food topics which coincide with Rogation Sunday.
- The killer American diet that’s sweeping the planet
- Sustainable seafood? Let’s get smart
- Save the oceans, feed the world!
- The global food waste scandal
- What’s wrong with school lunches
- Why I’m a weekday vegetarian
Local Farmers’ Markets (updated May 1)
As we are celebrating the farmer this Sunday, we must also look to the market – the Farmers Market. These have become more organized and developed in more communities over the last few years
Here’s a map of local markets. Click on the map to change it to an interactive view. You can click on each location and get the addresses and times of the market.
- 1. Fresh, healthy, locally grown food at competitive prices for the consumer.
- 2. Outlet for farmers selling organic and less intensively-produced food.
- 3. More money is spent in the local economy, and it circulates in the locality for longer.
- 4. Provides a customer base for other retail establishments in the community.
Advantages of Farmers Markets
- 1. For farmers, must transport produce. Time spent.
- 2. Farmers do not have as much control over promotion.
- 3. The farmers sell their products and goods according to season and for that reason certain products are not available all the time. They can sell only when the market is open.
- 4. For the customer, going to several different places to get everything needed takes a lot of time what can represent a serious problem nowadays.
Disadvantages of Farmers Markets
Lectionary, May 10, Rogation One
I.Theme – The Stewardship of Abundance
"The Mustard Seed"
First Reading – Deuteronomy 11:10-15
Psalm – Psalm 147
Epistle –Romans 8:18-25
Gospel – Mark 4:26-32
The readings this week are for Rogation One and not Easter 6! This is an option in the BCP, page 930. There is Rogation Sunday which is celebrated on Easter 6 and then 3 days afterward in the week of Ascension. Rogation Monday is for fruitful seasons, Rogation Tuesday for commerce and industry and Rogation Wednesday for the stewardship of creation. We look at the Monday readings.
The Collect provides the overall ecological feeling to the readings. God is the source of fruitful seasons, the source of abundance and we must be “faithful stewards of your good gift.” As stewards we provide all our knowledge resources, time, talent and funds and use them in service to take care of what belongs to God.
We are the managers but as our first reading in Deuteronomy states God is watching this management . “The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year”. We must heed his commandments and God will provide – rain, grass for the fields and as a result “you will eat your fill” As the Psalm maintains God is in control of both the weather – weather – rain, hail, frost, snow, wind – which can determine your abundance but also the end product – “satisfying with the finest of wheat.”
Background – Israel was called a land of barley and wheat (Deuteronomy 8:7-8). The spring wheat and barley harvest preceded the major harvest in the fall, the Feast of Ingathering (Exodus 23:16, 34:22). Both the spring and the fall harvest were dependent upon the rains coming at the right time. The fall rains are called the early rain. The spring rains are called the latter rain. The early rain is spoken of in Deuteronomy 11:10-15, and Joel 2:23. The rain is prophetic of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon people’s lives individually as they accept Jesus into their lives and allow the Holy Spirit to teach and instruct them concerning the ways of God. The early rain and the latter rain also teach us about the pouring out of God’s Holy Spirit in a corporate way upon all flesh. The early rain refers to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit during Christ’s first coming and the latter rain refers to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit during Christ’s second coming.
Psalm 147:12-20 sings of God’s work in creation as well as God’s work of protection and safety for the people. God is the one who has given ordinances and statutes to Israel, and to them, God relates to them in a special way, unique, unlike any other people. Those who know God’s ways know the assurance of God’s presence.
Psalm 147 is a praise psalm and broadens the work of God. It sings the praises of God who binds up the brokenhearted, gathers the outcasts, and brings in the marginalized. God cares for all of creation and provides for all the creatures, and God cares for all of the people. God is not impressed with feats of strength or greatness, but rather humility and awe of God.
The Gospel is the parable of the mustard seed, the “smallest of all the seeds on earth” which yet becomes “the greatest of all shrubs”. This allows us to find additional meanings.
When we open ourselves to God’s possibilities, it is often the tiniest change that opens up a new trajectory, weak at first, but then growing stronger, until it overcomes resistance, obstacles, habitual behavior. The mustard seed metaphor stands on its own, but there are so many more organic images that reinforce the point—such as the Mississippi River, which starts as a stream in northern Minnesota small enough to step over and becomes progressively wider, until it spreads through the Louisiana delta to the Gulf of Mexico. Wherever we are in journey, God is always ready to gurgle up from underground, to plant a small seed, to open us to more than we can imagine.
God does allow us to grow on this earth, interacting with this world, and does not pull us out of danger or harm, or shield us from mistakes. But the kingdom or reign of God is built and created out of all of us. We do not know how each of us will grow, but we know we grow based on our experiences here on earth, and grow beyond our earthly experience. How we grow, and grow together, helps determine how and when we will be harvested, gathered together with God
The Romans reading provides a dose of reality into our growing from seeds into bushes when we face difficult life situations.