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Block Print by Mike Newman
Projects
Beginning Nov. 19 for 4 Sundays in the Parish House! Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol and the Bible.
A Christmas Carol has delighted audiences since it publication in 1843 in its book form and through the many movies made from its story. Few people know of Dickens’ connection with religion. A Christmas Carol has many Biblical references, some cleverly hidden within the story. The regeneration of Scrooge mirrors the regeneration of mankind in the Bible. Even with the title, “A Christmas Carol”, Dickens is using the meaning of “carol” familiar to him: a song celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Dickens each chapter of his book a stave, a stanza of a song. We will discuss Chapter 1 of the book on the first Sunday. Where to find it ?
2 The book and audio are available free at Project Gutenberg on the web. It is available in plain text, formatted text, Kindle for book readers (with or with images). It is available in in audio in mp3 format and itunes audiobook
3 If you want a hardcopy, it is available on Amazon. Look for Dover Thrift edition for as little as $3 plus shipping.
Link to the reports from Jan 15 Annual Meeting
3-Minute Retreats invite you to take a short prayer break right at your computer. Spend some quiet time reflecting on a Scripture passage.
Knowing that not everyone prays at the same pace, you have control over the pace of the retreat. After each screen, a Continue button will appear. Click it when you are ready to move on. If you are new to online prayer, the basic timing of the screens will guide you through the experience.
Daily meditations in words and music.
Your daily prayer online, since 1999
"We invite you to make a ‘Sacred Space’ in your day, praying here and now, as you visit our website, with the help of scripture chosen every day and on-screen guidance."
Saints of the Week, Sept. 10- Sept. 17
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10
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Alexander Crummel, 1898 |
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11
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[Harry Thacker Burleigh, Composer, 1949] |
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12
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John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York, 1830 |
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13
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John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, 407 (new date) |
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14
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Holy Cross Day |
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15
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Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr of Carthage, 258 (new date); and [James Chisholm, Priest, 1855] |
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16
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Ninian, Bishop in Galloway, c. 430 |
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17
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Hildegard of Bingen, 1170 |
September 10, 2017 – Season of Creation 2
Clockwise from top left – Catherine’s sermon on the sun, Elizabeth as lector, The sisters, A St. Peter’s Welcome!, Prelude -"Shining", Flowers for Myrtle, Playing Quidditch,Morning light in the church, Godly Play for adults on the creation story. See the Sunday description
Video-Singing a favorite hymn -Sept 10. Part of Not here for high and holy things
The music was taken from "Morning Song" by Elkanah Kelsay Dare (1782-1826), a Presbyterian minister. The words were written by Geoffrey Kennedy (1883-1929), An English Anglican priest who saw service in WWI. He was nicknamed ‘Woodbine Willie’ during World War I for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with spiritual aid to injured and dying soldiers. It is hymn #9.
The lyrics for verse #4 worked well today with our theme – "Come, let thy voice be one with theirs, shout with their shout of praise; see how the giant sun soars up, great lord of years and days! So let the love of Jesus come and set thy soul ablaze"
The Week Ahead…
Sept. 13 – 10:00am – Ecumenical Bible Study
Sept. 14 – Holy Cross Day
Sept. 17 – 10:00am – Godly Play for Adults
Sept. 17 – 10:00am – Children’s Christian Ed with Becky
Sept. 17 – 11:00am – Holy Eucharist, Rite II
Stewardship -Pledge card distribution
Sunday, Sept. 17, Readings and Servers
We need these items:
1. For the Village Harvest Sept 20. Kleenex, toilet paper, and paper towels. 
2. For the "Buzzing Bees", ongoing 
a. Granulated sugar, in any amount, so that Andrew Huffman, the beekeeper, can prepare it for the bees for food.
b. Mason jars, preferably pint size 16oz, for the bumper crop of honey that the bees will provide for harvesting next year
Stewardship Sunday
We give back as we are given by God – Consider your pledge for 2018.
The Commitment
Sunday, Sept. 17 is the distribution of 2017 pledge cards. They are due back on Oct. 1. A better word is commitment card. We commit so we can give:
- Commit to help us reduce hunger in this area, through the Village Harvest Distribution
- Commit to us to bring hope to our community,
- Commit to help us bring comfort to those suffering in sickness or loneliness,
- Commit to help us in Christian education and encourage fellowship.
- Commit so we can make a difference.
What should be our commitment to what God has given us ?
The gifts we received through pledges are all about mission. It’s those gifts which help St. Peter’s ministries thrive – food distribution and meals in our community, outreach to those in need, Christian education and fellowship for all. Over 80% of the funds used to support and plan for ministry in a year come from pledges.
Holy Cross Day, September 14, 2017
See Our Collection of Crosses
"O BLESSED Saviour, who by thy cross and passion hast given life unto the world: Grant that we thy servants may be given grace to take up the cross and follow thee through life and death; whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit we worship and glorify, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."
Holy Cross Day is Sept. 14 in honor of Christ’s self-offering on the cross for our salvation. The collect for Holy Cross Day recalls that Christ "was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world unto himself," and prays that "we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him" (BCP, p. 192). The themes of Holy Cross Day are powerfully expressed by the hymn "Lift high the cross" (Hymn 473).
This day has been a part of the Eastern Church. The feast entered the Western calendar in the seventh century after Emperor Heraclius recovered the cross from the Persians, who had carried it off in 614, 15 years earlier. According to the story, the emperor intended to carry the cross back into Jerusalem himself, but was unable to move forward until he took off his imperial garb and became a barefoot pilgrim. It only has been celebrated in the Episcopal Church with the current prayer book
Origin of Sept 14 -During the reign of Constantine, first Roman Emperor to profess the Christian faith, his mother Helena went to Israel and there undertook to find the places especially significant to Christians. (She was helped in this by the fact that in their destructions around 135, the Romans had built pagan shrines over many of these sites.) Having located, close together, what she believed to be the sites of the Crucifixion and of the Burial (at locations that modern archaeologists think may be correct), she then had built over them the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was dedicated on 14 September 335. It has become a day for recognizing the Cross (in a festal atmosphere that would be inappropriate on Good Friday) as a symbol of triumph, as a sign of Christ’s victory over death, and a reminder of His promise, "And when I am lifted up, I will draw all men unto me." (John 12:32)
Read about the Cross as symbol….
Faithful Dissent: Loving Our Way into a Brighter Tomorrow (Sept 11-25) ?
A Free course from ChurchNext.
"We live in increasingly divisive times. From politics to sports, the gif of human difference can quickly become a chasm that can invite serious discord and division. What does it mean for good Christians to disagree? How do we do so faithfully?
"Ed Bacon, author and former rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Pasadena, CA, and Stanley Hauerwas, a Duke University ethicist whom TIME Magazine called America’s theologian, will teach a free, online course called Faithful Dissent: Loving Our Way into a Brighter Tomorrow with Ed Bacon and Stanley Hauerwas. Students will be able to sign up for free and take this 45-minute, pre-recorded course with thousands of students around the world, anytime for a two-week period. Ed Bacon and Stanley Hauerwas.
"This free, 45-minute, pre-recorded online class contains video lectures, quizzes, and discussions is offered from Sept 11-25. You don’t have to view it in one setting. Registration is free and open to all. You can register here for 4 video sessions: The Gift of Dissent, The Nature of Dissent Witness and Dissent, How We Dissent.
What is the Season of Creation ?
This is a new church season for us. Usually Pentecost is the longest season from Pentecost Sunday until Advent. Now the Season of Creation, five Sundays, helps to break up the period we spend in Pentecost. Where did this come from ?
Since the 1980’s, the Eastern Orthodox Church has designated this time each year to delve more deeply into our relationships with God and with one another in the context of the magnificent creation in which we live. The Catholic Church also recognizes this season. The Church of England, as well as the Anglicans in Australia and New Zealand observe this season as well. Various churches across the United States also celebrate the Season of Creation. Bishop Shannon has blessed our observance, so that we at St Peter’s can join with Christians all over the world in this celebration.
The central focus of the month is on God–God as Creator. In his letter to the Romans, right up front, Paul makes this statement. “Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things that God has made.” We know a lot about God simply by paying attention to God’s creation. And Jesus, who came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly, used his own attention to and love of the natural world in his teachings and parables, to help the people around him find the abundant life that can become ours through him. To be with Jesus through scripture and through the bread and wine is also to see and to know God the Creator of heaven and earth.
When we Christians consider all the “works thy hands hath made,” as the old hymn “How Great Thou Art” puts it, how do our relationships with God, with creation, and with one another grow richer and deeper? This question is also a focus of this five week Season of Creation.
The goal in worship then is to deepen our understanding of God as Creator, to celebrate God’s role as Creator, and to examine and deepen and widen our own relationships with God, creation, and with one another. With Bishop Shannon’s permission, we will be using scripture readings in this five week period that have been designed to help us to accomplish these goals. You can find out more about the readings in the article later in this newsletter, “The Readings for The Season of Creation.” At the Eucharist, we will be using the Eucharistic Prayer “We Give Thanks” which highlights the role of God as Creator and Jesus dwelling in nature as one of us to bring us abundant life.
My hope for this Season is that we can grow in our love of God as Creator, and also in our love of creation itself, and to consider why, as Christians, the natural world and our relationship with it matters deeply in the working out of our lives as the beloved children of God on this earth.
Lectionary, Sept. 17, 2017, Season of Creation 3
I.Theme – Man’s relationship with God and the Benefits
The Rich Fool -Rembrandt (1627)
The lectionary readings are here
Creation Week 3 continues to be involved in our relationship to the Creator God. In Deuteronomy is about the benefits of faithfulness in terms of blessings. In the Psalm it’s in term of prayers being answered sins being forgiven , and the blessedness of dwelling with God in terms of bountiful harvests and the beauty of nature and God’s control. The Epistle is about our relationship to God in terms of giving. Why should we give. For those who give cheerfully and willingly, the promise is that God will provide all that they need to continue doing good The Gospel looks at our relationship to God in terms of 3 questions- Where is your treasure ? How is your vision ? Who are you serving ?
Read more from the lectionary …
Climate Change and Deforestation
Last week we tended to look down on earth from high dealing with rising temperatures, the effect on glaciers and water scarcity. This week we look at ground level to consider deforestation and next week the effect on the seas.
Deforestation
Forests play a vital role in maintaining the balance of the Earth’s ecosystems. They provide habitat for more than half of all terrestrial species, help filter pollutants out of the air and water, and prevent soil erosion. Rainforests also provide essential hydrological (water-related) services. For example, they tend to result in higher dry season streamflow and river levels, since forests slow down the rate of water or rain run-off, and help it enter into the aquifer.
Without a tree cover, the water tends to run off quickly into the streams and rivers, often taking a lot of topsoil with it. Forests also help the regional climate as they cycle water to the interior of a continent. The shrinking of the Amazon Rainforest reduces regional rainfall, which in turn threatens the health of the remaining forest and of the agricultural land in Southern Brazil. This also results in an increased fire risk.
Forests and their soils also play a critical role in the global carbon cycle. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere depends on the distribution or exchange of carbon between different “carbon pools” as part of the carbon cycle. Forests and their soils are major carbon pools, as are oceans, agricultural soils, other vegetation, and wood products: the carbon stored in the woody part of trees and shrubs (known as “biomass”) and soils is about 50% more than that stored in the atmosphere.
Trees continuously exchange CO2 with the atmosphere. The release of CO2 into the air is due both to natural processes (respiration of trees at night and the decomposition of organic matter) and human processes (removal or destruction of trees). Similarly, CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by the action of photosynthesis, which results in carbon being integrated into the organic molecules used by plants, including the woody biomass of trees. Thus forests play a major role in regulating global temperatures by absorbing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and storing it in the form of wood and vegetation – a process referred to as “carbon sequestration”.
Unfortunately, the global benefits provided by trees are being threatened by deforestation and forest degradation. ‘Deforestation’ as a shorthand for tree loss. Forest ‘degradation’ happens when the forest gets degraded, for example due to unsustainable logging practices which remove the most valuable species, or artesanal charcoal production in which only a few trees are harvested. The Earth loses more than 18 million acres of forestland every year—an area larger than Ireland—according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Deforestation is a major cause of global warming. When trees are burned, their stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere. As a result, tropical deforestation (including forest degradation) is responsible for about 12-15 percent of total annual global warming emissions according to estimates released for the climate change meeting in Copenhagen.
The reasons for deforestation are complex – they are a mixture of interacting and interdependent social, economic, political, demographic (or population) and governance factors. The most important factors are clearance for agriculture (including cattle ranching), poor governance (illegal logging, corruption, and ineffective law and order), insecurity of land tenure, the system of international trade, poor planning (e.g.building of major trunk roads in forest areas), and unsustainable logging.
“The tropical deforestation in Asia is driven primarily by the fast-growing demand for timber. In Latin America, by contrast, the growing demand for soybeans and beef is deforesting the Amazon. In Africa, it is mostly the gathering of fuelwood and the clearing of new land for agriculture as existing cropland is degraded and abandoned. Two countries, Indonesia and Brazil, account for more than half of all deforestation.”
Agricultural clearance is overall the most important cause of deforestation – it is estimated to be responsible for up to three quarters of deforestation and degradation. While some of this is for commercial biofuel crops like oil palm and soybean, which grow very well in tropical forest areas, much of it is also due to the basic problem of how to feed a burgeoning world population. Also many of the ‘agents of deforestation’ are among the poorest people in the world, often without land, who are forced to clear forest areas to feed their families.
At the same time, forests that have so far escaped deforestation are now threatened by climate change: In many regions of the world, more trees will die because of increasing insect infestations and forest fires. (More insects are surviving milder winters.) “Wildfires have been on the rise worldwide for half a century. Every decade since the 1950s has seen an increase in major wildfires in the United States and around the world.”
In addition to the environmental devastation, forest fires directly affect the lives of people. In the 2007 wildfires in Southern California, 900,000 people were displaced. “The total area affected by forest fires in the western US has increased by more than a factor of six in the past two decades.” Tropical rainforests, rich in biodiversity, are suffering from warmer temperatures and less rainfall, both caused by climate change. In the past, rainforests were a sink for CO2. Now with hotter temperatures, their growth is impeded, and some are actually emitting CO2.
If climate change is not mitigated, rainforests will not be able to survive. Much of the Amazon rainforest could be transformed into savannah.