Pictures and text from this Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019
Videos from this Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019
The Week Ahead…
Sept 9 – 4:00pm – Vestry
Sept 11 – 10:00am – Ecumenical Bible Study
Sept 11 – 5:00pm – 6:30pm Village Dinner
Sept 13 – 7:00am ECM at Horne’s
Sept 14 – Holy Cross Day
Sept 15 – 10:00am – Family Vacation – Ireland
Sept 15 – 11:00am – Holy Eucharist, Rite II
Sunday, Sept. 15 Readings and Servers
Celebrating Creation
Psalm 8 today reminds that we are created in the image of God, and that we ought to reflect that image in our lives. In the way that God has dominion over all creation, so God has given us dominion over the earth. Thus, we are called to create, renew, and care for all of creation.
Check out this gallery of 40 pictures that displays some of the creation that we encounter here at St. Peter’s.
Holy Cross Day, Sept 14
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
Christian Education in Sept 15
Family Vacation-Let’s go! During September, at 10AM, we’re going to take some trips around the world, specifically to the Holy Land, to Ireland, to Guatemala, and then on the last Sunday of this Season, Along Your Road. Your tour guide will be Catherine. We are going to enjoy traveling together and searching for God along the way. You and your family are invited. Come to the front room in the Parish House, prepared to travel. And hopefully, you’ll find some surprises on these journeys that will hopefully bring us closer to God, to the natural world, and to one another. Jesus spent his ministry travelling, and so we’ll go with Him along the Way.
The Third Sunday, Sept 15 we will be in Ireland.
“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” Luke 15:1-10
By the Seventh century, St. Patrick had come to be revered as the patron saint of ireland
St. Patrick was captured from Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. he then entered the church, and returned to Ireland as an ordained priest to minister to the few Christians already living there and to begin to convert the Irish. The year 432 AD is generally accepted as the year of St. Patrick’s arrival in Ireland. Patrick was sent to Ireland by Pope Celestine. He arrived in Wicklow but received a hostile reception there and that he then landed on the shores of Down where he said his first Mass on Irish soil in a barn at Saul.
Instead of attempting to eradicate native irish beliefs he chose to incorporate traditional irish ritual into his Christianity. the creation of the ‘Celtic cross’ is an example of this. he superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto the christian cross to create what is now called a ‘Celtic cross’, to make the symbol more natural to the Irish.
Today, the 35 acre Irish National Heritage Park with it’s sixteen archaeological and historical reconstructions covers 9000 years of Ireland’s history. The Early Christian Monastery in the Heritage Park consists of a Stone Church with a corbelled roof, a Monk’s Cell, a Scriptorium, a Refectory, a Herb Garden, a Celtic High Cross and a Sundial.
6 Key Environmental Issues –
1. Climate Change
2. Deforestation
3. Pollution
4. Water Scarcity
5. Loss of Biodiversity
6. Soil erosion and degredation
We will be reviewing these issues over the weeks in the Season of Creation. Last week was about climate change.
2. DEFORESTATION
Deforestation takes place when “forests are converted to non-forests uses” like agriculture or development. Along with forest degradation (which is linked to activities like logging, when forests are stripped to the point they are no longer able to support nature), deforestation represents the biggest threat to forests around the world. In Brazil, deforestation rates in August hit the highest levels since 2015, when the current monitoring system began.
Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Between 1990 and 2016, the world lost 502,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) of forest, according to the World Bank—an area larger than South Africa. Since humans started cutting down forests, 46 percent of trees have been felled, according to a 2015 study in the journal Nature. About 17 percent of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed over the past 50 years, and losses recently have been on the rise.Tropical tree cover alone can provide 23 percent of the climate mitigation needed over the next decade to meet goals set in the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to one estimate.
Farming, grazing of livestock, mining, and drilling combined account for more than half of all deforestation. Forestry practices, wildfires and, in small part, urbanization account for the rest. In Malaysia and Indonesia, forests are cut down to make way for producing palm oil, which can be found in everything from shampoo to saltines. In the Amazon, cattle ranching and farms—particularly soy plantations—are key culprits.
Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also fell countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forests—which leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl as land is developed for homes.
Deforestation is directly related to climate change. Forests represent a major asset in the fight against climate change and serve as carbon “sinks,” sucking up emissions released by human activities. The main reasons for the warming are the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) and deforestation, which are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation add 10 percent or so to global warming by reducing the quantity of CO2 that the world’s forests pull from the atmosphere
Deforestation is connected to food supplies and wasted food supplies also contributes to greenhouse gases. World Wildlife did a study of food sources in 2018:
“In the near-term, food production is sufficient to provide for all, but it doesn’t reach everyone who needs it. In fact, one-third of the world’s food—1.3 billion tons—is lost or wasted at a cost of $750 billion annually. When we throw away food, we waste the wealth of resources and labor that was used to get it to our plates. In effect, lost and wasted food is behind more than a quarter of all deforestation and nearly a quarter of global water consumption. It generates as much as 10% of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
Deforestation is also related to water supply
Every tree in the forest is a fountain, sucking water out of the ground through its roots and releasing water vapor into the atmosphere through pores in its foliage. In their billions, they create giant rivers of water in the air – rivers that form clouds and create rainfall hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
A growing body of research suggests that this hitherto neglected impact of deforestation could in many continental interiors dwarf the impacts of global climate change. It could dry up the Nile, hobble the Asian monsoon, and desiccate fields from Argentina to the Midwestern United States.
U.S. think tank Forest Climate Analytics and Nancy Harris of the World Resources Institute published a study that concluded that “tropical forest loss is having a larger impact on the climate than has been commonly understood.”They warned that large-scale deforestation in any of the three major tropical forest zones of the world – Africa’s Congo basin, southeast Asia, and especially the Amazon – could disrupt the water cycle sufficiently to “pose a substantial risk to agriculture in key breadbaskets halfway round the world in parts of the U.S., India, and China.”
There is another cost to deforesetation. The United Nations reports that more than 80% of terrestrial species can be found in the planet’s forests, although they only cover about 31% of all land. But up to 100 species could be lost per day due to deforestation that humans haven’t even documented.
Read more about deforestation…
What can you do about deforestation?
The equivalent of 50 soccer fields each minute have fallen every day of the past 13 years
Trees are absolutely vital to life here on Earth, but they are also being destroyed at an alarming rate. So many of the choices we make throughout the day when we’re shopping, eating, or even driving, are powered by deforestation. Trees are cut and burned down for a number of reasons. Forests are logged to supply timber for wood and paper products, and to clear land for crops, cattle, and housing. Other causes of deforestation include mining and oil exploitation, urbanization, acid rain and wildfires
One easy way to combat deforestation is to plant a tree. But you can take it one step further by making sure the choices you make at home, at the store, at work, and on the menu don’t contribute to the problem. Here’s what you can do about deforestation.
1. Plant a tree.
2. Go paperless.
3. Recycle and buy recycled products.
4. Look for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification on wood and wood products.
5. Eat vegetarian meals as often as possible.
You can also watch data collecting efforts on this issue on your mobile phone through Global Forest Watch
Other Climate Change Links
1. Summary Change from the 4th National Climate Change Assessment
This is required to be published every 4 years.
2. How to be green without giving up life’s luxuries?
3. Climate Change and Children’s Health
Lectionary, Sept 15 2019 – Season of Creation 3, Year C
Deuteronomy 11:10-17
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.
We are the managers but as 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.”
Read more about the Lectionary….
Block Print by Mike Newman
Projects
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. 8 – Sept. 15
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8
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Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Søren Kierkegaard, Philosopher, 1855 |
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9
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Constance and her Companions, Martyrs, 1878 |
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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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14
14 |
Holy Cross Day Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr of Carthage, 258 |
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15
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Catherine of Genoa, Mystic and Nurse, 1510 James Chisholm, Priest, 1855 |