The Episcopal Diocese 

of Northern California

Beloved Community

Resource Newsletter

Published by

The Commission for

Intercultural Ministries

December 2024 Special Edition 

Episcopal Church Becoming Beloved Community

In this Special Edition:

• Advent Greetings from the Commission for Intercultural Ministries
• Sacred Ground Password Change
• "I am an American"
• Pure Imagination: World AIDS Day, and How Willie Wonka Taught Me About the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

“Almighty God, give us the grace to cast away the works of darkness

and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility....”

-Collect for Advent, The Book of Common Prayer

The password for the Sacred Ground course materials will be changing on Jan. 13, 2025. Ahead of this date, one organizer/facilitator per circle should complete the registration form for your current circle(s) and any circles that are starting soon. Upon doing so, you will receive the new password, which you may then distribute to your participants and co-facilitator.

Please contact SacredGround@EpiscopalChurch.org with any questions or concerns about this change.

Imagine a nightmare.

What if the government forced you and your family to leave your home to move to some yet unspecified place for an unknown duration?

You have been told that you must take linens, dishes and silverware, clothing, toiletries, and personal effects, but can take no more than what your two arms can carry.

What would you bring?

What if you had less than a week to pack, sell your house or business for a fraction of its value, and settle your affairs?

What if this order applied only to you and people who look like you?

Harvey Itano, a native of Sacramento and University Medalist of the UC Berkeley Class of 1942, included biochemistry texts among his personal effects. He later completed MD and PhD degrees and became the first Japanese American member of the National Academy of Sciences, recognized for his research on sickle cell anemia. Photo: Dorothea Lange/ National Archives and Records Administration.

For over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast in 1942, this nightmare scenario was reality. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast.

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent, and it is also World AIDS Day. What follows below is a long reflection that I delivered on this same Advent Sunday at Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver, BC in 2018. I had just lost my mother to cancer a year earlier and my brother to a fluke accident two months prior, and I was reeling both spiritually and emotionally. Our task in this reflection series was to answer this advent question: "What are you waiting for?" My answer was rooted in the ancient question "where is God in this pain" (or stated another way, "why does God let bad things happen to good people?"). It is a question of theodicy that I was grappling with that winter.

That First Sunday coincided with World AIDS Day, and our task called upon me to reflect back on the horrors of my 20s and 30s to make sense of the pain that a generation experienced and for me, to open my eyes to the presence of God in that suffering. I wrapped it all around a song that I particularly love, one from the first film that my father took me to see, for my 7th birthday in August of 1971.

The Episcopal Diocese of Northern California

The Commission for Intercultural Ministries

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