EfM Graduation

Two students have completed the four year "Education for Ministry program and will be recognized for their accomplishment on Sunday.

 

Red Bags

Our Outreach Red Bags will be received and blessed on Sunday. This drive, to provide feminine products for women in our community in need is in partnership with Women and Friends Making a Difference

(WFMAD). Members of WFMAD will worship with us and share in the blessing of these gifts.

Movie Night

Our next feature (6 p.m. on Sunday June 2nd) will be "Paradise Road". (Thanks to Phil Jackman for recommending the movie and providing the DVD). This 1997 movie is about a group of women imprisoned on the island of Sumatra by the Japanese duringWorld War II. Among others, it stars Glenn Close, Frances McDormand and a young Cate Blanchett. It's excellent! No trailer is attached; because they give away too much. Just come and enjoy it more thoroughly.

     Bring your own snack if you wish to (quietly) dine during the movie. Coffee and hot water (for tea) will be provided.

 

Prayer Bead Workshop

On Tuesday, June 4th we are offering a protestant prayer bead workshop at the Parish House from 10 - noon.  We will make prayer beads and also share some prayers for using the prayer beads.  The use of prayer beads helps to bring us into contemplative or meditative prayer.  This is a continuation of our "Way of Love" practices.  Please RSVP to Karen Steinke 920-495-2133 [email protected] or Carmen Ferguson 815 777 2309 [email protected] so we will bring enough materials for everyone.  There is no fee, but donations will be gladly accepted and feel free to bring snacks to share.

 

Canapés & Conversations

This month's event will be held at the Apple River Fort State Historic site in Elizabeth by Don & Crystal Mason on Friday, June 21st from 5-7 pm. Please bring a guest, a beverage and a nibble to share. All are welcome!

Reverence--Part 3(!)

I did not expect this to become a series! But, happily, it has resulted in a number of responses to the request for thoughts about reverence, specifically in terms of Sunday morning worship at Grace. Though not statistically significant, it is more input than has been received previously! A few more came in this past week in addition to the six reported last week:

1) Here's my slow-but-sure response to your question in the recent Rector's Ramblings.  When I first read it, I was sitting in the garden so "treating the earth with reverence as God's own creation" came to mind.  Then on Sunday, my ears perked up when you gave the option of "sitting reverently in the pew while others received" communion.  Just now as I finally get around to responding, the thought popped into my head that the Wednesday people tend to be more reverent than the Sunday people.  We save our chatting and catching up for breakfast.
      Pondering these three thoughts, it seems that "reverence" includes respect, care for the time and place, concern for each other.  On Sunday, we have greeters whose role is to welcome people. Can they be friendly and welcoming while also showing reverence or care for the time and place?  That I think is the challenge.
      So my thoughts echo much of your ramblings,

2)  I experience reverence in general in so many ways and places, the beauty of creation as I sit on my special log on the river path, or in the garden, during centering prayer, reading psalms in the small conference room with sunlight filtering through stained glass. In church I often experience a thrill of anticipation as I enter a nearly empty holy space, in the voices of young children and infants, in singing an especially moving anthem, or in being lifted out of the world's humdrum by Robin's skillful rendition of the prelude. For me this is the beginning of the full reverence, and quiet is mandatory at this point!

3) To my mind, "reverence"  means taking seriously, but not necessarily solemnly, all that is happening during  a Sunday morning at Grace.  Coming from a fairly boisterous suburban congregation, I don't especially find the movement, chatting and so forth that precede the service bothersome or irreverent.  It CAN be taken to that extreme, but I don't find that to be the usual case at Grace.  Sunday is our day for corporate worship, all of us doing basically the same thing at the same time as a group.  I'm not sure it's realistic to expect in a corporate setting the level of quiet or stillness that many of us want/need for private prayer and contemplation. To me, the lack of such quiet on a Sunday morning certainly does not equate to irreverence.  I personally enjoy the camaraderie of Sunday worship as a group exercise in reverence of an outgoing sort.

And one more, from a friend of Grace whose worship community is in the northwest suburbs of Chicago:

4) Does not reverence emerge first and foremost as an overwhelming responsiveness from within the worshiping individual? If that reverence becomes attached to the items within the house of worship, does that not inch toward idolatry? I can't help but think of the word "namaste"-I honor the spirit  in you  which is also in me. We come to worship God our Creator in awe as a community and is not that Holy Spirit nourished within each of us during communal worship? Quietness once seated does help develop a centeredness for worship, but so does a warm, honestly expressed word of greeting at the open doors.The energy of organ music or even canned music can open us up to a reverential responsiveness and openness. For me, the intentionality of personal openness and vulnerability to the power of the Holy Spirit can fill me with awe and reverence. For us wide variety of worshipers, it may be the strong visuals of stained glass window messaging, it may be the smells of flowers or incense, it may be the liturgy flow itself in toto, it may be the taste of the Eucharist, the soft glow of candles, the  sounds of music awakening our aural sense, a choral selection that reaches the heart, a powerful sermon... we all bring such different perceptions and awarenesses on any given day of worship, reverence can be nurtured in different ways, by different things, at different moments, for various degrees of time. This is not to mean that  reverence can be anything at any time. Not so.
      Your Rector Ramblings help me grow. Thank you.

And my thanks to all who replied. It has given me much food for thought.

See you in church for the rest of the 50 days of Easter,

We celebrate Christ's Ascension (transferred from May 30).

A traditional "power over" view of the Ascension  is all too common, and all too destructive in our world. We begin to frame faith in the language of conquest, and we begin to view Jesus' lordship as some sort of military victory. This image of Christ goes against the Jesus of the Gospels, and the message he proclaimed. What our world needs rather is a new way of viewing power: not as "power over" (dominion) nor as "power under" (manipulation), but as "power with" - shared, collaborative, dialogic and relational. When we view the ascension as an extension of Christ's death and resurrection (which it has to be), then we recognise God's purpose of bringing all things into relationship with Godself and with each other, and of making all things one - consciously filled with the Presence of God. This intimate union of creation and Creator is an immense gift of grace. But, it is also the dream to which we are called to aspire as we follow Christ. Christ's Ascension, then, is not a call to an exclusive Christian exceptionalism based on a dominant Divine Monarch. Rather, it is a call to an inclusive, relational stance of humility and hospitality to all people, all creators and all the different parts of our planet, based on the welcoming, all-inclusive hospitality of God. The power that is proclaimed in this vision is that of self-giving love - the power to connect, to know and be known, to love and be loved, and to find abundant life together. This is a power that the world desperately needs to learn.

The thumbnails and reflections excerpted from sacredise.com