September 19, 2024 | VOLUME 36, ISSUE 38

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Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 22, 2024

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Jeremiah 11:18-20

Psalm 54

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

Mark 9:30-37

Preacher: The Reverend Jennifer Wagner Pavia

Sat., October 5: Octoberfest Venue (now full) changed to Luther Hall

Sat., October 19, 6:00 - 9:00 PM: A Community Gala (see flyer below; click to register)

Sat., October 26, 6:00 PM: Party of Parties in Luther Hall (see story below; click to RSVP)

Bible and Breakfast

Tuesdays | 9:30 AM

Luther Hall & Zoom

Midweek Eucharist:

Wednesdays | 7:00 PM

Sanctuary

Adult Forum: Season of Creation

Wednesdays | 8:00 PM

Luther Hall & Zoom

PARTY of PARTIES

Saturday, October 26, at 6:00 PM, in Luther Hall

The Sisters of Bede would like to remind everyone to put on your calendars the date of our Party of Parties: Sat. Oct. 26 in Luther Hall at 6pm. Everyone is welcome to attend the party where we will hear about the events planned for the 2024-25 series and have the opportunity to sign up for our favorites. Feel free to invite a friend to join you. Click HERE to RSVP for the Party of Parties.

HOST a SISTERS OF BEDE VENUE

Hosting or attending these events is a really fun way to get to know our fellow parishioners! It is not too late if you are still considering hosting or co-hosting an event. There are paper fliers on the Narthex to be completed by hand. Or you can click HERE to Host a Venue. The deadline for submitting your event has been extended to Sunday, Sept. 29.

Come join us for this fabulous event. Click HERE to register.

WHAT are the Ballona Wetlands?

WHY are they important?

WHEN did they become endangered?

WHERE are they?

WHO depends on them?

HOW do we protect them?

Adult Forum

Season of Creation

This is a moral and spiritual climate crisis demanding a gospel response

September 4-October 2

Wednesdays 8pm

(in person and via zoom)

Following the mid-week 7pm service (in person only)

Click here to join via zoom

Monday, Sept. 9, was “Buy Your Priest a Beer Day," but our resident homebrewer Carl Townsend likes to step things up a notch. Noting the annual date follows on the heels of Rev. Jennifer’s birthday, he presented her with not one, but four bottles of homebrewed beer.  Three of the four beers were crafted with homegrown hops from Carl’s garden. The fourth was crafted as a low-gluten Oktoberfest beer. Interested in what they taste like? Most of these will make an appearance at the Oktoberfest Sisters of Bede venue on Oct. 5 hosted by Rea Crane.  Prost!

By Melora Sundt

Bring out your (gently) used books!

The St Bede’s Book Cart, located at the north end of Luther Hall, is alive and well! It’s attracting so many readers that we are in need of gently used fiction, particularly mysteries and thrillers.  

How does it work? Donated books are lovingly curated by Kathy Russell and Melora Sundt, and rotated onto the shelves. Recently donated books receive a colored sticker, coded to the month in which we acquired the book. Any book remaining after 4 months is pulled off the shelves and donated elsewhere, making room for new books. We review and refresh the cart on the first Sunday of each month. 

Mysteries and thrillers are particularly popular, so please check your own bookshelves, and bring your oldies-but-goodies to St. Bede’s. You can leave them on top of the cart or give them to Kathy or Melora when you see us. Please donate only books in good condition and perhaps route those outdated textbooks, old health books, and the dusty, battered volumes to other worthy charities. 

As always, there are no prices on the books in the book cart, but we’d appreciate your leaving a donation in the baskets on the cart if you decide to claim something new to read. All proceeds go to the scholarships for NYA.  

Thank you!

Visit the St. Bede's website and at the top of every page, look for the "Donate" button. When you click on the "Donate" button, you will be transported to St. Bede's Vanco eGiving and Payment Process Site.

Vanco is an industry leader in online payments. More than 40,000 churches, faith-based groups, nonprofits, schools, and educational organizations trust Vanco to securely complete transactions every day. Vanco complies with PCI Level 1 standards, the highest security standard in the payment processing industry.

You are invited to set up one-time or recurring gifts using credit, debit, or bank transfer on Vanco's secure payment processing platform. Giving online through the Vanco site saves time and the hassle of remembering to bring your offering. In addition, you decrease the expense incurred by St. Bede’s from handling and processing checks and cash.

A live video link allowed members of seven Virginia churches to see and hear from teachers and students at St. Marc’s School in Cerca-la-Source, Haiti, like these pictured during a visit before 2020. The churches provide the school with needed support. Photo: Virginia Haiti Collaborative

Live-video link unites Virginia churches with a Haiti school they support but haven’t visited in four years

By Melodie Woerman

COVID-pandemic restrictions that began in early 2020 and worsening political unrest and violence in Haiti have made it impossible for members of seven churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia to see the faces and hear the stories of the students and teachers of their partner school in Cerca-la-Source.

That changed at 9:15 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday morning, Sept. 15, when everyone was connected by Zoom.

St. Marc’s School and the connected St. Mark’s Church are in a rural community near the border with the Dominican Republic.

“Members of the 7:30 a.m. congregation waited, and they had some teachers and students there to thank us for what we’ve been able to do together in the past,” the Rev. Roger Bowen told Episcopal News Service. Bowen is one of the organizers Virginia Haiti Collaborative, which ties the U.S. and Haiti churches together. The starting time allowed some of the Virginia partner churches to stream the virtual gathering into their adult forums.

English and Creole interpreters were on the call, Bowen said, which made it easier for some of the school’s 300 students to tell Virginia Episcopalians what they liked best about school, and for teachers to describe their ongoing needs. They also received greetings and an update from the Rev. Schneyder Couloute, the school’s administrator and the church’s priest.

“Being able to see each other face to face was so powerful,” Bowen said.

READ MORE HERE

“We are your neighbors,” from left Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, Jewish Theological Seminary; Sandra Montes, Union Theological Seminary; Abigail Asgaralli, Union Theological Seminary; Ian Rottenberg, Columbia University Office of Religious Life; the Rev. Chloe Breyer, Interfaith Center of New York; and, Henry Goldschmidt, Interfaith Center of New York Photo: Interfaith Center of New York

New York’s Interfaith Center hosts service of music, conversation for Columbia students and seminarians

By Caleb Galaraga

The final weeks of the spring semester at Columbia University were disrupted by Pro-Palestinian protests and tense negotiations between university administrators and student leaders. The clashes, which involved law enforcement clearing an on-campus encampment, caused the university to cancel its main graduation ceremony.

The crisis divided the Columbia community and eventually led to the August resignation of President Minouche Shafik.

To begin the 2024-25 academic year and welcome back students and seminarians, leaders from the religious and academic institutions in Columbia’s Morningside Heights neighborhood, which includes the Jewish Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary, decided to host an hourlong, agenda-free event, aimed at highlighting the community’s beautiful and diverse faith traditions.

Over 100 people attended the Sept. 16 interfaith service held at the Interchurch Center, aka, “the God Box.” It was a “chance for people to get to know each other, listen to music and break down the animosity that existed at the end of last [school] year,” the Rev. Chloe Breyer, an Episcopal priest and executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, told Episcopal News Service. It was organized “in the hopes that this year, we can set off on a little bit firmer footing.”

“There isn’t an agenda besides sacred music from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, halal and kosher food,” she added.

READ MORE HERE

View the latest edition of Episcopal News Service

Panelists for the “Losing Truth” forums are: Jill Castellano, Consumer Affairs data reporter; Paul Daniels, dean and president of Bloy House; Farrah Fazal, documentary producer and war correspondent; Andrew Guilford, retired U.S. district judge; and Lance Larson, cyber investigator.

Vet your sources, pop your news bubble, support good local journalism, panelists tell participants in first ‘Losing Truth’ online forum

By Pat McCaughan 

Bishop John Harvey Taylor opened “Losing Truth: The Critical Cost to Our Lives and Future,” the Sept. 15 online forum, with his confession of how easily he, even as a former journalist and sophisticated news reader, recently was misled by misinformation.

“Remember last week when Tom Brady debuted as a commentator on Fox Sports, helping call the Cowboys-Browns game?” he asked the gathering of about 40. “I’m not much of a football fan, but it’s hard not to follow the career of Tom Brady, and the next day I saw a seemingly reliable commentary saying he’d done a terrible job, and I was inclined to believe it. Why not? But then I checked the online publication The Athletic and learned that, although he started off rocky, as people usually don their first day at work, by the end of the game, he found his voice.



“Turns out, many people were upset. The popular analyst, Greg Olsen, had been demoted to make room for the superstar. I didn’t know enough to be aware of people’s agenda and hurt feelings, and I believed a seeming credible report on face value.”

Confirmation bias, or the human tendency to look for information sources meeting particular needs; tribalism and the need for deeper personal connection; fluidity of truth and the need for contextualization of media and wider media diets, hate speech and abuse of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, were among the topics discussed during the forum facilitated by Dot Leach, a former broadcast journalist and chair of the diocesan Program Group on Ecumenical and Interreligious Life.

“Recently, we’ve seen truth manipulated with misinformation, disinformation, malinformation and just plain old lies,” said Leach, a lay leader at St. John Chrysostom Church in Rancho Santa Margarita and moderator of the program, a two-part forum at 2 p.m. both Sept. 15 and 22. A link to view the first forum will be posted soon. To register for the Sept. 22 discussion, click here.

READ MORE HERE

New grant helps Seeds of Hope expand services with rent assistance, additional food

By Mostyn Trudinger-Smith

Seeds of Hope, the food justice ministry of the Diocese of Los Angeles, recently received a $25,000 grant from United Way that will allow it to expand its services, offering clients rent assistance and additional food support at its produce distribution events.

With the new funding, Seeds of Hope will be able to offer clients staple foods, such as beans, rice, eggs, milk, and meat, in addition to produce, and provide rent assistance to eligible clients. The grant money comes from the U.S. government’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program, of which United Way is a partner agency.

“It’s also to serve meals,” said Steven Trapasso, executive director of Seeds of Hope. “I wrote this grant [proposal] with Thanksgiving in mind. Every year we have a Thanksgiving at the diocese. It’s always huge, 1000 people or more, and we can buy everything for that [with the grant].”

Trapasso said that the rent assistance will focus on clients who don’t have quite enough money to get by. Giving clients even a little bit of money when they really need it can prevent a downward spiral of housing insecurity, he said.

READ MORE HERE

View the latest edition of Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles News