What are you doing on April 29?

Holy Week Adventures

Here are our schedules for Holy Week. We will reflect on them over the week and blog about our experiences

Amity
Monday- Crosswalk Cathedral, Daley Plaza, Old St. Pat’s, Stroger Hospital 5:30pm
Tuesday- 7 Last Words St. James Cathedral, 7:00pm
Wednesday- Tenebrae at Church of Our Saviour, 6:15pm 
Friday- Good Friday Service in Detroit
Saturday- Easter Vigil All Saints, 8:00pm

Graham
Monday- Crosswalk Cathedral, Daley Plaza, Old St. Pat’s, Stroger Hospital 5:30pm
Wednesday- Tenebrae at Church of Our Saviour, 6:15pm
Thursday- Maundy Thursday Atonement, 7:00pm
Friday- Good Friday Atonement, 7:00pm
Saturday- Easter Vigil  Atonement, 8:00pm

Jess
Monday- Crosswalk Cathedral, Daley Plaza, Old St. Pat’s, Stroger Hospital 5:30pm
Tuesday- Healing Service, All Saints, 7:00pm
Wednesday- Tenebrae at Church of Our Saviour, 6:15pm 
Thursday- Maundy Thursday, St. John’s Chicago, 7:30pm
Friday- Either All Saints or St. Marks Evanston
Saturday- Easter Vigil Atonement, 8:00pm

Rebecca
Monday- Crosswalk Cathedral, Daley Plaza, Old St. Pat’s, Stroger Hospital 5:30pm
Wednesday- Tenebrae at Church of Our Saviour, 6:15pm 
Thursday- Maundy Thursday, St. John’s Chicago, 7:30pm
Friday- Church of Our Saviour, 8:00am
Saturday- Easter Vigil Atonement, 8:00pm

For more information on the churches we’re visiting, check out their websites:

Cathedral- www.saintjamescathedral.org
All Saints- www.allsaintschicago.org
St. John’s Chicago- http://www.stjohnschicago.com
Atonement- http://www.churchoftheatonement.org
Church of Our Saviour- http://www.coschurch.org

Christ has no body on earth but yours,
No hands but yours,
No feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which compassion is to look out to the world;
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.
-Teresa of Avila

Week 2: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

Blessed are those who mourn: for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4).

It seems in our most trying times, we reach out for God. If we are sick, or a family member is in the hospital, people gather in prayer or support each other by making meals, watching kids, visiting the hospital, etc. Comunities come together when people are mourning.

What would it mean to not pray for the victim? What would it mean to pray for the offender? About 13 years ago on Halloween, my sister was beat up by a drunk 18 year old man and thrown into a mailbox, she was 16. When my parents called me to come home and told me what had happened, I just prayed for my sister hoping she was alright. The thought never came across my mind to pray for the man who had done this to her. Infact, I probably had every other thought about him besides that.  

It is easier to pray for someone you care about than to pray for someone who has negetivly affected you or someone you love. I thought about what it would be like to pray for Fred Phelps, (westboro baptist church). This man has caused so much pain to the GLBT Community since 1991. It makes me angry even thinking about praying for him. Does that make me a bad person? He also helped out with the Civil Rights movement….Equality for some?

“God promises to comfort those who mourn for others and for their own sin. In what ways has God shown comfort to you or someone you know?” -ke

I guess my experiment this week is to pray for others and their own sin and to help them find God. Maybe it will help turn my heart of anger for some. Join me this week as I pray for those who have hurt many.

Praying for the FBI 10 Most Wanted:

Today, I ask your prayers for:

EDUARDO RAVELO

Engaging in the Affairs of an Enterprise, Through a Pattern of Racketeering Activities; Conspiracy to Conduct the Affairs of an Enterprise, Through a Pattern of Racketeering Activities; Conspiracy to Launder Monetary Instruments… more →

Eduardo Ravelo was indicted in Texas in 2008 for his involvement in racketeering activities, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, and conspiracy to possess heroin, cocaine and marijuana with the intent to distribute. His alleged criminal activities began in 2003. Ravelo is known to be a Captain (Capo) within the Barrio Azteca criminal enterprise and is allegedly responsible for issuing orders to the Barrio Azteca members residing in Juarez, Mexico. Allegedly, Ravelo and the Barrio Azteca members act as “hitmen” for the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Drug Trafficking Organization and are responsible for numerous murders. Ravelo has ties to Mexico and El Paso, Texas. He may have had plastic surgery and altered his fingerprints.

For more information, http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten

AND FOR

 

 Fred Phelps

AKAFrederick Waldron Phelps, Sr.

Born: 13-Nov–1929
Birthplace: Meridian, MS

Gender: Male
Religion: Baptist
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Activist, Religion
Party Affiliation: Democratic [1]

Nationality: United States
Executive summary:Convinced that God hates fags

Fred Phelps is a self-described “Primitive Baptist” preacher fixated on the few Biblical passages that mention homosexuality. He is the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, where he preaches that “God hates fags”, and that the Biblical punishment for homosexuality is death, followed by eternal damnation to hell. His church is largely populated by the Phelps family, and they are best known for their demonstrations — holding garish placards writ with vulgar stick-figure slogans and singing upside-down hymns reworked to fit Phelps’ message. The group publicly celebrates God’s wrath after tragedies and natural disasters, and since September 11they have regularly picketed the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq.

Phelps was ordained a minister at 17, as Southern Baptists did not require ministers to be graduates of any seminary. Rev. Phelps and Westboro Baptist, however, are no longer affiliated with the Southern Baptist Church. He first made national news in 1951 when, attending John Muir College in California, he led a campus campaign against “promiscuous petting, evil language, profanity, cheating, teachers’ filthy jokes in classrooms and pandering to the lusts of the flesh”. He began leading anti-gay protests in 1991, and reached his pinnacle of fame when he and his followers demonstrated at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, carrying signs announcing that Shepard was already burning in hell. At Phelps’ website, “godhatesfags.com”, he provides a daily counter of the number of days Shepard has been burning in hell.

 

 

 

 

-Jess

The floor…is hard

The challenge that I have decided to do this week was to sleep on the floor, and also to take cold showers.  Let me tell you, it has been a sleep deprived and overall cold week.  The problem with Taking cold showers is that its January, in Chicago. And while the weather up until a couple of days ago has been very mild, the cold water is still quite frigid.

Cold showers are really no big deal compared to sleeping on the floor though. I mean with a cold shower you just get in, wash as quick as you can, and then get out, sleeping on the floor is ideally an 8 hour experience.  I’ve slept on the floor before at youth events, and I’ve gone camping and slept on the ground before.  It just seems so much more difficult to do when you are sleeping on the floor directly next to your big soft comfortable bed.

The first night (that would have been Tuesday) was the worst.  It was just a sleeping bag, and pillows on the floor, and my hardwood floor is just that. Hard. And I sleep on my side, which creates a lot of pressure on my hip, and well it’s just uncomfortable. I tried sleeping on my stomach, and that didn’t work. Basically I kept waking up every 30-45 minutes, and then had a hard time falling back asleep. When I finally work up for the day, an hour before I had planned on waking up. I started to rethink how I could make this more comfortable, so I decided I would allow myself the materials a homeless person might have, and that I would have to get creative. By the end of this week, I may just have built a fort in my room.

The second night, I decided I would add some cardboard boxes thinking that if I put them under the sleeping bag it would soften it a little bit…I was wrong. it was just as bad, if not more so. I tried to sleep on my back, but I just couldn’t. I ended up waking up at about 5 am for the ninth time, and spent half an hour trying to fall back asleep, and I finally decided to sleep the last hour in my bed.  Finally I put a couple blankets down under the sleeping bag last night, and that was much better, still very uncomfortable, but bearable.

I will say that overall it has been a very interesting experience sleeping on the floor.  As I said, it is something that I’ve done many times, but when doing it, I’ve never really thought about those who sleep on the ground daily  because there isn’t another option. Eye opening, that is for sure.

-Graham

What are you doing this Sunday?

The Kingdom is Backwards

For his birthday Graham received a book from is mom called The Kingdom Experiment.   When you first open what appears to be the front cover of the book, there is a page that says, “The Kingdom is Backwards” . Turn one more page and you realize that are in fact holding the book upside down, and backwards…clever right?  The book is intended to be a community practice on intentional living. What a thoughtful birthday present.

The premise of the book is simple, while living it out may not be so simple. It is based on the beatitudes, and there is one section for each beatitude, and within each section there are 8 separate experiments; each one  relevant to its particular beatitude.  The idea is to, as a community, do the different experiments, sometimes as a group, and sometimes individually, and then to write about it, and discuss it with the group.  So, That is what our community has decided to do during the season of Epiphany (and slightly into lent).  Each week we will cover a new section and talk about it, and then as a community we will do one of the experiments together, and then individually we will choose another one of them to do, and then to write about, and then discuss with the community. We have taken the liberty of modifying some of the experiments for location, and seasonality purposes. For instance, one of them says to secretly mow your neighbor’s lawn, but since we live in Chicago, our neighbors don’t have lawns to mow, and since it is January, it isn’t even mowing season.  So we changed mow, to shovel the sidewalk, assuming the temperature drops here, and we ever get any snow.

All that being said, what we would like you to do, is to do this “experiment” with us.  If that means you buy the book and do it with your own particular community, then that’s cool.  If you don’t want to buy the book, and just want to read what we do, and then do some of the experiments on your own, then that’s cool too. A big part of all of this though is discussing it, so please feel free to share with us, what you have done, and any particular thoughts you have on it.  We will be updating this blog as individuals and as a community, so feel free to comment on anything that you think is relevant.

Just a little preview for the upcoming weeks experiments:

Shut your pie hole: fast from food as a means of making yourself aware of its physical and emotional ownership of you. Consider how important it is, then reflect on Christ’s implication that life is more important than food. Consider doing this as a group, then break your fast with a community meal.

Ten items or less more:  Not everyone has the luxury of choosing between fettuccine alfredo and chicken parmesan. Go grocery shopping, then donate everything to the local food pantry. And don’t just camp out in the canned food aisle.

I ain’t no Lance: Take your bike out. For an errand which you would normally use your car, use the bike. consider how your life would have to change if this were your only means of transportation. how long would you have to plan for a trip to the grocery store? How far away from home would you be able to work? What if you could only walk?

“I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?” – Mother Teresa

Merry Christmas

Hungry?

Nativity Scene Flash Mob Anyone?

I’m forwarding this message from a forwarded message:

Yup. That’s what I’d love to see as an Episcopal Church Advertizing
Campaign this winter. Churches all over the country gathering groups to do
Nativity Scene Flash Mobs.

Youth groups, men’s groups, kids, ECWs, church staff–whomever! could do
this. It could be as few as 2 people (Joseph, Mary, and doll baby Jesus)
to a dozen or more.
Costumes could be traditional, cheezy, or modern–all carried in a shopping
bag by each actor.

They could gather, dress, and then stay still for 3-5 minutes, and before
they break just say, “Your local Episcopal Church welcomes you to spend
Christmas Eve with us.”

Groups could do it whenever and wherever it fit into their schedule.
People would start talking and wondering where they would pop up next.

It would be awesome!!!

peace
helen+

 Oddly enough, I have partaken in something like this back in 2007 in Louisiana… I think I’m portraying Mary? I think I see Rebecca too… 😉

 

Anyone up for an adventure this Advent?