Folks,
The lessons this Sunday include the follow-on passage from I Kings, which includes Elijah anointing Hazael as King of Syria in order to bring down the worship of Baal that Jezebel and Ahab had instituted among the Jews, and then passing his mantle to Elisha, and a gospel lesson with some very odd things in it, including a seeming complaint by Jesus that he had no place to stay. But Jesus also rebukes a couple of people who say they want to follow him but want to handle some important family matters first, including the burial of one's father and another seeks a delay s he can say farewell to his family. Note that there is something of a parallel to the gospel lesson in that from I Kings: both "prophets" (Jesus and Elijah) expect their followers to assign immediate top importance to the prophetic mission. While Jesus's words to those who would delay seem unusually harsh, they need to be taken with the understanding of Jesus's entire ministry, being mindful that he was headed for Jerusalem and certain death. Nevertheless I prefer the way Elijah handled the suggested delay - and indeed told Elisha to "go back again". Elisha then made a feast for the people of the "twelve yoke of oxen he had been following" (sounds like a LOT of food!) after which he went to follow Elijah. All the foregoing notwithstanding, the lesson that shines for me this weekend is from Paul's letter to the Galatians, a paean to living "by the Spirit" (and note that Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is indeed a person, in that this Spirit lives in each of us. And on the heels of the Juneteenth celebration last weekend, Paul's words about slavery make clear that slavery exists in many forms, and is a potential problem for all of us. While some are indeed slave to the sins of the body, eg with addictions (to alcohol, drugs, etc - Paul goes on to list many), none of us should feel complacent, as one can also fall into slavery in community relationships like jealousy, dissension, anger, etc - these are also forms of slavery that block us from being truly in touch with God's Spirit. May we all then seek the path of the Spirit, both in the ways of the body and in the ways of family and community relationships! Our love to all, Bart (and Tony!) and for all of us at St Matts! Events Folks, though we are travelling this weekend and so will not be at our beloved St Matts, we encourage all to seek services and community in the parishes near you, and with some farther away. And as we mentioned, we'd like to highlight one or more special events beyond the "regular services" offered by those parishes, even though, as with family, the "regular" events are likely the most important. Thus today, we are glad to mention that St Benedicts Church in Los Osos will be having "Messy Church" tomorrow night (Feb 24) at 5:30pm, a community building event.. In Rector Caro Hall's words " Messy Church is a fun event for all ages, with crafts, song, stories and food." Also from St Barnabas Church in Arroyo Grande (and from the Diocese) we hear of Episcopal Church Women’s Annual Mary Lou Thompson Retreat August 19-21, 2022 St Francis Retreat Center 549 Mission Vineyard Rd. San Juan Bautista, CA. The title of the presentation of this year’s retreat is: “Reconciliation and Creating Community” How have these past few Covid years yielded moments of reconciliation? What or whom are we reconciled with? How have recent current events stirred you to consider the necessity of reconciliation? What would it take to change our attitudes regarding our fellow humans in these days of war in Eastern Europe and children all over the world being randomly assaulted? How can we come into community with a sense of belonging and trust? Can we create such a community in our churches, homes, communities? Join the Episcopal church women and Rev. Mary Lou McKinney, our retreat leader this year, for a time of reflection, conversation, and prayer to address some of these topics so pertinent to our lives right now. This year’s retreat is extended to three days for added rest and rejuvenation. You can arrive on August 19 any time after 2:00 PM. The retreat program begins at 4:00 PM with refreshments and social time. It ends on August 21 at 1:00 PM. The cost for this two day retreat, which includes overnight accommodations for two nights and 6 meals is: * $195.00 per night for a private room ($390.00 for the weekend) * $155.00 per person for a shared room ($310.00 for the weekend) * $75.00 per day for Commuter. Meals provided. ($150.00 for the weekend if you attend all days.) Partial scholarships are available. Please register by August 5, 2022. To receive a registration form please contact our St. Barnabas church office.
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Folks,
The lessons for this Sunday include from I Kings, the story of Jezebel, who apparently tried to institute worship of Baal, along with her husband King Ahab and the prophet Elijah, along with Paul's letter to the Galatians noting that we are all siblings in Christ, and none of the typical divisions apply ("There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.").Note that the inclusion of slavery in that list ies especially appropriate as this Sunday is also Juneteenth, celebrating the end of slavery in the US. The gospel lesson from Luke tells the story of Jesus ordering demons out of a man possessed and into a herd of pigs who then drowned themselves - good for the man who became a follower, but for the pigs not so much. But with several choices of Psalms appointed it is hard not to notice the amazing amount of poetry in the Bible (with some of it being in the content of the books- think Isaiah). While preparing for this Sunday, Tony(!), who usually leads our Evening Prayer service, called this out: "One deep calls to another in the noise of your cataracts" Lines like this, replete with metaphors, stir the spiritual in each of us (and when as so often set to music, they can get us singing, even those of us without "choir=quality" voices. Yet this line is from Psalm 42, a psalm which sounds more like complaints, yet also containing that return to trust in God, for whom the psalmist longs. The alternate Psalm 43 ALSO contains complaint and return to faith. To me it seems a remarkably common part of human INTERNAL experience, as we all go thru difficult times and make complaint, sometimes poetically. A suggestion of the origin of the word (wiki) tells us that it is from the Greek word "poeisis" which means making. Thus the line Tony(!) picked up on, using metaphoric symbolism, is a way of making different and spiritual reality from the ordinary understanding of reality, where there os no discussion between the caves. Such language can move our spirits. Seems to me a wonderful thing that such a poetic line is preceded by the passage from I Kings (a passage where Elijah heads for Syria by way of the Damascene desert for safe passage according to commentaries) in which God is neither wind, earthquake or fire, but rather seems to be present in the "sheer silence" experienced by Elijah following those three. Elijah goes on to Syria and appoints Hazael king, knowing well that he will be the scourge of the people of Israel for their following of "false gods". Finally, it seems to me that it is up to each of us to choose our god(s) and we would commend a choice based on a loving spirit, and then express that spirit poetically as well as practically! Our love to all, Bart (and Tony!) and for all of us at St Matts! Events As always, we encourage all to check out the websites of local parishes for events, as well as those of the Deanery (www.sloepiscopalians.org) and our Diocese of El Camino Real. Note that in addition to Juneteenth, this weekend we celebrate fathers day. This has always been important to me with my memories of my own wonderful Dad. Thus at St Matts in San Ardo, where we will be having Evening Prayer this Sunday, we celebrate Raphael Barrios and Fred Golin in particular - both have contributed a great deal to St Matts and the San Ardo community. St Lukes in Jolon will be meeting with St Marks, King City for Eucharist at 10am. And they tell us the good news for community building that St Lukes Vespers Supper Club returns! This re-inaugural event, the first since the Covid pandemic began, begins at 6pm on Thurs, Jun 23, with a simple service of Vespers followed by pot-luck super in the Guild Hall. In another return to pre-Covid tradition, St Barnabas Church in Arroyo Grande will be gathering for Dinner Night Out Thurs Jun 30 at the Branch Street Deli to hear from a speaker of the Jewish tradition at 6pm. The Congregation will also be building pergola on their beautiful campus overlooking central Arroyo Grande. And the congregation will host a One-Woman-Show with violinist Brynn Albanese Sunday, July 3rd at 3pm. In celebration of Fathers Day along with Pride Sunday, Good Shepherd Church in Salinas will be having their annual Brusa's BBQ, a Swiss chicken fundraiser this Sunday. And our friends Gordon Fuglie and Nora Gaisi will lead a group that is committed to spiritual growth in community at St James Church in Paso Robles who will be reading and discussing a book, The Deeply Formed Life, by Rich Villodas. This seems a great way to further spiritual growth! An Event to be Proud Of Last week we mentioned that we would be at the AIDs LifeCycle ride with a small group from the SLO Deanery, offering refreshment to the riders for this worthy cause. Our friend Patricia Woodfill then replied with this rather beatiful description of that congregation's welcome out at St Lukes Church in Jolon: "We also donate to the AidsLifeCycle ride. Our neighbor David used to ride and now another friend is riding this year. SuRay and I make banana bread and serve Sue's Lavender Lemonade at St Luke's. The riders can go into the church and light a candle and many join in the singing as one rider knows how to play the antique organ! So many amazing people stop in. It's beautiful!" We hope you will join us in being proud of the group at St Lukes! Folks,
The lessons for this coming Sunday are nothing short of amazing. The Old Testament from Proverbs presents Wisdom as a woman speaking to us (funny how often wisdom is female!), while in his letter to the Romans Paul presents an interesting logical progression to hope. But it is this Sunday's gospel lesson that really caught my attention, with some of Jesus' parting words, telling us that the Spirit of Truth will come to guide us into all the truth. This passage from John's gospel brings me back to our Centering Prayer practice (I suspect most of you know how keen Tony(!) and I are on CP). The passage makes clear why people of faith need not fear death, as they will have a great future in spirit, with full knowledge of things to come thereby giving us all that Jesus has as "Son of God". That's why Paul last Sunday referred to us as "joint-heirs" with Christ. The wonderful thing about Centering Prayer is that in those contemplative moments we can catch glimpses here and now of that great future and our oneness with God in the Spirit of Truth. May we all sense that oneness with the Lord that brings us all together! Our love to all, Bart (and Tony!) And for all of us at St Matts! Events Because we will be travelling we don't have time to list events, but as always we encourage folks to go to the many parish websites, our diocesan websites and our own SLO Deanery website (with calendar and parish pages). want to mention that St Matts in San Ardo will be meeting for Evening Prayer at 3:30 pm. We also want to mention that we had a great time with the AIDS Lifecycle riders in San Miguel (as we mentioned in the PS) with friends including Dcn Susan Arnold of St Barnabas Church in Arroyo Grande. We also wanted to offer the following beautiful description of the Life Cycle greeting event as the riders went past our fellow mission St Lukes Carpenter's Gothic Church in Jolon (and thanks to Patricia Woodfill!): "We also donate to the AidsLifeCycle ride. Our neighbor used to ride and now another friend is riding this year. (We) make banana bread and serve Sue's Lavender Lemonade at St Luke's. The riders can go into the church and light a candle and many join in the singing as one rider knows how to play the antique organ! So many amazing people stop in. It's beautiful!" Folks,
In my haste I forgot to mention an important event item that is very much in keeping with the notion of a reasonable Pride from our friend Rev Rob Keim of St Barnabas Church in Arroyo Grande: "Aids Life Cycle is a non-profit organization that supports the San Francisco Aids Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. They raise funds through their yearly bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles every June. The ride comes through San Luis Obispo County starting in San Miguel. For the past 5 years I have been supporting this through monetary donation and by presence. On the day they come into the county I set up a “booth” at the north end of Mission Street and greet the riders as they round the curve on to Mission Street." The date for the booth this year is Tuesday June 7th from 8:30am to 3pm. The booth will offer refreshment and a "high-five" to riders from about 8:30am thru 3pm, and we hope to be there too! Our love to all, Bart (and Tony!) and for all of us at St Matts! Folks,
Most of you will recall that we have before written about a "reasonable humility" - not a self-abasing sense of guilt and shame, but a simple recognition that we all have "fallen short of the glory of God". But today it is a day to relate a story of a "reasonable pride". As we have mentioned before, Pentecost, which we celebrate this Sunday, is often called "the birthday of the church". As it happens, this month of June is also the time of LGBT Pride celebrations. The two things seem linked to me in a curious way, especially in the lessons appointed. As often, there are alternate lessons for the greater celebrations of the church, including for this Sunday, with a bit of complexity: the first lesson from Acts, a straightforward if miraculous account of the events of the first Pentecost has an alternate from Genesis with the very curious story of the famed construction of the "tower" at Babel. The second lesson from Paul writing in Romans how the Spirit pulls people together, with the first lesson from Acts as an alternate, while the gospel lesson from John tells of Jesus's conversation with Philip, seeking to be shown the father. Wondering about the lessons this morning, my thoughts turned to a link between the Babel lesson, wherein God causes a communications breakdown between overly proud humans, and the Pentecost story wherein God's spirit ENABLES communications between humans whose spirits are "on fire". Such spirited human interaction reminded me of the several "Gay Pride" celebrations Tony(!) and I have attended - a joyous outpouring of the "good news" that we should love one another as we are. It seems to me that this is the same "spirit" that the disciples evidenced at Pentecost - a humble minority group "turned on" by the spirit of righteousness and preaching their experience of God's love to any and all while overcoming language problems by the power of the spirit. To my mind, both can be considered cases of a "reasonable pride". With this Spirit (as the "year verse" of Scripture from when I attended Wheaton College said: "For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind") Philip from the gospel story later carried the message of God's love to the Ethiopians, while in Romans Paul says that followers of the Way of Love will be able with pride to build the church, not of bricks and mortar, but of the bonds of human love. May we all find in ourselves both a reasonable humility and a reasonable pride! Our love to all, Bart (and Tony!) and for all of us at St Matts! Events In keeping with our custom of highlighting one or two special events while encouraging all to visit us at St Matts for services, including this Sunday for Evening Prayers at 3:30pm, and to check with local parishes (and even some farther away) for events of interest at their websites and our Deanery website, we wanted to mention the following: St Stephens Church in San Luis Obispo has announced that on Wednesdays in June they will meet at 12:15 for prayer followed by lunch and conversation on their patio and invites all, especially those in central SLO to join in This weekend about 40 members of Good Shepherd Church in Salinas had a successful parish campout at Big Sur for Memorial Day weekend. While it is too late to be at that event, the parish will do it again Labour Day weekend, Sep 2-5. Contact the parish office for full info. There are few events that restore me as well as time in the great outdoors of God's creation! And this Sunday St Pauls Cathedral in San Diego invites us to "Please join us in person or via livestream this Sunday at 5pm at Evensong for the Feast of Pentecost, which will be sung by the Cathedral Schola. Choral works are by Stephen Sturk (Lord Jesus Christ, Be Present Now) and Thomas Attwood (Come, Holy Ghost), with the Evening Service in B-flat by Charles Villiers Stanford." Full info at www.stpaulcathedral.org Also this Sunday at St Dunstans Church in Carmel Valley, the Brahms Requiem will be performed by the San Jose Symphonic Choir and organist Rodney Gehrke - full info at https://realepiscopal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=99ebbaf4cee8d012c9edafe60&id=b2cfba4649&e=f136cc0442 From the Diocese We hear that Jen Crompton has been selected as the first El Camino Real Community Trailblazer: "Bishop Lucinda and The Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real established the El Camino Real Community Trailblazer role to invite recent seminary graduates to return to El Camino Real and work with either a parish, a group of parishes, or a region, to help churches to connect with their communities in new and vital ways. Unlike historical curacies, the Trailblazer is not being “trained” to be a traditional parish priest—although there will be many of those skills learned along the way. ??he Trailblazer is an explorer, who guides the parish outside its walls and its comfort zone to find ways to be New Church." The Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, the European presence of The Episcopal Church, has a long history of ministry to refugees dating back to before World War I. Since the late 1980s, the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center (JNRC) – based at Saint Paul’s Within the Walls in Rome – has provided direct service to refugees from countless countries, helping them rebuild shattered lives. Donations to Episcopal Relief & Development’s Ukraine Crisis Response Fund [realepiscopal.us3.list-manage.com] will help the organization and its partners continue to provide assistance to people displaced by the crisis in Ukraine. And our friend Rev Jani Wild we hear that at St Andrews Church in Saratoga a conversation is set for Jun 26 at 4pm with Rosalind Hughes to discuss "How we can actively respond to the epidemic of gun violence in our country?" |
WILLIAM BARTOSH
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