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Daybook -- Today is Friday, May 26, 2006, in Eastertide. The Church Calendar remembers Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury from 597 to 605 A.D.
* Today in Scripture: Daily Office meditation http://eds.libsyn.com * Today in Prayer: Anglican Cycle of Prayer http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm * Today in History: On this day in 1896, the Diocese of Los Angeles was officially established. http://www.ladiocese.org/
Note to our readers: In observance of Memorial Day, ENS will not publish and edition of NewsLink on May 29. NewsLink will resume on Tuesday, May 30.
This Memorial Day, the ENS staff is particularly mindful of the estimated 2,458 Americans and the many more thousands of Iraqis who have died since the Iraq War began on March 19, 2003.
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Friday Forum: 'Impure genius'?
New Latin American sensibility is being born in the U.S., says Richard Rodriguez
Note to readers: The following opinion article is reprinted by ENS with permission of the author, Richard Rodriguez, who has addressed numerous Episcopal Church groups, including the House of Bishops, the NationalAssociation of Episcopal Schools, Episcopal Communicators, and various cathedrals, parishes and diocesan convention meetings. Rodriguez, a Sacramento-born Mexican American, has been a regular essayist on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and is the author of three books, "Hunger of Memory," "Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father," and "Brown: The Last Discovery of America." The following article also appeared in the Los Angeles Times on May 19, 2006.
By Richard Rodriguez
[Special to ENS] -- The United States is facing the return of the native. In the American scheme of things, the Indian disappeared from history: reluctantly, sadly, tragically, he was eliminated. He went into retreat in our memory. Yet, suddenly, spilling out from over our southern horizon are people who were supposed to no longer exist.
The discomfiting thought occurs to us that history has not ended. Instead, we are in the middle of another turn of the wheel our words can't describe. We are facing a future we can't name.
So we have decided to call the newcomers "Hispanics" in reference to the Spanish king who once ruled Mexico and the American Southwest. Although most of these faces coming toward us are Mexicans of mixed blood - mestizos - the imprint of the Indian is clearly on their faces. It is on my face!
The long struggle between the U.S. and Mexico began as a fight over land in the 19th century. Mexico used to be the larger of the two countries but lost its enormous northern lands - now the U.S. Southwest, from Texas to New Mexico to California - when Americans began to expand westward.
There remains an anxiety on the part of both countries about this memory. Mexicans have a sense that this is a land that ancestrally was Mexican, although there is a recognition that it is no longer. But for the U.S. to see this land being populated again by Spanish-speaking people is to remember an extinguished part of our history.
This unsettles Americans because they're not used to the repetition of history. They do not have a circular sense of time, in which events repeat themselves, but a linear sense of history going one direction only - into the future.
The most recent wave of immigration is likely to change not just the destiny of the United States but of Latin America as well. The Latino population in the U.S. is now more than 40 million people. That is equivalent in size to several of the largest countries in Latin America.
A new Latin American sensibility is being born - here, in the U.S.! One of the things I've seen in the huge pro-immigrant demonstrations is not simply families walking together - the son walking with the father, the mother with her babies - but also Colombians walking alongside Mexicans, walking alongside Dominicans, walking alongside Guatemalans. These people are no longer members of their ethnic or national groups; they're marching as some new nation of the "Hispanic" world. That is quite revolutionary.
Full article: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_74964_ENG_HTM.htm
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On Capitol Hill, Episcopal bishops oppose constitutional marriage amendment
by John Johnson
[ENS] -- The Rt. Rev. Larry Maze, bishop of the Diocese of Arkansas, and the Rt. Rev. Joe Morris Doss of Louisiana joined a diverse spectrum of clergy and other religious leaders on Capitol Hill May 22 to speak against the so-called "Federal Marriage Amendment" (FMA).
The bishops are part of "Clergy for Fairness" -- a coalition of religious leaders working to oppose passage of the amendment that would deine marriage in the U.S. Constitution. The Senate is scheduled to debate the measure the week of June 5. Maze and Doss participated in a news conference and lobby day in Washington to express publicly their opposition to the amendment and to ask personally their senators to oppose the proposal. Their participation was part of a full day of activities and a national petition effort organized by the Clergy for Fairness coalition.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_74965_ENG_HTM.htm
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Catalyst: "Prayer Book for the Armed Services, revised edition," from the Episcopal Church Office of the Bishop for Chaplancies, published by the Episcopal Church, softcover, $4 per copy.
Episcopal Books & Resources: http://www.episcopalbookstore.org ISBN:64-0101ea
[Source: Episcopal Books & Resources] -- An abridged version of "The Book of Common Prayer" adapted for military use and ecumenical use, this pocket-size volume includes services of Holy Eucharist, Baptism and Confirmation. It also includes Psalms, canticles, readings and collects,daily devotions, indexes to Bible passages, updated preface, foreword and more.
This new edition also contains Spanish language materials: Devotiones Diaria, Bautismo en caso de emergencia, Psalmos, y Oraciones. "The Prayer Book for the Armed Services may be the best means of outreach the Episcopal Church has," says the Rt. Rev. George Packard, bishop for chaplaincies.
Bishop Packard adds that he usually loads his pockets with the palm-sized book when he visits military bases here and abroad. He reports that the spiritual appeal of this specially edited version of the Book of Common Prayer, which includes Spanish and English versions of the Holy Eucharist and Holy Baptism, as well as other selections including scriptural passages and relevant prayers, has not diminished from the time it first appeared in the 1980s.
For years, chaplains, families and congregations at home have given it to departing troops, sailors, marines and airmen. Regularly updated, the latest version was published in 2001.
A Vietnam combat veteran himself, Packard particularly likes the no-nonsense presentation of the text. "How many rites do we have that are designated to be said alone, even at your own death, yet a few pages later you can find a prayer for your enemies? It's a sobering and dignified support for our men and women in uniform. But mostly, as it did for the countless veterans before them, this little book brings the companionship of Christ to those lonely places of service." For more on the ministries of the Office of the Bishop for Chaplaincies, visit http://www.ecusa-chaplain.org.
To order: Episcopal Books and Resources, online at http://www.episcopalbookstore.org, or call 800.903.5544.
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