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Daybook -- Today is Monday, September 18, 2006. The Church calendar remembers Edward Bouverie Pusey, priest (1800-1882).
* 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 2004, G. Porter Taylor was consecrated sixth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina. http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_50933_ENG_HTM.htm
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Mission: Jubilee Ministry Gathering offers hope, connection and peer support
Michael Battle welcomed as keynote speaker
By Pat McCaughan
[ENS, LOS ANGELES] Seeking ways to engage economic justice, immigration reform, and expand HIV/AIDS ministries formed part of the agenda for 250 participants meeting at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles September 14-17 for the National Jubilee Ministry Gathering.
The triennial meeting also offered continuing hope, connection and peer support, said the Rev. Canon Carmen B. Guerrero, the Episcopal Church's national jubilee officer.
"A lot of what we do is peer to peer help in sharing what we know with each other," said Guerrero. "After I came on board as national jubilee officer nearly eight years ago, it became very clear that jubilee officers needed to know one another; I made it my business to visit all the centers to help facilitate those connections."
The Rev. Pascual Torres, chancellor of the Diocese of Honduras, said the canvas tote bags distributed to each conference participant are made at a jubilee center which does something unheard of in his country -- offers work to those living with HIV/AIDS.
"There is a stigma in Honduras for people living with AIDS -- they are ignored by society at large. We offer them the opportunity to be productive people," he said. The industry, called Tabita Industrial, a sewing factory supported by Ministerio Episcopal 'Siempre Unidos,' employs about 25 people who make -- in addition to the tote bags -- hospital and baby clothing.
Through the jubilee center and other connections, the Honduras diocese partnered with All Saints Church in Beverly Hills and others to produce the tote bags. The relationship blossomed to include building of the All Saints Day Care Center in Honduras, in partnership with the Beverly Hills parish. The church also makes two trips yearly to deliver medicine and other supplies, he said.
Keynote speaker, the Rev. Dr. Michael Battle, chaplain to the House of Bishops and Professor of Theology at the Virginia Theological Seminary, encouraged participants to overcome society's "shallow forces" in order to cultivate a spirituality of justice, to ensure longevity for activism.
Drawing upon the two-year period he lived with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Battle told the gathering: "I saw it embodied in Bishop Tutu, how a person is able to impact societies, not in a hit-or-miss way, the way a rock singer has one hit, but how it is that we can impact society with all of our life until that eulogy is actually said, how our life is active to its very end.
"Without theology we lose the ability to be reflective, contemplative, we burn out, we act up, we exacerbate situations and make matters worse. It's about creating a movement, a synergy, about how what you do links with what I do with what India does or what Darfur does."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_77857_ENG_HTM.htm
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Catalyst: "The Dream of God: A Call to Return" from Church Publishing, Inc., by Verna J. Dozier, 114 pages, paperback, $13
[Source: Church Publishing, Inc.] -- Again and again the Christian church has fallen away from the dream God has for it, a dream in which we are called to follow Jesus and not merely to worship him. Through adept storytelling and Bible study, Dozier reawakens our sense of calling and our desire for truth.
"This contemporary prophet has touched lives and transformed hearts through her books and talks. Many centuries before Verna Dozier, there was Amos, from the country, speaking out in the market square against the corrupt practices of merchants who 'sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes.' In this century we have Dozier, a black female, spreading God's word in the nation's capital, across the country, and outside its borders." -- Washington Diocese
To order: Episcopal Books and Resources online at http://www.episcopalbookstore.org or call 800.903.5544.
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