Episcopal Life Daily February 13, 2008
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's Episcopal Life Daily includes:
* TOP STORY - Executive Council reviews budgets, considers draft of letter to the Episcopal Church * TOP STORY - Executive Council gets briefing on Ecuador's challenges * DIOCESAN DIGEST - MISSISSIPPI: Bishop calls diocese to move from change to transformation * DIOCESAN DIGEST - NORTH CAROLINA: The Disciple becomes Episcopal Life's newest printing partner * WORLD REPORT - CANADA: West Coast bishops warn parishes against separation * WORLD REPORT - ENGLAND: Synod discusses Anglican covenant; debate draws mixed reactions * WORLD REPORT - MIDDLE EAST: In Afghanistan, ERD responds to severe winter weather * MULTIMEDIA - Image Gallery: Ecuadorian Episcopalians welcome Executive Council * SPIRITUAL REFLECTIONS - Second Sunday in Lent - Year A [RCL] * WEEKS AHEAD - Upcoming special events and services * DAYBOOK - February 14, 2008: Today in Scripture, Prayer, History * CATALYST - Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life
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TOP STORIES
Executive Council reviews budgets, considers draft of letter to the Episcopal Church
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[Episcopal News Service, Quito, Ecuador] Members of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council February 13 learned that diocesan financial contributions to the wider church's budget exceeded what was expected in the 2007 and will likely also increase in 2008.
Josephine Hicks of the Diocese of North Carolina, chair of Council's Administration and Finance Committee (A&F), and Episcopal Church Treasurer Kurt Barnes reviewed the performance of the 2007 budget and presented A&F's proposed 2008 budget. Council will vote on the budget February 14 during the concluding day of this four-day meeting in Quito.
Also during the afternoon plenary session at the Hilton Colon hotel, a task group charged with writing a letter to the Episcopal Church, to be released at the end of the meeting, presented a first draft and asked for feedback. Council members read the draft as it was projected on a large screen in the plenary meeting room. Task group chair Sherry Denton of the Diocese of Western Kansas asked the members to individually relay their feedback to the task group.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_94914_ENG_HTM.htm
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Executive Council gets briefing on Ecuador's challenges
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[Episcopal News Service, Quito, Ecuador] Members of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council February 12 heard from a government official, an academic and a Latin American church leader about the challenges facing Ecuador.
The briefing came after Council members, Church Center staff and their guests traveled earlier in the day to one of eight venues in and around Quito to learn about and briefly engage in the mission of the Diocese of Ecuador Central.
Augusto Saa, a minister in the office of the Ecuadorian Vice Chancellor, spoke to Council about Ecuador President Rafael Correa's plans for the country and the work he has already done to repay what Saa called the country's "social debt" to those whom he said previous Ecuadorian governments had marginalized. Saa said that marginalization came about despite the country's richness in natural resources.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_94869_ENG_HTM.htm
More Top Stories: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife
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DIOCESAN DIGEST
MISSISSIPPI: Bishop calls diocese to move from change to transformation http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_94871_ENG_HTM.htm
NORTH CAROLINA: The Disciple becomes Episcopal Life's newest printing partner http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_94913_ENG_HTM.htm
More Diocesan news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_ENG_HTM.htm
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WORLD REPORT
CANADA: West Coast bishops warn parishes against separation http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_94878_ENG_HTM.htm
ENGLAND: Synod discusses Anglican covenant; debate draws mixed reactions http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_94910_ENG_HTM.htm
MIDDLE EAST: In Afghanistan, ERD responds to severe winter weather http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_94877_ENG_HTM.htm
More World news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_ENG_HTM.htm
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MULTIMEDIA
Image Gallery: Ecuadorian Episcopalians welcome Executive Council
[Episcopal News Service] Members of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council, Church Center staff and their guests traveled to one of eight venues in and around Quito February 12 to learn about and briefly engage in the mission of the Diocese of Ecuador Central.
An image gallery of the five-hour activity, that took place during the morning of the second day of Council's four-day meeting in Quito, is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81991_94887_ENG_HTM.htm
More Multimedia: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80056_ENG_HTM.htm
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SPIRITUAL REFLECTIONS
Second Sunday in Lent - Year A [RCL]
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
By Ben E. Helmer
[Sermons That Work] One could summarize the past two Sundays and today with a three-word theme: Transfiguration, Temptation, and Trust. On the last Sunday of Epiphany we went to the mountaintop with Jesus and witnessed the Transfiguration. On the first Sunday in Lent we reflected on his temptation in the wilderness at the start of his public ministry, and today we have the subject of trust embodied in the patriarch, Abraham, the writing of St. Paul, and in a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.
Abraham is the ultimate "trust in the Lord" kind of person. He's asked to leave everything behind and go to a new place, unknown to him, and begin a new life with God. For a person whose identity was grounded in land, ancestry, and family, this was a risky endeavor. Yet he leaves country, kindred, and his father's house to go to a new land with the promise that he will found a great nation. If somebody announced God had called them to do that today, we'd put them on tranquilizers!
The point, of course, is not that Abraham is deluded or demented. His developing relationship with God has led him to this trustful action. The Abraham cycle in Genesis has to be read as a whole to understand how this relationship grew from one of doubt into trust.
Full reflection: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/82478_94868_ENG_HTM.htm
More Spiritual Reflections:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/82457_ENG_HTM.htm
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WEEKS AHEAD
A round-up of upcoming special events, services, concerts and diocesan conventions taking place throughout the Episcopal Church is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/78650_1669_ENG_HTM.htm
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DAYBOOK
On February 14, 2008, the Church remembers Cyril, monk, and Methodius, bishop, missionaries to the Slavs.
* Today in Scripture: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/82457_ENG_HTM.htm * Today in Prayer: Anglican Cycle of Prayer: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm * Today in History: On February 14, 1913, James A. Pike, controversial bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
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CATALYST
"Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life" from Random House, Inc., by Beverly Lowry, 418pages, hardcover, c. 2007, $26
[Source: Random House, Inc.] "I am at peace with God and all mankind." -- Harriet Tubman to Mary Talbert, on the occasion of their last visit, 1913
Now, from the award-winning novelist and biographer, an astonishing reimagining of the remarkable life of Harriet Tubman-the "Moses of Her People."
During her lifetime Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave, lumberjack, laundress, raid leader, nurse, fund-raiser, cook, intelligence gatherer, Underground Railroad organizer, and abolitionist. She was known both as Moses and as General Tubman.
In Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life, Beverly Lowry goes beyond the familiar tales to create a portrait of Tubman in lively imagined vignettes that, as Lowry writes, "catch her on the fly" and portray her life as she herself might have presented it. Lowry offers readers an intimate look at Tubman's early life firsthand: her birth as Araminta Ross in 1822 in Dorchester, Maryland; the harsh treatment she experienced growing up-including being struck with a two-pound iron when she was twelve years old; and her triumphant escape from slavery as a young woman and rebirth as Harriet Tubman. We travel with Tubman along the treacherous route of the Underground Railroad and hear of her friendships with Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and other abolitionists. We accompany her to the battlefields of the Civil War, where she worked as a nurse and a cook and earned the name General Tubman, join her on slave-freeing raids in the heart of the Confederacy, and share her horror and sorrow as she witnesses the massacre of Colonel Shaw and the black soldiers of the 54th Regiment at Fort Wagner.
Integrating extensive research and interviews with scholars and historians into a stunningly rich and mesmerizing chronicle, Lowry brings Tubman to life as never before.
Includes 62 photographs, illustrations, and maps.
To order: Episcopal Books and Resources, online at http://www.episcopalbookstore.org, or call 800-903-5544 -- or visit your local Episcopal bookseller, http://www.episcopalbooksellers.org
More Catalyst: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/83842_ENG_HTM.htm