Episcopal Life Online Newslink May 16, 2007
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's ELO Newslink includes:
* TOP STORY - Growing Honduras diocese welcomes Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Relief and Development delegation * TOP STORY - 'Local eating' provides food security, sustainability * TOP STORY - Presiding Bishop urges ETSS graduates to live out 'si, se puede' * WORLD REPORT - CANADA: Arctic to begin rebuilding 'igloo church' * SPIRITUAL REFLECTION - Seventh Sunday of Easter - Year C [BCP]
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TOP STORIES
Growing Honduras diocese welcomes Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Relief and Development delegation
'They have a story to be told and to be heard,' Jefferts Schori affirms
By Thomas Mansella
[Episcopal News Service] "You are transforming the world beginning in your own place," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told the people of Sangre de Toro, Honduras, an isolated mountain Gotas de Sangre community, praising their newly built houses as "a sacrament of the reality that God loves us, and of human dignity being restored."
Jefferts Schori joined Episcopal Relief and Development's (ERD) president Robert W. Radtke and Abagail Nelson, vice president of Programs, in visiting Honduras May 10-13 at the invitation of the bishop of the Diocese of Honduras, Lloyd E. Allen.
The leaders visited Siempre Unidos, the Diocesan HIV/AIDS Ministry headquarters in San Pedro Sula, including the Tabitha Industrial Project -- named after the New Testament embroiderer, and a micro-enterprise dressmaking shop supporting women and men who lost their employment due to the widespread discrimination against HIV/AIDS infected laborers by the local "maquiladoras."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_86023_ENG_HTM.htm
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'Local eating' provides food security, sustainability Community gardens in Syracuse serve environment, economic justice
By Phina Borgeson
[Episcopal News Service] Stephen Meyer grew up in Davis, California, where one of his first jobs was working for a neighbor pulling weeds. The neighbor was the breeder of the Ace tomato, the first variety harvestable by machine, the kind seen heaped in eighteen wheelers traversing California Valleys every late summer.
"I bundled weeds in newspaper and took them out to the curb for the trash collector to take away," recalls Meyer. "It seems symbolic of a whole attitude toward the natural world which I am now trying to undo as an adult."
Meyer, a professor of music history at Syracuse University, practices a different kind of gardening in his backyard now, more in line with the growing interest, from California to New York, in wholesome, seasonal, local eating. "I eat from my own garden as much as possible from June through November."
Last year, when the Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Syracuse, New York, blessed Meyer's garden, "it helped to make the connections between sustainability, food justice, and community," he said. "It seems that the ideas were all there in church rites, just waiting to be connected and brought forward."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_85999_ENG_HTM.htm
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Presiding Bishop urges ETSS graduates to live out 'si, se puede'
By Bob Kinney, May 16, 2007
[ETSS] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori called Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest (ETSS) graduates to a ministry that is rooted in "si, se puede" -- "Yes, we can."
Speaking during her sermon at ETSS's annual commencement ceremony May 15, the Presiding Bishop reflected on her recent visit to the Diocese of Honduras and pointed to Hondurans' evangelism and mission in action programs as exemplary models for graduates to emulate. From the multi-program ministry of Siempre Unidos to the HIV-positive in San Pedro Sula to training residents of remote mountain areas how to ensure clean water, adequate sanitation and easy-to-maintain houses, the diocese has a foundational belief, she said. "All people are capable and have gifts and talents to contribute."
Jefferts Schori lauded the Rt. Rev. Lloyd Allen, first native-born Honduran bishop, President of Province 9 and 1989 Seminary of the Southwest graduate, for fostering many mission initiatives that have "Yes, we can" as their driving force.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_86019_ENG_HTM.htm
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WORLD REPORT
CANADA: Arctic to begin rebuilding 'igloo church' Fundraising effort still CAN$4.5 million short http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_86017_ENG_HTM.htm
More World news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_ENG_HTM.htm
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SPIRITUAL REFLECTION
Seventh Sunday of Easter - Year C [BCP] Acts 16:16-34 or 1 Samuel 12:19-24; Psalm 47 or 110:1-5; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20 or Acts 16:16-34; John 17:20-26
By Anthony Jewiss
[Episcopal Life] The elderly and rheumy-eyed bishop climbed to the pulpit slowly and with difficulty. While he recovered from the effort, the congregation noted the kindness, wisdom, and experience evident on his face.
He smiled a wan smile and hunched his shoulders in that familiar gesture of despair and said, "Whenever I have to preach from the Gospel of John I look at the text and then ask myself 'what does this mean?'"
Then he read the lesson again, but this time the congregation heard it with pauses, inflection, and nuance.
Full Reflection: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/82457_85914_ENG_HTM.htm
More Spiritual Reflections: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/82457_ENG_HTM.htm
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