November 2, The Sunday of All Saints
Wednesday, October 29, 2014 at 12:00PM Day Light Savings Time Ends This Weekend.
Set your clocks back 1 hour Saturday night
Friday October 31
Eve of All Hallows Halloween
All Hallows is the full name for Halloween. It means All Hallows Eve, the day before All Saints Day. The fun of Halloween is an expression of the Christian faith’s conviction that Christ has vanquished all the powers of evil through his death and resurrection. You can read references to this in St. Paul’s Letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. He talks about Christ conquering all the “principalities and powers” and subduing them to the rule of the Father. So things that used to frighten people to death, ghosts etc. have been reduced by Christ’s victory to clowns and playthings. Christians have nothing to fear.
Saturday November 1, 2013
All Saints Day
Day Of
From its earliest days, the Church has recognized as its foundation stones those heroes of the faith whose lives have excited others to holiness and have assumed a communion with the Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Celebrating the Feast of All Saints began in the fourth century. At first it was observed on the Sunday after the Feast of Pentecost; this was to link the disciples who received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the foundation of the Church, with those who were martyrs, giving their lives as witnesses for the faith. In the eighth century, a pope dedicated a chapel to All Saints in St. Peters at Rome on November 1 and within a century this day was being observed in England and Ireland as "All Saints Day."
Monday November 3
All the Faithful Departed
All Souls' Day
Transferred from Sunday
The commemoration of all the faithful departed (commonly known as All Souls' Day) on the day following All Saints' Day began as a monastic custom at the great abbey of Cluny. Under the influence of Abbot Odilo, who in 998 ordered its observance in Cluniac houses, the custom gradually spread until by the 13th Century it was universal throughout the Western Church. The medieval rite contained the famous sequence Dies Irae. Althought the observance did not survive the liturgical changes of the Reformation, it was restored in the proposed English 1928 Book of Common Prayer, largely in response to the huge weight of grief following the First World War. In recent years it has become increasingly customary to hold a service (either this day or at this season) for all the bereaved. In a society that has largely abandoned traditional patterns of mourning, the opportunity to express grief continues to have a valued place in the ministry of the Church in order to acknowledge the hard and painful reality of death, but "in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." In the words of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission: "The believer's pilgrimage of faith is lived out with the mutual support of all the people of God. In Christ all the faithful, both living and departed are bound together in a communion of prayer.
Our custom at COA is to combine both All Saints and All Souls on the First Sunday of November when celebrate the Sunday of All Saints
The Feast of All Saints:
Sunday, November 2
Stories of the Saints, Prayers for deceased loved ones.
We will celebrate the Feast of All Saints on Sunday, November 2. Once again we will have two “Saint Stories.,
Our Ministry Study Year person, Louise Macatee will give the story of St. John Bosco. St. John was a priest and the founder of the religious order known as the Salesians. He is remembered for his work as an educator.
Robert Bates will reprise his Saint Story about the Four Chaplains who on a troop ship in World War 2 stayed with the ship after it was torpedoed and worked to rescue the soldiers. The chaplains went down with the ship, giving their lives for the troops.
We will also recite the names of those who have been buried from our parish since last All Saints Day, and as is our tradition, we will recite the names of our loved ones who have gone before us, all within the context of the Eucharistic Prayer. In the reciting of the names embedded in the Eucharistic Prayer, we not only remember those we love who’ve gone before us, but affirm our hope in their living in our Lord’s Risen life which the Eucharist makes present to us. All Saints is a profound event, of the most moving liturgies of the Church Year.
You can still email names in to the Church Office. Please specify whether you want them read at the 7:45 or 10:15 a.m. service.
Food For Thought: Video Version
Sundays, 9:00 a.m. Science & Religion DVD
We begin to look at the emergence of science in the 17th Century and the development of “Natural Theology” looking at its strengths and weaknesses.
Coffee Hour Sign Up
The Sign up Sheet for Coffee Hour for November and December will be on coffee table this Sunday. Please sign up to take a turn.
Information Updates:
Beginning Sunday we’ll put out the current Parish Directory and Email list so you can make corrections to it. Each will be in a separate file folder. You need to check both and make any necessary corrections in both files because they are in different parts of the computer.
Year of Grace Calendars
The Year of Grace Calendars for the Christian Year which begins on the First Sunday of Advent, November 30, will be available for purchase on Sunday. They come in three sizes: Laminated Poster, which is great for hanging on your refrigerator door, Laminated Notebook size which is 11 x 17, and Paper Notebook size. An envelope will be available for checks and cash.
Altar Flowers for 2015
The Sign Up Sheet for Altar Flowers for Sundays in 2015 will be on the table outside Church on Sunday. Sign up for the Sundays you would like to give Flowers. The cost is $55.00 per Sunday.
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd
CGS Level I Atrium
November 2, 2014
Education to Wonder
“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Last week, we were scheduled to prepare the chalice. However, shortly after the start of our time together it became apparent an unstructured session trumped “best laid plans.” An unstructured session is where the child has a longer time to freely work on material that calls to him/her that day. Some of the works of choice were to work on completing an Altar book, depicting articles that are used at the altar; flower arranging; threading beads (representing loved ones) with a string and a prayer or kind word for that person, and discovering the new dry erase easel, pens and eraser. Comments that came from work included: “Wow! When I put this all [beads] on [the string], it is going to be awesome!” and “The marker disappeared! Maybe it is hidden in this fuzz [of the eraser]!”
Nothing quite prepared me, however, for the discussion about the pictures hanging on the wall. Sofia Cavalletti writes about education to wonder in Religious Potential of the Child, pg. 139, “Wonder is not an emotion of superficial people; it strikes root only in the person whose mind is able to settle and rest in things, in the person who is capable of stopping and looking.” Since I have been a catechist for Level I, I cannot recall the time when a child stopped and noticed, let alone commented on, what was hanging on the wall. Last Sunday was different.
There are two pictures hanging on the wall just above the work for the Infancy Narratives, one is of the annunciation to the shepherds about the birth of Jesus and the other is about the magi travelling to see the baby. This began a detailed discussion about what shepherds were and if there were any working today; if we could visit the place drawn in the picture and speak with the shepherds about their sheep. The sheep had to be counted, three times [each, for a total of six times] by the two participants in the discussion just to make sure they didn’t miss one. The pictures are hung quite high, but the detail of shepherds warming themselves by a small fire was not missed. Why they had a fire to keep warm was discussed for another five minutes. There was a yearning on the part of the participants to visit the place in the picture about the shepherds and the sheep.
When the attention came to the other picture, what entered the discussion was the concept of time. When did this happen and is it still happening today? Where are the magi now? Can we visit them? No, they are not alive now. Did they come before, during, or after the dinosaurs? A very long time after. Where were they going? To see the baby, Jesus.
With the placement of the magi in time in relation to the dinosaurs, the discussion went on to Level II work about Creation and its placement in The History of the Kingdom of God – La Fettuccia Ribbon and Unity Strip. Then the questions came, “What happened during Creation?”
Preparing the chalice will be postponed a week or two. It only seems appropriate to introduce the work on Jesus as the Good Shepherd which I will do. One of the most common direct aims of the CGS program is that it encourages children of the atria to experience education to wonder. If only there was just a little more time.
Outreach Committee
Mission Giving
On Sunday, the Outreach Committee plans to team up with the 12+ year olds to offer you a special treat. The boys are going to be “trying out” different jobs around the church. They are starting with pricing and selling “crafts” from a women’s group in Uganda.
The Suubi women crafts group was established in 2012 with 20 women some of whom have HIV/AIDS, are single mothers and grandmothers and their first crafts that included animal mobiles, coasters, book marks and head bands were sold through Come Together Trading Company in Texas. This encouraged the women to make more crafts which were of a better quality. One of the significant features is that 100% of the profit goes back to the group of HIV/AIDS women that Global Hands of Hope supports (Suubi Children Centre is also supported by Global Hands of Hope and you will be hearing more about them later). The income from the crafts helps the women to support their families and children attain education.
The group now has 30 members of which 5 are men.
Adam and Oliver will be putting prices on the items and selling them after the 10:15 service. Please support them and the women of Bukeka with your generosity.
The picture below shows some of the women working on items to sell
Annual Giving for 2015
This week the Outreach Committee begins a project falling under the heading of Mission Giving which is one of the four fields of Christian giving.
Over the years we’ve offered a program for high school and college age young people we’ve entitled The Young Person’s Guide to Love and Wealth Management. It has been a team effort involving Fr. Bob, and Bill and Rebecca Woods. As Bill said a couple of Sundays ago, Rebecca does the “love” part. Bill is the financial person. We work to impart good values in each of these dimensions of life.
Before thinking about budgeting, Bill asks the young people to first consider the question, “What do you want from your money?” He’s seeking to help them identify their values and once they’ve done that, they can figure how to enact them in the way they use their money.
Coming at that are a couple of principles about money that are as real as the law of gravity. There are two things you absolutely cannot do with your money, and there are two things you absolutely must do with your money. The two things you absolutely cannot do are 1. Keep all your money and 2. Spend all your money. The two things you absolutely must do are: 1. Save some, and 2, Give some away.
This all falls under the concept called Stewardship, for Christians means, the proper use of all the gifts God bestows upon us.
There is a new book out entitled: The Paradox of Generosity.: Giving We Receive, Grasping We lose. Below is a description of what the research shows, which conforms with Christian teaching for 2014 years.
The Paradox of Generosity is the first study to make use of the cutting-edge empirical data collected in Smith's groundbreaking, multidisciplinary, five-year Science of Generosity Initiative. It draws on an extensive survey of 2,000 Americans, more than sixty in-depth interviews with individuals across twelve states, and analysis of over 1,000 photographs and other visual materials. This wealth of evidence reveals a consistent link between demonstrating generosity and leading a better life: more generous people are happier, suffer fewer illnesses and injuries, live with a greater sense of purpose, and experience less depression. Smith and Davidson also show, however, that to achieve a better life a person must practice generosity regularly-random acts of kindness are not enough.
For Christians, living “Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose is enacted in what we call the The Four Fields of Christian Giving.
Annual Giving: Financial Support for the life and work of the local parish.
Mission Giving: Financial Support for the spread of the Gospel and the relief for human need For us this usually means sponsored by the Outreach Committee, funded by 10% of income from movie locations
Capital Giving Occasional Financial Support for building new or upkeep of Church infrastructure. This is funded by income realized from the Church being used as a movie location, and endowment income from gifts left by the Campbell Johnston family and other benefactors. Which leads to…
Legacy Giving: Making a provision for the Church out of your estate so that your support continues beyond your lifetime so that future generations may enjoy what we’ve all come to value.
The Annual Giving Letter and Pledge Cards have been mailed out. We ask your participation and to please return them to us as soon as possible.
Emmaus Road Monday, November 3, 7:00 p.m.
Emmaus Road goes from one end of the spectrum, having concluded Fr. James Martin’s book Jesus, to the other, or maybe we should say, “dark side.” We will be reading Tosca Lee’s novel, Demon: a Memoir. It is a portrayal of Lucifer. And through this novel we will encounter much of the thinking on the nature of evil in the Christian Tradition. Emmaus Road read Ms. Lee’s novel, Iscariot, earlier in the year. This fictionalized portrayal of Judas captured all of the current biblical scholarship about him, in a very engaging way. Just in case you think we’ve gone off the deep end, we did read some years ago The Screwtape Letters. So we’ve met this guy before. The book is available from Amazon. Everyone is welcome to join the discussion. Below is description of it from Amazon.
Recently divorced and mired in a meaningless existence, Clay drifts from his drab apartment to his equally lusterless job as an editor for a small Boston press--until the night Lucian finds him and everything changes with the simple words, "I'm going to tell you my story, and you're going to write it down and publish it. "What begins as a mystery soon spirals into chaotic obsession as Clay struggles to piece together Lucian's dark tale of love, ambition, and grace--only to discover that the demon's story has become his own. And then only one thing matters: learning how the story ends.
Free Books for the Taking
Fr. Bob is currently trying to make over the Church Office. Part of that process is culling through the large number of books he’s acquired over the years. He’s been able to let go of four boxes of books. Before taking them to the Archives in Pasadena, anyone is welcome to go through them and take any of those books they’d like. They are on the table by the entrance to the Parish Hall.
Food For Thought
On the Food For Thought table this Sunday two articles, one particularly appropriate for All Saints. From the current issue of the The New York Review of Books, an article entitled, To Heaven and Back. This is the first of a two-part article on Near Death Experiences, and it covers a large selections of books on the subject. While the writer is not a “believer,” his article is probing and respectful of an experience widely shared by millions of people.
The second article is from the current issue of Pacific Standard, and is entitled, We Are All Confident Idiots. As the author writes, “The trouble with ignorance is that if feels so much like expertise. A leading researcher on the psychology of human wrongness sets us straight.” What really does make it so hard to admit, “I don’t know?” I guess I’ll have to turn in the T-shirt Leigh Torgerson found in an airline magazine. On the front of the T-shirt it says, “Of course I’m right. I’m Bob!”