Sunday, February 14, Trinity Episcopal Church, 124 North Mulanix St. in Kirksville, is having a Haitian Kanaval Dinner to raise money for the earthquake victims in Haiti and to mark the beginning of Lent.
“Haitians celebrate three fat days, trois joursgras, or Kanaval, and so will we,” said Scott Alberts, Trinity choir director and the dinner’s organizer. “They go from Mass until Wednesday morning nonstop, so our custom of a Sunday party is perfect. We don’t just want to help Haiti, we want to celebrate Haiti.” (more…)
Trinity-Kirksville Trinity Episcopal Church, 124 N. Mulanix, Kirksville, MO 63501, ph 660-665-6155, www.trinitykirksville.org
Saturday, March 6, 2010,
9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Registration begins at 8:30)
St. Martin’s, Ellisville.
This year’s annual Leadership Conference for clergy and lay members of the diocese is devoted to Public Narrative; how we effectively, succinctly, and engagingly tell our story.
Keynote and lead presenter will be the Rev. Devon Anderson. In addition to her work as executive director of Episcopalians for Global Reconcilliation, Anderson was the project manager for the Episcopal Public Narrative Project. (more…)
In earthquake-stricken Haiti, an Episcopal bishop is providing relief to as many survivors as he can while they wait for the arrival of official aid. Jean Zache Duracin speaks with WSJ’s Charles Forelle on how he’s trying to help.
Main Haiti information page at Episcopal Relief & Development, including a letter from Bishop Duracin and the Rev. Lauren Stanley, TEC missioner to Haiti.
From 9 am to 5 pm today, the national holiday to celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., you are let the words and images of MLK flow through you in the sacred space of Christ Church Cathedral, 1210 Locust in the city of St. Louis. Provost Mike Kinman began the day’s reading this morning. Readers signed up to cover half hours throughout the day.
“Our hearts are broken,” the Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in a homily at a prayer service for Haiti on January 17. The Presiding Bishop joined Bishop of Washington John Bryson Chane, Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III, The Honorable Susan E. Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, His Excellency Raymond Alcide Joseph, Ambassador of Haiti, and others at “Strength through Unity — L’Union fait la Force: A Service of Prayer for Haiti” at Washington National Cathedral.
Our hearts are broken, as we sit transfixed before images of devastation and ruin, the bodies of children and elders piled in the streets, buildings crushed to dust, pleading arms and voices raised to heaven. We respond in lament and grief and sorrow, we push back against the senseless mystery of life’s pain. We yield to those ancient questions: Why? What sort of a God permits destruction like this? What can I do, how can I help? Those questions can’t ever be fully answered fully, yet they are most important in times like these. The reality is that life is not safe or predictable, but what we do with our lives gives them meaning. God does not cause suffering or punish people with it, but God is present and known more intimately in the midst of suffering. Above all, we become more human through our broken hearts. (more…)
A service of music and prayer for the victims, families, and survivors of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. The offering will benefit relief efforts in Haiti. The service will feature prayers from interfaith representatives and a Haitian folksong sung by countertenor Jean-Luc Princivil.
Main resource. Real time reports from Haiti and from across The Episcopal Church on missionaries, church responses, persons in Haiti, blog locations, congregational resources, prayers, hymns, ministries, missions, current needs: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/haiti.php
The Diocese of Haiti
FAQ. The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti is a member of Province II of The Episcopal Church. The Diocesan offices are located in Port-au-Prince. Haiti is the largest and fastest-growing diocese in The Episcopal Church with over 83,000 members (2008 parochial reports). There are 97 Episcopal churches in Haiti. TEC is in the process of ascertaining their status; updates will be posted on the Episcopal Church Haiti page. In 2008, the diocese celebrated over 200 child and adult baptisms, and over 700 child and adult confirmations. There are over 200 Episcopal schools with more than 6000 students. (more…)
The Episcopal Church and the Sisters of St. Margaret (an Episcopal religious community) have concentrated on helping all the faithful in Haiti since 1927. The Sisters run programs with the elderly and do work with the poor people throught the area. They also are involved at two schools the order founded, one specifically for the handicapped and the other for children within the neighborhood.
The Sisters of Saint Margaret’s mission in Haiti has never been more needed.
The most recent news received is that Sisters Marie Margaret Fenelon, Marjorie Raphael Wysong, and Marie Therese Milien are alive. They have lost their convent, but are committed to continuing their mission of working iwth the elderly, poor, indigent, and young.
Your urgent support is greatly needed. An unfathomable catastrophe like this in a place that has already known so much hardship is a true tragedy. We are asking for your prayers, donations, and service.
Faithfully yours,
Carolyn H. Darr, SSM Superior
Adele Marie Ryan, SSM Asst. Superior
Donations may be made online. Please send donations by mail to: The Society of St. Margaret, 17 Highland Park St., Boston, MA 02119-1436. For updates and more information about the Sisters’ work in Haiti, go to ssmbos.org
The Sisters of St. Margaret are an Episcopal Religious Order of women called to glorify God and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ through our worship and work, prayer and common life. Their commitment to God and to one another is expressed through vows of poverty, celibate chastity and obedience. The Sisters maintain a presence in Haiti, and the three working there have been accounted for. They are staying in a tent on the football field at College St. Pierre (which was heavily damaged). Above is a picture of the convent before the earthquake.
The people of Haiti have suffered a devastating earthquake, and it is already clear that many have died and many more are injured. Even under “normal” circumstances, Haiti struggles to care for her 9 million people. The nation is the poorest in the western hemisphere, and this latest disaster will set back many recent efforts at development. I urge your prayers for those who have died, been injured, and are searching for loved ones – and I urge your concrete and immediate prayers in the form of contributions to Episcopal Relief & Development, who are already working with the Diocese of Haiti to send aid where it is most needed.
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop
The Episcopal Church (more…)
In 1889 Charles Gore, who was to become the Bishop of Oxford, edited a collection of twelve essays written by a group of Anglican scholars later called “liberal catholics.” Gore entitled the book Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation. (No longer under copyright, it is available as a free download on archive.org, in pdf and Kindle formats, among others.) I think that Lux Mundi is one of a dozen or so pivotal works in Anglicanism. It happens to detail some of the characteristics of the movement in our tradition with which I closely identify, liberal catholicism. But more to the point, it argues for an Anglican expression—no, a Christianity— which is greathearted in its orthodoxy, never narrow, unafraid of such new learnings as the theory of evolution and critical approaches to history and to scripture.
The subtitle intimates a lot, claiming a Christianity rooted in the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation, is rightly kept as one of the two great feasts of the year. God has definitively intervened in the life of the world in the Word-madeflesh. But Christmas does not exhaust Incarnation’s meaning; Easter, the other feast, definitively completes God’s intervention in the person of Jesus Christ, destroying death by death and making the whole creation new. Because of the Incarnation, nothing that is human can be foreign to the believer, and Incarnation’s completion shows resurrection as our truest destiny, and the world’s. Eastern Orthodoxy gives poetic expression to the truth of the Incarnation, in one of the great hymns sung at the Nativity:
Today the Virgin cometh unto the cave
to give birth to the Word,
begotten in a manner that
defies all description.
Rejoice, therefore, O universe,
and with the angels and shepherds
rejoice for Him who by his own will
is a new-born babe:
Who is our God before all ages.
May your celebration of Incarnation’s feast be rich and full of grace. May you know in the birth of the Word, this new-born babe, that Jesus Christ is indeed our God before all ages.
The Right Reverend Wayne Smith
Tenth Bishop of Missouri
Byzantine fresco from Mistra, Greece, mid-14th century
Sunday, February 14, Trinity Episcopal Church, 124 North Mulanix St. in Kirksville, is having a Haitian Kanaval Dinner to raise money for the earthquake victims in Haiti and to mark the beginning of Lent.
Saturday, March 6, 2010,
Our hearts are broken, as we sit transfixed before images of devastation and ruin, the bodies of children and elders piled in the streets, buildings crushed to dust, pleading arms and voices raised to heaven. We respond in lament and grief and sorrow, we push back against the senseless mystery of life’s pain. We yield to those ancient questions: Why? What sort of a God permits destruction like this? What can I do, how can I help? Those questions can’t ever be fully answered fully, yet they are most important in times like these. The reality is that life is not safe or predictable, but what we do with our lives gives them meaning. God does not cause suffering or punish people with it, but God is present and known more intimately in the midst of suffering. Above all, we become more human through our broken hearts. 
A service of music and prayer for the victims, families, and survivors of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. The offering will benefit relief efforts in Haiti. The service will feature prayers from interfaith representatives and a Haitian folksong sung by countertenor Jean-Luc Princivil.
The Episcopal Church and the Sisters of St. Margaret (an Episcopal religious community) have concentrated on helping all the faithful in Haiti since 1927. The Sisters run programs with the elderly and do work with the poor people throught the area. They also are involved at two schools the order founded, one specifically for the handicapped and the other for children within the neighborhood.
From the Presiding Bishop
