Tag: Evening Prayer

Dear friends,

Today’s email is very important!  It is a “MARK YOUR CALENDAR” EMAIL WITH 3 ITEMS!!

SUNDAY, JUNE 21st SERVICES:  Those of you who indicated on our survey, last month, that you would like to attend in-person worship once we moved into the yellow phase where we could accommodate 25 people for worship at each service, are requested to reserve your place at either the 8 AM Rite I or the 10:15 AM Rite II service.

If you are interested in attending services this Sunday, June 21st, please contact the parish office via email no later than Friday afternoon, June 19th. We must stay true to the diocesan protocols that have been approved by Bishop Scanlan.  We know there will be disappointment if we reach our maximum number of people and have to decline some reservations.  This is all very new to us, as well, so we ask for your kindness and patience as we determine a system that will allow those who seek in-person worship to be able to attend.  Father Rick and I will be in consultation as to what will work best to meet everyone’s needs and will make sure that everyone is spiritually fed.

To that end, please make certain, if you do reserve a spot, that you are planning on attending.  But also know we understand if, on a Saturday evening you may feel unsure.  You can reach out to me by phone and let me know.  Your comfort and safety are our primary concerns, so we will work through this new normal together and in these changing times, we will “go with the flow” and make it work for each other.

Know that we will have a wonderful live streamed service at 10:15 AM on YouTube Live, so in place of the prerecorded service from past weeks, you can be at the service while it is happening!  We will have the service bulletin uploaded to our website and will provide the link in the Friday email.

Another change starting this week is our Virtual Coffee Hour on Sundays.  It will now switch to a Saturday Social from 9 AM – 9:40 AM.  Our hosts, Joe & Christina McLaughlin, will start our weekend off right with fellowship at a time that we hope will be convenient for all.  So, join us THIS SATURDAY at 9:00 AM.  The link and details will also be in Friday’s email.

 

 

Friday Evening Prayer is tomorrow at 7:00 PM.  This is a wonderful way to peacefully end our week and is led by Patrick Ishler.  Join us on Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86327105082

Join Code:  863 2710 5082

Be well. Stay safe.  Keep the Faith.  We look forward to this upcoming weekend!

Michelle
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And remember, share our posts with your friends on Facebook as well as our YouTube page and our website!  To grow, we need to spread the good news and tell people about our wonderful St. Edward’s parish.  We have many offerings, virtually, to allow them to be “in community” with us!

Dear friends,

Today I write to you with a prayer on my heart: that God made known to us in Jesus Christ and poured out into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit might spring forth, in a deep and an authentic PEACE, at the core of each of our lives.  That PEACE, which passes all understanding, comes to us through a sense of gravity…a knowing that roots us in a hope and a love that transcends our circumstances, both personal and collective.  With coronavirus still on the rise in many places, we’re now also in the midst of emotionally charged public discourse on issues of race and policing, as our markets vacillate.  And with all of the external factors at play, disrupting our rhythms of life and threatening our PEACE, we still have our day to day realties that come with their own challenges.  We still have family dynamics to tend with, we still have existential questions, and we still have our unresolved hurts that prevent us from being fully alive to the abundant light and love available to us in this life.

Questions of COVID-19, systemic racism, and police reform aside: we need to care for ourselves in order to face the world…let alone, to embrace the gift of life.  We need to pay attention to our own breath.  And as Christians, I’d like to believe that we can initiate a response to the world’s problems through the simple act of our breathing.  To inhale the social Zeitgeist: in all its anxious, uncertain, and erratic flavor…and to exhale back into the atmosphere: a faith, a hope, and a LOVE…is itself, an act of social praxis.  Like a light upon a hill, we can allow the hope that is in us as people of faith to shine, when (and perhaps, only when) we tend to our inner worlds.  And so, we start with our breath.  When we calm down and quiet the pulsing dialogue from the fear-based and oppositional portion of our reptilian brains, we enable ourselves to rest in the faculties of our higher minds.  In this way: by loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves, we act like living ‘air filters’ in this season of distress, taking in the toxic atmosphere…refining it with the PEACE of our Lord…and putting something qualitatively better back out into the world.  Indeed, we are graced as Christians to reconstitute the narratives that we receive from the outside world, in light of what we know of God made incarnate in Jesus Christ.  And through the power of the Holy Spirit, we rest in the potential for this healing re-orientation each and every time we worship together.

To that end: it does indeed appear that we will be physically together again (though only in small groups of 25) beginning next Sunday, June 21st.  Thanks to the dedicated work of Michelle and our Vestry, we’ve prepared a detailed re-launch plan for our health and safety protocols that will be reviewed with Bishop Audrey in the coming week.  We believe that we are “right sized” to offer up socially distanced Sunday services to our 8:00 and 10:15 congregations, while continuing to provide virtual worship through the integration of livestreaming on YouTube Live.  To clarify what this means: beginning on the 21st, people will be able to attend our 10:15 service in real-time from the safety and comfort of home.  There is no pressure to return to church if you have any concerns over health and safety, and it is our hope that we will be able to use livestreaming as a permanent fixture to increase our reach and to more faithfully engage the work of evangelism as a parish.

While there will be very real limitations on how we gather for the foreseeable future, we are well-positioned to use the opportunities thrust upon us by COVID-19 to generate a model for engaging our wider community as a twenty-first century church in the years to come.  We will hug again…but even sooner…we will break bread together!  Please be on the lookout for communications from Michelle next Wednesday with our formal plan for return.

With great enthusiasm and with humble appreciation,

Father Rick+

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St. Edward’s Episcopal Church is inviting you to Evening Prayer TONIGHT!
DATE: Friday. June 12, 2020
TIME: 7:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86327105082

Meeting ID: 863 2710 5082

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,86327105082# US (Germantown)
+13126266799,,86327105082# US (Chicago)

We will be showing the text on screen to make it easy to follow along. If you have a Book of Common Prayer, you may start on page 115.

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Please connect with our Daily Message on Saturday, June 13th, which is posted by 4 PM.  It includes the link to our Online Sunday Service, service bulletin, link to online giving, and a NEW link for this Sunday’s Virtual Coffee Hour which will be hosted by Father Rick.  There will be the link and a join code. . . no pass code needed. . .so join us!

And remember, share our posts with your friends on Facebook as well as our YouTube page.

Dear friends,

Below are details for our Friday Evening Prayer.  A wonderful meditative discipline to journey from your week to the weekend.  Please join Patrick Ishler in this service on Fridays.

The next week(s) will be filled with many details about re-opening plans at St. Edward’s as they start to unfold, so please stay tuned and if you miss the Daily Message, know that we post the exact content on our website and on Facebook.

Be well. Be safe. Keep the faith.

Michelle
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St. Edward’s Episcopal Church is inviting you to Evening Prayer
DATE: Friday. June 12, 2020
TIME: 7:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86327105082

Meeting ID: 863 2710 5082

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,86327105082# US (Germantown)
+13126266799,,86327105082# US (Chicago)

We will be showing the text on screen to make it easy to follow along. If you have a Book of Common Prayer, you may start on page 115.

—
A wonderful message for today.

Forward Day by Day Meditation for THURSDAY, June 11            Saint Barnabas

Psalm 42:10 The Lord grants his loving-kindness in the daytime; in the night season his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

From the Archives: September 1, 1939
Some of you who read this psalm today can echo the words from the depths of your hearts, for you too hunger and thirst for the living God. You have a spiritual kinship with the psalmist’s Godward desire and with his love of the temple.

But to some of you, the psalm perhaps seems unreal—a spiritual experience that you have never had. How can it be yours?

Spiritual growth is a slow process. We must be patient as though training a child. Our Lord was patient with the slow growth of his disciples. He judges us not by what we are now but by what we are on the way to becoming. As Jesus is patient with us, so we should be patient with ourselves, not excusing our failures but not despondent over them. Reality, earnestness, and faith in God are the essentials. These we all can have.

MOVING FORWARD: Consider your vocations in life. Where is God calling you?

Read the contemporary reflection here.

PRAY for the Dioceses of Luapula (Zambia) and Taita Taveta (Kenya)

Ps 112 | Isaiah 42:5-12 | Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-3 | Matthew 10:7-16