St. Luke s Episcopal Church. The Northern Light. November 2017

Transcription

1 St. Luke s Episcopal Church The Northern Light The Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac: Being Communies of God s Mercy and Delight November 2017 Signs and recipients of God s blessings: Fall stewardship at St. Luke s Betsy Rogers, Senior Warden With November comes St. Luke s annual stewardship appeal, asking parishioners for their financial pledges to help the vestry as it writes a budget and plans for the church s mission and ministry in the year ahead. This has been a wonderful year at St. Luke s. Our a"endance has con#nued to grow. We ve added new members to the rolls. And when Bishop Ma" Gunter came to St. Luke s in August for his annual visita#on, he confirmed Emiliano Marvin, bap#zed Emiliano s brother Richard, and received John Hauser. Like all who join our parish community, Emiliano, Richard and John bring unique gi/s to us; they are signs of God s blessing as surely as they are recipients of his grace in these sacramental rites. We are all both signs and recipients of God s grace. Blessings abound in our lives. Our families, friends, the wonders of crea#on, the fellowship of our shared life at St. Luke s, opportuni#es to learn and grow through Bible study and film and our book club, and above all the gi/ of God s Son to redeem and heal us: God s blessings are all around us, everywhere we turn. We become signs of God s grace when we open our minds and hearts and hands to share those blessings, within the church and beyond it. This year s appeal has par#cular importance. We recognize that we must grow our budget as we prepare for Barb s eventual re#rement. This is our opportunity to recommit ourselves to mission, to take a longer view of St. Luke s future, and to respond to God s blessings with gra#tude and generosity. If you find that you can increase your pledge, it will really help. And know that for whatever you are able to give, we are most grateful! Please watch for the stewardship le"er in early November, and respond by Nov. 30. Diocese of Fond du Lac s 143rd Annual Convention Carol Ann Osinski So what did you think? was the ques#on posed by David Skidmore and Joy Zakrzewski as we se"led into the car on our way back home from the 2017 Conven#on of the Diocese of Fond du Lac. Well, definitely not what I expected! was my reply. I am not a fan of mee#ngs with resolu#ons, elec#ons, budget issues, or topics dealing with things that on the surface could make my eyes glaze over. This was my very first diocesan conven#on as you may have guessed The day began with Eucharist at Holy Apostles Church in Oneida. It is the grandmother church of the diocese of Fond du Lac. For me, the highlight of the Eucharist was the two hymns sung in their na- #ve language by the Oneida singers. A/er the service we convened Connued page 2 I!"!""#$ Opportuni es to Serve p. 2 Diocesan Conven on con nued p. 2 Prayer p. 3 Fall Learning Offerings / Book Group p. 4 Parish Events / Prayer Shawls p. 4 Canterbury Cinema & Dinner p. 5 Pet Blessing p. 6 Birthdays, Anniversaries and Deaths p. 7 Vestry Notes p. 7 Concert for Hurricane Relief p. 8 September Calendar / Lay Ministry insert Benedic ne Stewardship insert

2 The Northern Light Page 2 The Vestry Betsy Rogers, Sr. Warden Doug Schwartz, Jr. Warden Norma Bramsen (2018) David Skidmore (2018) Ralph Blankenburg (2019) Steve Ellio" (2019) Judy Bush (2020) George Hughes (2020) Vestry minutes appear monthly on our website at h6p://stlukessisterbay.org/ O7789#!!$" T8 S$9;$ Please don t wait to be asked if you want to get involved. We invite you to pray about serving and see what you discover. You can let any vestry member or Mother Barb know you are interested. Training is provided. Counters for Sunday Offering. Reading the lessons and/or the Prayers of the People during Sunday worship. Serve as a chalice bearer -- they offer the cup of wine, the blood of Jesus Christ. Some also assist at the table during communion. Altar Guild they prepare for worship services including communion bread and wine as well as flowers. Added bonus, great gatherings with scrump#ous food. Lay Eucharis#c Visitor (LEV) they take communion to parish members at Scandia. Providing transporta#on to church for members who live at Scandia. Speak with Gwynne Schultz, Deacon Joy or Mother Barb. Diocesan 143rd Annual Convention Connued from front page at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center in Green Bay. Bishop Ma" and his team led a well organized and efficiently run mee#ng. The process for elec#ons and acceptance of resolu#ons was smooth and painless much to my surprise. Just before lunch, conven#on a"endees had the pleasure of par#cipa#ng in a surprise birthday celebra#on for Bishop Ma". We all donned birthday hats and tooted our noisemakers to wish him a very happy 60 th birthday. A/er lunch we heard brief reports about various diocesan projects, commi"ees and task forces. Reverend Brad Hauff, the Episcopal Church s Indigenous Minister, also greeted us. He gave a brief history of the Indigenous Ministry in the Episcopal Church. What did I learn? A lot! Being amidst this group of energe#c and faith-filled people, I le/ with a greater apprecia#on of what makes this diocese #ck. It takes a vibrant, down-to-earth leader and scores of dedicated clerics and lay people whose mission it is to spread God s love. I learned how St. Luke s fits into the big picture and how well we compare with other parishes in the diocese. And perhaps, and most important, I learned not to prejudge conven#ons, at least not this one. If you haven t ever been a delegate, I strongly encourage you to give it a try. Photos Above: St. Luke s delegaon: Carol Ann and Ray Osinski, Deacon Joy, (David Skidmore, the fourth delegate, was taking photo). Right below: Exuberance in vong. Le2: presentaon to the convenon.

3 The Northern Light Page 3 Mother Barb is hoping to offer experiences and learning about prayer in the coming time. This reflection from his book Wistful Thinking by noted theologian Frederick Buechner, lays the groundwork. Prayer Everybody prays whether he thinks of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beau#ful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that some#mes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else s pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else s joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world. According to Jesus, by far the most important things about praying is to keep at it. The images he uses to explain this are all rather comic, as though he thought it was rather comic to have to explain it at all He says God is like a friend you go to borrow bread from at midnight. The friend tells you in effect to drop dead, but you go on knocking anyway un#l finally he gives you what you want so he can go back to bed again (Luke 11:5-8). Or God is like a crooked judge who refuses to hear the case of a certain poor widow, presumably because he knows there s nothing much in it for him. But she keeps on hounding him un#l finally he hears her case just to get her out of his hair (Luke 18:1-8). Even a s#nker, Jesus says, won t give his own child a black eye when he asks for peanut bu"er and jelly, so how all the more will God when his children - (Ma"hew 7:9-11). Be importunate, Jesus says not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God s door before he ll open it, but because un#l you beat the path maybe there s no way of gesng to your door. Ravish my heart, John Donne wrote. But God will not usually ravish. He will only court. Whatever else it may or may not be, prayer is at least talking to yourself, and that s in itself not always a bad idea. Talk to yourself about your own life, about what you ve done and what you ve failed to do and about who you are and who you wish you were and who the people you love are and the people you don t love too. Talk to yourself about what ma"ers most to you, because if you don t, you may forget what ma"ers most to you. Even if you don t believe anybody s listening, at least you ll be listening. Believe Somebody is listening. Believe in miracles. That s what Jesus told the father who asked him to heal his epilep#c son. Jesus said, All things are possible to him who believes. And the father spoke for all of us when he answered, Lord, I believe; help my unbelief! (Mark 9:14-29). What about when the boy is not healed? When, listened to or not listened to, the prayer goes unanswered? Who knows? Just keep praying, Jesus says. Remember the sleepy friend, the crooked judge. Even if the boy dies, keep on bea#ng the path to God s door, because the one thing you can be sure of is that down the path you beat with even your most half-cocked and hal#ng prayer the God you call upon will finally come, and even if he does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring you himself. And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers that is what we are really praying for. Frederick Buechner: In Wishful Thinking, the first book in his much-loved lexical trilogy, Frederick Buechner puts the language of God, the universe, and the human spirit under his wry linguis#c microscope. In his o/en ironic and always keensighted reflec#ons on such terms as agnosc, envy, love, and sin, he invited us to look at these everyday words in new and enlightening ways. Freshly revised and expanded for this edi#on, Wishful Thinking is a "beguiling" [Time] adventure in language for the restless believer, the doubter, and all who love words. From Amazon.com.

4 The Northern Light Page 4 Mother Barb Blessing Prayer Shawls Shawls have been made for centuries. They are universal and embracing; they comfort and enfold; wrap and warm. Kni"ers pray for the persons while they knit or crochet the shawl. When a shawl is completed it is blessed. When a shawl is given, the recipient receives a card with prayers and a brief history of the prayer shawl ministry a"ached. Shawls are given to those who are undergoing chemo, the bereaved, those who are going through a difficult #me, someone moving away, a new mother, an ordina#on any occasion where someone could be touched by encouragement and prayer. If you are interested in joining the group, know of someone who would benefit from receiving a shawl or would like to donate yarn or fleece fabric for making shawls please contact Carol Ann Osinski ( or rcosinski@gmail.com). You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother s womb. Psalm 139:13 St. Luke s will host Lessons and Carols at St. Luke s on December 3. We have a long standing tradi#on of celebra#ng Advent Lessons and Carols with Christ the King/ Holy Na#vity. Sue Raye Hughes, along with someone from Christ the King/Holy Na#vity, will be organizing the music. There will be a choir with a one-#me prac#ce. Please speak to Sue Raye if you are interested. We will also need readers for this service. Speak with Mother Barb if you would like to read. Learning Opportunities Lectionary Conversation Wednesday, 1:30p The lec#onary group takes an in-depth look at the upcoming Sunday scriptures, including looking at the history and theology of a given passage. Needless to say, that makes listening to the sermon on Sunday a much more rewarding experience. This class isn t sequen#al, so feel free to drop in on any Wednesday. Scandia Tea Tuesday, December 13 We need lots of goodies as well as help with set-up, serving and cleanup. All are welcome to par#cipate. The residents and staff look forward to this fes#ve event each year. There we be a sign-up sheet in Clipboard Alley. Reading the Good Book Well: Not Your Grandmother s Bible Study! Thursday, 10a Someone has said the Bible is an R-rated book, intended for mature audiences. This will be a six week Bible study, designed to illustrate key insights from READING THE GOOD BOOK WELL, wri"en by my great friend, Jerry Camery- Hogga". The goal is to enable par#cipants to interpret biblical passages with greater interest and insight, and to increase their appe#te for being addressed by scripture itself. It will be an interac#ve study, so bring your sense of humor and a curious mind. Roger Johnson Altar Guild Annual Meeting The Altar Guild will meet December 5, 9a, at The White Gull Inn. Breakfast is being provided by Mother Barb. This is a #me for Altar Guild members to celebrate what has worked well, iden#fy things that might need improvement, and to plan for the church year including preparing our worship space for Christmas and the Season of Christmas. If you are interested in this ministry speak with Norma Bramsen Coffee Hour News Did you know that the coffee consumed at our Coffee Hour supports Fair Trade? Recently the Kitchen Commi"ee has started ordering coffee from Equal Exchange. We found their policies suppor#ng Fair Trade, small farms and economic jus#ce consistent with the values we espouse at St. Luke s. An added bonus is that Equal Exchange will donate 15 cents to Episcopal Relief and Development for each pound of coffee we purchase. Drink up!

5 The Northern Light Page 5 Canterbury Cinema Wednesday, November 8, 5p The November movie will be A Christmas Memory. Please sign-up in Clipboard Alley if you plan on a"ending and if you are able to help with dinner. Plan on being there on November 8. Sneak Preview: A Christmas Memory (1966) Mike Eischen This sweet, gentle, holiday film provides more than ample emo#onal and spiritual introduc#on to the season of Advent and preparing our spirit for Christmas. The story is wri"en by author Truman Capote and reflects his childhood experience as a young boy. Capote narrates the film. When his parents split up, their young boy Buddy is sent to the Depression-era south to live with distant and aging cousins. Though two of the cousins are joyless and ina"en#ve regarding Buddy, he finds an unlikely friend in his mentally challenged elder cousin Sook (played by Geraldine Page). The two raise enough money to buy the ingredients for 30 fruit cakes, sent mostly to strangers like FDR and a foreign missionary. Living as they do in near poverty, dependent on the seemingly grudging support of emo#onally distant family members, they must scrounge and forage for the necessary ingredients to make the fruit cakes. Par#cularly touching is their visit to a local bootlegger to purchase whiskey. Though frightened, they approach the in#mida#ng Mr. HaHa with a surprising result. The poverty of the 1930s fails to stop or even slow down a loving rela#onship. They spend Christmas day flying the kites they made for each other as Capote s voice closes the film with a touching remembrance of the passage of #me. In a departure from other Canterbury Cinema selec#ons, this 50-minute film is an archival print of the December 21, 1966 television episode of ABC Stage 67. As such, the quality of the produc#on, color, and sound can be challenging. Sub#tles are not available, but we will have significant dialogue in print to help the hearing impaired and to enhance discussion. Viewers give it high ra#ngs, especially when compared to a 1997 remake for television. As you watch: What Chris#an themes emerge? Did any characters or you the viewer experience what is called the numinous, a spiritual quality indica#ng or sugges#ng the presence of a God? What is problema#c about the strict religious teachings of the two joyless cousins on Christmas morning? I once knew a woman who grew up on a poor northern Minnesota farm in the late 1800 s. Her only Christmas gi/s were in her stocking hung behind the wood stove: one dime and an orange. Both were unavailable to her the rest of the year. Reflect on the joy of gi/ giving shared between Buddy and his wide-eyed, innocent cousin Sook. Making fruit cakes and kites were rituals. What Christmas rituals did you enjoy as a child? See you at Canterbury Cinema. Outreach Ministries RE-cap of 2017 Sharing Scandia Music Program $ Scandia Golf Ou#ng $ Episcopal Relief Fund (Sudan) $1, Custom Canines $ Altrusa of Door County $ HaS School Lutheran Bike Ride $ Secret Santa $ YMCA Lunch Program $ Doctors Without Borders $ Total given $4, Balance le/ to share $ Rummage Sale Recipients, Secret Santa Ellison Bay, Doctors Without Borders, and YMCA Summer lunch program.

6 The Northern Light Page Pet Blessing Getting your newsletter in the mail? Consider gesng it in color on-line. You can print out only what you need plus enjoy a more vibrant newsle"er. Send an to: stlukescommunica on@gmail.com Please include your name and address. Sign-up for E-News list as well. Want to be in the Know? Sign-up for E-News to get weekly and special updates on what is happening in our faith community. This is our primary means of ge:ng news out to people in the most mely manner. All we need is your address and you will be in the know. Send Carol Ann Osinski an at rcosinski@gmail.com Preparing for Sunday: Sunday Readings with Commentary Go to our website at h6p://stlukes -sisterbay.org/ and click on the icon. Clipboard Alley Clipboard Alley is where a number of things are posted on clipboards including sign-up sheets for serving, Sunday flowers and other events. Clipboard Alley is located along the hallway that leads to the stairs. When entering St. Luke s, the hallway is immediately to your right as you walk towards the worship space.

7 The Northern Light Page 7 Nov 5 George Eileen True Nov 5 Doug Fran Peterson Nov 17 Marcia Eischen Nov 25 Lee Hickey Are we missing your birthday or anniversary? Have we given you a new one by mistake? If so, please call the church office and let us know. Vestry Notes The Bishop has agreed for Mother Barb to con#nue on a year-by-year basis. By-laws Update The bishop has approved our proposed bylaws revisions, which will now be distributed to the parish for ac#on at the January annual mee#ng. Gourmet Dinner Jean Barre" has requested input from the vestry on having gourmet dinners. It was decided to ask her to do it next spring as we are con#nuing the Foyer dinners through the winter. Signage We an#cipate budge#ng for new signage in the 2018 budget. Betsy will convene the sign commi"ee to review design op#ons and make a proposal to the vestry. There is deteriora#on on some of the framing members of the box windows on both sides of the nave. This will be dealt with in Spring and included in the budget. Financials The Balance Sheet as of August 31, 2017 indicated total assets of $373, The financial report for the month of August reflected a total net income of $10, and total expenses of $24, indica#ng a deficit of $14, This was par#ally explained by the cost of Building Improvements. Year-to-date reports against the budget items indicated total income of $176, and total expenses of $93, reflec#ng a surplus of $82, Disposal of TV/Cart and other equipment no longer needed it will be donated to Gibraltar if they want it. Amazon Smile Amazon donates 0.5% of the price of your eligible Amazon Smile purchases to the charitable organiza#on of your choice. St. Luke s will be registered and informa#on provided to the parish in the newsle"er and in E-News. Contrac#ng Procedures it was suggested that we need procedures to follow when dealing with large maintenance issues around the church building. Barb, Ralph, George and Doug will work on preparing a policy and bring it to a future vestry mee#ng. RECTOR: The Rev. Barbara Sajna, 2100 Ridges Road Baileys Harbor, WI Home: Cell: Church Phone: (920) Deacon: The Rev. Joy Zakrzewski joylael@charter.net Home: Cell: Parish Staff: Treasurer: Karen Schwartz stlukestreasurer77@gmail.com Secretary: Jane Weis jnjweis@charter.net Organist: Sue Raye Hughes meowyldy@gmail.com E-News Editor: Carol Ann Osinski rcosinski@gmail.com Newsle6er Editor: Joanne Skidmore joanneskidmore@prodigy.net Website Editor: Norma Bramsen nabramsen@aol.com Parish Nurse: Roberta Thelen robertathelen@live.com R$I$IJ$9!K T 8"$ W 8 HL;$ D!$M Sarah Wright, long-time member We thank you God for giving them to us, their family and friends, to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion console us who mourn. Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until, by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before. Give rest, O Christ, to your servants with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting. The Book of Common Prayer

8 St. Luke s Episcopal Church 2336 Canterbury Lane PO Box 559, Sister Bay, WI Church Phone: (920) stlukesdoorcounty@gmail.com Website: h"p://stlukes-sisterbay.org/ Bishop Ma"hew Gunter, The Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac Mother Barb Sajna, Rector Deacon Joy Zakrzewski Celebrang, Deepening and Sharing our Commitment to Christ Concert for Hurricane Relief Sunday, Nov 5, 2p Beth Chafey-Hon, the violinist will be playing with Sue Raye Hughes accompanying on piano. The concert will be Sunday a/ernoon, with a recep#on to follow. The money from the free-will offering will go to go to Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD). About ERD: ERD consistently receives the highest ra#ngs on Charity Navigator. Their primary mission is to go in a/er a crisis and provide assistance at rebuilding lives. Gi/s to ERD provide their partners on the ground with cri#cal supplies, such as food and water for communi#es devastated by Hurricane Irma and other storms. Gi/s also help ERD to empower communi#es to not only prepare for emergencies, but assist with the long-term efforts needed to rebuild and heal. For more informa#on, go to their website at h"p:// Can t be there? Please consider sending a dona on to the church marked for Hurricane Relief. Hearing Loop System A reminder that the church has two Sound Loop receivers with headsets available. See George Hughes if interested (he is usually by the organ).