A WORD FROM THE RECTOR

Transcription

1 ADVENT: CHRISTMAS: EPIPHANY

2 A WORD FROM THE RECTOR It s a long road to Bethlehem. The busy-ness and rush that comes this time of year, the frustration, the lines. The emotions, high and low, that come with holiday parties and family expectations. The season before Christmas can feel like a slog. The good news We re not prepared for God s entrance into our world, into our lives. We never are. That s the beauty isn t it? God isn t waiting for you to be ready. God doesn t need you to have your act together. God is showing up whether or not you have the presents wrapped and the ham out of the oven. God is always already coming to you. Our work is deceptively simple. Get quiet. Wait for the Lord. Be still, as the psalms say. Be still and know that I am God. Many of you know that I spent my first years as a priest serving with a Spanish language congregation. Advent sermons are a little easier in Spanish. Wait and hope are the same word: Esperar. And the word rhymes well with another good word for Advent: Respirar. Breathe. Slow down and breathe. God is coming, ready or not. What a gift. I hope you will join us as we wait, watch, and celebrate this joyous season. Advent Blessings, The Rev. Mike Angell Rector In the midst of all the rush, can you make room for stillness? In the midst of all our cultures preparing, can you quiet yourself down? Can you wait with hope? TOWARD A CAPITAL CAMPAIGN Thank you to all who participated in our feasibility study. The results were strong. Our consultants remarked that the participation rate in the survey and the willingness to participate were far higher than they usually see for parishes. Based on the strong results, the vestry has voted to move forward with a capital campaign, prioritizing heating and cooling, the organ, basic repairs, accessiblity, and the kitchen. Based on the results of the study, the vestry also has determined to adjust the goal of the campaign. We tested a goal of $1.8 million. We have set a primary goal for the campaign of $823,000. While the goal we set is lower than the goal we tested, we also view this as a win. It is far better to set a realistic goal than to reach beyond our means. We anticipate launching the public phase of the campaign in early 2019, in time for the celebrations of our church s 150th anniversary. 2

3 LAURIE ANZILOTTI TO JOIN HOLY COMMUNION AS SEMINIARIAN On February 10, 2019, Laurie Anzilotti will be joining the clergy team at Holy Communion as seminarian. She comes to us after serving three semesters at Emanuel Church in Webster Groves. Laurie Anzilotti is a third-year Masters of Divinity student at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame with majors in Theology and English, and continued her theological studies at the master s level at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles and Aquinas Institute in St. Louis. She deeply engaged with the community as a theology teacher, the children s liturgist at St. Michael and St. George in Clayton, a community activist, and as the director of programming at Camp Thunderbird, a boys and girls camp in Minnesota. JOIN US FOR LAURIE S ORDINATION When she comes to Holy Communion, Laurie will have already been ordained as a "Transitional Deacon." Unlike The Rev. Chester Hines who serves as a permanent deacon at Holy Communion, Laurie will be ordained to the diaconate as the first step before she is ordained a priest about six months later. Laurie will be ordained alongside three other transitional deacons on Friday December 21, 2018 at 6pm at Christ Church Cathedral. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. 3

4 Waiting With Hope T he Season of Advent is a time of waiting, watching, and expectation. In counter to the cultural season of frantic preparation for Christmas by buying, shopping, and rushing, Advent invites us to slow down. This season asks us to think about our hopes and dreams for the world. ADVENT JOURNEY CLASS: SOUP SUPPER AND PRAYER Engage in this season of hope and expectation in prayer. Starting December 6th and each following Wednesday evening of Advent, you are invited to step away from the busy holiday pace for a shared meal and some quiet prayer time. We will gather at 6:00 p.m. for contemplative prayer, and then those who can stay will share a simple soup supper. If you are willing to arrive early on one of the evenings to prepare dinner with a team of other parishioners, please or call the parish office. Follow the hashtag #adventword on social media for a digital Advent Calendar, you can even tag your own images. 4

5 As we prepare for Christmas, we are mindful that many in our city are facing cold weather and difficult family circumstances. There are two gift drives going on concurrently at Holy Communion. For our partners at Trinity Food Pantry, we are collecting clean socks, gloves, and warm hats for those who are housing insecure. For our partners at the Episcopal City Mission who work with youth in detention, we are collecting gifts and gift cards for children. You can download a full list of requested items here. We are especially encouraging anyone coming to our Advent Party on December 2 to make a donation to one of the drives. All gifts need to be turned in by December 16. Please turn gift cards into the parish office, or place them in an envelope in the offering plate. You can find baskets ready to receive gifts in the main entryway. Please do not wrap the gifts, to make work easier for our sorters. Thank you for helping brighten this holiday season for someone in need. Dates to remember: GODLY PLAY We will celebrate Advent in the Godly Play room December 2nd-16th from 9:15-10:15am. The annual Advent Party is December 2nd at 5:00pm. The Christmas Pageant for all children on December 24th at 5pm. Rehearsal December 22 at 10am. On January 6th, we will come together for an Inter-generational formation celebrating Epiphany from 9:15-10:15am. The celebration will continue with the Epiphany Pageant during the 10:30am service. On January 13th, we will return to the Godly Play Sanctuary. We will listen to Parables of Jesus as we approach Lent. 5 Heidi Olliff Children's Formation Coordinator

6 A HUMAN RIGHTS BASED RESPONSE Cristosal, our partners in El Salvador, visited St. Louis in October, the following article by Bob Lowes recounts the symposium at Washington University, which touched on the immigration crisis we are seeing today. A human rights group in El Salvador founded by Episcopal clergy is using the courts to force the government there to live up to its responsibility to protect hundreds of thousands of citizens internally displaced by rampant violence, criminal and otherwise. And when such refugees from violence come to the United States, this country also has a responsibility to give them safe haven, said Noah Bullock, the executive director of Cristosal, in a symposium on a faith-informed response to immigration and violence on Oct. 8 at Washington University in St. Louis. No person can be denied a place on planet Earth where they can be free of persecution, said Bullock, speaking at the university s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, named after U.S. Sen. John Danforth, a Missouri Republican and Episcopal priest. Contrary to popular opinion, Bullock said, the typical immigrant crossing the southern border of the United States is no longer a Mexican looking for work, but someone from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala fleeing gang violence. Cristosal, which has offices in all three countries, operates safe houses there for their protection. However, the ultimate solution is not for private groups to replace the government in this guardian role, Bullock said. Rather, groups like Cristosal achieve long-term structural reforms by activating victims to claim their rights, and the state to do its duty. The 1951 Refugee Convention of the United Nations, Bullock said, spells out this duty for whatever country harbors people fleeing persecution. Bullock described one successful execution of its activation strategy. Cristosal sued the Salvadoran government on behalf of six families forced out of their homes by gang violence, contending that an indifferent government had violated their constitutional rights. In July, the country s Supreme Court sided with the families, ordering the government to recognize the problem of forced displacement after years of denial, prevent it from happening and aid victims. David Morales, who directs Cristosal s strategic litigation team, told the audience of 75 at Washington University of another attempt to hold the powerful of El Salvador accountable for wrongdoing through the courts. Cristosal is privately prosecuting the perpetrators of the El Mozote massacre, in which U.S.- trained government soldiers killed more than 1,000 civilians more than half of them children in 1981, the second year of the country s 12-year civil war. Morales began investigating the massacre during the conflict when he worked in the human rights office of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador, 6

7 in the nation s capital. (Morales also sought justice for the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, a defender of the poor who was canonized as a Catholic saint on Oct. 14). The El Mozote case came to a halt when the civil war ended in 1992 with an amnesty agreement that shielded war criminals from prosecution. However, the country s Supreme Court struck down the amnesty as unconstitutional in That decision allowed Morales to pick up where he left off years earlier. Morales said the naked use of violence against civilians during the war has persisted into the present as the Salvadoran police and military take an iron fist approach toward gang violence without investments in policies to prevent crime. In the process, young people merely suspected of gang membership face imprisonment, torture and extrajudicial execution, he said. Bullock added that it s important to prosecute decades-old war crimes because when there is no truth, when there is no justice, there is a continuation of the norm. We think we can challenge the assumption of impunity, the assumption of the powerful that they can do what they like to the weak without any consequences, Bullock said about the court case. It s something we chip away at. Other than urging the United States to protect refugees from the Northern Triangle, Bullock and Morales did not address controversial U.S. immigration policies on family separation, temporary protected status or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Bullock more broadly stressed the importance of the United States, however imperfect, upholding human rights. It means a lot to the world when the United States says that human rights matter, said Bullock. There s leverage, then, for organizations like ourselves to advocate. But when the United States abrogates a leadership role, there s less pressure to leverage those changes, he said. He noted a resurgence of authoritarianism across the globe and even in our own country, which emboldens human rights violators. Case in point: In Nicaragua, the regime has killed more than 400 protesters in the last few months and kicked the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights out of the country with no concern for [international] consequences, he said. Bullock also disputed President Donald Trump s characterization of El Salvador and other developing nations as shithole countries, saying that the president ignores U.S. policies that have shaped those countries for the worse over the years. For example, the bullets used by the government soldiers in the El Mozote massacre were made in an army munitions plant in Independence, Missouri, Bullock said. We can t see ourselves in isolation from the conditions that are there, he said. A panel of three St. Louis faith-based activists at the symposium related the work of Cristosal in Central America to their own missions. Faith is personal, but not private faith has to go public, said the Rev. Travis Winckler, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church. His congregation, said Winckler, is trying to live out those words by bridging the divide between a predominantly African-American neighborhood immediately to the north that has experienced the historical residue of racism and a more affluent, integrated neighborhood next door. Continued on next page Join us for the next El Salvador Trip! June 3-10, 2019 " Limited Spaces are Available Estimated Cost $2,500 per person Scholarships are available Contact the Rector mangell@holycommunion.net 7

8 To the Rev. Dietra Wise-Baker, who was active in the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police shooting of Michael Brown, the iron fist wielded by the Salvadoran army and police sounds like the same story, the same song that has happened here, with police in riot gear. How do they understand who we are in their service to us? said Wise-Baker. There s so much resonance between our people and the people of El Salvador. She added that she had not previously viewed the oppression of African-Americans through a human rights lens. Wise-Baker, a community organizer with a group called Metropolitan Congregations United, is on the same page with Cristosal when it comes to using the judicial system. In August, her group filed a lawsuit against a local school district along with Missouri educational agencies in federal court for allegedly providing substandard education to homeless children, in violation of federal law. This is a form of trying to get accountability from the state, she said. The panelists also commented on false characterizations or narratives repeated about those deprived of human rights, such as the misconception that undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border are mostly job seekers, or, as Trump has said, criminals and rapists. I d hate to think about actually repeating what people say against us, said Maharat Rori Picker Neiss, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis. Neiss said a false narrative undergirded a common argument that would-be immigrants should come here legally like previous generations of newcomers. We ve had a history of Jews illegally entering this country, she said. In my childhood, so many of the stories we heard were about how people heroically falsified papers, stole papers, did whatever they needed to do to survive. Robert Lowes, an independent journalist and poet, is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion. This story was originally published by the Episcopal News Service. Photos courtesy of the Danforth Center for Religion and Politics. 8

9 HIGHLIGHTS FROM FALL 2018 S t. Francis Day was a big success, with record attendance among both humans and pets. Here the rector is blessing Milo Chapman. After the shortened Eucharistic service, the parish and neighborhood gathered on the front lawn for good food, fellowship, and prayers for pets, stuffed animals, and people alike. All the while we were serenaded by the Mariachi group "Nuevo Azteca." F If you missed out on collecting your "My pet was blessed at Holy Communion" bumper sticker, you can still get one from the office. all Festival, our third annual, was held on October 28. With games for all ages, and a Dia de los Muertos theme. This year we held the celebration in Mooney Park on a sunny, if breezy, day. The annual chili cookoff was a threeway tie between Andy Ludwig, Kim Hudson, and Tom and Ben Rose. In the picture you can see the winners with the "golden skull" trophy. (Mary Chapman still owes the winners the real deal). Big thanks to the Party and Prayers group for their organizing! L aundry Love has seen record attendance this fall, with capacity crowds gathering at the Classic Coin laundromat on Balson each third Tuesday of the month. The growth of the ministry is largely due to the hard work of our volunteer leaders Mary Duba, Julie Farrar, and Lisa Heaner. Sally Thomas, Holy Communion's Missioner for Children and Families worked with UCity Schools to get a flyer for Laundry Love in back to school packets, and several volunteers answered questions at our booth at the back to school fair. You can join us at Laundry Love every third Tuesday of the month, including December 18. Volunteers are asked to be there by 6:00pm. Laundry starts at 6:30p.

10 PAGE 8 HOLIDAY SEASON CALENDAR Advent Party December 2, 5pm-8pm HARK! ADVENT REVELRY!. Food, fun, and entertainment for all ages. All Are Welcome! Bring your family and friends. Please sign up on the Bulletin Board in the Entrance to the Church or online. Holiday music sing-along presented by the Holy Communion Choir Nursery Care will be available from 4:45 p.m. until 8:15 p.m No charge, but please consider making a donation of socks, hats, or gloves for Trinity Food Ministry or making a gift to the youth supported by Episcopal City Mission. Festival of Lessons and Carols December 16, 10:30am WE JOIN ANGLICANS ACROSS THE WORLD TO WAIT, HEAR SCRIPTURE, AND SING GREAT CAROLS We join Anglicans around the globe in marking the season with Lessons and Carols The tradition of the service of Lessons and Carols comes from the Chapel of King s College, Cambridge, where it was first observed on Christmas Eve, Since 1919 the service has begun with the hymn Once in royal David s city. Beginning in 1928 the service was broadcast by the BBC, and except in 1930, it has been heard annually., Blue Christmas December 23, 10:30am JOIN US FOR A SPECIAL SERVICE FEATURING BLUES MUSIC AND PRAYERS OR THOSE WHO GRIEVE Christmas is not a joy-filled season for everyone. For those who have experiences loss, particularly of a close family member, the holidays can be a difficult time. On the day before Christmas eve, Sunday December 23 we will have different sort of service at 10:30am. We will bring some beautiful blues music alongside prayers for those who struggle with the holidays. The 8am service that day will be a traditional Advent 4 service.. Family Service: Pageant and Carols December 24, 5:00pm A FAMILY FRIENDLY SERVICE WITH CAROLS AND CHRISTMAS PAGEANT. All children are invited to help tell the Christmas story at this family service with great music. 10

11 Late Service: Missa Popularis December 24, 10:00pm OUR LATE SERVICE FEATURES MUSIC BY SWEDISH COMPOSERS MÅRTEN JANSSON AND FREDRIK SIXTEN FOR CHOIR AND BRASS We welcome Emmanuel, God with us, with carols, candlelight, and beautiful music. Christmas Morning December 25 10:30am ON CHRISTMAS MORNING OUR SIMPLIST CHRISTMAS SERVICE A single, simple, spoken service of Holy Communion for Christmas morning. Epiphany: December 6 January 6, 8am and 10:30am (regular schedule) WELCOME THE MAGI THEN BUST OPEN THE PIÑATA FOLLOW THE STAR. We welcome the Magi! Join us for an intergenerational Sunday morning teaching at 9:30am, with crafts, followed by a pageant and visit of the magi during the 10:30am service. After the service, children are invited to help break open the star piñata. We Remember Dr. King January 20, 10:30am A GOSPEL AND SOUL MUSIC FESTIVAL REMEMBERING DR. KING AND SINGING SONGS OF PROTEST AND RESISTANCE Help us celebrate Dr. King's holiday with soul. Join us for this music festival service as we lift our voices to remember Martin. Bishop's Visit and Annual Meeting February 3, 9:00am and 10:30am BISHOP SMITH'S FINAL VISITATION BEFORE HIS RETIREMENT Bishop Smith will visit to confirm and receive new Episcopalians. He will also give the blessing at our 150th Annual meeting, kicking off the celebration of our sesquicentennial year. We will elect vestry members, and delegates to convention. 11

12 A huge thank you to all who have made pledges as part of our 2019 annual campaign for Holy Communion. We are close to a record year of pledged giving at Holy Communion. A growing church means we need resources to continue to grow the program. If you have not yet pledged, we ask you to prayerfully consider doing so at or by mail. STAFF The Rev. Mike Angell, Rector mangell@holycommunion.net The Rev. Marc Smith, Priest Associate msmith@holycommunion.net The Rev. Chester Hines, Deacon chines@holycommunion.net The Rev. Beth Scriven, Campus Ministry beth@rockwellhouse.org Cheyanne Lovellette, Director of Operations clovellette@holycommunion.net Mary Chapman, Director of Music mchapman@holycommunion.net Jim Kern, Financial Administrator jkern@holycommunion.net Heidi Olliff, Children s Formation hmolliff@holycommunion.net Brooklyn Payne, Youth Director youth@holycommunion.net Sally Thomas, Missioner sthomas@holycommunion.net Jerome Harris, Sexton VESTRY Shirley Mensah, Sr. Warden Susan Norris, Jr. Warden Brian Barnhart, Treasurer Alisa Williams, Secretary Tahnee Jackson-Whitlock, Scott Ferguson, Rudy Nickens, Megan Ondr, Pat Redington 12