You can see a video of it at Ann Fontaine’s site HERE.
A transcripton of the sermon is HERE.
L-R Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin
On Sunday July 20, 1969 the first people landed on the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were in the lunar lander which touched down at 3:17 Eastern Standard Time.
Buzz Aldrin had with him the Reserved Sacrament. He radioed: “Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, whoever or wherever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the last few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way.”
Later he wrote: “In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.’ I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute Deke Slayton had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly…Eagle’s metal body creaked. I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”
NASA kept this secret for two decades. The memoirs of Buzz Aldrin and the Tom Hanks’s Emmy- winning HBO mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon (1998), made people aware of this act of Christian worship 235,000 miles from Earth.
Read the rest HERE.
This is how Christina Patterson begins her commentary. The entire article is lovely. You can read it all HERE. Toward the end, she says this:
So why do I, who found the Anglican church so boring as a child that I flounced away at 13 never to go back, and who then had an adolescence as a born-again Baptist nutter, and who now has no religious belief whatsoever, and believes that religion is responsible for some of the biggest disasters in human history and some of the biggest threats to our planet, now love the Church of England? (The traditional Church of England, not its evangelical, Alpha-armed wing.)
Why do I love it? Let me count the ways.I love it because it is patient. It does not expect the world to change in an instant, or to be bludgeoned into belief, because it knows that certain things take centuries.
I love it because it is kind. It is kind enough to welcome strangers, whatever their beliefs, and shake their hands, and offer them drinks. It is kind enough to suggest that the biblical teaching on sex before marriage is a mere technicality that can be disregarded, and to offer couples with clear evidence of this disregard (in the form of children) its blessing in the form of weddings when they want them and baptisms when they want them, and even both at the same time, if they want them.I like the fact that it is neither envious (of more flamboyant, more attention-seeking and more successful-at-proselytising religions) nor boastful.
I like the fact that it is not arrogant or rude. I like the fact that it does not insist on its own way, but is genuinely tolerant of other religious beliefs and none. I like the fact that it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but quietly presents an ethical framework of kindness. I like the fact that it believes in the values of the New Testament, and of St Paul’s description of love, which I’ve just paraphrased, but also believes that it is more important to embody them than to quote them.I like the fact that it doesn’t speak like a child, think like a child, or reason like a child. I like the fact that it is mature enough to recognise doubt. I like the fact that it is calm.
I like the fact that it recognises that the religious impulse is here to stay, and that the more you try to crush it, the stronger it will be, and that all human beings, irrespective of their beliefs, have yearnings for the transcendent.
Listen to the sermon HERE.
God has heard it all before.
You can’t afford to take a pilgrimage to one of the world’s sacred spots.
It’s too hard to find a church, mosque or temple while you’re on vacation.
You just can’t find the time to pray.
Thanks to new technological advances, you really have no excuses left for avoiding communing with the divine, even during the dog days of summer.
Earlier this month, a clever fellow in Israel made it possible for anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time, to tuck a scrap of paper with their prayer on it into the cracks of the Western Wall in Jerusalem — via Twitter.
If you “tweet” your prayers to the Twitter account @thekotel, Alon Nil, the service’s 25-year-old founder in Tel Aviv, will print them out on paper and have a group of kind souls in Jerusalem take them by hand and tuck them into the wall for you.
You can read the rest HERE.
You can listen to this old sermon HERE.
Tags:John 6, loaves and fishes, Sermon
Conversations “out and about:”
The woman who stopped me in the worship hall to thank Integrity for our work and then to share that she had attended the Integrity Eucharist with her 14 year old son — and that afterwards in their hotel room he had come out to her.
“I’ve known he was gay since he was about 4,” she said, her eyes welling up. “And have been waiting for him to figure it out. The fact that he came to himself in the context of a celebration of the Eucharist — that he’s never going to have to wonder if his church or his family will love and accept him as he is — I just can’t thank you enough.”
“He’s a really great kid,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And he’s going to be FABULOUS gay man! “
My brothers and sisters in Christ:The 76th General Convention is now history, though it will likely take some time before we are all reasonably clear about what the results are.
We gathered in Anaheim, as guests of the Diocese of Los Angeles, for eleven full days of worship, learning, and policy-making. The worship was stunning visually, musically, and liturgically, with provocative preaching and lively singing.
Our learning included training in Public Narrative, as well as news about the emergent church, in the LA Night presentation.
We welcomed a number of visitors from other parts of the Anglican Communion, including 15 of the primates (archbishops or presiding bishops), other bishops, clergy, and laity.
You can see and hear all this and more at the Media Hub: http://gchub.episcopalchurch.org/
The budget adopted represents a significant curtailment of church-wide ministry efforts, in recognition of the economic realities of many dioceses and church endowments, which will result in the loss of a number of Church Center staff who have given long and laudable service. Yet we will continue to serve God’s mission, throughout The Episcopal Church and beyond. This budget expects that more mission work will continue or begin to take place at diocesan or congregational levels. Religious pilgrims, from the Israelites in the desert to Episcopalians in Alaska or Haiti, have always learned that times of leanness are opportunities for strengthened faith and creativity.
As a Church, we have deepened our commitments to mission and ministry with “the least of these” (Matthew 25). We included a budgetary commitment of 0.7% to the Millennium Development Goals, through the NetsforLife® program partnership of Episcopal Relief & Development. That is in addition to approximately 15% of the budget already committed to international development work.
We have committed to a domestic poverty initiative, meant to explore coherent and constructive responses to some of the worst poverty statistics in the Americas: Native American reservations and indigenous communities.
Justice is the goal, as we revised our canons (church rules) having to do with clergy discipline, both as an act of solidarity with those who may suffer at the hands of clergy and an act of pastoral concern for clergy charged with misconduct.
The General Convention adopted a health plan to serve all clergy and lay employees, which is expected to be a cost-savings across the whole of the United States portion of the Church. Work continues to ensure adequate health coverage in the non-U.S. parts of this Church. The Convention also mandated pension coverage for lay employees.
Liturgical additions were also included in the Convention’s work, from more saints on the calendar to prayers around reproductive loss.
What captured the headlines across the secular media, however, had to do with two resolutions, the consequences of which were often misinterpreted or exaggerated. One, identified as D025, is titled “Anglican Communion: Commitment and Witness to Anglican Communion.” It
* reaffirms our commitment to and desire to pursue mission with the Anglican Communion;
* reiterates our commitment to Listening Process urged by Lambeth Conferences of 1978, 1988, and 1998;
* notes that our own participation in the listening process led General Convention in 2000 to “recognize that the baptized membership of The Episcopal Church includes same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships ‘characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God’”;
* recognizes that ministry, both lay and ordained is being exercised by such persons in response to God’s call;
* notes that the call to ordained ministry is God’s call, is a mystery, and that the Church participates in that mystery through the process of discernment;
* acknowledges that the members of The Episcopal Church, and of the Anglican Communion, are not of one mind, and that faithful Christians disagree about some of these matters.The other resolution that received a lot of press is C056, titled “Liturgies for Blessings.” The text adopted was a substitute for the original, yet the title remains unchanged. It
* acknowledges changing circumstances in the U.S. and elsewhere, in that civil jurisdictions in some places permit marriage, civil unions, and/or domestic partnerships involving same-sex couples, that call for a pastoral response from this Church;
* asks the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, and the House of Bishops, to collect and develop theological and liturgical resources for such pastoral response, and report to the next General Convention;
* asks those bodies to invite comment and participation from other parts of this Church and the Anglican Communion;
* notes that bishops may provide generous pastoral responses to the needs of members of this Church;
* asks the Convention to honor the theological diversity of this Church in regard to matters of human sexuality.The full text of both resolutions is available here: http://gc2009.org/ViewLegislation. I urge you to read them for yourself. Some have insisted that these resolutions repudiate our relationships with other members of the Anglican Communion. My sense is that we have been very clear that we value our relationships within and around the Communion, and seek to deepen them. My sense as well is that we cannot do that without being honest about who and where we are. We are obviously not of one mind, and likely will not be until Jesus returns in all his glory. We are called by God to continue to wrestle with the circumstances in which we live and move and have our being, and to do it as carefully and faithfully as we are able, in companionship with those who disagree vehemently and agree wholeheartedly. It is only in that wrestling that we, like Jacob, will begin to discern the leading of the Spirit and the blessing of relationship with God.
Above all else, this Convention claimed God’s mission as the heartbeat of The Episcopal Church. I encourage every member of this Church to enter into conversation in your own congregation or diocese about God’s mission, and where you and your faith community are being invited to enter more deeply into caring for your neighbors, the “least of these” whom Jesus befriends.
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
To see the episode:
http://www.intheirboots.com/itb/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl…
LA Times article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gay-military18-2009jul18,0,84862…
Andrea, Mark and Brian w Lt. Dan Choi
