On April 28 members of Memorial joined with neighbors from Bolton Hill, Sandtown and wider West Baltimore for the Mayor's Clean up Kick off day. Below are some pictures from the day, including the removal of a truly unwanted piece of trash.
Click here to see Grey+ talking about the day - hosted on Mayor Pugh's facebook page.
Tomorrow evening we will celebrate Ascension Day with a 6:30 Eucharist in the church. After the service will be our monthly Justice Committee meeting. All are invited to join us for both. The service should last approximately half an hour and the meeting should begin around 7:00 pm.
If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. 1 John 5:9-10a.
Do you have a ‘testimony in your heart’?
I recognize this is very Evangelical language, which may be triggering for some. So let me try and phrase the question a different way, borrowing some language from Iona:
“Has God sent you out as a living letter to the world?”
This blessing from the community of Iona, perhaps the oldest mystic community in the British Isles, captures the essence of the message of the first letter of John perhaps better than anything I have seen. God Loves us. And so God sends us out as living letters, incarnate words, to the world.
Just as Jesus was ‘The Word’ made flesh/incarnate, so are we to be living words to the world - examples of Christ’s love, compassion and salvation to all those we meet.
Now sometimes our common life can get a little prickly. In Church we can get annoyed that the music wasn’t quite right, that the sermon wasn’t to our liking, or that an announcement was skipped, a program dropped. In the world we can be upset with someone’s political opinions, who they voted for, who they support. We can be upset with any number of things and our words can get ‘spiky’. You know, spiky words right?
FAKE NEWS.
Baby Killer.
Nazi.
Homo.
Warmonger.
Racist.
Whether these words are ‘true’ or not. They inflict so much damage that they are rendered almost useless in conversation among people in disagreement. Such words come ‘pre-loaded’ and when we deploy them we know (or should know) that they are liable to shut down rather than further conversation.
These are not ‘living words’ but ‘dying words’. And they can kill conversations and relationships. Now sometimes things need to die! Sometimes we need to cut off communication because the abuse and hurt and hate is just too much. And when we do that, we should do so conscious that we believe in the resurrection and with a prayerful hope that resurrection may come to that relationship sometime in the future.
But we should also work to use ‘living words’ more fully. To find the words God has written on our heart to share, not the words that a perpetually angry 24 hr news cycle has embedded in our brains. So that we can be kinder with each other, and with those whom we disagree more fully with. Particularly among fellow Christians and fellow Memorialites we should always assume the best in each other, and seek to offer living words to each other so that we may be living water to each other.
But in order to due that - we must dig past the first layer of emotion, past our skin and flesh. Past the bones and get to the heart of our belief. The heart of our faith. We must know what we believe!
That you (me, us, all of us) are beloved Children of God. That we have collectively made so many mistakes and yet God loves us anyway. And that Jesus Christ died on the Cross so that we all be reconciled — not just with God but also with each other. So that together we may find eternal life.
That ‘living letter’ is written on my heart. And there is a letter written on your heart; with a different tone, texture, and sentiment; but hopefully a similar message, that you can share.
Whenever we engage on an issue of import - be it the style of worship in Church or the character of the President - we do so fully immersed in that belief - and the belief that the person we are engaging with is a child of God, deserving of our love, respect, care, concern and our trust. Because in that moment we are nothing less than Christ’s emissary. A living letter in his own hand that is being shared with the world.
Grey+
This Friday is ArtWalk - MICA’s annual Senior exhibition and art fair. This year Memorial has had the pleasure of working with two MICA artists, Tyler Ballon - who created the painting in the Peace Chapel and Thomas Yang, who is a regular attender at our 10:30 service. Tyler’s art can be found on the second floor of the Main MICA Building on Mt. Royal Ave, and Thomas’ can be found on the fourth floor of the Brown Center - the Pyramid Like Glass Building at the end of Lafayette Ave.
Please come out this Friday and support these two, and many other, young talented artists!
This year will be a special Feast of Pentecost with a focus on kids in the 10:30 service. We will once again be joined by members of the BSA jazz ensemble featuring our very own Kate Gorman. There will be readings in a multitude of languages. The children of the parish will be singing during the service - in short, a full day about the future of Memorial, by the future of Memorial.
We hope you will join us, May 20, for either Faith @ 8 in UFH or Rite II at 10:30 in the church.
Registration for MEC’s summer camp, Baltimore Water Heroes, is underway! We will have a group of up to 25 children from grades K to 8 for this one week camp but we need some volunteers and staff to make it happen.
We are currently recruiting the following:
1 or 2 camp leaders who have experience in teaching, youth facilitation and or/environmental science (remuneration)
Camp Counselors - older teens, college students or adults who will help implement camp activities (possible remuneration)
Volunteers to help with any number of activities, such as swimming, pre-care and aftercare
Camp will take place from August 20-24, 2018. Visit the camp link here for more information. Email Amy Rial at rialster@gmail.com if you are interested in any of positions above.
Calling all families!
All families of tots, tweens and teens are invited to join us on May 16 at 6 to 7 pm for our 2nd family dinner. Grey and Dads will be working on a mother’s day surprise.
Please RSVP with the number of adults and children in your party so we know how to prepare. RSVP to Amy Rial, rialster@gmail.com.
You are cordially invited to
The Annual Thurgood Marshall Commemoration
Let Justice Roll…
The Honorable Shirley M. Watts,
Judge, Court of Appeals, 6th Appellate Circuit, Speaker
Mr. Stuart O. Simms, Esquire, Moderator
Wednesday, May 16, 2018 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Cathedral of the Incarnation
4 East University Parkway
Baltimore, MD 21218
Ta-Nehisi Coates is talking on the subject of “Afrofutures”. What’s Afrofutures, you might ask?
From the BMA Today: “The cultural movement (afrofuturism) envisions alternative futures and new possibilities unapologetically root in black culture and technology. The event includes music by Ancestral Duo and DJTrillnatured…(etc.), and community conversation.” Coates will discuss his work on the “Black Panther” comic series and the same-name, recent film.
Doors open at 6pm. The BMA Auditorium seats 250 or 300. I expect there will be overflow into adjacent rooms with TV monitors. To get a good seat, one would have to line up well in advance of door opening. Bring a book or readiness for a conversation while standing (sitting?) on line.
For full information, please click here to go to the BMA page for this event.
“Into the Woods, and Out of the Woods” ..... And Just in Time for Pentecost!
First of all, a hearty round of applause to all of our actors, stagehands, stage manager, producer, costume mavens, director and all of the volunteers who baked goods, brought snacks, helped with costumes, and sets and music and all of the other pieces that came together to make “Into the Woods” happen.
Two things I loved about this show. First, that nearly every time I looked at the stage, I saw at least half the people were active members of our congregation. Second, In addition to the 30-40 members of the cast who aren’t members, we also had the opportunity to share a little bit about Memorial with 150 or 200 people every night. Some of whom may actually come back.
So the question for us is now that we are “Out of the Woods.” what happens next? The altar is slowly coming back into view, the stage is going back into storage, The acolytes are re-rehearsing the procession, and the choir is figuring out where their seats are. Throughout the show I introduced Memorial to the audience by saying that “we don’t mind having this stage in here because we as a congregation are more concerned with the mess of the world out THERE, than the little bit of disorder here.”
Which is true! Memorial has always been a church very concerned about its community, sometimes in really negative ways, but mostly in really positive ways. It was wonderful to see so many people out for the No Boundaries Clean Up last Saturday, and even more exciting to hear how excited folks are for future “field trips” into our local communities. So I hope, if you invited someone to church for the musical, you will invite them back for Pentecost on May 20! Or really for any service.
As we continue to explore the Book of Acts this Pentecost season, we continue to see the Early Church grow from 12 scared lonely disciples into a large church spanning three continents, many languages, races, genders, identities and ethnicities. At the same time, we can begin to imagine Memorial’s own growth and transformation as we become a church more in keeping with the end of the Book of Acts than the beginning.
The cast and crew of “Into the Woods” were a wonderful example of that diversity and the benefit of embracing such diversity along racial, ethnic and economic lines — it is my prayer that Memorial, and all of God’s Church, can follow suit.
