Agape' MCC News & Updates
February 16, 2021
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View our 02/14/21 "Transfiguration" experience by clicking on the image below:
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Greetings Agape Community,
I am sitting here in my home office crafting this letter to you in the wake of 15 hours without electricity. I am feeling a bit rushed as I understand we are not out of the woods and many of us will be with and without electricity and possibly water for some days to come. In the spirit of collective justice, we will be doing what we can to conserve electricity. To that end there will not be a live-streamed Ash Wednesday Service, I will wait to begin my daily Waking up to Love meditations until we are through this energy crisis, and there will not be a Spirit Café Zoom this week. Welcome to Lent. This season, like last season, still finds us in the flow of extreme changes and ongoing transformations. It can feel like more than forty days in the wilderness and yes, we are being asked to endure, to drop into what is most important in our lives, to help when and how we can, and continue to remember that “if it’s not about relationship it’s not about God.” This is living the Love Project at its most essential level.
My invitation to you is to follow the flow of your path through Ash Wednesday. Spirit will guide you. We were going to begin our ritual with this reading from Matthew 11:28-30:
28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
For my ritual, I will meditate on this teaching. I will be silent and listen for what it means for me today, surrounded by so much ash. I will receive this rest and then I will share it in the thin place where we are all connected. I will make the sign of the cross on my forehead remembering that “I come from love and to love I will return.” Because I am a man of ritual and a mystic and because I can already feel the grief of not being together in the Ash, I will do this at 7:00 p.m. (CST) on Ash Wednesday and I will connect with you all in the place beyond our human constructs of space, date and time.
We do plan to be streaming on Facebook Live on Sunday for the first Sunday of Lent. As usual, we’ll be in the wilderness.
In your service as we live the Love Project,
Rev. David
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We will not be streaming service Wednesday due to the weather. See you Sunday!
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Waking up to Love in Lent
Waking up from sleep, at whatever time, is a thin place. What we do with this liminal space will ripple throughout our entire day. Beginning Monday, February 22, at 6:30 a.m., Rev. David will be going live on Facebook to offer, daily brief quotes, thoughts, or practices, about love, to begin your day. You're invited to set your alarm and join in or check out the recording when you do wake. This is a special Lenten tool as we continue to learn to live the Love Project.
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Join us for Sunday Morning Worship @ 10:30AM on Facebook Live. Our theme for the Lenten Season is "The Love Project".
A definition:
A lifelong project of learning and unlearning, of giving and receiving, of valuable lessons and relationships. What a gift it is to spend our days living the Love Project together.
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Spirit Cafe'
Spirit Cafe' will not be held this week to conserve energy during this artic blast. See you next Wednesday!
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Let's Zoom!
Click here to register in advance for our Wednesday Zoom Meet Up
Enter the meeting ID: 816-8960-6902
(You only need to register once and you will be set for all the Wednesday Zoom Sessions)
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Sacred Saturdays
The first Saturday of each month.
This is a time for:
- setting intentions for the season
- letting go of things that no longer serve you
- discovering inner peace
- quiet reflection
- finding light in the dark places
- simply being
If you would like, you may bring a piece of paper to put in the fire with intentions and/or things to let go of written on it to offer up. This meeting will have an organic feel with little verbal communication. You are encouraged to come with an open heart and mind.
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Be someones safe place to land even if the someone is you.
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Marsha P Johnson (1944 to 1992)
Transgender rights activist Marsha P Johnson was a leading figure in the Stonewall Riots in 1969, during which she broke a police car windshield.
Johnson moved to Manhattan from New Jersey when she was 18 in 1966. She said she was ‘no one’ until she came to New York and became a drag queen. She supported herself mainly through sex work but also performed in experimental theatre company Hot Peaches and was photographed by Andy Warhol.
‘Drag mother’ to many including fellow transgender activist Sylvia Riveria, Johnson founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Riveria to help young homeless trans women.
In an interview, Remembering Marsha P Johnson Stonewall, veterans Bob Kohler, Thomas Langian-Schmidt and Danny Garvin recalled her vivacity. ‘Marsha was totally mad but one of the geniuses on the face of the Earth. The heart and soul of a reality was in Marsha,’ said artist Langian-Schmidt.
Johnson died shortly after New York Pride in 1992. Her body was found floating in the Hudson River. Initially police ruled her death as suicide but her friends protested, saying that she wasn’t suicidal and that she had been seen being harrassed near where her body was found. Despite the protests, a full investigation into the cause of her death was never carried out.
The New York band Antony and the Johnsons fronted by trans singer Antony Hegarty are named after Johnson.
Reference: Gaystarnews.com
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BARBARA CHARLINE JORDAN (1936-1996)
Civil rights leader and attorney Barbara Jordan was a political trailblazer. In 1966, she became the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate, and then just a few years later, she became the first woman and first African-American elected to Congress from Texas. In 1992, the NAACP awarded Jordan the Spingarn Medal, and in 1994, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton. While Jordan never explicitly acknowledged her sexual orientation in public, she was open about her life partner of nearly 30 years, Nancy Earl.
Reference: NBCNews.com
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Elders Call to Prayer
Ash Wednesday 2021
God, it feels as though so much has already turned to ash.
We miss holding our loved ones close, or even just being physically in the same room.
Many of us don’t know how we are going to pay our bills or feed our children.
We mourn those we have lost and worry about those who we know are at risk.
We look for your face in the midst of the news reports and lists of statistics, and wonder where you are in all of this.
And yet we know this cannot last forever.
Your people did not wander in the desert forever. They entered the promised land and a new “normal” for life emerged, built on the experience of life before and during the wilderness years.
Your prophet Isaiah promised in your name
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion –
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of Yahweh
for the display of God’s splendour.
We trust you for the day when we experience these things.
Give us strength, courage, resilience and patience through the power of your Holy Spirit as we enter Lent, accompanying Jesus in his own wilderness experience.
Amen
Rev. Elder Cecilia Eggleston (she/her/hers) is the Moderator of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), elected by the MCC General Conference in 2019.
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A Message from your Board of Directors
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Dear Agape' Community,
You are loved unconditionally. You are prayed for by name. You are in our thoughts and hearts every moment of every day.
We are sending you lots of...
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Namaste!
Rev. David, Cassy, Leigh, Lisa D., Ward, Melisa, EJ, and Amy
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02/16 - Tru Edwards
02/18 - Kevin Harkins
02/23 - Lynne Fratt
02/27 - Julie Korek
02/27 - Paxton Roberts
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