The Way of Love:

Adult Formation

The Adult Forum series on The Way of Love continues each Sunday through the season following Epiphany. All are invited to this series of talks and conversation focused on The Way of Love: Practices for Jesus-Centered Life. This rule of life offers us an opportunity to grow more deeply with Jesus Christ at the center of our lives, so we can bear witness to his way of love in and for the world, together.

Come for the remaining sessions on practices in the Way of Love: Bless (February 17), Go (February 24), and Rest (March 3). We continue to meet Sundays from 9:15-10:15 for fellowship and Christian formation in the Great Hall.

Volunteer Opportunity

On Sunday, March 3, from 3:15-8:00 pm, volunteers from the diocese of Spokane (that’s us!) have the opportunity to help with the KSPS fund drive. Some members of the Cathedral helped out at a previous fund drive and had a great time. It’s a fabulous opportunity to reach out into the community, and to help the community see Episcopalians active in our city and region. If you’re interested in volunteering, contact Mallory Davis.

One Cathedral One Book

This year, we are stepping out in faith for a new type of Lenten program. Please join us for One Cathedral, One Book. Throughout Lent we will read and discuss Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again (Thomas Nelson, 2018). From the publisher: "If the Bible isn't a science book or an instruction manual, then what is it? What do people mean when they say the Bible is inspired? When Rachel Held Evans found herself asking these questions, she began a quest to better understand what the Bible is and how it is meant to be read. What she discovered changed her--and it will change you too. Drawing on the best in recent scholarship and using her well-honed literary expertise, Evans examines some of our favorite Bible stories and possible interpretations, retelling them through memoir, original poetry, short stories, soliloquies, and even a short screenplay. Undaunted by the Bible's most difficult passages, Evans wrestles through the process of doubting, imagining, and debating Scripture's mysteries. The Bible, she discovers, is not a static work but is a living, breathing, captivating, and confounding book that is able to equip us to join God's loving and redemptive work in the world."

Evans was raised in an evangelical Christian tradition and found her way to the Episcopal church as an adult. You can learn more about her at her website. We hope that this study will help participants to engage with Scripture in a new way, and to enjoy fellowship with one another.

 

So how will this work? Parishioners will sign up to participate in a group hosted and facilitated by other members of the Cathedral – look for sign-ups beginning at the end of February. Groups of about 8 parishioners will meet starting the week of March 10, running through the week of April 7, for about 90 minutes each week.

 

Thank you to those who have already volunteered to host a group! There is still the opportunity to do so. You could open your home to a group, or you could convene a group at a public location, or even at St John’s. Select the meeting time that works for you! The Faith Formation committee will provide facilitation materials and support. If you are interested in volunteering, or exploring the idea of volunteering, please contact the church office (secretary@stjohns-cathedral.org, 509-838-4277).

Lenten Sunday Series:

Civil Discourse

Sunday mornings in Lent, join Dean Heather and others to work through a five-week curriculum on Civil Discourse inspired by the Office of Government Relations of the Episcopal Church, and used throughout our Diocese. What is civil discourse, and how does it relate to our lives as Christians? What does it mean to listen well, and how can we practice that? How can we have values-based conversations, and interact with love and respect? How can Christians speak to the convictions of faith in the public sphere? We will meet Sundays in Lent (beginning March 10) from 9:15-10:15 in the Great Hall.

The Episcopal Church affirms a commitment to creation care . Creation care ministries seek to heal, defend, and work toward justice for all God's creation and to respect the kinship and connection of all that God created through education, advocacy, and action . In support of these ministries we share resources each month.

Creation Care and the Episcopal Church

"Living on God’s Earth"

According to the EPA, Americans throw away more than 34 million tons of food every year -- making food the single largest category of waste. That's not just bad land use, it's also bad for the climate: When all that food begins to break down in landfills, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than CO2.

What can we do to reduce food waste? The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has the following tips. Learn more about each tip at their website .

“Both the rural and the urban dweller recognize, albeit in different ways, that creation is a tool, a gift to be enjoyed, and a means to be employed; but for the observant Jew or Christian or Muslim, Earth exists neither to be deified nor to be consumed. Rather, it exists now, as it has from the beginning, as teacher, limitation, and purposed circumstance. It is a nursery of sorts, and incubator, in which each of us may first uncurl, then stretch, and finally rise up into the business of growing holy before God. From the Abrahamic point of view, whatever we do with and to the Earth is always to be measured by what the pursuit of such an action will do to human souls and their progress toward living fully into the image of God.”

– Phyllis Tickle, “In the Beginning, Eden,” published in Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation , edited by Lyndsay Moseley, Sierra Club Books, 2008.

This column is also available at the Episcopal Climate News website.

From the Senior Warden

"Snowball Earth"

by John Wallingford

I was fascinated to read in the LA Times about new evidence for massive glaciation early in Earth’s history, so large that it eroded about 3 miles of the crust of the Earth, creating vast shallow seas and conditions for the emergence of multicellular life. The article speculated that the glaciation was caused by a precipitous drop in atmospheric CO2, the result of geologic activity. I wondered, maybe we could use geology to harness the runaway CO2. Some digging around brought me to recent research on that very concept here in our diocese. 

The National Academy of Sciences book Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration identified carbon sequestration in live trees and charcoal as one of 5 cost-effective technologies available today, support for the Diocesan commitment to plant “Paris Groves”. A later chapter in that same book described two experiments where CO2 was pumped into porous basalt where it could react with magnesium and iron and calcium, basically being absorbed into rock. Such chemistry had been demonstrated above ground, and the experiments were undertaken to learn if the results could be replicated in situ. One of those was in Iceland, and the other in Wallula, WA, the site of the first European settlement in the state. Researchers in Richland injected 1000 tons of CO2 into the basalt about 2600 feet down, and the CO2 stayed put. Some became new rock, ankerite. 

There are other start up efforts to pull CO2 out of the air to make useful products...

Upcoming Parish Events

February 20: Final Reel Theology dinner, film viewing, and conversation (Coco): RSVP here

March 3: Volunteer with the diocese to help out at the KSPS pledge drive, 3:15-8pm

March 6: Ash Wednesday. Services @ 7am, 10am, noon, 7pm

March 9: Integrity Prayer Service, 12pm

March 10: Beginning of Civil Discourse Adult Forum, 9:15 AM in the Great Hall

Week of March 10: Beginning of One Cathedral, One Book groups

Do you have an item that you’d like to see included in the March edition?

Contact the interim editor, Katherine Karr-Cornejo, prior to March 10.