[Episcopal News Service] As the United States struggles through a time of turbulence and tension, Washington National Cathedral will host a national interfaith prayer service on Sunday, Nov. 1 - two days before Election Day - featuring Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and other spiritual leaders. The service, titled "Holding Onto Hope: A national service for healing and wholeness," will be livestreamed on The Episcopal Church's Facebook page in English and Spanish from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern time....

Curry will offer "wisdom and encouragement," along with the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, and Valarie Kaur, a Sikh filmmaker and speaker. Curry will also preach that same day at the cathedral's All Saints' Day Eucharist at 11 a.m. The full article is here: WNC Prayer

Forward Movement and The Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations are calling Episcopalians and all others to join in A Season of Prayer: For an Election. This prayer novena-nine days of devotional prayers-calls upon God for discernment in voting and for the well-being of our nation.

The season of prayer begins Tuesday, October 27, and continues through November 4, the day after the elections in the United States. The full aritcile is here: Prayer Novena

READINGS:
Exodus 33:12-23: Moses pleads with God for God's presence to go with the Israelites, which is what will distinguish them from other nations, and God promises to do so. Then Moses asks to see God's glory and God agrees to pass by Moses, speaking God's name, while hiding Moses in a cleft in the rock, and then to then allow Moses to see God's back, but not God's face.

One of the most important questions we face as we seek to follow Christ and manifest God's reign in our world in some way, is how we respond to the God we're seeking to serve. All of the readings this week challenge us to keep God in the place in our lives and thoughts that is rightfully God's. Moses asks for God's presence to go with God's people, and for himself to see God's glory, revealing a recognition of his and Israel's need for God to be acknowledged and worshipped and responded to as God. In the Psalm people of all nations are called to honour and worship God as God deserves, and in the epistle, the Thessalonian Christians are celebrated for their faithful worship and service of God and God's purposes which reveals their true acknowledgement of God. In the light of all this, Jesus' response to the attempted entrapment of the religious leaders is a powerful and challenging word. Where they have missed God and God's new, creative work among them, and have fallen into domesticating God to their purposes, Jesus challenges them to put God into the proper place of sovereignty and majesty in their lives. Essentially Jesus turns their question on its head and bypasses the tax question, confronting the leaders with the insignificance of things like taxation in the face of God's greater claim on our worship and our lives. In a faith culture in which it is often popular for God to be reduced to simply a divine friend, or "the man up there", or a "higher" part of ourselves, this call to recognise God's transcendence is important and life-giving.

• The Rev. Canon Paula E. Clark, canon to the ordinary and chief of staff, Diocese of Washington
• The Rev. Edwin Daniel Johnson, rector, St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Boston
• The Rev. Fulton L. Porter III, rector, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Chicago
• The Rev. Winnie Varghese, priest for ministry and program coordination, Trinity Church Wall Street, New York City.