For this edition of our newsletter, we’ve provided two streams of music suggestions: the usual Revised Common Lectionary and the Season of Creation. The following information is from the Season of Creation website (
https://seasonofcreation.org/about/).
"The Season of Creation is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator
and all creation through celebration, conversion, and commitment together.
During the Season of Creation, we join our sisters and brothers
in the ecumenical family in prayer and action for our common home.
Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed 1 September
as a day of prayer for creation for the Orthodox in 1989.
In fact, the Orthodox church year starts on that day
with a commemoration of how God created the world.
The World Council of Churches was instrumental in making the special time a season, extending the celebration from 1 September until 4 October.
Following the leadership of Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I and the WCC,
Christians worldwide have embraced the season as part of their annual calendar.
Pope Francis made the Roman Catholic Church’s
warm welcoming of the season official in 2015.
In recent years, statements from religious leaders around the world
have also encouraged the faithful to take time to care for creation
during the month-long celebration.
The season starts 1 September, the Day of Prayer for Creation,
and ends 4 October, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology beloved by many Christian denominations.
Throughout the month-long celebration,
the world’s 2.2 billion Christians come together to care for our common home."
During this time of extraordinary unrest and divisiveness, consider expressing the unity of this ecumenical movement through song and all the arts.
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I’d like to call attention to the tremendous effort Walter Farquharson has been making by providing Reflections and Scripture Suggestions for the texts of Shirley Erena Murray. Walter has been working through Shirley’s titles alphabetically and is now in the land of ’S’. Visitors to the site can find the Reflections (and often a related Activity) at the bottom of the first column. The collegial act of one hymn writer providing this kind of supporting input to another’s writing is an enriching gift to the site and all who use it.
RK
