Are you serving this Sunday? Would you be interested in reading at either service (zoom or in person)? You can view what positions are

available here

We Episcopalians believe in a loving, liberating, and life-giving God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As constituent members of the Anglican Communion in the United States, we are descendants of and partners with the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church, and are part of the third largest group of Christians in the world.

We believe in following the teachings of Jesus Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection saved the world. We have a legacy of inclusion, aspiring to tell and exemplify God’s love for every human being; women and men serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church.

Laypeople and clergy cooperate as leaders at all levels of our church. Leadership is a gift from God, and can be expressed by all people in our church, regardless of sexual identity or orientation.

We believe that God loves you – no exceptions.

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WE NEED YOUR HELP! Now that we have your attention... Is there anyone who would be willing to take over the administration of the Coffee Hour? 

We are leaving for 6 months and need someone or a few someones to take charge while we are gone. Requires just setting up coffee on the Porch across from the church before the 8:00 service is over and to put everything away after the 9:30 service. All materials are provided. We have so enjoyed this loving task and would like to temporarily pass it off to someone who would like to take on this project. This could be a shared position, which it probably should have been all along. Please call or text 847 207-2074. 

Thanks. Debra & Dale

As we celebrate Earth Day tomorrow, April 22 we are mindful of ways we can demonstrate support for our beautiful island home . We do our part at Christ Memorial through our Helen Mitsui Shared Blessings Thrift Shop where we are the largest repurposing center on the Northshore of Kauai.  

Ecologist and pastor Andi Lloyd writes about our land in today’s Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation below:

THE LAND LAMENT'S

Therefore the land shall mourn. —Hosea 4:3 

Ecologist and pastor Andi Lloyd writes of the Hebrew prophets’ understanding that the land itself grieves with its people:  

In the Hebrew Bible, mourning is an expansive practice. The people mourn, of course, but so do the land, the pastures, and the deep springs. Even gates and walls lament. The Hebrew verb abal, translated here [in Hosea] as “mourn,” also carries the meaning “to dry up, to wither.” Where a widow might put ashes on her head, the land and pastures and springs mourn by withering and drying up—all ways of speaking aloud the truth of inward grief.  

Therein lies the power of lament: to speak the truth that all is not well. Walter Brueggemann writes that grief, spoken aloud, is “the counter to denial.” [1] Lament is prophetic speech. It bears faithful witness to all that is not right with the world and to all that is not right with ourselves. To take the land’s mourning seriously is to ask about its grief—to wonder what truth the land’s grief spoke to the people in Hosea’s day and what truth it might speak to us now.… 

The land’s lament speaks a foundational ecological truth: when one part of creation goes awry, the whole suffers. The land’s grief at what the people have done points to the fundamental reality of our interconnection. Perhaps it is the boundedness of our bodies that makes it so easy to overlook the truth of our connectedness. We appear so discrete, so unitary, but we are not. 

Lloyd describes our interconnectedness with God, each other, and the earth on which we dwell:  

Our lives are held, connected, one to the other and all to God: we are bound up in a beautiful, multicolored, homespun fabric. That fabric is an ecological truth: it describes the deeply interconnected and interdependent world that I came to know as an ecologist. And that fabric is a theological truth, reflecting the world as God made it to be—a relational world, a connected world, an interdependent world.  

The land’s mourning speaks simultaneously of a vision of the world as it ought to be—that beautiful fabric—and the truth of the world as it is: too much injustice and too little love fraying the threads that hold us all. The land feels those fraying threads. The land grieves those fraying threads. The land mourns.  

Now, as then, the fabric that connects all of creation is badly torn: torn by manifold injustices wrought and perpetuated by the exploitative systems in which we live, torn by ideologies of scarcity that teach us to love too narrowly and too little. To mourn is to speak that truth to the lies that prop up the denial on which the status quo depends.….  

Mourning together, in true solidarity, we name the truth of what’s wrong. And in so doing, we begin to make it right.  

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2014), 57. 

Copyright © 2022 by the Christian Century. “The Land Mourns Climate Change,” by Andi Lloyd is excerpted by permission from the September 1, 2022 issue of the Christian Century. To read the full article, click here. 

Image credit: A path from one week to the next—McEl Chevrier, Untitled. Margi Ahearn, Exercise on Grief and Lamentation. McEl Chevrier, Untitled. Used with permission. Click here to enlarge image. 

On retreat, the CAC staff used watercolors to connect to our collective grief. This is one of the watercolor paintings that came from that exercise. 

Check out the latest news from the Episcopal Diocese of Hawai'i here

TIPS FROM LOT'S LIST - "Build or renovate with recycled materials. (Check with Re-Use Hawai'ifirst.) Purchase furnishings made with recycled plastics and other materials."

HAWAI'I ENERGY: "BE A LIGHT, GIVE A LIGHT" - This Earth Month, we're proud to announce our "Be a Light, Give a Light" campaign! We're inviting our community to nominate a local nonprofit for an energy-saving makeover. Hawai'i Energy will award three winning organizations with new LED lighting valued at up to $25,000. Hurry! Nomination period will close on April 28. Visit the Hawai'i Energy website HERE to learn more and make your nomnation!

CREATION CARE GRANTS - DEADLINE TO APPLY IS MAY 8 - The Episcopal Church Office of Creation Care is now receiving 2023 Creation Care grant applications in English and Spanish. Applications are being accepted for local and regional eco-ministry projects until 5:00 PM (ET), May 1, 2023. For more information, click HERE.

EARTH DAY IS SATURDAY, APRIL 22! LEARN MORE HERE!

WE HAD HOPED

By: Leslie Scoopmire

Luke 24:13-24

We had hoped 

that he would redeem Israel, 

make Israel great again, a power among powers. 

We had hoped 

that he would cleanse us of sin 

without changing us too much– 

that he would keep out of politics, 

hate all the people we do, 

and keep us comfortable in our prejudices. 

But instead, 

he appears to us as a stranger, 

slightly shiny around the edges, 

but a stranger 

making our hearts burn, 

setting us aflame 

for the love of the world 

including all those we render invisible, 

powerless, 

voiceless, 

and excluded from the table. 

In the breaking of the bread, 

he is at once revealed and vanishes, 

lightning crashes at our feet 

and rolls away the stone of our hearts. 

He vanishes into those he renders visible 

by his companionship and kinship, 

and bids us welcome all to the table 

where he is at once both host and guest. 

This is the eternal life he gives: 

to be his hands 

pierced yet restored 

that break bread 

and hearts 

open 

tenderly 

on the way to Emmaus

and beyond.

Helen Mitsui Shared Blessings Thrift Shop in Kilauea is seeking Volunteers for 2023.

Each volunteer shift is a 2-4 hour commitment for a minimum of one day per week. Experience in Retail, Customer Service, and/or Retail a plus, but not required.

Volunteers are invaluable to serving our community. Our goal is to reuse, repurpose and recycle goods — keeping as much as possible out of landfill — while providing our community with access to reasonably priced, quality merchandise.

Here are ways you can help:

* Greeters welcome shoppers and monitor our COVID guidelines.

* Customer Care helps shoppers to ensure a pleasant shopping experience.

* Merchandisers organize departments, restock the floor and display retail goods.

* Philanthropy distributes merchandise to organizations in need.

* Donation Intakers receive, sort and process donations.

Work-from-Home volunteers help prepare merchandise for sale. We are especially looking for help in these areas:

* Games: checking games to ensure all components are intact

* Stationery: packaging up cards and envelopes

* Holidays: preparing merchandise for Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Valentines, 4th of July, and more

* School, Office, Art Craft Supplies: organizing and packaging materials for reuse

* Toys: sorting, cleaning, and packaging toys

* Hardware: sorting and packaging tools, materials, electronics and appliances

Requirements?

*Team players with a genuine interest in serving the community and contributing to the reuse movement.

* Willingness to support COVID-19 safety measures set by Shared Blessings

* Physically able to lift 50 pounds (Merchandisers and Donation Intakers only)

Benefits?

Serving the community and our environment is rewarding work. We have a lot of fun! New merchandise is donated daily, so the element of surprise and wonder is constant. Get a first peek and more!

Interested?

Click on the reply button here! Let us know 1) your interests, 2) your availability to volunteer and 3) your contact information. Mahalo!

Let us pray for our own needs and those of others. We remember especially those on our prayer list. Healing of body, mind and spirit for: Lowell, Sandy, Molly, Amelia, Peter, Gordon, Jessica, Sherry, Webb, David, Linda, David, Helen, Mary, Bev, Jeanne, Chris, Carole, Elizabeth, Robert, Justin, Mike, Tony, Anthony, Penny, Betsy, Tom, Sandy, Dwight, Tommy, and the leadership and people of Ukraine.We pray that you will bring people together in worship. Enliven your church and bless our musician, our clergy and lay leadership. We pray for our sibling Episcopal congregations on Kauai: St John and St Pauls, St Michael & All Angels, and All Saints, and for all churches on the North Shore. We pray for our own congregation of Christ Memorial, Kilauea for those present, online and absent - that all of us together may be united in your ministry. 

THRIFT SHOP MISSION STATEMENT:

Our goal is to provide our community with reasonably priced, quality merchandise. We will reuse, repurpose and recycle goods and keep as much as possible out of the landfill in an effort to help Kauai and our planet toward Zero Waste. Above all we will show compassion, kindness and tolerance to each other and our community.