Coming Up at St. John’s
THIS SUNDAY! All Ages Worship and Backpack Blessing
This Sunday is All Ages Worship as we return to the sanctuary. Terry has some fabulous music lined up but most importantly: Don’t forget to bring your backpacks! Rev. Michelle will bless them and we will all pray for everyone starting a new year of school. Be sure to come and celebrate our community and the beginning of the programming year.
Next week! St. John’s Neighborhood Block Party
Invite your friends and come meet the people in our neighborhood! And be sure to sign-up for a volunteer slot that day because everyone’s help is needed as we welcome our neighborhood to St. John’s. Sign-up sheets are on the bulletin board in the vestibule.
St. John’s Bible Study Continues
We’re studying the Gospel of Matthew and, this week, we’re finishing up the Sermon on the Mount – chapters 5, 6, and 7. Sundays 8:30-9:30 in person or Wednesday 12:00-1:00 on Zoom. If you’d like to join Wednesday’s session, email Rev. Michelle so she can send you the Zoom link. To learn more, click here
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From Bishop Co-Adjutor Matt HeydOn Tuesday, September 5 the Diocese of New York began weekday online morning prayer at 8 am via Zoom. The 30 minute service offers an opportunity for us to join together daily in shared prayer— the foundation of our Anglican tradition and our lives as Christians. We’ll use the 1979 Book of Common Prayer Rite II Morning Prayer liturgy. The service includes different leaders as officiants and features diverse voices to offer brief daily reflections. This liturgy offers an additional possibility for connection across the 10 counties and nearly 200 congregations of the Diocese of New York. The Holy Spirit moves at ground level— and connects us to each other. You can find the Zoom link for Tuesday here. Everyone’s invited! My hope is that Morning Prayer will widely engage voices from across our diocese and will be intercultural in its expression. I’ll support the service along with postulants and candidates preparing for ordination in our Diocese. Thanks to Canon Victor Conrado for helping imagine this new service and to Alito Orsini for coordinating. Grace and Peace, Matthew Heyd |
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The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC
Dear Ones,
Let’s talk about cathedrals… stay with me here.
The Episcopal Church has a structure that is similar, in some ways, to the Roman Catholic Church – we have bishops (but no archbishops and no pope), we have dioceses, and we have cathedrals. Each congregation is a part of a larger collection of congregations (diocese) and each diocese has a bishop who oversees and supports the mission of that diocese. The cathedral is named as such because the word “cathedra” is Latin for “seat.” The cathedral, then, is the seat of the bishop.
Our diocese is the Episcopal Diocese of New York which covers Staten Island, Manhattan, Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Sullivan, Dutchess, and Putnam counties. Our current bishop is Andy Dietsche who will retire in January and our new bishop is Matt Heyd who will be installed in February at our cathedral.
So, now we get to talk about our cathedral. On Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world – St. John the Divine, the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. They are a part of our common life as a diocese – a kind of center, if you will. They have a congregation that worships together, just like we do, but they are also our cathedral. They, like the bishop and the bishop’s staff, are here to support our lives as congregations. It’s a stunning place to visit.
One of the ways they are reaching out to all of us is to collect prayers from us. These prayers will then become an art installation called Divine Pathways. Artist Anne Patterson will install 1,000 ribbons in the nave (sanctuary) of the cathedral for 9 months and on these ribbons will be written all the prayers.
As the wind blows through these ribbons, it will be a symbol of all our collected prayers being lifted up to God.
Jocelyn Bergen has volunteered to collect thoughts/words for the prayer from St. John’s Kingston. You don’t have to craft a beautiful prayer – it can just be a word or two or three, something for our common life as St. John’s Kingston. What do we desire? What do we need? For what would we like to offer our thanks? How does God’s glory manifest in our common life?
From now until Sept 17, please email Jocelyn directly at jocelyn@zephyr-interactive.com with your thoughts/words of prayer for St. John’s. She will collect them and make sure that our collective prayer gets to the cathedral. So, on one of those 1,000 ribbons will be our words, our prayer, our collective heart.
As a congregation, we will plan a trip to St. John the Divine in the spring, not only to view the installation, but also to experience the beauty and awe of our collective spiritual home as a diocesan family. I look forward to reading our collective prayer and finding ways to include it in our worship life here too.
I hope you will spend some time considering what our congregational prayer might be and reach out to Jocelyn with your words. Also, please thank her for helping us to participate as a congregation.
In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle
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Announcements for September 10
The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
St. John’s Office Hours
Wednesdays 10:00-12:00 noon
Thursdays 1:00-4:00 pm
Phone: 845-331-2252
Email: stjohnskingston@aol.com
Have an announcement for the bulletin?
Please send by Wednesday at noon to stjohnskingston@aol.com
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Neighborhood Block Party! Sunday, Sept. 17 from 12:00-4:00 pm. It’s ALL HANDS ON DECK! Clear your schedule and be sure to sign up on the bulletin board in the vestibule for set-up and take-down duties that Sunday. And take some flyers and postcards to help get the word out!
Change to Centering Prayer Meeting Time: Centering Prayer will now meet on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 pm on Zoom. If you’d like to learn more about Centering Prayer, please visit this page on our website.
Social Hour Sign-up! If you enjoy staying after worship for snacks and socializing, please sign up to host for a week. The sign-up sheet is on the bulletin board in the vestibule. Talk to Barbara Johnston if you have any questions.
Bible Study: Come and join in Bible Study with Rev. Michelle on Sundays at 8:30 am (in person) or Wednesdays at 12:00 noon (via Zoom). We are studying the Gospel of Matthew and you can join the conversation any Sunday! Everyone is welcome to pick up a one-page overview of this Gospel on the bulletin board in the Vestibule. Email Rev. Michelle if you’d like to join the Wednesday Bible Study on Zoom.
St. John’s Outreach Project – People’s Place: When you go to the store, pick up a few extra non-perishable food items for People’s Place food pantry (tuna, soup, pasta, sauce, etc.). We are also taking donations of birthday napkins/plates, candles, and gift bags in various sizes. Bring them to church and place them in the appropriate baskets near the Font.
The Page Turners Book Club will meet on September 14, at 2 p.m., in the parish hall, to discuss ‘Demon Copperhead’ by Barbara Kingsolver. New members are welcome! To learn more about the book group, speak to Lynn Dennison or Barbara Johnston.
St. John’s Upcoming Schedule
Check back, more events/dates being added!
www.stjohnskingston.org/welcome/event-calendar
Look for updates on children’s programming and occasional adult education forums. Soon we will announce dates for our Stewardship Campaign.
Sept 10 All Ages Worship and Return to the Sanctuary
Sept 17 Godly Play, Healing Sunday
Sept 17 Neighborhood Block Party 12:00 – 4:00 pm
Sept 18 Vestry Meeting, 6:00 pm, Parish Hall
Sept 23 Ulster Deanery Meeting, 9-12 at Holy Cross/Santa Cruz, Kingston
Sept 29/30 Holy Cross/Santa Cruz Book Sale Plus! Fr 4-8 / Sa 9-2
Oct 1 All Ages Worship; Blessing of the Animals after worship
Oct 8 Godly Play for kids
Oct 15 Healing Sunday; Choir Rehearsal after worship
Oct 22 Sunday School Activity Day for kids
Oct 31 Morning Prayer
Nov 5 Feast of All Saints’: All Ages Worship
Nov 12 Godly Play for kids
Nov 11 247th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of New York
Nov 19 Healing Sunday; Choir Rehearsal after worship
Nov 26 Sunday School Activity Day for kids
Dec 3 All Ages Worship: Season of Advent begins
Dec 10 Godly Play for kids
Dec 17 Healing Sunday; Choir Rehearsal after worship
Dec 24 Advent IV worship at 10:00am
Christmas Eve Worship:
– Family Service 3:00 pm
– Choral Eucharist 8:00 pm
Dec 31 Morning Prayer
With a feast day this past week on August 24, Bartholomew is one of the 12 apostles appearing in the Gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He is also a part of the story in the Acts of the Apostles. We don’t often hear much about him though. Who was he? What did he do?
upside down, or he was flayed and beheaded. Regardless of the story, Bartholomew remains an especially significant figure in Armenian Christianity and other Eastern Christian Churches because it was in the countries we now know as Turkey and Azerbaijan, that Bartholomew traveled to spread the news of Jesus the Christ.
In icons of Mary Magdalene, we often see her depicted with a jar of perfume to recall her anointing of Jesus. Otherwise, we see her depicted with an egg and, contrary to what you might find when you search about this on the internet, this has nothing to do with Easter eggs. Very simply, the egg is a symbol of the Resurrection. All other stories about Mary and eggs are fables. A word of caution, thanks to the novels of Dan Brown (which are fantastic fictional reads!), there is a significant amount of conjecture and outright fallacy about Mary Magdalene on many websites. Please be mindful when you read up on her.
No Act of Love Is Ever Wasted offers a realistic picture of all types of dementia and how to care for those living with its effects. The chances of us having someone close to us with a form of dementia is high because 5.8 million people in the US suffer from some form of dementia. Only decades ago, people were still writing off dementia-related behaviors to senility. Now, researchers have an ever-increasing understanding of the brain, which has allowed them to better diagnose different forms of dementia.As the community of St. John’s, we will not only discuss the content of the book, but we will also use this as an opportunity to take a look at pastoral care with the elderly and how we might respond to the growing need for care in Ulster County.
Last Sunday, we were blessed with our guest preacher, the Rev. Richard Witt, who is the Executive Director of Rural and Migrant Ministry. He stayed after worship to talk with us more about this vital organization and what help is currently needed regarding the current situation in our rural counties, in which the mayor of New York City is sending busloads of people to other counties. As Richard reminded us, it’s not unusual for us to be receiving immigrants from NYC. What is unusual is the manner in which this is happening. We need to reach out and assist in their settlement here. Rev. Michelle
June is an auspicious month to begin this feature of our Newsletter because St. John’s in Kingston was named after St. John the Baptist, whose life is celebrated every year on June 24. There is some lore in the verbal history of St. John’s that our parish was named after both St. John the Baptist and St. John the Divine, but the records indicate that it’s more likely John the Baptist because the founding date is listed as June 24, 1832. As such, John the Baptist is our patron saint.
John was what we call an ascetic, someone who is characterized by self-discipline and fasting from indulgence. He lived a life apart from worldly ways and called others to do the same because he preached against the worldly corruption of the current Jewish leadership (which got him killed) and prophesied the coming of the messiah. He is the ultimate “fire and brimstone” preacher, one who pronounces hope through reconciling with God and God’s holy ways.