An Appeal for Haiti from the Sisters of St. Margaret

The Episcopal Church and the Sisters of St. Margaret (an Episcopal religious community) have concentrated on helping all the faithful in Haiti since 1927. The Sisters run programs with the elderly and do work with the poor people throught the area. They also are involved at two schools the order founded, one specifically for the handicapped and the other for children within the neighborhood.

The Sisters of Saint Margaret’s mission in Haiti has never been more needed.

The most recent news received is that Sisters Marie Margaret Fenelon, Marjorie Raphael Wysong, and Marie Therese Milien are alive. They have lost their convent, but are committed to continuing their mission of working iwth the elderly, poor, indigent, and young.

Your urgent support is greatly needed. An unfathomable catastrophe like this in a place that has already known so much hardship is a true tragedy. We are asking for your prayers, donations, and service.

Faithfully yours,
Carolyn H. Darr, SSM Superior
Adele Marie Ryan, SSM Asst. Superior

Donations to the Society of St. Margaret may be made online. Please send donations by mail to: The Society of St. Margaret, 17 Highland Park St., Boston, MA 02119-1436. For updates and more information about the Sisters’ work in Haiti, go to ssmbos.org

The Sisters of St. Margaret are an Episcopal Religious Order of women called to glorify God and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ through our worship and work, prayer and common life. Their commitment to God and to one another is expressed through vows of poverty, celibate chastity and obedience. The Sisters maintain a presence in Haiti, and the three working there have been accounted for. They are staying in a tent on the football field at College St. Pierre (which was heavily damaged). Above is a picture of the convent before the earthquake.

Update

We heard yesterday that the children from St. Vincent's are safe. And there are reports that the school was not as damaged as first reported. The sisters are unsure which reports to trust. The women from the Foyer, the sisters' home for the elderly indigent are safe. Several of them are with the sisters at the fields of a nearby college. They have food and water. It is too dangerous to be inside the damaged buildings as aftershocks continue. It sounds like all of Port au Prince is living and sleeping outdoors.

Continue to pray. And give all that you can.

Episcopal Relief and Development

I have spent much of the day frightened and grief struck over the devastation in Haiti. The entire Episcopal compound around the cathedral was destroyed, including the convent of the Society of St. Margaret. I was a postulant at St. Margaret's in Boston ten years ago, and I know two of the three sisters in Haiti, who are miraculously alive and uninjured. There are still hundreds of children from St. Vincent's School for Disabled Children and Holy Trinity School, both started by the sisters, unaccounted for. Haiti is a diocese of the Episcopal Church. These are our neighbors as truly as the people who live on my street. They are our own.

Pray for the people of Haiti. And give what you can. At this moment every dollar will be needed. Episcopal Relief and Development works through local diocesan leadership and has a strong relief infrastructure in Haiti. They have already provided money for Haiti and are prepared to be there indefinitely. Because of the support they receive from the Episcopal Church, 92% of every dollar given will go to Haiti.

Haiti

Ten years ago this month I became a postulant in the Society of St. Margaret. I decided that

A cop, a rabbi, and a dog were in Montana...

This is too good not to share!

Andrew Gerns at The Lead, found this for the first full day of Hanukkah:

Did you hear the one about the Montana cop, the rabbi and the dog who speaks Hebrew?

Eric Stern describes what happens next:

In Montana, a rabbi is an unusual sight. So when a Hasidic one walked into the State Capitol last December, with his long beard, black hat and long black coat, a police officer grabbed his bomb-sniffing German shepherd and went to ask the exotic visitor a few questions....

...Hanukkah has a special significance in Montana these days. In Billings in 1993, vandals broke windows in homes that were displaying menorahs. In a response organized by local church leaders, more than 10,000 of the city’s residents and shopkeepers put make-shift menorahs in their own windows, to protect the city’s three dozen or so Jewish families. The vandalism stopped....

...The menorah was lighted and Hebrew prayers chanted, while the officer watched from a distance with his dog. He figured he would let it all go down and then move in when the ceremony was done. The dog sat at attention, watching the ceremony with a peculiar expression on its face, a look of intense interest. When the ceremony was over, the officer approached the Hasidic rabbi.

“I’m Officer John Fosket of the Helena Police,” he said. “This is Miky, our security dog. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Miky (pronounced Mikey) is a surplus police dog trained by the Israel Defense Force to sniff for explosives and was purchased by the State of Montana for the price of a plane ticket and a crate. Fosket was handed a card with phrases like like “Hi’ sha’ er” (stay!), Ch’pess (search!), and “Kelev tov” (good doggy)" but all too often Miky would stare at Fosket waiting for a command that made sense.

But with the help of Rabbi Chaim Bruk, Officer Fosket has learned to pronounce the tricky Israeli “ch” sound, and Miky has become a top dog, even working with the Secret Service when the President came to town.

"So all is well in the Jewish community here," Stern says. "Because the Hasidic rabbi is helping the Montana cop speak Hebrew to his dog."

The full story is from the New York Times.

Happy Holidays!

Wow, I have been a bad blogger lately!

Things are winding down for the semester here at Pacific. Students are furiously working to get their final papers and assignments done and they're studying like they haven't all semester before final exams next week. So, things are pretty quiet in my neighborhood - apart from a few holiday parties.

I've been thinking a lot about how we celebrate the holidays as a community. We worked really hard this year to make our Festival of Lights celebration more inclusive, and to make the decorations in the university center more resonant for everyone - not just those who celebrate Christmas.

There's always some backlash to this. People who say things like, "most of us DO celebrate Christmas." Or, "that's just political correctness." I always find this surprising, especially when it comes from people who I know really do care about other people, regardless of their religious or cultural background. And this is nothing compared to the ridiculous boycotting of companies that dare to recognize that not all people are Christians, or the TV drama about "attacks on Christmas!" As if! The attack is that materialism has taken over the holiday, not that it threatens to take over others, too.

Saying "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" and putting a menorah in the window as well as a Christmas tree (or instead of!) aren't about being "PC." They're about respecting the dignity of every human being, which is something that Episcopalians promise to do every time we baptize a child or renew our own baptismal vows. Respecting other people is something that people of all faiths ought to be able to get behind. As a Christian, I can say that Christians CERTAINLY ought to be able to get behind it!

In the spirit of Christmas, let's us Christians not try to shove our religion down other people's throats. Let's trust that the creator of the universe is at work, and that we are better participants in that work when we are examples of love and hospitality, not hostility. Let's honor those who celebrate Hanukkah, Yule, and Kwanzaa, and those who have already celebrate Eid and Diwali this year.

If you're a Christian and you want to share your holiday traditions with others, invite them to your home to share your holiday meal and celebration, or to Christmas worship. (You will be going to worship, right?! I mean, if you're one of those who is all worked up about "Merry Christmas" you better be putting your money where your mouth is and showing up for church on Christmas eve or Christmas morning!)

If the Gap can 'get it' surely the rest of us can too! For them it's good business. For the rest of us, it's Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward ALL people.

Salty Language!

My friend and colleague, The Rev. Nick Knisely, on Episcopal Cafe, highlighted Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori's sermon last weekend for the Diocese of Kansas' annual convention.

The Topeka Capital Journal reports on the sermon thus:

"Appropriately salty language, she said, 'can indeed be divinely abrasive signs of God's urgency.'

'Your letters to a member of Congress or to the editor of the local paper or the words you speak in a town meeting can be salt when they challenge a sleepy government or community to pay attention to the needs of hungry children or the unemployed,' she said. 'That is the salt of compassion even though it may feel irritating to those who are invited to wake up to their neighbors' needs and demonstrate compassion.'

Jefferts Schori did urge moderation, saying, 'Like all good gifts, salt can be overused.'

She also applied her salt theme in a different way, saying: 'I heard Fred Phelps and his clan were demonstrating outside our meeting place yesterday, and I heard they were here today, too. I didn't see them.'

'Their message -- their hateful message -- just might embrace enough salt to entomb it,' she said.

The congregation interrupted her with applause before she added 'perhaps like Lot's wife' and noted nuclear waste is buried in salt mines."

Read the full article from the Topeka Capital-Journal.

It's such an important message!

We people have faith have too often decided that what we have to say, what we believe God has told us to share, is THE most important thing. More important even than respecting the dignity of all people. More important than loving one another. More important than listening to what God is saying to other people.

When Jesus was asked what THE most important thing was, he didn't respond with a statement of belief, he didn't make a pronouncement about who was holy and who wasn't. He said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. And Love your neighbor as yourself.

That's the most important thing, for Christians and for many other people of faith, as well. Love includes speaking out for the cause of justice. But only if we also love those we're speaking out against. That's a trick that only a very few have been able to pull off.

*The prepared text of the Presiding Bishop's sermon is available at the Episcopal Church's website, though apparently she added some salty language of her own as she preached because some of the above comments are missing.