Risen Christ,
through the power of your Holy Spirit you filled your disciples with boldness and fresh hope:
strengthen us to proclaim your risen life
and fill us with your peace,
to the glory of God the Father.
Amen.
Slightly edited; KSH.
"The boldness of Thomas’ #Easter request to place his fingers in Jesus' side was rewarded.." https://t.co/hkkejegomu pic.twitter.com/v9ZbKZnn1j
— Diocese of Arlington (@arlingtonchurch) April 6, 2016
The Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce has today published its report ‘From Lament to Action’ proposing a suite of changes to begin bringing about a change of culture in the life of the Church of England.
It issues a warning to the Archbishops that a failure to act could be a “last straw” for many people of UK Minority Ethnic (UKME) or Global Majority Heritage (GMH) backgrounds with “devastating effects” on the future of the Church.
The report sets out 47 specific actions for different arms of the Church of England to implement across five priority areas: participation, governance, training, education and young people.
Without these changes the Church risks denying and disregarding the gifts of a significant part of the nation, the Taskforce makes clear.
“This is the culture change that is required if the Church is to live up to its mandate of being a body where all the gifts of all its people flourish to the full, for the benefit of the church as a whole, the nation of England and the greater glory of God,” they say.
They add: “Decades of inaction carry consequences and this inaction must be owned by the whole Church.
“A failure to act now will be seen as another indication, potentially a last straw for many, that the Church is not serious about racial sin.”
"Racism is a sin which disfigures God’s image in us."
From Lament To Action: the report of the Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce is published today.
Read the report at https://t.co/73mvSZ8AX0.#LamentToAction pic.twitter.com/bqSLtdcvWA
— The Church of England (@churchofengland) April 22, 2021
For the first time in more than a year, Erin Mohring and her family attended church in person this past Sunday. They are not the only previously familiar faces returning to pews across the U.S.
A Lifeway Research study earlier this year found 9 in 10 Protestant churchgoers say they plan to return to in-person services once COVID-19 is no longer an active threat. Many of those who are just now returning or plan to return later were, like the Mohrings, active members of their congregation.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mohring said she and her family attended Sunday services and Wednesday night activities each week. After coronavirus cases began to spread across the U.S. last spring, however, they made the decision on March 15, 2020, to attend strictly remotely.
That became more difficult as their church moved back to in-person services. “The church we were attending when the pandemic hit did online services for a little while, but when group gatherings of any kind were allowed again in our area, the online services became an afterthought and eventually went away,” she said.
Among weekly churchgoers pre-COVID, 66% attended in person less frequently, if at all, in January 2021. Despite how it may seem, here’s why that can be good news for churches. https://t.co/W6VtcBIjE4
— Lifeway Research (@LifewayResearch) April 22, 2021
Some years ago, when I was nineteen and living in the north of England, I knew a middle-aged man named Reuben who claimed to be visited by angels, to receive visions and auditions from God, to see and converse with the spirits of nature, and to be able to intuit the spiritual complaints of nearly everyone he met. He was a cheerful soul, with a vast and almost impossibly tangled beard of walnut brown through which he was forever running the fingers of his right hand, a few ghostly wisps of hair floating about the crown of his head, and eyes of positively gemlike blue. (Actually, his eyes were rather unsettling at times—they sometimes seemed to be lit from within—but there was never any menace in them.)
He once told me that as a very small child he had assumed that everyone was aware of the numinous presences that he saw everywhere, on a nearly daily basis. To him, a small anthropine figure dancing atop an open flower or a radiant angel standing beside a church door was as ordinary a sight as, well, an open flower or a church door. It was only when he was about seven, he said, after years of his parents’ anxiously admonishing him not to make up tales and to embarrass them with his nonsense, that he began to grasp that the world he saw about him was qualitatively different from that of most other persons; and when he was about twelve he began to appreciate how much more interesting and delightful than theirs his reality was.
When I knew him, he was studying for a master’s degree in the religious studies department of the University of Lancaster, where I was doing a year’s research principally on Cittamatra Buddhism. He hoped to write a dissertation on William Blake, with whom—for obvious reasons—he felt a close kinship. He was one of those gentle and slightly hapless eccentrics who are deeply necessary parts of the constituency of any university or college worth its charter, generally drifting about in programs that offer them temporary shelter but no real prospects of a career, working toward degrees they will probably never receive, but contributing some vital, genial, and largely indefinable benefit to everyone around them.
He worked, if that is the right word, in the university library, though as far as I could tell his only job was engaging in long conversations at the front desk with all of his friends (work he did not mind taking with him, after his shift, to the nearby coffee bar). Everyone who knew him was exceedingly fond of him, and I never heard anyone express any doubt that his visions and auditions from the other side were entirely authentic….
Sometimes it is difficult to exaggerate how strange, barbaric, and superstitious an age ours really is. From the archives:https://t.co/DsWc7wwfK9
— First Things (@firstthingsmag) April 22, 2021
The doctor’s bag now sits in his closet gathering dust. He lost his stethoscope somewhere in the house — a familiar weight that sat on his neck for two decades.
It’s been months since Justin Meschler, 48, practiced medicine. And he wonders if he ever will again.
He quit his job as an anesthesiologist during the pandemic last spring when fear began seeping into every part of his life. And what began as a few months off has now turned into something much longer.
“I feel guilty for leaving. I think about the others who stayed on. I think about the patients I could have helped. I feel like I abandoned them,” Meschler said. “But mostly, I feel relieved.”
A year into the pandemic, many others are joining Meschler at the door — an exodus fueled by burnout, trauma and disillusionment. According to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, roughly 3 in 10 health-care workers have weighed leaving their profession. More than half are burned out. And about 6 in 10 say stress from the pandemic has harmed their mental health.
Burned out by the pandemic, 3 in 10 health-care workers say they've considered leaving the profession, poll shows https://t.co/NuJvhStFWQ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 22, 2021
We thank you, creator God,
for the goodly heritage you offer us,
from green downland
to the deep salt seas,
and for the abundant world
we share with your creation.
Keep us so mindful of its needs
and those of all with whom we share,
that open to your Spirit
we may discern and practice
all that makes for its wellbeing,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
–The Rev. Peter Lippiett courtesy of Xavier Univeristy
“If at some point Earth becomes uninhabitable there’s no way to escape. We are linked to this planet.”
Our world is changing – and it's even more important that we each do our part to help the planet. What are you doing to look after our world?#EarthDay #EarthDay2021 pic.twitter.com/706ZAon7VE
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) April 22, 2021
O God our Father, who hast taught us that our citizenship is in heaven, and hast called us to tread a pilgrim’s path here on earth: Guide us, we pray thee, on our journey through this world to the Celestial City; defend us from the perils that await us in the way; give us grace to endure faithfully to the end; and at the last bring us to thy eternal joy; through the mercy of thy Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Frosty, fiery Scottish sunrise today#stormhour #loveukweather #sunrise pic.twitter.com/HRMOQDwoXd
— Tom Lowe (@saloplarus) April 22, 2021
While the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. And he saw two boats by the lake; but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish; and as their nets were breaking, they beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the catch of fish which they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.” And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.
–Luke 5:1-11
We have the best sunrises and sunsets on this planet.
Happy #EarthDay #capecod pic.twitter.com/I32PR1vPBq— Darius Aniunas (@dariusaniunas) April 22, 2021