Pastor Gary McCluskey provides us an update on a season of Lutheran Campus Ministry unlike any other.
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The origins of Labor Day, established as a federal holiday in 1894, lie in the labor movement's persistent organizing for the rights and recognition of American workers.
This year's impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the heroics and faithfulness of the many we now know to be essential workers.
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In a special message for Labor Day, Bishop Eaton reminds us to give thanks for all workers but pay special tribute to those essential workers for their contributions to our country’s well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The question of exactly who is our neighbor is critically important in a time when the Oikoumene, the whole inhabited earth, is infected and affected by COVID-19, racism, and injustice.
For help, we can look to the recently issued joint document of the WCC)and PCID, “Serving a Wounded World in Interreligious Solidarity: A Christian Call to Reflection and Action During COVID-19 and Beyond.”
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We continue our 50·40·10 celebration with a message from Eileen Ruppel-Doan, Master Divinity Student, United Lutheran Seminary. Ruppel-Doan shares her appreciation of growing up blessed with female pastors her entire life.
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Michaela Shelly writes, “Walking off of the Mass Gathering stage after speaking at the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering, I don’t think I fully understood the magnitude of what I had just done. I stood up on stage to show others how you can take some of your worst moments, such as my terminal diagnosis, and use them to help remind others they do not have to feel alone in all of this.”
In this post, read her letter and watch her heartfelt Youth Gathering talk. Read her blog here.
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Bishop Mark W. Holmerud, with the Sierra Pacific synod, writes this letter on the recent incomprehensible weather events.
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In her weekly message, Bishop Eaton addresses the weariness of being church during pandemic amongst many storms around us, and offers a prayer.
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When I was 10 years old, I was in a community theater’s production of the musical Peter Pan. I was apart of the chorus, a lost boy who would run around the stage with twigs in my hair, a wooden sword in my hand, singing about flying to Neverland. This play gave me a taste for fantasy.
The author of A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle talks of fantasy being a guide to truth. She said; “Fantasy goes beyond easy possibilities to the possibilities that are much harder which open us and push us.”
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ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton and the Mission Support Team express gratitude for ELCA congregations and synods and their sharing of Mission Support.
For stories about how your Mission Support is making a difference visit https://www.elca.org/SOFIA
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In need of a miracle, Bishop Sani-Ibrahim Azar offers this prayer and appeal for support of Lutheran schools in the Holy Land. Bishop Azar is Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land.
Already struggling with difficulties, Covid-19 has affected the school as well as many student’s families dependent upon tourism dollars for tuition. Please donate at elcjhl.org or via OpportunityPalestine.org.
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Tessa Comnick, Hunger Advocacy Fellow writes: “Like many people, I have spent the last several months living out of my house. While that may not seem like a significant statement—I mean, houses are where we live—living out of my house has taken on new meaning. It’s now where I socialize (virtually), where I work, where I sleep, where I eat… and soon it will be where I vote in the 2020 election.”
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We continue our 50·40·10 celebration with a message from Pastor Lu Cantrell of Peace Lutheran Church in Morris, Illinois. Pastor Cantrell shares the special circumstances of her unique ordination.
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Even though I am not currently in Senegal, my work continues as an ELCA Global Missionary. Find my August 2020 Newsletter here, or you can also access (and share) the August Newsletter online at the YAGM Senegal blog. You will also find a few posts from myself and the Senegal YAGM about our return to the United States in March.
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In her weekly message, Bishop Eaton gives us a history of the Luther rose. And if you’ve been watching her this summer, you’ve noticed the neon Luther Rose always in the background. In this video, things finally get lit.
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In a Harper’s article, A Litany for Survival, Naomi Jackson begins with: “When I was a girl, my Bajan grandmother insisted that I recite Psalm 23 every night before bed. I didn’t yet know what death was, but I knew that there was something sinister and brave about repeating the words.
My parents emigrated to the United States from Barbados and Antigua in the late 1970s. They were determined to cloak their children in an armor of education, etiquette, and religion—to protect us from a world that, in the words of Audre Lorde, ‘we were never meant to survive.’ “
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We share a letter written by Interim Bishop Murray D. Finck of the Southwest California Synod, addressing the series of fires spreading through California.
“I have worn the shirt pictured above a number of times in the past years…on the island of Kawai; in San Diego; Fallbrook; New Orleans. I want to put this shirt on now and go somewhere where I can be helpful, but today I do not believe that is possible. Instead I have gone to elca.org and made a contribution.”
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The Office of the Bishop team is dwelling in the words of Acts 16:6-10, and will be for the next few months. In a time of weariness, when we are unable to go to the places we desire, this story from the church in its infancy has much to offer.
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Join Valley Interfaith Project and the Arizona Faith Network in urging the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) and Arizona Department of Health Services (DHS) to protect prison staff, inmates, and their families during the COVID-19 crisis.
On Tuesday, it was reported that half the population of the Whetstone Unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex, 517 individuals, have tested positive for COVID-19. Learn more and sign a petition for a testing blitz and other measures to control the virus in Arizona prisons.
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Sylvia Haddad, the executive director of the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees (DSPR), shares a personal account of her experience with the Beirut explosion on August 4, 2020.
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