Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles

#dailyprayer Gracious and attentive God, you promise to number every sparrow one by one, even every hair on our heads, and your son said that not one of those y...ou gave him would be lost. In the hours and days ahead, send your angels to attend those who count us citizens one by one. We have been counted in Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, and Dallas, in Los Angeles, Miami, and Seattle. And by your grace, and these laborers' diligence, we will be counted in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Quicken the true patriotic heart of all judges bidden to interfere with the counting of their fellow Americans, lest they forget all those who died to secure our sacred right to hold power to account; because it is by this means, in this time, that you enable us in your mighty name to bring good news to the poor, release the captives, and let the oppressed go free; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen. (Photo: Counting the votes in my home town of Detroit; Salwan Georges, Washington Post) See more

#DailyInvitation For additional perspective from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, log in this Saturday, Nov. 7, to the diocesan Facebook page as he keynotes the Bishop's Gala benefiting diocesan ministries including Bloy House, The Episcopal Theological School at Los Angeles. Learn more here: www.bishopsgala.org. Log-in is complimentary and open to all. Let us pray the Collect for the Nation: "Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to ser...ve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen." Also, the Diocesan Cycle of Prayer today remembers the Rev. Roberto Maldonado on the anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood in 1989. Image: Washington Cathedral "Holding on to Hope" national interfaith prayer service, Nov. 1, 2020 #feedinghungryhearts #ConnectReflectAct

#dailyprayer Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges: Guide the people of the United States in the election of officials and rep...resentatives; that, by faithful administration and wise laws, including the observance of all election procedures and the acceptance by all in our country of the lawful results, that the rights of all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your purposes; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. #bcp See more

#DailyInvitation Let us pray the collect for an election: "Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges: Guide the people of the United States in the election of officials and representatives; that, by faithful administration and wise laws, the rights of all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your purposes; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." -- Book of Common Prayer, page 822 #VoteFaithfully #soulstothepolls #feedinghungryhearts #ConnectReflectAct

#feedinghungryhearts #ihearAmericasinging #150000000voters One day on Facebook, I provoked a little controversy by writing this: Jesus Christ died so we could v...ote. For some of my friends, the idea associated our savior with the sordidness and crudeness of politics. Church values are theoretically the exact opposite. You’re probably familiar with these words from our liturgy for evening prayer the congregation addressing our God in Christ: You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices. Such a contrast with our angry political voices. In one of our most beloved prayers, we pray for the peace that the world cannot give. For some, this is the solution to the seemingly irresolvable dissonance between the timbres of our worship and world. What we do here is of God; what they do out there is not. Alas, I don’t think the gospel give us that easy an out. We heard the story from chapter four of Luke on a Sunday morning not long ago. In the synagogue in Nazareth, after he had read from Isaiah, Jesus said that, among other things, he had come to bring good news to the poor, release the captives, and let the oppressed go free. But his saying it then hasn’t made it happen today. Jesus doesn’t operate an economy, prisons and detention centers, or oppressive governments. Jesus doesn’t go to war or crush the life out of a Black man in police custody in the streets of Minneapolis. Jesus doesn’t close the border to the stranger and asylee. We do those things, or rather, our fellow denizens of humanity do them. For good or ill, whatever power does, it does in our name, with our sufferance and our taxes. So Jesus’s proclamation of a kingdom of justice and peace requires more of us than thoughts and prayers. More even than outreach and advocacy. It requires us to lean into our freedom our freedom as people of faith and our hard-won freedom as citizens. These two freedoms are cut from the same cloth. Both are gifts from a Creator who yearns to set all people free. Which brings me back to Jesus and voting. My faith in the birth, teachings, life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ has as much to do with my freedom as my salvation. Whatever the circumstance or sadness, the limitation or loss, my faith makes me free. In every situation, there’s always something I can do for the glory of God and the sake of God’s people. And yet the world is apt to try to make me forget my freedom. We just heard Jesus’s promise to set parents and children against one another. This may resonate with anyone who’s experienced political discord in their families in recent years. It may also resonate with those who experience our national politics as an unending pitting of people against one another for the sake of getting and keeping power. I hear Jesus describing a struggle that is always underway, and always will be, between entrenched power and interest and his values of self-sacrifice and love. Whether amid the brutal tyranny enforced by the Roman empire in our Lord’s time or, in my own lifetime, the tyranny enforced against Black people by state governments in the Deep South until 1965, freedom in Christ has always been a sword and shield for people suffering oppression. Abrahamic values an insistence on the dignity of every human being have spurred humanity’s agonizingly slow recognition of the political value which holds that every human being has the right to petition, question, and constrain the state. And yet some still insist that voting is a privilege. It’s the opposite of a privilege. It’s a hard-won, inalienable human right. Everyone is a well-informed voter, because everyone is an expert in the life they’re leading. Everyone has the government coming down on them one way or another. Whether our streets are clean and safe. Whether the police treat us and our neighbors fairly. Whether our taxes and our wars are just. That’s why I don’t think Jesus’s expectations about voting could possibly be clearer. It’s inherent in the whole gospel. Everyone and especially the poor, the captives, and the oppressed, the ones he came to set free -- should be free to express their hopes and fears to those in power. And yet in our system, like all systems, politics privileges the already privileged. If you own property, you’re more likely to vote than if you don’t. The older we are, the more likely to vote. On average white people vote at higher rates than people of color. The experts tell us why all this is true. We vote when we think we’re being heard, when we think it will make a difference, when we think we have a stake in the outcome. Because turnout is usually so low and uneven because we make voting so cumbersome government has gotten away with under-serving people of color, the housing insecure, the hungry, the formerly incarcerated, the young, and the unpropertied. Some in power do their best, or worst, to resist the inevitable pluralizing of our country by engaging in the sin of voter suppression. Voter suppression grieves the heart of God and desecrates the grave of every patriot who ever fought for freedom. And yet the complexity of registering and voting itself is a form of suppression. A couple of weeks ago, I was waiting in a parking lot in Orange County while my spouse, Kathy, shopped at Goodwill. Thrifting is her greatest recreational joy. I used the time to sit in the car and order my new computer on my telephone. It took six minutes. All I had to do was push the Apple Pay button. The cloud has all my financial information. People who care about money made sure the transaction was secure. If the government really cared about everyone voting, it would make voting that easy. A political, poetic irony of this time that an unanticipated symptom of COVID-19 is that millions of new voters have caught the political bug. Because we have gazed into the abyss. A global pandemic. Systemic racism and endemic anti-Blackness thrown into sharp relief. The highest death rates among older Americans living in isolation in nursing homes. People of color and essential workers, especially immigrant workers, those with the least political influence, suffering disproportionately. Government’s historic failure to protect the safety and security of the American people. All contributing to a mighty chorus that has been swelling from pianissimo to fortissimo. By this evening, nearly 100 million have voted already, over two-thirds of the 2016 turnout. Can’t you hear the music? Tomorrow, as always happens on Election Day, but as perhaps never before in our country, some of our leaders are going to face the music. Before the Civil War, in a poem celebrating the American worker, Walt Whitman wrote these words: I hear America singing, the varied carols I hearEach singing what belongs to him or her and to none elseSinging with open mouths their strong melodious songs. Everyone brings their unique temperament and experience to their vote, what belongs to them and none else. As Christians, we celebrate the amazing diverse complexity which is the unity of the body of Christ. As citizens, it should be our priority to ensure that every voice in our diverse national family is heard, every narrative included, in our shared national canon. If we’re all in this together, then we must leave no one behind. The more people vote, the more a civic spirit blows across the land that is akin to the Holy Spirit in its counseling, advocating, life-giving wisdom. So let’s vote. Let’s urge others to vote, especially those around us who are reluctant, who are afraid they don’t count. And in the name of Christ, this year and in the years to come, let’s petition our government at last to honor its covenant with the people, be a light to the nations, and do whatever it takes to streamline, simplify, and encourage voting for all. I hear America singing in millions and millions of angry voices, loving voices, pleading voices. A freedom song, a justice song, a redemption song, a godly song. A song of hope that is loud enough and true enough to silence fear and set captive hearts free at last. May our God in Christ be with you, your families and friends, your neighbors and neighborhoods, and with our country and all its people this Election Day and in all the days to come. [My homily at a Service of Prayer for our Nation last Thursday at St. John's Cathedral; LM Otero/AP Photo]

From Bishop John Harvey Taylor Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry: "[W]hatever your politics, however you have or will cast your vote, however this election unfolds, wherever the course of racial reckoning and pandemic take us, whether we are in the valley or the mountaintop, hold on to the hope of America. Hold on hope grounded in our shared values and ideals. Hold on to God’s dream. Hold on and struggle and walk and pray for our nation."

From Bishop John Harvey Taylor: #IhearAmericasinging "The Rt. Rev. Diane Jardine Bruce told viewers in Mandarin, Spanish and English that, regardless of political differences, 'What binds us together is that one Eucharistic table we all gather around. All are loved. All are cared for and together the strongest, most powerful thing we can do for each other and for our nation is to pray.'"

#dailyprayer O God, the Maker and Redeemer of all believers: Grant to the faithful departed the unsearchable benefits of the passion of your Son; that on the da...y of his appearing they may be manifested as your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. #bcp (Photo: At November 2017 rededication of All Souls Chapel at PIH Health Good Samaritan Hospital) See more

#DailyInvitation On this All Souls' Day commemorating Al Faithful Departed, prayers of the diocesan community are offered for those who have died, especially those some 1.2 million worldwide who have perished from the Coronavirus during the present pandemic. May their souls, with the souls of all faithful departed, rest in peace. Let us pray today's collect for All Souls' Day: "God, the Maker and Redeemer of all believers: Grant to the faithful departed the unsearchable ...benefits of the passion of your Son; that on the day of his appearing they may be manifested as your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen." Image: Ofrenda (traditional altar of remembrance) created in 2019 for the Nov. 1-2 Dia de los Muertos observance by students, parents and staff of the Neighborhood Youth Association, an institution of the Diocese of Los Angeles. #feedinghungryhearts #ConnectReflectAct

#feedinghungryhearts With thanks to Luke and Lindy Colaluca-Polling for the photo, some eucharistic exercise, aka the sacramental stretch, this morning at All Saints Episcopal Church in Riverside. Pretty sure that's Mary Ellen Gruendyke!

#feedinghungryhearts When the germ hit, All Saints Episcopal Church in Riverside leaned in and stepped up, in the words of its rector, the Rev. Canon Kelli Grac...e Kurtz. Within weeks, they had established a new ministry, the Thursday Food Share, which last week distributed eight tons of food to neighbors. Laundry Love is recommencing. Several All Saints members are former members of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, now St. Michael's Riverside Episcopal Ministry Center. Parish members have been devoted advocates of affordable housing at St. Michael's. A thirty-member care team helps keeps everyone in touch, including by setting up small Zoom groups by ministry. Though rector since March 2019, Canon Kurtz served as associate rector from 1999-2007, making her both a familiar and transformative presence during these wilderness times. In a socially distanced way, the place is humming, and looking ahead to the inevitable day the germ relents. On a Cook's tour between services, Kelli Grace showed me the work that's well underway on new staff offices, freeing up space in the south wing to be let out to non-profits. There'll be plenty of room for a pre-school as well. Folks will be back on campus tomorrow at 5 p.m. for the All Souls Day Lantern Festival, "a outdoor service of light and remembrance." On election day from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., the nave will be open for private prayer and meditation. With All Saints, let us all pray for a clear result, accepted by all parties, and a nation at peace in the aftermath. Supported by Luke and Lindy Colaluca-Polling, All Saints' digital worship is polished and inviting, with multiple cameras. Longtime director of music and organist Abraham Fabella was magnificent, as was soloist Janie Hillard. Andrea Briggs said the responses for the congregation at home. I was along to preach and celebrate Holy Eucharist with a prayer for spiritual communion, attend a coffee hour between services, meet with All Saints' energetic and spirited vestry, and even distribute the Blessed Sacrament to those who drove over after the second service. I was masked and gloved, leaning the length of a table to stay six feet away. I can't satisfactorily convey the joy of all this, especially saying the words "the body of Christ, the bread of heaven, keep you in everlasting life" after exchanging a few words with each communicant (always well briefed by Kelli Grace, who knows her people well). The Rt. Rev. Diane Jardine Bruce and I have been doing digitally present visitations throughout the autumn. All Saints was the first church to invite me in person. Kelli Grace had written the liturgy so that she and I would say the collect for purity and the "Gloria" in unison, and as we did, I got goose bumps, a grin and a catch in my throat at the same time, as I did when she held the consecrated sacrament aloft (each wafer in its own wax paper slip) as she prepared to take it outside for the distribution. "This is what we do," she said. "This is what we have to do." Amen. Livestreamed worship is at 8 and 10 a.m. Sundays. Read more about All Saints and its ministries here: http://www.allsaintsriverside.org.

Holding on to Hope - A National Service for Healing and Wholeness

From All Saints by the Sea Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara #feedinghungryhearts

Our 10:00am service on All Saints Day, we are welcoming The Bishop Diocesan John H. Taylor to celebrate with us this morning.