October 1, 2016

New Visitation Schedule Features Mid-week Dates

"Visiting the congregations and people of our diocese is

by far the most wonderful part of this ministry." The pattern of my previous visitation cycles generally occurred over the course of 18 months, during which I would worship and visit with each of our 46 congregations (plus the two congregations in the Diocese of Albany where I serve as DEPO Bishop) on a Sunday. For the current cycle, which began in August, I am trying on something new. The main idea is to visit every congregation in the course of an 11-month cycle. In order to do that, I am scheduled to visit half our congregations on a Sunday and half on a weekday.

I’d like to thank clergy, lay leaders, and my assistant, Susan Kremer, for coordinating the new schedule. Now into my 16th year as your bishop, visiting the congregations and people of our diocese is by far the most wonderful part of this ministry. This comes with gratitude for the joy of being connected with you in ministry as part of the Episcopal Church in Vermont.

Faithfully,

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October 2016 Visits Please contact the local parish to confirm times.

Sunday, October 2 Christ Church – Montpelier, Vt. 8:00 AM & 10:00 AM

Sunday, October 16 St. Luke’s – Chester, Vt.

Thursday, October 20 St. Mark’s – Newport, Vt.

Sunday, October 23 St. Luke’s Mission – Fair Haven, Vt.

Sunday, October 30 St. Barnabas – Norwich, Vt.

In the photo: Visit to St. Michael's - Brattleboro, Vt., September 25, 2016

Excitement Builds for Diocesan Convention November 4-5 will mark the 184th year that clergy and lay delegates from across the Episcopal Church in Vermont have convened to hear and decide on matters of importance to the life of the church. As preparations reach a fevered pitch this month, the committee is taking action to ensure that every parishioner—not just the registered attendees—can connect with the experience online.

The convention page on the diocesan website serves as the online hub for clergy, delegates and parishioners alike. Today the majority of the posted information is for those who will be attending in person, submitting nominations, or proposing resolutions. Once the event begins, however, downloadable parish resources and video highlights will be added.

Event organizers anticipate that the most viewed coverage may be of the Rev. Becca Stevens, special guest and founding director of Magdalene and Thistle Farms. They

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plan to make video recordings of her forthcoming keynote address and Eucharistic message available during the convention.

Thistle Farms, a community of women who have survived prostitution, trafficking and addiction, has become one of the largest social enterprises in the United States, and last year topped a million in sales revenue. “Love Heals,” the Thistle Farms tagline and the message of Stevens’s 2015 book, Letters from the Farm: A Simple Path for a Deeper Spiritual Life, has been adopted as this year’s convention theme.

Video: Loving. Liberating. Life Giving. Presiding Bishop Michael Bruce Curry invites you to join The Jesus Movement. Watch the video… http://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/video/jesus-movement

Video: House of Bishops Recap The House of Bishops met Sept. 15-20 in Detroit, Michigan. View a daily video account of activities, beginning with this message.

Workgroup Addresses Disaster Preparedness

From the stories several participants told, it was clear that the wounds left by hurricanes Irene and Sandy were only beginning to heal years later. As several New England Dioceses gathered with Episcopal Relief and Development at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in North Grafton, Mass., they pondered question like, “How can the church

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be missional in times of crisis?” And, “How can congregations mitigate their risks?” Those talks, held in early August, are now resulting in actions by the Episcopal Church in Vermont.

For the past two months, a disaster preparedness workgroup has been busy developing a diocesan response, beginning with a written plan. The Episcopal Church in Connecticut provided a working draft, which is currently being adapted for the Diocese of Vermont. In fact, networking with neighboring dioceses is a key ingredient in the plan, and Vermont remains connected to the rest of Province I through GroupMe, a group text service, in addition to establishing its own monthly meeting.

Because every disaster, whether natural or human-made, presents its own unique challenges, Episcopal Relief and Development has expressed the importance of building an inventory of each parish’s assets. This extensive work began last year with the launch of the Episcopal Asset Map, a national database managed locally by each diocese. Various parishes throughout Vermont have submitted information for the database in recent months, but there is yet work to do, our local workgroup reported.

The workgroup plans to provide access to both online and written Asset Map questionnaires at the upcoming Diocesan Convention. The ten minutes it takes to complete could help save lives, literally, in a time of crises.

Members of the disaster preparedness workgroup include: Harry Kendrick, St. Paul’s - White River Junction; Lars Hunter, St. Mary’s in the Mountains - Wilmington; John Hartman, St. John’s - Randolph;. Maurice Harris, diocesan ministry support; and the Rev. Canon Lynn Bates, diocesan ministry support.

In the photos

Top: At the North Grafton, Mass. meeting from left to right are Harry Kendrick, Maurice Harris, Lura Steele (Episcopal Relief & Development), Tamara Plummer (Episcopal Relief & Development), Lars Hunter, and John Hartman.

Bottom: Members of the Vermont team discuss challenges and potential solutions with other Province I dioceses at the North Grafton meeting.

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Reflections

Inviting Outsiders In, Always By Kathleen Moore

I grew up in an Episcopal Church that ordained women. I have never known anything else, and for that I am deeply grateful. Including women in all aspects of our church hierarchy is vitally important, and there is certainly more work to do in this vein. Still, I hope that the Episcopal Church will look beyond our own structure and hierarchy in the next 40 years, and take seriously the call to make this world safer for all women everywhere.

God’s reconciling work in the world involves bringing people in from the margins, and so often it is women living in those margins. Women are exploited and brutalized, victims of gender-based violence, sex trafficking and abuse. Women must fight to be heard and respected in navigating our everyday lives, our workplaces, our families, and yes, our churches. I continue to be surprised by how many people are threatened by or distrustful of women: women in positions of power, women who speak out and say what they are really thinking, women who dare to take an outspoken interest in the right to control what happens to their own bodies, or who ask only to be compensated as much as a man would be for the same work, women who don’t behave either gently or callously enough, depending on the audience. These feelings of threat and distrust are symptoms of the outsider status of women, a status we are reminded of through stories that come up again and again throughout Jesus’s ministry.

We are called to invite outsiders in, always. I hope our church will take the risks required to prioritize looking outward. I hope we will commit to working with, supporting, and advocating on behalf of our sisters in this world.

Kathleen Moore is a first-year MDiv student at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a postulant in the Diocese of Vermont, and the communications manager at Canticle Communications.

Article re-published from House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church http://houseofdeputies.org/inviting-outsiders-in-always.html

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The Ten Commandments By Jane Lee Wolfe

These are written down in Exodus 20.

• I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage: You shall have no other gods beside Me.

• You shall not make for yourself a sculpture image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord you God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me ad keep My commandments.

• You shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God; for the Lord will not clear one who swears falsely by His name.

• Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do any work – you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

• Honor your father and your mother, that you may long endure on the land that the Lord your God is assigning to you.

• You shall not murder. • You shall not commit adultery. • You shall not steal. • You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. • You shall not covet your neighbor’s house: you shall not covet your neighbor’s

wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

Ok, you know these, right? Nice moral guidelines. The thing is, though, they aren’t “guidelines” they are “commitments.” God has committed to being with you always and supporting you in your life, and you have committed to God – in your baptism and/or confirmation. If infant baptism, it was sort of like an arranged marriage, but an arranged marriage is still a marriage whether you approve or not. You are committed to the relationship with God, others, yourself.

Anyway, you need to every now and then confess these commitments to God, not just read or listen to how God talked about them to Moses. It goes like this: I have no other Gods but You. I make no image of you in my life. I do not lie using your name as witness. I rest on the Sabbath. I honor my mother and father.

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I do not murder. I do not commit adultery. I do not steal from you or my neighbor. I do not lie about other human beings. I do not covet what you or my neighbor has.

You ask for forgiveness when you fail to honor one of your commitments, and you forgive your neighbors, family and friends when they fail too. That is how you seal your own forgiveness – by forgiving others. Do this all the time, not just on Ash Wednesday, if that’s a confessing day for you. Why let the breeches of commitment pile up; why let the opportunities for forgiveness pile up. Clean the plate. That’s part of what can happen; the great part of walking into your true humanity with and in relationship with God.

Jane Lee Wolfe is a parishioner of St. James-Woodstock, Vt. and Director of Bog Chapel, Inc., an educational not-for-profit organization that focuses on the spiritual health and spiritual fitness of human beings, from youth through old age.

LMA Brushstrokes: A Call for Stories

You'vereadthetheologicalperspectives,aswellasexamplesofwhatLocalMissionApproachentails.Nowwe'dliketohearfromyou!FromnowthroughOctober17,youareinvited(read:encouraged)tosubmit200wordsorlessdescribingwhatyourcongregationisdoingtowardLocalMissionApproach.Pleasesubmityour

entriestomharris@dioceseofvermont.org

In Case You Missed It: Concert to End Gun Violence On Sunday, September 25, National Gun Violence Awareness Day, All Saints Episcopal Church in South Burlington hosted a concert, featuring jazz musicians Mark and Morgan LeFay Klarich, as part of the Concert Across America to End Gun Violence.

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Upcoming Events, Reminders and Announcements View upcoming parish and diocesan events in the full calendar.

2016 Diocesan Safe Church Training Registration Now Open Read more and register online for training dates listed below:

• Re-Certification: Wednesday, October 5, 4:00 pm to 7:30 pm at Christ Church, Montpelier • Certification: Saturday, October 22, 8:30 am to 3:00 pm at Trinity Church, Rutland

Visiting Palestine: A Talk by George Rishmawi, October 10 A Talk by George Rishmawi, Executive Director Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies and the Masar Ibraham al-Khalil. October 10 at 6 PM, St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Norwich, Vt. Download Flyer Deep Change for Climate Justice, White River Junction, October 15-16 VT Interfaith Power & Light and Our Children, Climate, Faith Symposium are collaborating on our annual conference, Deep Change for Climate Justice: Coalescing a Transformational Movement, Oct. 15-16, White River Junction. Join with people from VT, NH, and beyond to connect and draw courage to do the work that's needed, and to engage others to take action on global climate change! Registration is open. Online registration and much more is at: www.dc4cj2016.org Registration fee goes up on Oct. 1 - register now! Contact: info@vtipl.org 802-434-3397 VT Christian Rocktoberfest, October 15 October 15 from 7 to 9 PM North Avenue Alliance Church Burlington, Vt. Tickets on sale now! Download flyer and ticket order form 2016 Diocesan Convention November 4 & 5 Taking place November 4 & 5, 2016 at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Burlington, VT. Stay tuned for further announcements including registration information!

Stay Connected

The Mountain E-News is sent twice monthly. If you have questions, would like your news or event to be included in the next issue, or have a change of e-mail address or phone number, email us. The next two editions of The Mountain will publish on or around October 17 and November 1. Please submit content at least 48 hours in advance.

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