May 15, 2024

All Saints Gazette: It's Pentecost!

Greetings from All Saints!

This week, ALL THE THINGS are a go:

Thursday, 18:00, Vrijburg: Prayer lab
Sunday, 17:30, Vriburg: Eucharist

Sunday is Pentecost, which is one of The Big Occasions of the Christian year. Brief explanation below. tl;dr: Be there! If you can, bring a food item to share. Wear red if you have it.

Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter. Jesus rose on Easter and returned to heaven on Ascension (last Thursday), and told his disciples to hang out in Jerusalem and wait for something to happen. Pentecost is the day when the Holy Spirit appeared and stayed, and a group of still-faily-taumatized people went from sitting around scratching their heads to showing the world who Jesus is and what Jesus means. That is us. At our Sunday worship, we will hear the story, learn a bit about who the Holy Spirit is and what She/He/They/It do*es, and experience its presence and power. Bring yourself, bring you friends, bring your kids. And if it’s not too much trouble, bring something edible to share (friendliness to common dietary restrictions appreciated where possible). And remember: we’re paperless, so bring a device or a prayer book (and if you have an extra one to share, bring that too).

Want to Go Deeper? Try Prayer Lab!

Once or twice a month, our Thursday evening meeting is devoted to exploring the Christian spiritual tradition. This week, we’ll start with the ancient tradition of Evening Prayer (vespers) as it is received in The Episcopal Church. We then follow with an exercise in one of the many ways of praying in the more contemplative vein, though we might do something more verbal or kinetic if it suits the particular crowd. Afterward, we talk about it while eating, so bring something to share if you can. This Thursday, 18:00, Vrijburg!

Did you know?

Pentecost is the Christian analogue to the Jewish feast of Shavuot. Described in the Bible as the festival of first fruits (i.e. by now something has hopefully come up from the ground, so go offer a bit of it to God), in rabbinic Judaism it commemorates the giving of the Torah fifty days after the first Passover. The feast is observed with a night-long study party.

Upcoming Opportunities

Bishop’s Visitation, June 2

I trust you know by now that the bishop is coming on June 2, and are planning to attend worship that day? Wonderful! We’ll have some kind of party. Let Mpho know if you’d like to help plan. See last week’s newsletter for a brief explanation of why this is another of The Big Occasions.

Festival of Gathering

Another way we are connected to The Episcopal Church is through each diocese’s annual gathering. The Festival of Gathering is in Florence on October 18-19. This is a chance to go to workshops on various aspects of church life, meet members of other churches, and worship together. Anybody from All Saints is welcome, so put it on your calendar if interested. There will be a formal registration available at some point. We may have funds available to assist with registration and travel, so talk to Mpho or Kyle.

Beloved Community Corner

Mpho is on pilgrimage in Portugal and Spain, making her way to the relics of St. James. Hold her in your prayers. She offers this prayer, which she will be walking with (and which she in turn received from Katherine, a friend of All Saints in Cambridge, Massachusetts):

V’ahavta
by Aurora Levins

Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning
and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire:
Another world is possible.
 
Thus spoke the prophet Roque Dalton:
All together they have more death than we,
but all together, we have more life than they.
There is more bloody death in their hands
than we could ever wield, unless
we lay down our souls to become them,
and then we will lose everything.  So instead,
 
imagine winning.  This is your sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge and the woman
wrapping herself in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.
 
Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child.
It is your child.
Defend it as if it were your lover.
It is your lover.
 
When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more.  
 
Imagine rape is unimaginable. Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumor
That the crimes of our age, the grotesque inhumanities of greed,
the sheer and astounding shamelessness of it, the vast fortunes
made by stealing lives, the horrible normalcy it came to have,
is unimaginable to our heirs, the generations of the free.
 
Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing.  Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.
 
Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our children’s children
may live

The title and first lines allude to Deuteronomy 6:4-9, repeated several times a day in the Jewish prayer cycle. Here is what is sounds like chanted.

All Saints People: Tell us the story of your name

This week we ask Hans, our church treasurer.

That's all for today!

Want to talk to a priest? We want to talk to you too!

Website: https://allsaintsamsterdam.church/
Mpho: mpho@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Kyle: kyle@allsaintsamsterdam.church
General: info@allsaintsamsterdam.church