All Saints Gazette: Ordinary Time, count to 100
Greetings from All Saints!
This week:
Thursday (today), All Community Creation Care liturgy, Vrijubrg at 18:00
Next week: No Thursday programming, but worship on Sunday, the 16th
Now wasn’t that something? Bishop Mark certainly perceived what it is that makes All Saints amazing. And from what people have shared with us, it seems that his visitation helped make The Episcopal Church a bit less abstract, made the idea of A Bishop Coming a bit less scary, and also let us see what it is that God is doing here in our midst with particular clarity. That’s what we meant about the power of the bishop’s visitation. Also, the food was ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐! Thank you to everyone who came, who read, helped with kids, cooked, and was otherwise awesome. Thanks also to those who held us in your prayers. It mattered!
Tonight: Multi-Community Potluck and liturgy
This week is the monthly gathering of all the communities who worship at Vrijburg. Every one of these has been powerful so far, and the food has been great! Tonight’s ritual is about creation care, and as always, bring something to share if you can (but the main thing is to come)! Vribjurg, 18:00.
We’re on Instagram!
We have some talent at digital communication in our midst, so let’s see what we can do with this tool. If you’re on Instagram, follow us, like our posts, and share them people who may be receptive to this newfangled thing (which is old enough to have celebrated Queen’s Day on 30 April).
Ambivalent about AI?
There are some good reflections in Yale Divinity School’s recent magazine about the religious significance (or lack thereof) of recent and likely future developments in artificial intelligence. Andrew McGowen, Episcopal New Testament scholar (and dean of Berkely Divinity School—an Episcopal seminary attached to Yale) asks what anxieties about AI-generated sermons tell us about what we truly value in church, and my friend Linn Tonstad, a queer systematic theologian, assuages some anxieties but calls us to consider what we would be missing in a world without disappointment. Asking whether AI “could” make the music her favorite band used to make, she writes:
I don’t really want AI to make music in the style of Pulp. I want Pulp to make more music, in whatever style they would have developed had the band not fallen apart as a result of getting famous and getting older. But the band did fall apart, as people often do. That’s one of our hallmarks. Another is living in a world that escapes our control and disappoints us constantly. Yet without such disappointment, our lives would have no texture, no shape. Because it is unsatisfying, Pulp’s ending is more satisfying to me than its artificial continuation would be.
No Bible Study or Prayer Lab Next Week
Next week, Mpho and I are both going to be at a Convocation clergy event in Germany, so we’re going to take one week off from our Thursday programming. Say evening prayer on your own and/or pick something that looks fun and tell us about it! We will have worship on Sunday, the 16th.
Beloved Community Corner
This week’s Beloved Community Corner will be sent as an addendum.
All Saints People
I don’t have a name video for this week, but all of our neighbors are All Saints People in a wider sense. So here’s a surprisingly moving video of 100 people in Amsterdam teaching you to count in Dutch (they each say their age).
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
