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at 8:00 a.m. & 10:30 a.m. Saint Augustine's identifies itself as an "open church." By this we mean that all persons are welcome to come and be part of this community wherever they are in their spiritual journey. We seek to be a safe place for skeptics and doubters as well as for convicted believers. We are an inclusive church in which people from many backgrounds have found common ground. We are a diverse community which discovered in God a oneness greater in significance than our differences. We have come to know that our variety, in truth, refects the divine comprehensiveness of the God of all created things.
The Bible and Homosexuality: A Pastor's
Argument for Acceptance
On Saturday, August 19, 2006, I delivered the homily at a wedding in Leeds, Maine. The brides were radiant, both dressed in white, both in full possession of the particular beauty common to those in their early thirties, when the loveliness of lingering youth meets the gathering wisdom of nature adulthood. When I returned to California, with the permission of the brides, I wrote about the Maine wedding, first on my blog, and later as a commentary for KQED FM in San Francisco, the nation's largest NPR affiliate. The response to both bits of writing was the same: sincere appreciation from most of my readers and listeners and absolute outrage from others. MORE…
Can You Be A Christian Without Community?
In one of Hartshorn's Sunday morning classes, Richard Peace (St. A's member, UCC minister and teacher at Fuller Seminary), threw out a statement that took a few of us back. He said, "In order to be a Christian, you have to be in a church community." So I decided to talk with him, for Ebb & Flow, to find out exactly what he meant. MORE…
A Parish Fun Weekend
Our parish has traditionally scheduled three weekends away. One is the Women's Retreat about which a good deal is written in this issue of Ebb & Flow. The second is the Annual Men's Retreat. Admittedly, the men's weekend has been hit and miss recently. (Our 2009 retreat was cancelled due to a fire in Santa Barbara which destroyed the Mt. Calvary Retreat Center). Both of these weekends away are held in the Spring, sometime between Easter and Pentecost. The third weekend away is the Parish Fun Weekend in the Fall. MORE…
"Tending the Holy" at the Holy Spirit Retreat Center
On Friday, April 17, twenty-two women from St. A's and our group leader, Dare Cox, who travelled from Michigan to be with us, arrived at the Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Encino for the St. A's annual women's retreat. The retreat center is run by the Sisters of Social Services, a Catholic Benedictine order founded in 1926. The founder of the order, Sister Margaret Slachta, was beatified in 2006 for work she did in Hungry which was instrumental in saving the lives of more than 1000 Jews during World War II. The retreat center is open to all – interfaith in its mission to provide spiritual renewal through contemplation, prayer, and reflection. MORE… |
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