Bits & Pieces
Making best use of A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery
Sisters Susan and Michelle on the OA retreat, Tybee Island, GA 2013
Shaping the Parish
Join us for the next cycle of Shaping the Parish, a two-year online training program making use of the best methods of parish development and applied theology, from the Episcopal Church’s own spiritual traditions. Current participants come from Canada, the US, Zambia, Haiti, and Dubai, The St Benedict Cycle begins October 10, 2025. Cost: $100 for the two years plus you pay for your own books ($100-200 +/-) Learn more - Shaping the Parish.
Top articles
Here are the top five articles from A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery
Four monastic practicesTo teach congregations about how to be in, but not of the world.
Daily office synergyThat awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.
Why so much on antisemitism?
We’ve written several article son antisemitism. Why that focus?
There are a few reasons.
In October 2023 the Director of the FBI reported that its “statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.” The trend continued, in September 2024, the FBI reported hate crime incidents across the country reached a record high of 11,862 in 2023. In 2023, reported single-bias anti-Jewish hate crime incidents rose to 1,832 incidents, a sharp increase of 63 percent from 2022, and the highest number ever recorded by the FBI since it began collecting data in 1991.” There were 2,699 reported incidents based on religion. More than half of these (1,832) were driven by anti-Jewish bias. Incidents involving anti-Muslim (236).
Sister Michelle and Brother Robert have had experiences throughout their lives of friends and neighbors facing the threat, e.g., for Michelle, a neighbor afraid to place a menorah in her window, for Robert, when a child, seeing the numbers tattooed on the arm of the proprietor of the neighborhood candy store.
The failure of the Episcopal Church to adequately address the issue deep in our own history and in last year’s General Convention (and earlier GCs). There’s a new book out on the efforts of Blessed Francis Perkins to save Jewish refugees from the Nazis and having to fight the antisemitism of other Episcopalians in the State Department.
The articles might be an useful sources of Lenten reflection.
Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done:
for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our
indifference to injustice and cruelty,
The menorah and the swastika: The light shines in the darkness - I’m very aware that my Jewish neighbors do not have a menorah in their window this year. Andrea told me a few months ago how afraid she feels.
MLK and Zionism: To bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey
Stay in the City: Until you have been clothed with power from on high
Faith, hope, and love abide: Now we see in a mirror, dimly
Antisemitism is like crabgrass. - an in depth look at the ancient hate
Antisemitism is a shape-shifting virus: There was the illusion that America was different, that it couldn’t happen here
Amsterdam: What do you see?
A book on friendship
We have begun work on a book about friendship. A bit of Scripture - “Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and Jesus”. Some ancient - Aelred and Augustine. More recent - FDR & Francis Perkins and C.S. Lewis & the Inklings. Also a few stories about friendships developed and nurtured in parishes.
Do you have such a parish friendship? Would you be willing to have us interview you on Zoom? No promise that we’ll interview everyone or be able to use all the stories but even those not retold in the book will serve to enrich that chapter. Send Brother Robert an email (at ragodct@gmail.com) and say a bit about that friendship.
More
See an earlier Bits & Pieces for more ways to make use of A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA
Please, good people, realize that Muslims in America are experiencing great deal of Islamaphobia and hate crimes that aren't being adequately addressed. The 3 young men in Vermont, one of whom is now paralyzed, never received a call from the President nor did the family of the Turkish American woman killed by a sniper in the West Bank .