Here is our weekly look at just some of the good stuff going on in The Episcopal Church:
Usually, church bells last less than a minute, but the morning of Oct. 25, the bells lasted much longer than usual when St. Paul’s Memorial Episcopal Church rang its bell 350 times to sound an alarm for the climate change crisis.
The number 350 holds significance because leading climate scientists claim that 350 is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide measured in parts per million.
“Right now, the levels of carbon dioxide are almost 390 ppm so it’s going to require a lot of work to get us back down to 350 ppm,” event organizer Gwynn Crichton said, who also works for the Nature Conservancy in Virginia.
GED students studied in the basement of First Lutheran Church in Over-the-Rhine on Thursday morning.
Beginning Nov. 15, as many as 30 homeless men – overflow from the nearby Drop Inn Center – will sleep in the same space overnight on cots.
The $25,000 cost of running the shelter is being split by several participating groups: Christ Church Cathedral, Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio, Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Cincinnati, St. Xavier Catholic Church, Church of the Redeemer, Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, Cincinnati/Hamilton County Continuum of Care for the Homeless, Society of St. Vincent de Paul Cincinnati, Drop Inn Center and Nast-Trinity Methodist Church.
On Sunday, civic, religious, and educational leaders convened at WITF to watch and discuss Martin Doblmeier’s award-winning film, “The Power of Forgiveness” — an event sponsored by Messiah College’s Ernest Boyer Center, WITF and the Central Pennsylvania Diocese of the Episcopal Church — and to ask how that power could be utilized in Harrisburg.
It is hardly fair to ask the oppressed to forgive the oppressor.
After all, in every American city there is more than enough blame to go around. In the world of oppression and retaliation, innocence is as rare as forgiveness.
Still, one wonders — what might happen in this city if parties on all sides — those who have been victims of oppression and those who have been victims of retaliation — tried to build bridges of forgiveness and reconciliation?