the The Newsletter for Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
August 2014
Knowing the Living God
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Faith and Grief Luncheon
the
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A Time to Pray Luncheon
22 23 24 31
Men of Saint Michael Breakfast
Disciples Class Kick Off Party Fall Worship Schedule begins Backpack Blessing
Labor Day Weekend Donut Reception in the Garden Cloister
Volume 25, No. 11 Volume 26, No. 8
At Saint Michael and All Angels we declare a core aspiration: to know more of the living, Triune God and our part in God’s dream, purpose, and activity in the world. Thus, we continually seek God’s presence, guidance, and animation in worship, formation, and service. We seek learning. And yet, our awareness of God – receiving and giving God’s love – hardly depends merely upon information or intellect. Unfortunately, however, our culture is permeated with the need to “know” about everything – even though most people don’t really know much about much. In his 1987 book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. listed 5,000 essential concepts and names with which educated people should be familiar. Dr. Hirsch’s book, along with its contemporary, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, made the point that cultural literacy was the bedrock of our agreed-upon values. Many people feel the constant pressure to know enough, at all times, about all subjects, lest we be revealed as culturally illiterate. So that we can survive an elevator pitch, a business meeting, a visit to the office kitchenette, a cocktail party, or a Sunday church forum, we awash ourselves in petabytes of data without real knowledge, and develop a position on the subject so that we can engage in the chatter “about” it. In this “I have to know something about everything” culture, it would be refreshing to hear a few more people cont. on page 19
Fall Worship Schedule Resumes Sunday, August 24 7:30 a.m. Rite I Saint Michael Chapel 9:00 a.m. Rite II Church Joy Mass Parish Hall Discovery Mass Saint Michael Chapel 11:00 a.m. Rite I Church 11:11 a.m. The Banquet Theater 5:30 p.m. Evening Prayer and Eucharist Saint Michael Chapel Saturday and weekday services are unchanged
The Banquet – Non-Traditional Service – Joins Worship Lineup The Banquet, a robust, non-traditional service, becomes a regular addition to Saint Michael’s Sunday morning worship offering beginning August 24 at 11:11 in the Theater. The service, incorporating much of the former Celebration Mass style, responds to requests for an enhanced contemporary worship with high-quality music, life-application homilies, and come-asyou-are dress for all parishioners, but particularly designed for a younger generation.