We’ll take some time to look together at where we have been, where we are currently, and where we will go in the future, on January 16, 23, and 30, meeting after the 10 am service (around 11:00 AM) until 12 PM.

This Sunday, January 23: The Rev. Gary England, Vice-Chancellor and Associate for Congregational Ministries for the Diocese of California, joins the Listening Circle to discuss governance of Redeemer Church and Redeemer Preschool.

"Gary’s ministry is to assist leadership throughout the diocese in enhancing business acumen by assessing current needs, identifying skills and resources, and establishing mechanisms for collaboratively sharing and deploying these skills and resources among congregations and institutions. Areas may include HR, facilities management, financial and strategic planning, vestry development, and legal issues." -- diocal.org

We are grateful for the opportunity to meet with the Rev. Gary England, to tell the stories and histories of Redeemer Church and Preschool, and to ask our questions as we look to our future.

Thich Nhat Hahn (pronounced Tick N'yat Hahn), the Buddhist monk, teacher, and writer, died on January 22, 2022. Many know him as the father of mindfulness around the world and the founder of "engaged Buddhism", the application of Buddhist teachings for the cultivation of humanistic practices in education, healthcare, and politics.

The New York Times recently curated a collection of quotations from his teaching:

On mindfulness

“With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.”

“Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.”

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole earth revolves — slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.”

As with the life, teachings, and example of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we still have much to learn from Thich Nhat Hahn.

The Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Handley Andrus, recently published a book on the friendship between the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thich Nhat Hahn. ("Thich" is a title equivalent to "Reverend"; most of his followers called Nhat Hahn, "Thay" (pronounced "tie"), which means "teacher".)

In this time of thresholds of life and death, let us consider the portals of learning through the teachers and books among us: living word.

                                                                             The Rev. Stephanie Green

The never-before-told story of a friendship between two of the most well-known peace icons of the twentieth century. Although Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr. knew each other for only a few years before Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, their relationship had a profound impact on each other and on the world.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote an open letter to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 as part of his effort to raise awareness and bring peace in Vietnam. There was an unexpected outcome of Nhat Hanh’s letter to King: The two men met in 1966 and 1967 and became not only allies in the peace movement, but friends. This friendship between two prophetic figures from different religions and cultures, from countries at war with one another, reached a great depth in a short period of time. Dr. King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He wrote: “Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”

The two men bonded over a vision of the Beloved Community, a concept each knew of because of their membership within the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international peace organization, and that Martin Luther King Jr. had been popularizing through his work for some time. In 2014, forty-six years after King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, Nhat Hanh wrote: “I was in New York when I heard the news of his assassination; I was devastated. I could not eat; I could not sleep. I made a deep vow to continue building what he called ‘the beloved community,’ not only for myself but for him also. I have done what I promised to Martin Luther King Jr. And I think that I have always felt his support.”

In Brothers in the Beloved Community, Marc Andrus tells the little-known story of a friendship between two giants of our time.

                                                                  Published by Penguin Random House.

As a personal communication addressed to a particular community, Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians contains arguments intended to persuade the hearers, not doctrinal treatises formulated to define Christian belief. In order to accomplish his objective Paul uses forms of argumentation or rhetoric common in the dominant hellenistic culture of the day.
 
Paul wrote this letter to address the problem of divisions that had arisen within the recently founded Corinthian assembly. These conflicts were not just a matter of doctrinal disagreements, but were complicated by the socioeconomic context of Corinthians which was a major port city of trade and a Roman colony populated by retired Roman military pensioners as well as peasants driven off their land in Italy and freed slaves. As such it becomes an important lens through which to view the formation of a Christian assembly newly formed in competition to the public assembly of the polis.                        

Drawn from the Introduction to Richard Horsley's Commentary, 1998.