The Episcopal Church in Western Washington
Bishop Rickel’s Advent Message Happy New Year, everyone! It may seem a bit early to you, but in the church, Advent begins the New Year. That’s when we say, “Happy New Year.” Advent marks the end of the longest “season,” if you will, in our church year, Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time is just nearly half the entire calendar year, about six months long. By now you know, I really like the rhythms of our liturgical calendar. We have Ordinary Time,
According to Ecclesiastes 3:1 and the song by The Byrds, “To everything there is a season.” In much of the Church, we observe the seasons of the two great cycles of the Church Year: Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter. But there are “in between” times which are sometimes counted as “ordinary.” In the Roman Catholic Church, the Sundays after the Feast of the Epiphany and after the Feast of the Pentecost are considered “ordinary time.” Episcopalians are more likely
With the First Sunday in Advent, we begin one of two major cycles of the Church year: Advent-Christmas-Epiphany (the Incarnation Cycle). The other major cycle is Lent-Holy Week-Easter (the Paschal or Resurrection Cycle). In our liturgies, seasonal changes in scripture readings, liturgical texts, music and practice, along with colors and ornamentation, reveal each season’s meaning within the overall shape of the cycle of which it is a part. Advent means “arrival” and “coming.” Advent’s readings weave together the three
Today we remember the lives of two remarkable men in the history of the Episcopal Church – the Rev. Thomas Gallaudet and the Rev. Henry Winter Syle. Gallaudet established the first deaf Epsicopal congregation and Syle, one of Gallaudet’s students, was the first deaf Episcopal priest. Both men lived out the church’s calling to respond to human need with loving service and to transform the unjust structures of our society. From a young age, Gallaudet’s father had wanted to become
Today we celebrate the Feast of Florence Nightingale, the nurse and social reformer who helped revolutionize patient care and is widely recognized as the founder of modern nursing. Though her views on religion were unorthodox, she became a member of the Church of England later in life and devoted herself to serving God. At seventeen, she wrote in her diary that “God spoke to me and called me to his service,” though she had no clear picture of how that