News

Dear Ones, Sunday morning, two Seattle police officers shot and killed Charleena Lyles, a pregnant African American mother of four, after she called the police for help. There is still much we do not know about the incident, and may never know. However, the details that have emerged are disturbingly familiar in the wake of so many police shootings in African American communities. Ms. Lyles reportedly suffered from mental illness and is reported to have been holding a knife when

Seattle Pride has released details and instructions for our participation in the annual Pride Parade on Sunday, June 25! The group from the Diocese of Olympia and Integrity is group number 161 and will be staged underneath I5, between 6th & 7th Avenues at Cherry Street. Please read the attached Final Staging Instructions below. The official stage time is 12:45pm to 1:30pm, so anyone marching will want to join no later than 1:30pm. Contact Sue Mings for more information. Join others

As Bishop Rickel stepped into his office Wednesday morning, he was greeted by some new office-mates – a flock of plastic pink flamingos. It’s all part of fundraising efforts by youth in the Diocese of Olympia to help cover the costs of attending this year’s Episcopal Youth Event (EYE) at the University of Central Oklahoma. EYE is a four-day conference filled with worship, guest speakers, group discussions, workshops, and time for more than 1,300 Episcopal youth from across the country

Harvesting Abundance: Local Initiatives of Food and Faith by Brian Sellers-Petersen “Perhaps our gardens can teach us about living out our faith while caring for our spiritual as well as physical lives.” So muses Brian Sellers-Petersen in this collection of stories and accounts of some of the  farm, garden and food ministries in the Episcopal church, including several in our own diocese (see pages 113 and following). When he says, “this book is about planting seeds,” of course he means

The Diocese of Olympia’s Diocesan Council, at the suggestion of St. John/San Juan, Olympia, has established a Legal Defense Fund for the Diocese of Olympia. Although this fund was born out of the need to help families facing deportation and other legal immigration issues, the long-term use will be for any legal matter which is a burden on those undergoing it, and most especially those who have no means to pay. The stated purpose of the fund is as follows:

Bishop Rickel and other faith leaders across Washington state have signed an open letter opposing I-1552, a proposed ballot initiative that would repeal protections for our transgender neighbors, family, and friends. Read the full text of the letter below: May 24, 2017 Dear Fellow Faith Leaders: We are followers of many different faiths that share a basic common tenet: love our neighbors as ourselves — including those who may seem different from us. Like many people, there was a time

It’s no secret that Churches, once thought to be immune from incidents such as lawsuits and violence, are now experiencing the same events, liabilities, and dangers as the local supermarket or the all-night convenience store. Tragic stories such as the shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and the death of a homeless man who set himself on fire, killing himself and the priest, seriously injuring a parishioner, and severely damaging St. Paul’s by the Sea Episcopal Church in Maryland, as

The Diocese of Olympia is pleased to announce that, effective immediately, April Caballero will be serving as Executive Assistant to the Bishop and to the Canon to the Ordinary. Since joining the Office of the Bishop in mid-2016, April has been a vital part of D-House operations. April Caballero is an Administrative and Communications Specialist out of Austin, Texas. Shortly after moving to Seattle in 2008, April began attending Church of the Apostles (COTA) in Fremont, which was her introduction

Possibly one of the longest running religious TV programs of its kind by a mainline denomination, “TV Eucharist,” after more than 44 years of continuous broadcast on Seattle’s NBC affiliate station, will go off the air later this summer. Reaching an estimated 3,000 or more viewers each week, the 30-minute Sunday morning program produced by KING5 in cooperation with the Diocese of Olympia, (the Episcopal Church in Western Washington), and the Northwest Washington Synod Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, served