DECEMBER 5 & 9: BAY AREA PREMIERES OF "PINK SMOKE OVER THE VATICAN"

Blogs are intermittent: September 25, 2010: Two Eucharists: San Francisco & East Bay

These blogs have been intermittent and hardly a reliable source for our liturgies!
However, given this, much has transpired since our last blog of July 10. We have continued our liturgies, twice a month. The second and fourth Saturday mornings of each month @ 10:30am. We welcome you to join us!

We are also happy to announce the forming of a new community, in the East Bay. The Women of Magdala, already a vibrant group of concerned Catholic women, have invited Victoria to preside at a Eucharist once a month, to coincide with the same Saturday that Sophia in Trinity meets. This new East Bay group, composed of women and men, gathers on the 4th Saturday of each month at 4:00pm in different houses. To join in these Eucharists contact Gwen at animo3@pacbell.net Here is a photograph from our first liturgy together at the end of July in the backyard of John Kiefer.

July 10: Who is the Good Samaritan and Why Should I care?

Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "I've Been to the Moutaintop" speech, on the day before he was assasinated, described the road from Jerusalem to Jericho that is the place of the Good Samaritan parable--

I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 2100 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're over 800 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?

But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

APOLOGIES !!

We have been having wonderful worship experiences and I have been off the mark in not keeping up with our gatherings on this blog. My apologies to all!

We will be meeting for worship this Saturday, July 10, at 10:30am.

Hope to see you all there.

Blessings
Victoria

March 27: Oscar Romero Presente!!

March 27: We will Gather at Grace Cathedral

Dear Sophia in Trinity Community--Instead of meeting for Eucharist, we will gather as a community at 10:45am at the labyrinth core in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. At 11am we will celebrate Bishop Romero's life with many other inter-faith sisters and brothers. Come to the Celebration Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Following the reception there will be a 2:00pm Immigration Forum.

March 13: Sherri Maurin to Lead our Homily

Following our Eucharist, we will also hear from Sherri about her recent trip to Palestine/Israel and Egypt.

February 13 And February 27, 2010

The time since Roy Bourgeois was with us has flown by! February 13 we celebrated a Valentine Eucharist and celebrated all of the good heart work that Judy Liteky, Susan Powers and Michael Bush did in organizing Roy's visit to the Bay Area. Our great thanks as a community to each of you and all the volunteers for creating an inspiring event that featured Roy, Anna Lange-Soto [Episcopal priest] and myself/Victoria. A very special thanks to Judy for coordinating all of the Northern California speaking engagements for Roy. What magnificent work! Thank you!


Our Eucharist on February 27 opened our season of Lent together. We are following a theme: Listening, Deep. We looked at the landless movement in Brazil and discussed what a birthrite might be: a place to live, food, shelter, education. We understood that hope drives one's birthrite. And hope emerges from discontent. Perhaps many of us share a Sacred Discontent--for the Holy One has given us a spiritual birthrite: the land of ourselves to plant and to grow.
We asked ourselves what are our discontents and our hopes for ourselves, our church and our world.

January 23: Opening the Stained Glass Ceiling

On this joyous day, we celebrated Eucharist and among us
was Fr.Roy Bourgeois, Maryknoll priest. Fr. Roy Bourgeois is calling for the ordination
of women priests in the Roman Catholic Church. On this day we gave thanks for the
ordination of women priests as a matter of justice,
and pray that the Vatican sees the Light and recognizes the "sensus fidelum"
---that the People of God want women priests.
The reading from Corinthians says it well:
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

Jimmy Carter also says it well:
Today, when religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior. "The Elders" are right that religious groups should stand up for a simple ethical principle: any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals.

January 9, 2010: Epiphany and Baptism

At our Eucharist, we celebrated the Nativity, the Epiphany, and the Theophany all in one. We were reminded in our shared homily that the in breaking of G-O-D into time is sometimes brilliant LIGHT, but just as often, beholding life in a soft LIGHT, even sometimes slightly out of focus. And too that the rupture, the parting of the clouds over our brother Jesus in the Jordan was most astonishing in saying "This is my Beloved." That this in breaking heralds for all of us if we but claim it that we too are called "Beloved" by the Holy. Yes, astonishing!

James Joyce wrote that the epiphany was the sudden "revelation of the whatness of a thing," the moment when "the soul of the commonest object ... seems to us radiant."
Yes, we, as our brother Jesus has shown, are all radiant to the Holy in our common humanity.

And now, sisters and brothers, as radiant beloved people let us turn our Light and Love to the needs of others in our world as Howard Thurman reminds us:
The Work of Christmas?
When the song of angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the wise men and wise women are back home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild nations,
To bring peace to all,
To make music in the heart.
Howard Thurman (adapted)