5920 N. Owasso Ave. and 6005 N. Johnstown Ave., Turley
in North Tulsa OK 74126
www.turleyok.blogspot.com,
www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com, www.missionalmonastics.blogspot.com
Hi all,
Here is a link to a TV news clip that ran Wednesday on
us and our food justice partnerships and our mobile food van giveaway days to
the hungry here. http://www.newson6.com/story/18899743/food-banks-and-farmers-markets-aim-to-provide-fresh-food-to-those-in-need. It became part of a broader Food For Kids program by Channel 6. We keep
adding people to our pantry program as more and more people find out about us,
and our shelves are getting emptier quicker during the month. It is easy for you
and others to help us; because of our buying arrangement we can make $20 turn
into 100 pounds of meat, for example, or the equivalency in other food; for $100
that becomes 500 pounds of meat. As the money to the food bank has been slashed,
we are no longer getting the free food from the USDA through the bank that we
used to get and which used to be our staple; now it is what we can raise to buy,
and what we grow and giveaway through our community kitchengardenpark and
orchard (and we continue to harvest each week for our food pantry even in the
tremendous heat of this month). We encourage people to think about sending us
the equivalency of one meal out a week or month; you can do so at
www.turleyok.blogspot.com or
sending a check to A Third Place Community Foundation at the Owasso Ave. address
above. We are back to putting it all into mission and ending at zero, at best,
each month, so we appreciate all the support and the
sharing.
Our next Food Van Day is going to be Thursday, Aug. 2
here at Cherokee School, 6001 N. Peoria Ave. across from our community center,
with volunteers needed from 10 am to noon; because of the heat we provide water
and refreshments but the more volunteers we have we can rotate people in and out
of the sun as we load up 60 pounds of food for each household. People in the
74126 74130 74073 zipcodes who need vouchers for the event to receive food need
to come to our Pantry open Tuesdays and Fridays mornings from 9:30 am to noon
and sign up for them while they last.
Also look for an upcoming Tulsa World article on us
that should run soon. I will facebook it and put it on our blogs as soon as it
is published.
This week because of the heat emergency in our area we
have opened up especially as a cooling station during hours beyond our pantry
and clothing room days and hours; it has been good to meet and serve new
neighbors moving into the area this summer and be a present when people need a
place to come and be cool, and when it can help them save on their electric
bills at home so they can save their energy for when it is needed, and their
money for their health. Of course, re: above paragraph, mission costs as we turn
our building into what it was meant for, a service to others. If you can do a
plate offering at your church, or have a small group adopt us as we adopt others
in need around us, much appreciated.
This Saturday at 9:30 am, one of our neighborhood
partners, Sarah's Residential Living Center, a revolutionary new project in
providing intimate and supportive housing for seniors in need of small family
setting, is having a clean up day. They are located near McLain High School here
at 1370 E. 53rd St. N. I can't think of a better community service project. It
is our pleasure to connect people there and elsewhere in our two mile service
area (our parish). Prayers also for Elaine McDondle of Sarah's on the mourning
for the death of her sister.
This Sunday, come help us welcome the Green Team from
All Souls Unitarian Church as they work with us indoors and some outdoors from
2-5 pm, on projects for the gardenpark and orchard and for the community center.
We will meet at the Center 5920 N. Owasso Ave. and go from there with those who
can do quick jobs at the park itself.
Earlier on Sunday, at 9:30 am we will have centering
prayer and morning prayer and study on Mark 5: 21-43 from the lectionary, as we
look at God, Freedom, and Healing Community, in light of both the July 4th
holiday and the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Health Care
Act. http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+5:21-43&vnum=yes&version=nrsv Followed by communion, always free and open and inclusive for any who
choose to participate in the radical meal of Jesus, and followed by common meal.
During the rest of the Sunday mornings in July we will be exploring the practice
of "Praying the Hours in ordinary life" based on the book by Lauralee Farrer and
Clayton Schmit (two connected with Fuller Theological Seminary by the way; shows
how the evangelical, contemplative, catholic, and liberal traditions can find
common ground in ancient practice; for more see the commentary below). Our
worship and communion will use various sources of chants, silence, and singing.
If you would like to participate in planning these, let me know. There is
something ecologically apt about this worship focus during summertime here when
Nature seems to be saying slow down, slow way down, pay attention. In this vein
our missional monastic movie of the month will be Sunday, July 15 at 1 pm.
Either Into Great Silence or another similar since some of us have seen Into
Great Silence (perhaps Therese, since we saw one on Hildegaard of Bingen this
month, or The Island, about a Russian Orthodox monk in simple service seeking
forgiveness and healing others, or maybe Merton: A Film Biography; drop me a
line if you have recommendations).
Join us late on Wednesday July 4th at dusk at The
Welcome Table KitchenGardenPark and Orchard as we watch the fireworks from our
vantage point on a hill overlooking North Tulsa and downtown toward the river.
Thursday, July 5 at 3:30 pm, our Grow Turley, future
of Turley leadership and planning meeting, here at the Center as we set dates
and invitations for the disaster response network leaders in our area, even as
we are coming up on the one year anniversary of the wildfires that prompted us
to put this on our agenda as a main focus.
Looking ahead, Saturday July 14 second Saturday of the
month community pancake breakfast at the Odd Fellows Lodge from 8 to 10 am, and
our Third Saturday community dinner from 4-7 pm at the Odd Fellows Lodge; both
events help raise funds for community projects. In August we will be raising
funds at the dinner for our particular projects.
And join me and a few hundred others at the Southwest
UU Summer Institute near Tulsa at Western Hills Lodge from July 22-27; come for
as much of it as you can; we will have wonderful theme morning talks on the
spiritual life by the Rev. Thomas Schade of First Unitarian Church Worcester,
and the sunset talks will be by the Rev. Tony Lorenzen of the Fort Worth area on
Spiritual Direction and Missional Living; Bonnie Ashing will be doing a workshop
on environmental gardening and the spirit, and there will be many other
wonderful workshops and worship services during the day, social events and more
at night; one not to miss. Go see more at www.swuuc.org. Oh yes, and Tulsa
artist and potter Linda Coward who was recently featured on the cover of the
Urban Tulsa Weekly will be the Artist in Residence during the week. I am honored
to be the adult program director this year. It will be my 31st or 32nd time at
the camp and has been instrumental in my own spiritual journey and meeting
friends for life.
The Hours That Point Beyond The
Hours:
All of the above are in some ways part of the
"chronos" of our lives, the chronology, the to-do list, as important as it is,
it can, as Greek mythology reminds us, become a monster that eats us up and eats
up our family and those around us. One of the reasons why we follow the
liturgical church year, and why we pause to refresh at our weekly or more often
gatherings of the spiritual community is to open ourselves up not to chronus,
but to the sacred time, the kairos, the God time that can even remind us of how
sacred we can experience the chronos moments. Beyond the celebration of the
counter-cultural calendar and different time zone of the Spirit that fills us up
in ways that the consumer culture's calendar can not despite its promises, each
day the "Praying of the Hours" is a way to bring sanity into our lives, silence
into our lives, community into our lives even in the midst of the chronological
events and movements.
As important as all of the above are to building
relationships and renewing community here in the abandoned place of Empire, so
too are the ways that the days and the hours can re-orient us beyond our
ever-present needs and wants and roots us in the Life that upholds life. This
summer we will be moving gradually into more presence of The Hours both in our
face to face, in our personal times away from one another and others, and even
in the online world; at our www.missionalmonastics.blogspot.com site look for liturgies and prayers that will be posted for each of the
times we mark off for going inward and outward and upward and around us all at
the same time: Vespers for the 6 pm hour, Compline for the 9 pm hour, Vigils for
the midnight hour, Lauds for the 3 am hour (and I know many of you find yourself
awake during those times, or your lives of work require you to be too), Prime at
6 am, Terce at 9 am, Sext at noontime, and None at 3 pm, that hour the story
tells us that Jesus died, both ending and beginning rolled into one
god-awful-awe-full time. By adding these to our website that can be accessed
anytime during the day, you can be with us wherever you are, or if you are here
with us you can join with us for these brief but soul satisfying times. We will
create a mirror for the website on Facebook for those who find it easier to go
there as well. Pausing during the day or perhaps during the night as
circumstances allow or you find yourself, in times of comfort or stress, and
connecting through us to many others both here and around the world who
participate in doing the same thing is a way that we can create, with God and
with others, that alternative society of real freedom, love, union, community,
and mission for which we have been given these precious hours in the first
place.
As we look closely at the pieces of the day, we are
able to take in the pieces of our broken places here all around us, and as we
found peace in the pieces so we will better able to share this peace with others
sorely in need. As Rainer Marie Rilke writes in The Book of Hours, "...news from
God comes rushing through dark alleys into your
heart."
