We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

2024 Sun July 28

Food Facts

The information presented here is excerpted from the above book. Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and author of several food related books

1. Food is an enormous business that generates well over $1 trillion in annual sales in the United States alone. Food must be produced, processed, distributed, and prepared before it is eaten, each of these steps conducted by companies with special interests in what the government and nutritionists say about food choice

The food industry is vast. It encompasses everyone who owns or works in agriculture (animal and plant), product manufacture, restaurants, institutional food service, retail stores, and factories that make farm machines and fertilizers, as well as people engaged in the transportation, storage, and insurance businesses that support such enterprises

2. Problem is not production but distribution

Read more

Prevail

“Whatever it is that we wrestle with, whatever is our struggle, God will strengthen us. God will bless us. God will allow us to prevail. And, having prevailed, we will be changed.” – Br. James Koester, SSJE

July, 1974-Celebrating 50 years of women’s ordination

The Philadelphia Eleven were the first eleven women to be ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church on July 29, 1974, two years before the General Convention affirmed and explicitly authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood.  A film was produced about their ascension to the priesthood for the 50th anniversary in 2024.

The 1974 ordination was seen as an act of civil disobedience and was highly controversial at the time.

The 11 women ordained in Philadelphia were the Revs. Merrill Bittner, Alla Renée Bozarth, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield Fleischer, Jeanette Piccard, Betty Bone Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig. From the Philadelphia Inquirer “While all were previously deacons, the women came from all over the country and from many different backgrounds, ages, walks of life, and political worldviews.”

Links

1. The Philadelphia Eleven: Courage and Change . Three minute Trailer

2. Article from “Religion Unplugged”

3. Film conversation. Filmmaker Margo Guernsey, and the Rev. Nancy Wittig (one of the eleven women ordained in Philadelphia) and others for the first public conversation about the film.

4. Watch the film online Jul 26, 12:00 PM EDT – Jul 30, 12:00 PM. $11

5. Timeline of women’s ordination

Several dioceses are promoting screenings of “The Philadelphia Eleven” documentary to coincide with the anniversary, and special worship services are planned.

In the Diocese of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral has committed to a yearlong celebration of women in the church, starting July 28 with its Holy Eucharist. Heyward, as one of the Philadelphia Eleven, will preach. A screening of the documentary will follow.

The 81st General Convention, at its meeting last month in Louisville, Kentucky, also passed several resolutions recognizing the Philadelphia Eleven and the 50th anniversary of their ordination. Resolution D055 invites commemorations over the next three years, marking an anniversary triennium.

Read more

Another Way to Feed the 5,000 – in a Chevy!

From Ft. Worth City Magazine

"Fort Worth has an unusual new entrant in the food truck scene: Arlington Heights United Methodist Church.

"The West Side church on Sunday officially launched Five & Two – a take on Jesus’ feeding of the multitude with five loaves and two fishes – in a refurbished 1996 Chevy plumbing truck.

"’It’s a full commercial kitchen on wheels,’ Allen Lutes, associate pastor and director of the church’s new food truck ministry, said after a dedication ceremony with hot dogs and chips.

"The church sees the food truck as a way to take its ministry to people, rather than rely on them to come to the church. “How much more meaningful if we meet them where they are?” Lutes said during a Sunday sermon.

"Beginning June 18, and on the third Thursday of each month, Five & Two will begin serving dinner to the 30 homeless veterans who live at the Presbyterian Night Shelter’s Patriot House off of East Lancaster Avenue.

"In July, the truck will be at the Night Shelter’s women and children’s unit once a month. ‘This is going to be an opportunity to do more,’ to serve as mentors and work with children, Lutes said."

The Art of the “Feeding of the 5,000”

The Visual Commentary on Scripture featires 3 paintings that depict the scripture in three periods -early 1500 1671, and 1796. From VCS (Visual Commentary on Scripture). The link to the paintings and then the discussion.

The Feeding of the Five Thousand can be found in all four canonical Gospels (Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:32–44; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–15), and the Feeding of the Four Thousand in two (Mark 8:1–10; Matthew 15:29–39). The miracle emphasizes Christ’s caring concern and compassion, but also his hospitality and his generosity as a host.

In all three paintings in this exhibition, the central motif is Christ’s gesture of blessing and the baskets in which food will be distributed and leftovers collected. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo follows John’s version of the miracle, while Lambert Lombard’s interpretation is a more complex blending of narratives, and Francisco de Goya’s sources are less clear. Their approaches to the representation of the crowds are also different. Traditionally, Jesus’s followers are depicted either as a gathering of individuals whose diversity provides the painter with an opportunity to display his originality and skills, or as an undefined multitude.

Artists like Lombard suggest the breadth and universality of God’s message by showing its recipients as individuals of varying ages, genders, status, and ethnicities. In Murillo’s and Goya’s works, lack of definition turns these individuals into a mass, which evinces the magnitude of Christ’s following and the extent of his miraculous powers. Both Lombard and Murillo divide the crowd into small groups: Luke refers to ‘groups of about fifty each’ (9:14–15), while in the Gospel of Mark ‘they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties’ (6:40). The wide sweep of Murillo’s landscape is populated by a large, expectant congregation, which in Goya’s interpretation becomes a barely sketched crowd agitated by a threatening, simmering sense of unrest.

Lambert Lombard – “The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes”. First half of 16th century.

Bartolome Estaban Murillo – The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes”. 1671

Francisco de Goya – The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes. 1795–96

A Food related issue – handling waste

Feeding the 5,000 is a program, part of the European organization FeedBack that is tackling hunger in a specific way – using food that would normally be wasted. They work to glean crops from farms that would be wasted also but host public events to bring awareness to this issue. They explain it this way "At each event, we serve up a delicious communal feast for 5000 people made entirely out of food that would otherwise have been wasted, bringing together a coalition of organizations that offer the solutions to food waste, raising the issue up the political agenda and inspiring new local initiatives against food waste."

An example is an event that took place in Vancouver, Canada on May 27, 2015.

It was grassroots “lunch and learn” on a grand scale. Everything on the menu came from industry donors. Those attending got a tasty free 3 course lunch, an appreciation of food waste in the region, connections with those already taking action to reduce waste, as well as ideas for reducing food waste in their own lives. Here is a video.