Saint Juniper Chapel of The Holy Feast

12/06/2020

Greetings for the second week of Advent, as well as the feast day of Saint Nicholas.

The second light of Advent is the candle of Peace. How peaceful are you feeling this time of year? Especially this year?

The real sainted Nicholas was a Greek man who became a bishop in 4th century Myra, Turkey. According to legend there was a family in his area who had three daughters they could not support. To prevent the girls being sold into slavery, Bishop Nicholas tossed bags of gold down the chimney of their house (alternate versions have him sneaking them through a window or door) to add to the girls’ dowries. A seemingly simple act that...seems to have become pretty darn complicated when we look around at what “gifts from St Nick” have become over the ~1600 years since. How much of your holiday-related anxiety (anti-peace) is centered around gift buying and giving? How much sense does it make for us to shoulder so much worry and financial stress when the beginnings of this tradition were meant to do the exact *opposite* of that?

Give yourself permission step out of that and find real peace this season, and not just when it’s over.

🕯 🕯

11/29/2020

Greeting, friends, on this first Sunday of Advent.

I'd like to share with you "A Note on Advent" from "Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals" by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro.

"A Note on Advent"
Advent, meaning "the coming," is a time when we wait expectantly. Christians began to celebrate it as a season during the fourth and fifth centuries. Like Mary, we celebrate the coming of the Christ child, what God has already done. And we wait in expectation of the full coming of God's reign on earth and for the return of Christ, what God will yet do. But this waiting is not a passive waiting. It is an active waiting. As any expectant mother knows, this waiting also involves preparation, exercise, nutrition, care, prayer, work; and birth involves pain, blood, tears, joy, release, community. It is called labor for a reason. Likewise, we are in a world pregnant with hope, and we live in the expectation of the coming of God's kingdom on earth. As we wait, we also work, cry, pray, ache; we are the midwives of another world.

Just as red, white, and blue have meaning in the world (as in "these colors don't run"), colors also have meaning in the church (though a different sort of meaning, needless to say).

Advent is often marked with purple, signifying royalty; in earlier times purple often marked the coming of a king or Caesar. (Often members of the royal family were the only people allowed to wear it.) Many Christians celebrate advent by lighting a purple candle each week for the four weeks leading up to Christmas, and then lighting a "Christ candle" (usually white or red) on Christmas Eve.

As you will note in the morning prayers, many Christians also remember St. Nicholas, who was a faithful man of God before he was a cultural icon. Today, the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas that many of us recognize as Advent is the biggest frenzy of retail spending. More than half of it, hundreds of billions of dollars a year, is spent as we celebrate the birth of the homeless Son of God in that stinky manger. (And he only got three measly presents. One of them was myrrh. What baby wants myrrh?) Hundreds of Christian congregations are now rethinking the Advent season as a time for compassion rather than consumption. (Check out www.adventconspiracy.org)

(A further note, from Amber)
The four candles of advent signify
1- Hope
2- Love
3- Joy
4- Peace

As we light the first candle of the advent wreath, let us think not only of what we hope for ourselves, but what we can do to bring the hopes of others to fruition. This has been such a difficult year for so many people, what can we do now to help alleviate suffering, and what can we do in the coming year to prevent more of the same? We wait for better and easier days, while actively working toward them. Lets take the time to notice when we think things like "Somebody ought to..." or "I wish someone would..." and if at all possible get those things rolling ourselves. Don't just hope, *be* the hope. I'm often reminded of a short passage in "Anne of Green Gables" when Marilla is questioning Anne about whether or not she has ever been to Sunday School and knows anything about God, and realizes "the girl knew and cared nothing of God's love since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human love." Our hope for a better world is entirely tangled up in how we show our love for our fellow humans, as well as for the animals and the rest of the world around us that we are a part of. Let us hope, and be the best human translators of God's love that we can be.

Have a blessed First Sunday
🕯

07/02/2020

06/18/2020

This meme is a quote taken from the following blog post:

https://www.inheritancemag.com/stories/why-i-stopped-talking-about-racial-reconciliation-and-started-talking-about-white-supremacy

06/02/2020

There will be a demonstration in front of the Holmes County courthouse tomorrow (Tuesday, June 2) starting at noon.

At Saint Juniper Chapel of The Holy Feast we firmly believe that Black Lives Matter and we adamantly oppose a “Roman Peace” in which there only exists comfort for a few because many are oppressed or abused and are too scared to speak up and demand better. Our brothers and sisters deserve better than that. Without true justice there can be no true peace.

-Amber

05/28/2020

“Owning space and controlling bodies has always been more important than personal morality in that imagination.”

They will know we are Christians by our...hunger for power?
They will know we are Christians by our...fear of differences?
They will know we are Christians by our...excuses?
They will know we are Christians by our...lust for violence?
They will know we are Christians by our...refusal to lift a single finger to protect those around us?
They will know we are Christians by our...?

Love.

It’s love.

And if you can’t even abide by the single greatest commandment, or if you don’t know by now that every human being on this earth is your brother...what do you think people know about you?

There comes a time when being nice is the worst kind of violence. This is especially true for the many Christians who erroneously conflate being nice with following Jesus. No more euphemisms. No more pretending. No more craving the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day “Kumbaya.” I believe it is tim...

03/17/2020

Greetings dear friends,
I hope this finds you well in body and in spirit, but I’m sure like most people right now you are aggravated and anxious, even if you aren’t ill yourself. These are troubling times, there’s no denying it.

I know it can be tempting to try for easy complacency but this pandemic is something that will require “constant vigilance!” if we want it to be over as soon as possible. This is not the time for dismissively saying “God is in control!” That may be true, but *you* are still responsible for washing your hands and covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and staying away from that aunt of yours who is fighting through her second round of chemo, no matter how much she would appreciate cookies and visit right now. Be a helper, be a protector.

Offer words of comfort and solace to your friends and family instead of peddling rumors and wild suppositions. Double check everything you read, from emails that appear to be from legitimate financial institutions through articles on social media. Unfortunately there are people out there who seek to capitalize on fear and will attempt to trick people into giving them money or sway their minds into falsehoods presented as fact. “Fake News” and con-artists don’t take sick days. Also, this illness is affecting other countries even more than we are currently being affected. Consider donating to international relief as well as local aid, and for goodness’ sake please realize that this pandemic is not a political stunt. The virus has the same mortality rate no matter what a person’s political beliefs are. I know it is tempting to find a scapegoat, push blame, downplay the seriousness to keep ourselves calm, but we can remain calm without being dismissive or peddling debunked myths about this party or the other engineering this international pandemic to sway election results. Real people have died and are dying right now. Many more will, and even more if we don’t take this seriously.

We can be smart without being selfish and without forgetting the most vulnerable in our population. Call the people you know who are in the “most at risk” category to see if they need someone to drop off some ready-made meals. Check with your neighbor when you’re making a run to the store anyway so you don’t both have to go out and about. If you are healthy and able-bodied, leave the paper plates and paper towels at the store for the folks who have a harder time getting around than you. If we’re going to be stuck inside for a few weeks, you’ll have plenty of time to wash the dishes and towels. Or better yet, let your school-aged kids who are home handle them. 😉 Check with your neighbors who work in the service/hospitality industry to make sure they’re getting on alright. Set up a FaceTime/video chat and wine night with your friends who are probably also stir-crazy and anxious.

Humans are meant to be social creatures, it’s one of the reasons we founded St. Juniper, but the only way we can stop this virus from spreading is to work together...to stay apart! We can’t predict the future, but we can each do our own little part and level best to make it a better one.

TL;DR- Stay calm, help others, be smart, and for goodness’ sake, wash your hands.

Please contact us if you need help or know someone who does, and we will do our best to help whatever needs arise around us.

02/02/2020

Alternative Orthodoxy Simply Living the Gospel Sunday, February 2, 2020 The Rule and the life of the Friars Minor is to simply live the Gospel. —St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) [1] One of the things I most appreciate about my Franciscan heritage is its alternative orthodoxy. The Franciscan tra...

01/06/2020

We cannot give into fear, but must embrace peace and reject violence.