Suicide Prevention Resources and More

In the wake of the bullying incidents and resulting suicides of GLBTQ teens and young adults that have drawn national attention in recent weeks, we are naturally receiving a number of inquiries seeking resources for holding compassionate conversations about a variety of topics including:

• gender identity and sexual orientation
• bullying and cyber-bullying
• depression and isolation
• suicide prevention

Please note the previous post on this blog about the "It Gets Better" project on You Tube. Please also follow this link to Sharon Ely Pearson's Blog post on the topic. Sharon is the Christian Formation Specialist at Church Publishing. She makes it her business to learn of and share resources. Thank you, Sharon!

Please post the resources you have found/created/used on these topics by using the comment feature on this blog, or by posting to the FaceBook wall at www.facebook.com/episcoyouth . Quick links could be shared at the EpiscoYouth Twitter feed as well.

The advantage we have as a denomination is the blessing of abundance in resources, as long as we share them! Please weigh in. This is Kingdom work as we live more fully into our Baptismal promises individually and as a Christian Church organized as a denomination. These are dignity and justice issues.

Please reach out to the teens in need in your community. Please respond to the cries for help with compassion and appropriate resources, even if that resource is a suicide prevention hot line number. Youth ministry can certainly be about life and death. Please don't hesitate to embrace the opportunity to make a difference in the life of a child of God!

Grant, O God, that your Holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart, and especially the hearts of those who choose to bully and harass and abuse, that barriers which divide us crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

- Prayer For Social Justice, The Book of Common Prayer, p.823

It Gets Better

Following is one of many You Tube videos that is being posted to the "It Gets Better" project to support GLBTQ persons and allies in prevention of harassment and suicide amongst young adults and teens.

My prayer in all of this is to hold fast to my Baptismal vows and encourage others to do the same.  With God's help I seek to serve Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself, and I strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.

Thank you, Bishop Gene, for modeling these vows for us, once again opening yourself up to the risk of insult and harassment in order to offer comfort, assurance, and hope to a broken world.

(Double click the video window below for full screen options)

Episcopalians on the Move

I suspect that this three week stretch of the summer is when there are more youthful Episcopalians on the move in mission, pilgrimage, camping, and VBS programs than any other stretch of time in the calendar year. Please hold all travelers, pilgrims, and missioners in your prayers.  When you encounter pilgrims and mission workers on your summer journey, whether they be "ours" or others, please greet them warmly, inquire about their journey, thank them, and send them with a prayer. Yes, even when their bus pulled into the McDonald's before you did!

One report of young Episcopalians on the move made it into the media today. Check out what this group from North Carolina is doing in their own backyard as they participate on the Freedom Ride by clicking this link. Way to go Freedom Riders! We can't wait to hear about the rest of your journey.

Please send news and links of the amazing things your youth are doing this summer. I would love to share this news as far and wide as I can. Bless you and your amazing ministry.

Prayer for Travellers
Merciful God, Giver of life and health,
guide, we pray, with your wisdom
all who are striving to protect travellers
   from injury or harm;
grant to those who travel consideration for others,
and to those who walk and play
a thoughtful caution and care;
so that without fear or misfortune
we may all come safely to our journey's end,
by your mercy, who care for each one of us;
through Jesus Christ, our Saviour. Amen.
 - Celebrating Common Prayer


Faithfully,
Bronwyn

++Katharine on Haiti

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori

at Haiti Prayer Service: Our Hearts Are Broken

[January 17, 2010] “Our hearts are broken,” The Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in a homily at a prayer service for Haiti on January 17.

The Presiding Bishop joined Bishop of Washington John Bryson Chane, Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III, The Honorable Susan E. Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, His Excellency Raymond Alcide Joseph, Ambassador of Haiti, and others at “Strength through Unity -- L'Union fait la Force: A Service of Prayer for Haiti” at Washington National Cathedral.

The following is Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori’s homily.

Prayer Service for Haiti – Strength through Unity

Washington National Cathedral

January 17, 2010

Our hearts are broken, as we sit transfixed before images of devastation and ruin, the bodies of children and elders piled in the streets, buildings crushed to dust, pleading arms and voices raised to heaven. We respond in lament and grief and sorrow, we push back against the senseless mystery of life’s pain. We yield to those ancient questions: Why? What sort of a God permits destruction like this? What can I do, how can I help? Those questions can’t ever be fully answered fully, yet they are most important in times like these. The reality is that life is not safe or predictable, but what we do with our lives gives them meaning. God does not cause suffering or punish people with it, but God is present and known more intimately in the midst of suffering. Above all, we become more human through our broken hearts.

That ability to suffer with, to feel compassion, is one of the gifts of being fully human. We may only be able to be respond through being with, by standing alongside, even at a distance. We can pray with the grieving, and we can reach out.

Compassion is pouring out across this nation and across the globe, as the world feels the suffering in Haiti. Suddenly strangers have become hungry brothers and thirsty and sisters, people in pain, without a place to lay their heads, mourning the death of loved ones.

Compassion is a gift that changes the world. We have discovered and remembered our sisters and brothers in a land many of us will never see – our common humanity is staring us in the face, and we have chosen to meet the gaze of Haiti. We are changed forever, if we will only remember the terror of that gaze.

Remember and let yourself be shaken. Feel something of the terror in Haiti. Terror, the word, comes from shaking; this terror started in the shaking of the earth. It has a parallel in the fear that periodically consumes this nation. May this terror shake us out of complacency and willful ignorance. Remember the people of Haiti. Reach out to those who have lost loved ones, to those who still wait for news of the missing, to Haitian-Americans in the neighborhoods around us.

The answer to terror is solidarity. The shaking stops when we stand together, when we remember that sisters and brothers, linked across the world, are stronger than fear.

Haiti is filled with resilient and persevering people, but much of the nation’s resources and systems are lost and broken. Many nations are already moving to stand alongside. We can give thanks for the rapid and deep response from these United States. There are immense seeds of hope in the response to this disaster, seeds that must continue to be watered and nurtured for the future. We’ve seen some of the hopeful seeds in Haitians gathering in broken streets to sing and pray, even children playing with empty boxes in which food arrived. Hope abounds, but it must be answered.

Our remembering has to be long-term, it must endure, if it is going to beat back the terror of this disaster. The longer and harder task is to remember the ancient hope of humanity, that vision Isaiah proclaims as repairing the ruined cities and building up ancient ruins and devastations. The long arm of remembering will give the strength to see that the hungry and thirsty and ill and homeless are cared for. Rebuilding the infrastructure of Haiti will take years, just as it has in the aftermath of Katrina. We cannot forget.

The disaster of this earthquake is the most recent and the most devastating of a long series of terrors – hurricanes, political coups and instability, the centuries-long struggle of former slaves to make a home in a foreign land. There is some deep solidarity in praying for Haiti on the eve of our nation’s remembrance of Martin Luther King. His message was filled with the biblical vision of the prophets, that heaven on earth comes when the poor are cared for and all God’s children are treated with justice. That vision applies to the poorest here and equally to those a few hundred miles south of our borders, to all who live in abject poverty, hungry for the world’s justice.

The words of prophets also come with challenge. It’s easy to miss Isaiah’s caution – the prophet proclaims that eternal dream of a restored world, but also the day of God’s vengeance. Matthew’s version comes in the verses we didn’t read, that those who don’t feed and care for the poor will be consigned to what we usually call hell – it’s not the poor who end up there, but those who ignore them and their suffering. The ancient vision of a healed world demands that all people have decent and dignified life possibilities – clean water, adequate food, shelter, medical care, education for their children, stable government, the possibility of meaningful employment. Here in this nation we shelter that vision under the banner of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That vision will never be possible in any nation while some live in want and fear.

Terror is not limited to Haiti. The prophets remind us that the kind of terror that leaves us shaking in our boots comes from poverty ignored and justice denied. That shaking is calmed and healed in remembering, in compassionate solidarity with the suffering of the world.

We are seeing immense generosity in the compassionate response to this earthquake. Our challenge will be to remember that suffering through the years to come, when the desperation is no longer on our screens 24 hours a day. The shaking and the terror will stop as the ruined city is rebuilt and the devastation of generations is healed. May today’s compassion be transformed into a steely will to continue caring for the least, the lost, and the left out until not one is left. May Haiti’s poor be our poor until that day dawns. May the suffering in Haiti be felt here and around the world until the oil of gladness blesses every brow, and every tear is dried, and every cry of grief is turned to joy.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori

Presiding Bishop

The Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church welcomes all who worship Jesus Christ in 109 dioceses and three regional areas in 16 nations.  The Episcopal Church is a member province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Episcopal Church Haiti page (info and updates): http://www.episcopalchurch.org/haiti.php

Episcopal Relief & Development:  www.er-d.org  

Washington National Cathedral: http://www.nationalcathedral.org/

The Episcopal Church: www.episcopalchurch.org

IamEpiscopalian: http://www.iamepiscopalian.org/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/episcopalian

Twitter: http://twitter.com/iamepiscopalian

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/TECtube

Prayers for Haiti

Our hearts break this week for our sister and brothers in Haiti; for the dead and the injured, for the displaced and dispossessed, for the police and firefighters, for the care workers and rescuers, for their family members and friends scattered across the world. For these and all our concerns for Haiti, we pray to the Lord.
Lord, hear our prayer.

This is a Petition from Prayers of the People, written by The Rev. Bob Honeychurch, our Episcopal Church Vitality Officer, that was prayed by all of your Church Center staff at Eucharist during our In-House Training days this week in New York City at our denominational headquarter offices.

Please follow this link to the Episcopal Relief and Development site for the latest information and methods of supporting immediate assistance and long term re-development efforts in Haiti.