[Magdalen] Please Pray - Shooting in Charleston, SC church

[Raewynne Whiteley]

I was privileged to be at a local AME church this evening, with eight
parishioners.  It was full to overflowing.  Each of the local clergy were
invited to offer a brief  reflection on a word: mine (the first one!) was
comfort. I sang the hymn that our (non-religious) organist has chose as our
gradual, which we also sang at communion, as I invited members of the
congregation to receive and then go up to the altar to sign cards for the
people of the two local AME congregations (Bethel, Setauket, and Trinity,
Smithtown) and Mother Emanuel. The hymn was "God of love" (379) - a more
appropriate hymn could not have been chosen.  Who says God isn't at work,
even through organists of no faith!

We delivered the cards to the local congregations today, along with flowers
from the altar. Poignantly, they were sunflowers, the flowers that were at
my nephew's funeral and which are a symbol of his charity - the altar guild
chose them for that reason. When i arrived at the service tonight, I was
greeted with a hug from the pastor of Trinity, Smithtown, who was
overwhelmed by our parish's love and concern.

The memorial service was at Bethel.  One of their key families, the Whites,
are second cousins once removed (I think) of DePayne Middleton-Doctor.
Family members will travel to SC this week.

In my sermon today, I talked explicitly about racism, for the third time in
7 months - more than in the previous 7 years.  None walked out - I guess
because we lost one member after my sermon in November, and the other
possible contenders apparently thought Fathers' Day means you don't come to
church...

Raewynne

On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 10:42 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Well, IMNSHO, 99% of what the NRA says is rubbish.
>
> On June 21, 2015, at 10:14 PM, ROGER STOKES <roger.stokes65 at btinternet.com>
> wrote:
>
> That response betrays a lack of understanding.  If you are in a Bible
> Study or Prayer Meeting then your mind is, or at least should be, on the
> matter at hand.  If someone starts shooting then it is reckoned to take 0.7
> seconds to react, after which you need to get your gun and take off the
> safety catch before you are in a position to return fire. There have been
> enough experiments (conducted under safe conditions and where the
> participants were aware thaqt there might e an incident) to show that what
> this NRA official said is rubbish.
> Roger
>
>
>
>      On Monday, 22 June 2015, 1:43, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>  This may already have been mentioned here, but an NRA board member
> actually said that the pastor of Emmanuel was at least partly to blame,
> because, as a state senator, he had voted against an open-carry gun law. If
> the law had been enacted, people in the church could have defended
> themselves..........
> How sick is that?
>
> > On Jun 21, 2015, at 1:08 PM, "Jim Guthrie" <jguthrie at pipeline.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 6:18 PM, Ginga Wilder <gingawilder at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Sadly, disgustingly in South Carolina, children much younger than 21 are
> >> given guns for Christmas and birthdays and just because it's deer
> season.
> >
> > It's clear that the NRA should be tagged a terrorist organization --
> it's "Second Amendment" crap has led to far more deaths in one year than
> all the Americans killed on 9/11 and in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
> combined
> >
> > Wayne LaPierre and his buddies are no different than Osama Bin Laden,
> IMNSHO.
> >
> > Jim Guthrie
>
>
>