Transmission moves to Tuesdays
August 16, 2010
Here’s hoping everyone had an amazing weekend, there have been a few wonderful changes of late that we would like to announce. First off we will be moving the meetings to Tuesday for the rest of the year in order to accomodate a very active member of the community, Isaac, starting a new job in Boston this week. Also in the spirit of trying new things we wondered, what if we try changing the day of the week we meet? So mark your calendars & spread the
word for the rest of the year Transmission will meet every 1st & 3rd Tuesday of the month 7-9 pm.
Transmission this Wednesday!
June 28, 2009
First of all, a big thanks to everyone who helped john, Paul, Sarah, and Dan move this month. That was a *lot* of weekends of carrying boxes, but I’m kind of excited that for each of us, Transmission was by the largest source of moving help – as Bowie says, helping your friends move is the modern equivalent of a barn raising, and the past month has reminded me what a tightly-knit group we are.
Second, July sees us returning to Wednesdays, where we’ll stay for the foreseeable future. Hopefully we’ll have fewer travel conflicts.
Third, this Wednesday, I’ll be hosting Transmission at my place – send an email if you need directions. Dan will be leading the ritual (I’m not sure yet what he has planned), and I’ll be cooking. See you then!
-isaac
Sitting Vigil in a Dying Church
January 6, 2009
So in Boston, the Catholic church has had to close a lot of its parishes, selling them off to raise money.¬† Four of those churches, however, have decided that they don’t want to go gently into the good night, and have been sitting vigil in the church buildings around the clock, prevening the diocese from locking the doors.¬† They’re putting on their own clergy-less worship service, and apparently the feeling of community has grown tremendously.
Personally, I’m a realist about church life – keeping a building open costs a lot of money, and building mainteance isn’t always the most Jesus-like way for a church to use its resources.¬† I don’t think that churches dying is a tragedy as long as new churches are planted.¬† Cells in our body die all the time and are replaced with new ones, and it’s a natural part of the life cycle.¬† That said, I think that these vigils are an amazing testament to the bottom-up nature of the Body of Christ.¬† Just like a mustard bush, the Church of God springs up like a weed in places that the gardner doesn’t always want it to, and it can be really, really hard to get rid of.
My prayers are with both those holding vigil and the diocesan leaders, and I’ll be watching how this develops with interest.
You can read more about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/us/06vigil.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em
Emad Youssef is my hero
August 23, 2008
Gothamist recently reported on an Egyptian food cart vendor who returned a $100 bill to a woman who dropped it.¬† When they asked him why he did it, he replied, “I’m Christian. In my religion, if I take somebody’s money, it’s haram.”
Although up until now I’ve only heard Jews and Muslims use the word haram (i.e. forbidden), I was super excited that Christianity is getting some positive press in NYC.¬† Woo Hoo!
Transmission this week! and lots of news!
May 18, 2008
It’s that time again! We welcome back Bowie who is freshly arrived from her recent wedding/vacation/pilgrimage to India. She’ll be celebrating her return to Transmission by leading us in our ritual, and she had this to say about it:
the ritual will be planned around St. Thomas, who brought Christianity to India in 52 AD. George and I visited the place where he landed and the Pontifical Shrine and hospital that have been built there. We will also talk about the two main stories about Thomas in the Gospel of John – 14:5-6 and 20:24-29 (the story that got him dubbed “Doubting Thomas”). I like the idea of “doubting, yet doing” and of “not knowing the way”…
Transmission will be Wednesday, 7pm, at Bowie’s place. If you get lost, feel free to call me. I’ll be cooking.
We’ll also have four pieces of business to discuss:
- Our beloved Katherine has moved to Chicago to be with her family, which means that we need someone else to step up and replace her as co-facilitator. I think it’s really important to have two people putting Transmission in the front of their brainspace, not only because it’s a lot of work but also because a community shouldn’t become centralized around one person.
- Starlight Ministries, another church-ish group that has a peculiar calling to sex worker ministry, wants to sponsor a program with us this summer called Exotic Dancer, MBA, which basically gives basic business and personal finance education to people in the sex industry. It’s very important work, and I think it’s exactly the sort of thing we should be involved with. You can read about it here: http://starlight-ministries.org/wp_blog_1/
- Mabel and Paul want to organize a trip to the Creation museum in Kentucky in August, which I think could be a great time. Note that this is *not* an endorsement of creationism…
- We’re meeting this Tuesday, 2pm with Intercession to discuss the possibility of inhabiting their currently vacant rectory, which would be a big move for Transmission. Anyway who wants to come and meet them, see the space, and be a part of our initial conversation should totally come, just let me know.
Congrats to Bishop Bob Rimbo
May 18, 2008
The New York Synod of the Lutheran Church elected a new Bishop this weekend, and I was lucky enough to get to be part of the voting process.  There were a bunch of great candidates, and in the end the winner only won by four votes: 236 to 232.  I can only imagine that it must be tremendously humbling way to begin a term as Bishop.
I have high hopes for this guy.¬† He mentioned the emerging church in some of his introductory remarks and seems hip to a lot of emerging concepts.¬† He also seems open to new models of ministry and expressions of church, so I’m hoping we might be able to count on some support from the Lutherans as we continue to evolve as a community.
Like many mainline denominations, the Lutherans are facing a severe drop in attendance and many of the churches in NYC are failing.¬† Many of the candidates for bishop talked about closing churches and consolidating congregations, which means that the Synod might have some extra real estate on its hands, and there are LOTS of ways I could imagine Transmission putting those to use…
Bill Moyers and Jeremiah Wright
April 26, 2008
These are worth watching. Catch the whole show on PBS if you can!
Read the rest of this entry »
Featured on Village Voice Blog
April 18, 2008
Bowie Snodgrass, beloved community member, had a great interview for Naked City, the Village Voice’s blog on sexuality, as part of the series Sexiness, Next to Godliness: Religion and the Sex Industry. Go check it out: http://www.nakedcity.com/2008/04/god_loves_sex_workers.php
CCT News Release
January 15, 2008
Here is a news release about the Christian Churches Together meeting Bowie attended last week.
Please especially note these “Scripture Soundbites” on poverty, compiled by Ron Sider –
In remembrance of the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Dr. Ron Sider of Evangelicals For Social Action, a CCT participant, provided “God, the Poor and Us: Forty Biblical Reminders,” 40 biblical texts that highlight God’s special concern for poor people. The document is available here.
Meeting with Christian Churches Together
January 8, 2008
One of the hats I wear as an “ecumenical Episcopalian” (my third “e” identifier would probably be “emerging”) is as a member of the standing committee for Christian Churches Together, the broadest ecumenical group in our nation’s history.
Today I arrived in Baltimore for the CCT Annual Meeting, which includes a day in DC addressing domestic poverty (see the CCT Statement of Poverty that was passed by consensus last year) and discernment about how we can evangelize together. Yup, you heard that right!
This meeting also has personal meaning for me, because it was at last year’s gathering in Pasadena that I met the Rev. Dr. Peter Heltzel, who lives ten blocks from me in West Harlem, and at whose party in April I met my (now) husband, George! Goes to show you never can tell.
Come to think of it, I also met Samir Selmanovic at last year’s meeting, who has since moved to NYC, is in the process of starting Faith House, an interfaith community in Manhattan.
I am also excited that two other women from exciting NYC organizations are here this year: Lisa Sharon Harper from New York Faith & Justice and Onleilove Alston from the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary.
Please read a little about this group on their website (www.christianchurchestogether.org) and keep us in your prayers this week.
Thanks and blessings, Bowie