Joyous Future

Right after services on December 26, our family went to Chicago for a few days. One of the places we visited was the Museum of Contemporary Art. While there we saw this particular piece. Never thought of our church signs as pieces of contemporary art. Hm.

Community Hero Award

The Transportation Team at the House of Fire Ministries was honored with a Community Hero Award by the Community Caring Conference at their annual banquet last evening, October 7, 2010 at the Milan Community Center. Here the team is presented their award.

Last year the English Language Learner's class at the Church of Peace needed a way to transport the students and their children to and from the classes. The House of Fire Ministries offered their van, and several members of the church volunteered to take turns driving the van to and from the classes. This was a huge help. The weather was often nasty, and the very new immigrants who take the class do not own cars or drive. This was a ministry of love, and meant a lot to the families being transported and to the Lights ON program.

It was wonderful to have House of Fire Ministries as a collaborator with the Church of Peace, Rock Island School District #41, the Regional Office of Education, Blackhawk College and the Rock Island Library in supporting family literacy in our community.

It was great to see them recognized and honored for this ministry.

Intersession Lunch

During the two week hiatus for the Rock Island Schools, called the 'intersession," we are serving lunch to children here at the Church of Peace. Today was a busy day. Since the kitchen prepared seventy five pieces of pizza and there were still two left, we believe we served lunch to 73 children today! 34 of those children were from the Academy down the street. So that means that 39 neighborhood children were able to attend on their own. (It is hard to get a picture of the crowd with my little camera.)
Here are the three food servers: Nora, Corinne and Tenisha.

On a sad note: We were also scheduled to serve food over at Century Woods apartments, formerly known as Arsenal Courts, during this intersession. We had served up to seventy children per day last summer. The families that live in those apartments have a lot of children. Last Friday, sort of at the last minute, the administration from Century Woods called the church to tell us that we could not serve food at their facility. It turns out that the kids are too messy and too pesky - said they kept coming early to the community room. To me this suggests that the children are bored and hungry. But the administration did not want to be bothered with the children. So no lunch there.

NAMI Walk

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill had their annual walk yesterday, October 2, at Credit Island Park in Davenport. Here is our little team from the Church of Peace.

While we got some donations, the main purpose of fielding a team is to help reduce stigma and begin to treat mental illness, more and more, like other illnesses. Certainly, several members of our church have had bouts with mental illness.

So looking in Sunday's QC Times I noted that our little team made it front and center in their coverage of the NAMI Walk.

Book Nook Report

For the past few years, Church of Peace has brought the Book Nook to the primary students at the Rock Island Academy. Kids, families, and teachers all love it. Since the Academy is now K-6th grade, the school has asked us to expand the program to accommodate the intermediate students.

We stock our Book Nook cabinet with new books, and sell them to the children of low-income families for just 50 cents each. This is not a free give-away, but an affordable price which preserves the dignity of the families while allowing the children to choose their own books and build their own home libraries. Research indicates that homes with many books produce a higher level of learning and a greater love of reading.

We try our best to get the books the children are interested in at the lowest rice. Still, the actual cost of a new book is anywhere from $3 to $5, and we need to seek funding every year for our program. In order to expand our program to the intermediate grades, we will also need to build another rolling bookcase and stock it with books. That is why we are asking for an increased amount of money from last year.

Check out the following pages to read what some of the teachers at the Academy had to say about our program.

Thank you for your past funding of Book Nook and for your support this year.

Sue Spurgetis
Church of Peace


This is such a wonderful program! The students get so excited and anticipate it every year. As I was walking past the Book Nook stand this year, I realized that the program greatly benefits our increasing number of ELL students. Many of their parents speak little to no English and rarely leave their own neighborhoods to see out books for their children. The Book Nook program provides an affordable and convenient way to have these students begin their at-home libraries, who would otherwise have no books at home. Having books at home increases the speed in which the students learn English and acclimate to an English-speaking classroom.
So thank you and all those who provide this service!
Sincerely,
Stephanie Sanders
RIA


The service the Church of Peace provides through the Book Nook is incredibly valuable. Most of my students cannot afford to purchase books at the store or through a Scholastic Book Club. My students love the Book Nook and do their best to scrounge up $0.50 to purchase a book. You know they want to use the service when that 0.50 comes as a mixture of dimes, nickels, and pennies. They're not kidding when they tell me, "Miss Brannen! I found all of these nickels in the car!"
Thank you for taking the time to find the funds to provide this wonderful service to our students. We all appreciate your efforts!
Kelli Brannen
2nd Grade
Rock Island Academy

I love that you guys do this for our kids. Our kids are so excited to be able to purchase books on the Fridays you are here. You provide for our kids a chance to buy a book! Many of our kids do not have books at home. Our families may need the $5 it cost to purchase a book to put food on the table and books are not a priority. Book Nook also allows teachers to purchase books for students. For the past 5 years, I purchased a book for each of my kids at the end of each quarter, so those that don't ever get to buy will have something. Their eyes light up and they are so excited when they get their books!
Bless you all for making this a priority for our kids!
Jessica Bollman


I teach a Special Education Class for grades Kindergarten, 1 and 2. I am always amazed, even after many years of teaching, by the fact hat most of my kindergarten students come to me with little to no knowledge of books. They do not know how to handle books, how to turn pages, or that words on the pages have a meaning that tells the story. I know that many of my students do not have books in their homes. Within a few days of school, they are introduced to the magic and wonder that books and words hold. By the end of their first quarter, my kindergartners seem to not be able to get enough of books, words, and pictures.

Your Book Nook program certainly allows many of my students who come from homes with very limited resources to not only enjoy, but have the exciting opportunity to purchase their very own book. The look in my students' eyes when they approach your Book Nook shelves is truly a testimony to the good that your program does.
Thank you for your Book Nook program.
Carol A. Kossaris
Special Education Teacher
Rock Island Academy

My intermediate students have been asking me each time they see Book Nook if this is something that they will get to have the opportunity to do as well. They would love to have the opportunity to purchase books, too--especially since we are now in the same building and our students are actually seeing the Book Nook take place. I feel that this would be highly beneficial to students at all grade levels at our school.
Thanks for you consideration.
Jamie Braet, RIA, 3/4

Book Nook is a fantastic program! The Rock Island Academy students are thrilled to have the opportunity to purchase these wonderful books at such a low, affordable cost. Thank you so much for this invaluable program--that nurtures the RIA children's excitement for literacy!
Susan Murphy

New Baby Dedication

One of the families of the Light Mission Pentecostal Church, the group that shares our building, dedicated a new baby last Saturday afternoon, September 11, 2010. These are Kirundi speaking immigrants, whose homeland was Burundi. (Kirundi is a Bantu language with about 4.5 million speakers.)

They had invited me to the event to help pray for the baby, Johnson Willey Vincent.

Well, the first thing was the feast. We enjoyed several foods in the African style. There were bread balls, cooked beef, fried chicken, rice, a lightly cooked cabbage that was served over rice with beans. It was all quite good, and I am sure
to learn more about these foods as time goes on.

There were also a series of "formal" presentations. I mean that not as stiff events, but rather a sequence that has a form taken from the culture.

At one point I asked, "where is the baby." Well, apparently that is the first question of the day. The root of the event is to "show the baby" to the community, and it had been kept out of sight. The baby was soon brought out and the festivities began.

Another element in the sequence is for the father to make a speech, followed by the grandfather. The fellow in the yellow shirt holding the baby is the grandfather. He thanked and blessed God for this child's birth, and prayed for the baby as well.

Then the grandmother - the woman in the bronze colored outfit, along with other mature ladies from the community invited the mother forward to help show and teach her how to care for the baby. She is instructed on how to carry the infant on her back.

As one fellow said to me, "You Americans push your babies in front of you. We keep them close to us on our back."

You can see in the pictures I snapped that there are a number of other photographers as well, recording this "teaching moment" for posterity and for those far away. There was a lot of laughter and great good humor in these presentations.

When the young mom returned to her seat at the head table everyone there sang a little song, so it must be very well known. The woman who was translating for me said that it meant something like "see how much love the mother has as she cares for her baby, this is the kind of love God has for us."
One of the very last moments was when I was asked to pray for the baby. I asked the translator, "do I hold the baby?" She said, "no, just reach out your hands and touch the baby as the parents hold him." That was fine.

What a great day. I was honored and happy to be part of the dedication and "showing off" the baby. Once again I am reminded what a privilege it is to be a pastor and have a representative ministry through the church.

Compressor

It is one of those good news/bad news situations.



The bad news is that the compressor on our commercial refrigerator in the church kitchen gave out.



The good news is that it waited till the very last day of the summer meals program to do so. That day was Friday, August 13. What can I say?



So here is the technician reparing the refrigerator. It is certainly a speciality and few companies do the work.

Lights ON Resumes

Today is the first day of the resumption of the ELL (English Language Learners) Class here at the Church of Peace. Whenever something is beginning one hopes for a good attendance. And above is teacher Rachel with a fair sized group in the fellowship hall of the church. The extra feature of this particular class is that there is childcare provided for children too young for Head Start and school. So children are in appropriate childcare while parents are receiving instruction.

Here are leaders and students talking about registration.

This program is part of Lights On for Learning, and is a collaboration with Church of Peace, Rock Island School District 41, the Regional Office of Education, the Rock Island Library and Blackhawk College. It is a way of meeting the needs of new immigrants who live in our neighborhood and seeks to strengthen the educational experience of children in school.

In the Heights

One of the wonderful events of our California vacation was to see the musical In the Heights at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood in the evening of July 25. One of the special features of this particular performance was that Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the show, sang the lead.

A lot of musicals qualify as chestnuts, but this one came to Broadway only in 2008 - and won a Tony that year as well. For lots of info: http://www.intheheightsthemusical.com/

What I especially appreciated was the consideration of the experience of many Latino folks in a community. Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans. And, as musicals so often do, the portrayal was of how life is still about boy-meets-girl, family loyalty, friendships, and what constitutes home. In a moment of our history where Latino immigrants are being vilified and portrayed as a great threat to the nation, it is good to have another perspective presented with such charm and energy.

The music is terrific, and we bought the Grammy award winning CD - and listed to it as we drove across the country, from California to the Midwest.

Summer Activity Program

Today is the conclusion of the Summer Activity Program at the Church of Peace and the Rock Island Parks and Recreation programs at various area schools. In a few minutes I will run up to the park to participate in a lunch of hot dogs and ice cream where all these sites come together in one place for a celebration.

We will continue to serve lunch for the next two weeks here at the church and at Century Woods. There has been remarkable growth in the number of lunches at Century Woods. We began the summer with about six children. It has grown to about 60 meals a day! We hope to do some enrichment activities at Century Woods and here at church for the next two weeks, and then school will resume.

It has been a very active summer so far.

Feeding 5000

By our estimate we reached 5000 meals on June 22. Our summer meals program for children began on June 7, and at the end of lunch on June 22 had served 5000 meals. Jesus did it in one sitting. It took us twelve serving days to reach the same point. And we have lots of help and lots of partners.

The part of the account of Jesus feeding 5000 that always strikes me is when Jesus says to the disciples, "You give them something to eat." (Matthew 14:16; Mark 6:37; Luke 9:13) It is only subsequent to this command that Jesus feeds the people.

When in the scripture Jesus speaks to the disciples I hear him speaking to us in the church. I believe that Jesus says to us, "you give them something to eat." And our summer lunch program for children is one of the ways that we at Church of Peace respond to this request from Jesus.

Freedom Fund Banquet

Nancy and I attended the Freedom Fund Banquet at the Ramada Inn in Moline last Saturday night. It was sponsored by our Rock Island Chapter of the NAACP.

An important part of the evening was honoring six community members and an organization for their service. I realized that over the years at least four of these persons have touched the life of our church as well.

Judge Thomas Kilbride was honored. Before he was a judge, when he practiced law in Rock Island, he aided the Community Caring Conference with legal representation for some 19 years and I recall him providing legal assistance to the church as well when we needed some direction. We were ready to pay for his help, but he gave the advice without billing us.

Rev. Melvin Grimes was honored. He has been a colleague over the years, and he along with his late father were partners with the Church of Peace in community efforts.

Linda Golden was honored. She is a teacher at Thurgood Marshall Learning Center, and was a partner with the YouthBuild Program that taught kids something about the building trades as they constructed houses. This was part of Rock Island Economic Growth, and the church work camps helped in some of these projects as well.

Vince Thomas was honored. Vince was instrumental in saving Arsenal Courts when the city wanted to tear it down to remove poor people. Reorganized as Century Woods this is where many of the members of our African Light Pentecostal Fellowship reside. It is a resource to our part of town.

Nancy and I saw many friends at the event. One of the benefits of twenty years at the same church is to have built relationships over time.

Jorge Morales - Conference Minister

The Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ elected Rev. Dr. Jorge Morales our Conference Minister on Saturday, June 19, during our annual conference meeting. The conference meeting took place at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Jorge has been a minister in our area for over thirty years now, and most recently has been serving as the Associate Conference Minister. In the photo above he is answering "interview" questions from those of us at conference; he was recommended to us by the search committee.

It is good to have someone in a leadership position that you already know and trust. I have found Jorge an open and helpful colleague in the 20 years I have been a pastor with standing in the Illinois Conference. I am very glad he was selected. The lower photo is the conference standing to applaud the announcement of Jorge's election.

Carla McGreevey; Hometown Hero

One of our church members, Carla McGreevey, was honored by Modern Woodmen of America, a local insurance company, as a "hometown hero." She had been nominated for this honor by Luke Cooley, an employee of Modern Woodmen.

The purpose of the Hometown Hero award is to honor a person who is of great service to the community. In this case the efforts lifted up were her leadership in the "Book Nook" program of the church to supply books to support literacy in our local elementary school. Another area of service mentioned was her help with the Summer Meals program at the church. There were a lot of ways that Carla serves her community that were not mentioned, too.

The honor has at least three components. First off, she was able to invite a group of friends to come to the ballpark for the local minor league baseball team, the Quad Cities Bandits, to have a meal with her. Second, she was able to designate a charity to receive a $100 gift - in her case she selected the Quad Cities Animal Welfare Shelter. Third, she and the group she had invited to dinner we able to watch that evening's ball game from a sky box that is leased by the Modern Woodmen company. And the Bandits won!

The top photo is Carla and Luke with the check. The second photo is of Carla having her hand shaken by the mascot, Bandit, with her friend, Emily giving a big smile. In the bottom photo is Carla and one table of her family and friends enjoying the "tailgate" dinner. Since it had been raining this took place in the clubhouse.

Summer Lunch Program

On Monday, June 7, the Summer meals program for children resumed at the Church of Peace. We serve both breakfast and lunch for any child under the age of 18 years. We have been providing this summer meals program for several years now.

The church prepares and serves the meals with a combination of volunteers and staff. And the meals served here at the church are only a small part of all the meals provided for children in the summer. We also, with delivery persons from the church, provide meals to several other sites in Rock Island where children are assembled.

Nora, the church secretary and manager of the food program, reported to me that in the first week of the program, between June 7 and June 11, we served 451 breakfasts and 1751 lunches. That is quite remarkable!




This meals program is sponsored by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and administered by the Illinois State Department of Education.

This means we need to do a lot of record keeping for the program! But this seems worthwhile when we see the smiles on the faces of children enjoying a good meal.

On this day when the photos were taken the main item on the menu was tacos.


The tacos were accompanied by fruit, cookies and milk.

Summer Program

Well, the Summer Program here at Church of Peace is up and running and it its second day now. These quick photos are of the activities for children that are taking place daily. The top photo is of the youngest group of students, and they focus on reading. I love the three little girls on the sofa with their books!

The second photo is of some instruction about nutrition that is taking place with an older group.

The third picture is of the oldest group, somewhat fewer in number on this rainy day. They are with an actor from a local group doing some theater exercizes.

The fellow at the bottom is the technician from the Hobart diswashing machinecompany. It turns out that we have a difficulty, which of course only became apparent when we were putting the machine to the test on the first day!


Another opening, another show.

More Graduation

Graduation

Well, here is Becca walking through graduation at Cornell College in Mt Vernon, Iowa. They feature "preference order" which means that the graduates get to sit with their best friends, so Becca is walking next to a friend, Margaret, and they are followed by other friends.

It was a warm but not unbearable day.

Here is our family pictured together. A wonderful event. More photos will follow, I'm sure.

Covenant

On the afternoon of April 22, I drove up the Mississippi River to the city of Clinton, Iowa, for a memorial service for one of my colleagues from the California/Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church. The service was for Charles Andrew Tanner-Dorn. Rev. Tanner-Dorn had died on April 16, and I had received news of it in an email from California. I figured that I might be the only clergy colleague from the Cal/Nevada Conference, and I was.

I remembered Charley a little from the late 1970s, when he joined the conference. I was at that time assigned to churches in the San Joaquin Valley of California and Charley was entering the conference after serving as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. I remember him as an affable person. But my reason for being there was not that he was a deep friend, but rather it was an effort to live out, or even embody, the covenant of collegiality and commitment we make to each other as clergy members of the conference.

We make some pretty deep promises to each other, and to God, and to our conference, and sometimes these become inconvenient to live out. This was my little effort to embody the connection.

Prayer Vigil in Kenosha

Yesterday, on April 29, a group of six members of Quad Cities Interfaith (QCI) drove (or rode) up to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to participate in some public events to have a voice in the national discussion on Comprehensive Immigration Reform. QCI is an affiliate of the Gamaliel Network and other affiliates were represented in Kenosha, and another meeting had been taking place there ahead of this immigration event.

At its core, Gamaliel equips and trains church folks to participate in civil society. This was a classic and simple series of events. The top photo is of the preparation for the day, and it is taking place in the local United Methodist Church. One of the pastors is explaining clearly and simply what will soon take place. The pattern for immigrant expulsion that is currently in use is to round them up, detain them first in county jails, then transfer them to detention centers (like the Broadview Detention Center in Chicago,) from which they are shipped by bus to the airport and flown out of the country. So our first stop is the local Kenosha County Jail, which is part of this system.

The pastors and other religious leaders lead the group to the nearby jail where we pray for justice and we pray for those caught up in this system. One of the religious leaders is the chaplain from the jail, who lets us know that all prisoners at Kenosha are treated humanely, but he along with us believes that this pattern of deportation bears closer scrutiny and reform. His participation is strategic; we are stakeholders.

After the prayer vigil at the county jail we walk to the nearby congressmember's office. This is Congressman Paul Ryan, and our presence certainly does not represent preaching to the choir. We arrive outside the office building, sing a devotional song, and one of the pastors makes a short presentation. The office has been informed in advance of our interest and intended visit, and one of the staff members listens to the presentation, receives written material and then makes a prepared speech. The speech is later made available as a press release.

After our visit at the congressmember's office we walk back to the church, have a wonderful lunch prepared by the women's group at the church, and then have a follow up meeting to evaluate the day and plan for future actions.

This was a pristine example of how such training as this works. We were consistently prepared and our efforts were disciplined and respectful to all involved. Different persons participated as leaders and speakers with the group at various moments. Everyone there got to experience "how it can be done" and went home better able to participate in the public discussion of important issues. At every moment we were reminded of our role and values as the faith community.

It was a good day, and on the way home in the van we found ourselves discussion what we should do next back in the Quad Cities. I will bet that similar discussions were taking place in cars, vans and buses around the Midwest.

Participation

I am grateful that the culture of the Church of Peace is one of consistent participation in the efforts of our conference and denomination. We do what we can to share in God's ministry in the world through various channels. One of those is through the church-wide offereings of the United Church of Christ.

Recently the church received some recognition for our efforts.

Reading in the lounge

One of the partners in the Family Literacy Program that takes place here at the Church of Peace is the Rock Island Public Library. On some occasions the group travels to the library together. At other times the librarian, Sue Foster, comes to the church and reads to the church and reads to the group. Not only is she providing enrichment for the children, but is modeling a good activity for parents and children to do together. Here they all are in the lounge.

The lower photo also shows what a wonderfully diverse group is here at the church daily. And the size of the program has grown substantially since last September.

Wonderful Day

One of the great privileges of a long pastorate at the Church of Peace is summed up in this photograph. I taught the confirmation class and confirmed the young father in the photo and also the godfather. And then I officiated at the couple's wedding a few years back. And now I am here for their daughter's baptism.

It was a beautiful service and wonderful day.

Merton Center

On the same day that I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani I also visited the Merton Center at Bellermine University in Louisville, Kentucky. While this meant short visits at both sites, you never know when you will be in the neighborhood again with such a purpose.

By its very nature a monastery is hardly a place for a focus on a particular personality. While there were many books by Merton in the gift shop, there was no other acknowledgement of him otherwise. The Merton Center could legitimately collect and examine Merton's legacy. An impressive collection is Merton's published work. Several editions, multiple translations to other languages helped me see not only how much he had written, but also how widely received he has been. The Center also has ongoing publications considering Merton's continuing influence, and sponsors convocations of interested persons at intervals.

There are also photos that Merton took along the way. Some at the Abbey. Some taken on his trip to Asia.

There are photos of Merton himself, and also some of his family. One especially dear photograph is of his mother.

There is an impressive collection of quilts that bear Merton's image as well.


The existence of the center, its activities and publications reminds me that there is a whole community out there, who along with me have found spiritual accompaniment in Merton's writings. If you would like to see more about this please go to http://www.merton.org/

Below is a snapshot of one of the rooms at the center.

Pilgrimage to Gethsemani

A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken for a religious or spiritual purpose, and I went on such a journey for a few days after Easter. There is a tradition for the pastor to "get away" after the rigors of Holy Week and Easter, and I drove down to Kentucky. The destination for the journey was the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist or Cistercian community that follows the Order of St. Benedict in a very traditional way. This particular community was established in 1848 in a hilly part of Kentucky, south of Louisville.

The reason I am aware of this religious community is that the monk and writer, Thomas Merton, resided there for 27 years. I became acquainted with Merton as a writer when I was in seminary in the early 1970s. First I discovered some of his journals that were published, then read the Seven Story Mountain, which is his autobiography, and moved on to some of his spiritual writing. I was saddened and surprised when one of my teachers told me that Merton had been killed in a tragic accident in 1968. His writing seemed so fresh and contemporary that I felt a kinship with him.

The Trappist monks pray seven times a day, and while I was at Gethsemani the prayer service of Sext rolled around at 2:15 pm. The core of this service is the singing of psalms, which we in the visiting congregation were able to do with the monks in the abbey church. That day it was psalms 125, 126 and 127. I count it a privilege to pray with these men.

Above is a photo of the monks in the abbey. It is from a postcard available in the gift shop. I did not think it appropriate to intrude by snapping a photo during the service. The church building is very tall, narrow and white. There was no processional with incense and all on this Wednesday after Easter. The service was quiet and part of a rhythm that is an alternative to our regular pace of life. Serene.