FEATURE STORY 2-1-2008 The First Sunday of Lent was Bead Making Sunday at St. Martin's Robin Heller, our Deanery Youth Coordinator and Director of the Godly Play program at St. Augustine's, was with us. She spoke to us about prayer as a living, vital, on-going conversation with God. To aid us and nurture that kind of a relationship she asked, "What's important in any relationship?" One of our youth replied, "Communication." How true that is.
As an aid to communication over mileniums of time, people from many different faith traditions have used beads or in our Christian tradition, they have used a string of beads called "the Rosary." Thus began our intergenerational activity, the making our own "Anglican Rosaries."
Around the table, all ages were bent upon the task, beginning with their entry piece, for some, the Cross, for one of our youth, a turtle. The entry piece was then followed by the invitation stone, and on toward the circle of beads, four cruciform stones, and with the days of the week, fours sets to make a month, each set separating the four cruciform beads. Now, if you've counted this out, the total number of stones or beads to make a Rosary is 33 (not counting the tiny spacer beads). Symbolically, this represents the earthly life of Jesus. The Rosary is a rich, visual and tactile symbolic text. As starters, the four cruciform beads form a cross,and with the seven days of the week separating them, they form a circle. For more on this as well as the use of the Rosary and its approach to contemplative prayer, see http://www.saintgabriels.org/rosary.html
One can use the Rosary using traditional prayers, or it can be used most informally. As one holds the invitation bead, one could recite the Lord's Prayer, or less formally, one could simply say, "Hi Lord, I'm here. I'm back. It's been a while."
By the end of the session all of us had completed making our own Anglican Rosary. Lent is indeed underway.
Thank you Robin for an excellent program. We look forward to your return in the Easter Season, and a program on "Easter Rolls."
Emma was our photographer for the event. Robin remembered that she has an interest in journalism so she let her use her camera for creating a photojournal of the morning. Here are six of the pictures that Emma took.
Note: This story as well as the pictures of the event taken by Emma are at St. Martin's web site, http://www.stmartins-omaha.com/news/default.aspx
Thanks for the opportunity to share this story. Fr. Ron Whitmer+
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Millennium Development Goals
The MDGs represent a global partnership that has grown from the
commitments and targets established at the world summits of the 1990s. Responding to the world's
main development challenges and to the calls of civil society, the MDGs promote poverty reduction,
education, maternal health, gender equality, and aim at combating child mortality,
AIDS and other diseases.
