Saturday, October 27, people from all walks of life will gather in 11 cities around the country in a national expression of the breadth and depth of antiwar sentiment in this nation. For many people, it will be their first step in transforming their antiwar feelings into antiwar action.

All Episcopalians, our friends and families are invited to join Bishop Marc Andrus at 10:00 a.m. at the steps of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, to march to the larger march forming at the San Francisco Civic Center at 11:00 a.m.

Congregations are encouraged to bring banners, signs and musical instruments. For more information and to download signs, visit the website of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq.

On May 29, 2007, the Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of California, spoke as 355 pairs of black combat boots lined both sides of the sidewalk in front of San Francisco's Federal Building at 450 Golden Gate Ave. The visual display Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War, has become a poignant reminder of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice in service to the United States of America.

When the first Eyes Wide Open exhibit was displayed in Chicago by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in January 2004, there were 504 pairs of boots representing all American service men and women who had died in the war to that date. A full representation of all American casualties now would take almost 3,500 pairs of boots. Simply representing all Californian lives lost provided ample evidence that the human cost is staggering.

Prior to joining the Diocese of California as your Bishop, as Bishop Suffragan of Alabama I led a pilgrimage for young people designed to share the stories and wisdom of veteran Civil Rights Movement organizers. The Pilgrimage for Peace continues still with ongoing opportunities for young people to engage their life of faith at a deeper level. An upcoming journey to South Africa is made with the same intentions:

• The experience is held in the context of sacred journey, pilgrimage, a form of sacrament where God's energies for peace, justice and reconciliation are renewed in the faithful seekers.
• The pilgrimage is global in vision, being held each year in another "tender spot" of the earth, a place where the struggle for peace, justice and reconciliation has been acute.
• The emphasis of the pilgrimage is on youth and young adults.
• The pilgrimage encourages veterans of the struggle for justice, reconciliation and peace to give the gifts of their life stories and understandings to the young pilgrims.
• The pilgrimage is a community journey, in worship, work, and learning.

Congregations are invited to participate through prayer and the sharing of information and resources. During Lent you may wish to focus your congregations attention to the challenges facing Africa and the efforts by the Episcopal Church to alleviate suffering, transform communities and help stop the spread of poverty and AIDS.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in words and deeds offered the world an example of prophetic witnessing and an invitation to transformation, this pilgrimage is inspired by these words, "Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made; this is the way it is structured.

John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." And he goes on toward the end to say, "Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution."

--Martin Luther King, Jr., Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution

The following is a sermon preached by the Rev. Rob Giesselmann at Christ Church, Sausalito, on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 2007.
 

Advent is such a charming season.  We light candles progressively, one, two, three, four, week after week, to mark time while we wait.  And we open the little doors of an Advent calendar, in anticipation of the birth of a baby. Even the lengthening nighttime is oddly charming.  Advent assumes the cloak of symbol, representing the complex of dark and light, yen and yang.  Darkness becomes poetry during this romantic season of serum blue or royal purple.