Dia de los Muertos @ All Saints Church

Whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on your journey this week, you can be part of our Dia de los Muertos celebration here at All Saints Church … by posting up a photo a memory of your loved one on our virtual Altar of Remembrance.

"Dia de los Muertos" is a festive and colorful celebration in which we honor our loved ones as they were when they were alive. Particpants are encouraged to bring photographs, garments, flowers, favorite foods, stories, or other reminders of loved ones to decorate the Altar of Remembrance.

The service will be held in the All Saints Chapel beginning at 7:30pm on Wednesday, November 2nd. Zelda Kennedy will preside.

This year, a "virtual" Altar of Remembrance has been created to invite those who cannot be present in the All Saints Chapel on Wednesday evening to honor their loved ones by posting a photo and a remembrance here. We will then gather ALL these names together, along with our memories, in thanksgiving and prayer ... and preserve them here on this blog:

All Saints Sunday: A Celebration of Life in the Presence of Death

We celebrate the truth that this community,

what we call the communion of saints,

is stronger than death.

It is All Saints' custom on the Sunday following All Saints Day to remember with thanksgiving those who have died with the celebration of a Requiem Mass. On Sunday, November 6, 2011 Coventry Choir will offer the Lux aeterna by Morten Lauridsen, accompanied by a chamber orchestra under the direction of James Walker. 9:00 & 11:15 a.m.

NOTE: Incense will be used at 9, 11:15am & 1pm an “Incense-Free” zone will be available in the Guild Room at 9 & 11:15am

All Saints Takes On the New Normal: Our Life and Our Livelihood

Saturday, November 5, 2011

9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

in the Forum

Potluck Lunch

David Leonhardt, the New York Times Washington bureau chief in his Sunday new analysis said:

“…The most worrisome aspect about our current slump is that it combines obvious short-term problems from the financial crisis with less obvious long-term problems…Together, these problems raise the possibility that the United States is not merely suffering through a normal, if severe, downturn. Instead it may have entered a phase in which high unemployment is the norm.”

With these issues ahead of us, please join me, Life and Livelihood, and other All Saints ministries on Saturday, Nov. 5 as we explore the values of dignity, equality, and hope for every human being.

Special guest Kim Bobo, executive director of Chicago’s Interfaith Worker justice program, will be with us. We will take the day to examine the “new normal” and how best to respond to our unstable world with persevering faith, strength and hope. We’ll share a potluck lunch and fellowship. And together we will help move our parish toward an enlightened response to these challenging times. Please join in!

For more information contact Linn Vaughan by email or call 626.583.2744

All Saints Stands With Farmworkers

Florida farmworkers and their allies demand higher wages at Trader Joe's By Brenda Gazzar, [Pasadena Star-News] Staff Writer


MONROVIA - At least 350 Florida tomato pickers and their allies marched to Trader Joe's corporate headquarters Friday, calling on the company to sign "a fair food agreement" with a community-based worker organization.

Organizers called the afternoon rally the largest by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in California since the successful conclusion of the Taco Bell Boycott in 2005. CIW is an organization of mainly Latino, Mayan Indian and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout Florida.

Read more

More photos

Patt Morrison Interviews George Regas on "Keeping Faith"

His church, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, came under IRS scrutiny seven years ago after he delivered a sermon on the Iraq war.

Yep, that was George Regas in that photo — the man in the purple ecclesiastical robe and handcuffs. The rector emeritus of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena chose to get busted this month outside the downtown federal building protesting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A few days earlier, scores of mostly conservative ministers across the country had deliberately defied the IRS ban on candidate endorsements by tax-exempt churches. Regas had tripped that wire inadvertently seven years ago, with a sermon that caught the IRS' ear and could have cost All Saints its tax exemption. He's retired from the pulpit, but time has not staled nor circumstance withered Regas' appetite for engagement.

Read the rest of Patt Morrison's interview with George Regas here.

The Noise of Democracy: Stories from the Political Imagination with Jeff Sharlet

Jeff Sharlet, bestselling author of The Family and C Street, will discuss his newest and most personal book, Sweet Heaven When I Die, and his reporting on – and from within – the Occupy movement.

Sharlet is Mellon Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth and a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine and Rolling Stone. In 2000, Sharlet teamed up with novelist Peter Manseau to create KillingTheBuddha.com, which has since become an award-winning online literary magazine about religion and spirituality. That led to a year on the road for Sharlet and Manseau, investigating the varieties of religious experience in America—a cowboy church in Texas, witches in Kansas, a Pentecostal exorcism for a terrorist in North Carolina, and an electric chair gospel choir in Florida.

A frequent guest on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show and NPR’s “Fresh Air,” Sharlet has appeared on HBO’s Bill Maher Show, Comedy Central’s Daily Show, NBC Nightly News, CNN, NPR, BBC, and other media venues.

From the Washington Post review of Sweet Heaven When I Die:

Jeff Sharlet delivers a fine dose of thoughtful skepticism in “Sweet Heaven When I Die,” his collection of 13 trenchant essays on how we gain, lose, maintain and blindly accept faith. The book belongs to the tradition of long-form, narrative journalism best exemplified by writers such as Joan Didion, John McPhee, Norman Mailer and Sharlet’s contemporary David Samuels. Sharlet deserves a place alongside such masters, for he has emerged as a master investigative stylist and one of the shrewdest commentators on religion’s underexplored realms.

Copies of his books will be available for purchase.

Jeff Sharlet in the All Saints Rector’s Forum | Sunday, October 30th | 10:15 a.m.

It's All Purple All Day @ All Saints Church

Members of the All Saints staff take a brief time out from their regularly scheduled "to do" list of turning the human race into the human family for a #SpiritDay photo op ... making God's Love Tangible to LGBT youth at risk by making today All Purple All Day @ All Saints Church!