Grace Episcopal Church  
In This Issue
Sunday Ministers
Birthdays
Sunday Services

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Sunday 
8:00 AM
Celebrant: 
The Rev. Dr. Maggie Arnold
Preacher:
Mia Benjamin, Life Together intern  
LEM:  Mia Benjamin
Altar Guild:
Olivia Bracken

10:00 AM 
Celebrant: 
The Rev. Dr. Maggie Arnold 
Preacher:  Mia Benjamin, Life Together intern  
Minister of Music:  Ruth Roper
LEM I: Mia Benjamin
LEM II: Genita Johnson  
Lector I*:
Deborah Jennings
Lector II*:
Cindy Scott Acolytes: 
Jordan Williams, Jaeda Hamel and Dylan Smith  
Ushers: 
Daniel Egger and James Klasen 
Altar Guild
Olivia Bracken 
Coffee Hour Hosts: Vin Maganzini,
coffee - Food host needed 
Counters:
Jill Capuccio and Bryan Spence   
Vestry Person of the Day:
Hallie Stephenson Lee

5:00 PM
Celebrant:  The Rev. Noah H. Evans
Preacher:  Mia Benjamin, Life Together intern
Musician
Cheryl Forest Morganson
Altar Guild
Olivia Bracken and Mia Benjamin 
 
*click on link to prepare for this week's readings  

Birthdays

 

Louise Fortino and Nancy Rogers (9/28); Samuel Masciave (9/30); Ivy Smith, Douglas Woodbury and Jean Zafiris (10/1); David Lee (10/2); Sarah Cluggish (10/3); Doris Johnson and Joan Williams (10/4).

 

If we do not have your birthday, please contact the church office at 781-396-7215 or office@gracemedford.org  
 Welcome
Please join us at Grace Church!
We celebrate the Eucharist at 8AM, 10AM and 5PM  The Rev. Dr. Maggie Arnold is the Celebrant at 8 and 10 AM services and The Rev. Noah Evans is the Celebrant for the 5 PM service.  Mia Benjamin, our Life Together intern is the preacher on Sunday.  Sunday school begins promptly at 9:45 AM.  
Martha Coakley and Mayor McGlynn at the Grace Church booth at Medford Community Day.  Thanks to all who volunteered at the booth and thanks to all who stopped by. 
 

Kid's Corner

Join us for Sunday School on Sunday at 9:45 AM.  

Acolytes are needed

Any child, 9 years or older who is interested in becoming an acolyte can speak to or have their parents speak to Wes Foote, Jr.

 

Friday night youth event on September 26:

Grace Church is hosting an evening of games and fun for youth, grades 6-12, on Friday, September 26th from 6-10pm. Parent chaperones are Maria Fenn and Cheryl Woodbury. Dinner is not provided, but kids can bring a favorite board game to share.

 

Enchanted Garden Tour

Laura Duggan is offering a tour of her "Enchanted Garden" to the children and families of the parish. Please RSVP to the parish office or on Facebook (where a carpool sign-up is also available), to give Laura an idea of how many to expect. The magic happens at 31 Hickory Avenue, 1:00-2:30 PM, Sunday, September 28th. An appropriately charming snack will be served.

Outreach Corner    
The next opportunity to help with St. Luke's Community Dining is September 27.   Please contact Brenda Pearson at bpearson267@gmail.com
if you are interested in volunteering or have questions. 
 
Food is needed for the food pantries that Grace Episcopal Church supports. Food items may be placed in the baskets just outside the main entrance to the sanctuary (an usher can help you locate them.)  The item for September 28 is cereal.   The item for October 5 is rice. 

Wednesdays at Grace

5:30: younger children's Godly Play classes

6:00: Community Dinner

Dinner host needed for Oct. 1st.  

6:45: Older children's classes

Adult Education- 6:45-8:00PM

Environmental Film Series

This fall during Wednesdays at Grace we will be looking at a few different environmental issues through an environmental film series. This series goal is to educate us so that we can better live out our faith commitments to "care for all creation."

 

Gasland II, film screening

October 1, 6:45PM

In this explosive follow-up to his Oscar®-nominated film GASLAND, filmmaker Josh Fox uses his trademark dark humor to take a deeper, broader look at the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the controversial method of extracting natural gas and oil, now occurring on a global level (in 32 countries worldwide). GASLAND PART II, which premiered at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, shows how the stakes have been raised on all sides in one of the most important environmental issues facing our nation today. The film argues that the gas industry's portrayal of natural gas as a clean and safe alternative to oil is a myth and that fracked wells inevitably leak over time, contaminating water and air, hurting families, and endangering the earth's climate with the potent greenhouse gas, methane. In addition the film looks at how the powerful oil and gas industries are in Fox's words "contaminating our democracy".

 

Save the Date! 

Visit by the Rt. Rev. Alan Gates

January 7, 2015

Bishop Alan Gates will come to Wednesdays at Grace on January 7, 2015.

Other Announcements     

  

Grace Church and GraceWorks support a sock drive to benefit Cradles to Crayons

Cradles to Crayons is running an area-wide sock drive from now until October 3rd culminating with children's concert they are holding in Boston on October 4th.  Grace Church and GraceWorks are hosting boxes to collect sock donations. They are collecting these types of socks:

* NEW socks only, please

* Sizes Infant up to Age 12

* Socks in multipacks welcomed

* White, colored, striped, polka dots, patterns...all welcomed! 

 

The website for the event on October 3rd is: http://www.kidsreallyrock.com/ FYI, Medford's own Alastair Moock is one of the headliners on the concert and another headliner, Ben Rudnick, got his start performing for the MFN.

 

Blessing of the Animals and Holy Eucharist 

Sunday, October 5 at 5:00PM

Come join us for a Blessing of the Animals! We will be acknowledging our relationship with creation, especially those animals who are a part of our daily lives! Bring your dogs, cats, fish, and sheep, stuffed animals, or a picture of animals, for a special blessing at Grace Church.

 

We will also be collecting donations for the Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, MA. The Northeast Animal Shelter is one of New England's largest no-profit, no-kill animal shelters and takes in homeless animals across the US. Currently, they have a large need for canned dog and cat food, jars of all-meat baby food, clay cat litter, toys for dogs and cats, as well as blankets. For more information on donations, contact Kris Plausky at kris.plausky@gmail.com   

 

First Friday Performances at Grace

We are offering new social and entertaining opportunities geared toward adult parishioners and their friends, and will be presenting events on the First Friday evenings at 7:30PM this Fall. We urge you to come and support these events.

 

On Friday October 3,  "Sisters in Song" will present its 3rd musical revue concert   Love Heals; No Day like Today -mostly beautiful duets from Broadway Musicals. Requested donation is $20 (more if you can; less if you wish) includes coffee and dessert and will benefit the Ellie Fund which supports women with breast cancer and their families with services (free of charge) as they convalesce. This is a local charity which helps patients in our community.

 

On Friday, November 7, "Love, Loss and What I Wore" will be repeated by popular request. This was presented April 4 to a rave-review audience at Grace and we are pleased to present it again.   Proceeds from this production will go to our Grace Church Youth Groups' projects.   Donation is $10 (more if you wish) and includes coffee and dessert.

 

For further information, please contact Maria Fenn, the producer of these special events or June or Jeff Pietrantoni.

 

20/30s Fellowship Group

Come and share a simple meal and fellowship after the 5:00pm service on October 5 
(at around 5:45-6:00ish).  Please bring your friends! 

 

Women's Lunch Group forming

Announcing the first monthly "You Don't Have to be a Senior" Women's Lunch.  If it's good enough for the men, it's good enough for the WOMEN!!  We'll meet on Wednesday, October 8th at John Brewer's Tavern, 7 Highland Ave, Malden at 12:00 noon - for lunch, conversation and the best fellowship in town.  Please let Cindy Scott know by Sunday, October 5 if you will attend so that a table (or 2 or 3 or 4 or . . .) can be reserved.  E-mail lucindarscott@gmail.com 

 

Book Club 

Grace Church Women's Book Club meets monthly at 7 pm on the third Thursday, except for the month of August.  Any woman is invited to attend any meeting. The October meeting is the 16th
 and the book is The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty.
And the book we're reading on November 20th is,

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes..  For more information about meetings please see Genita during church at 10 AM service or contact her at

. 

 

"Tea with Mary Cassatt"  

and Silver Tea  

presented at Grace Church on Sunday, October 19th, 3:00 PM.  This one-woman play provides a glimpse into the life of Mary Cassatt, famous for her paintings of mothers and babies.  She was a Victorian woman who was the only American invited to exhibit with the French Impressionists. Written by and starring, Laura R. Duggan, this multimedia production will also include a question and answer session with "Miss Cassatt."  A silent auction and gift basket raffles will help fund the restoration of the historical Grace Church organ.  For tickets, contact Laura Duggan. Tickets also available at Grace Church, #781-396-7215 or at Best Sellers Cafe.  Early Bird Tickets $12.50, $15 at the door. 

 

Reading and Signing of Grace Church
parishioner,
Julia Lisella's new book, Always
Please help celebrate the publication of Julia Lisella's second full-length collection of poems Sunday, November 2 (All Saints Sunday), following the 10 a.m. service. Julia will read a few poems and answer questions about the work. The books will be on sale for $18; the profits of each copy sold will go to our Grace Church Fund for the Organ Restoration. 

Always, Julia Lisella's new collection of lyric and free-verse poems, explores the transition from youth to midlife when what once seemed like impossible or impassable hurdles that might have made us feel hopeless in our twenties-war, hypocrisy, pain, illness, death, terrible grief-are full of creative possibilities for us later in life, to renew or even to reinvent. Characters emerge in Always that explore, observe, and instruct: St. Francis, a young boy, teenage girls, a mother in mid-life, husbands and wives, teachers and students, 19th century writers, and dead parents who speak from their full lives into the future.

and a comment from one of the readers:

 

"Always-a concept, Julia Lisella says, we can't understand, and yet have a word for.  Such conundrums fill these lovely and lucid poems.  It's not easy to make complex riddles clear, but that is what these poems do, exploring the tension between 'dust and devotion,' body and spirit, or in her ongoing dialogue with St. Francis, that dual attraction of denial and embrace.  'Make something beautiful,' this poet thinks in one poem, and she certainly does-not the cold beauty of the finished, the resolved, but the rich and deep beauty of the journey, the struggle itself."  -Betsy Sholl