to Cheryl Heckler, for being promoted to Associate Professor and being granted tenure at Miami!

Our discussion group will meet next on Monday, 14 April, in the Undercroft. Please note that the time has been changed (by request) and the discussion will start at 11:30 a.m. We will be discussing Reading Judas, by Karen King and Elaine Pagels, which is available at Follett's. All are welcome.

At the following meeting, on Monday, 12 May, the group will be choosing books to discuss during the next academic year. Please be thinking of what you would like to suggest and come to that meeting.

The Oxford Senior Citizens - Community Adult Day Service, housed in the fellowship hall of Faith Lutheran Church, 420 South Campus Avenue, is seeking participants. The service provides supportive care and programming for older adults with special needs. Caregivers are able to run errands, keep appointments, or take a break knowing that their family member is in a safe environment being cared for by trained staff. For more information contact: Stephanie Lineback, Coordinator 513.523.0464

[editor’s note: attendance is low just now, and if it doesn’t increase, the service could be discontinued!]

.

Help! We need plastic bags badly, so if you want to recycle yours to us, we would be most grateful. Also, we would appreciate your donations of trash bags (30 gal.), dish liquid, toilet bowl cleaner, household cleaners like Pine Sol, and diapers 4-5. As always, thank you for your continued generosity.          —Geoff and Judith.

At 12:00 p.m on Tuesday, April 29, at the Oxford Presbyterian Church, the Midday Music in Oxford series presents a progam of music by Franz Schubert performed by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra violinist Gerald Itzkoff, Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra keyboardist Joshua Nemith, and soprano Alma Jean Smith.

Call 523-6969 for information about this last program of the 2007–08 season.

The films that the Cincinnati Earth Institute is showing once a month will now also be shown in Oxford on the first Sunday of the month (except May and June) at 1:30 pm at the Campus Ministry, 16 S. Campus Ave. Discussion is optional. The events are open to the public—bring a friend or two!

The schedule:

April 6..... Episode 2—The Matrix of Life
May 18..... Episode 3—The Fire of Creation (note the different Sunday)
June 8..... Episode 4—Coming Home (note the different Sunday)

A hearty Thank you to the Pattersons and all of you who supported the mission trip fundraiser at the Uptown Café on March 15th. By the time Holy Trinity’s mission team arrives in the Dominican Republic this June, we will have been working on the trip for almost two years. During Holy Week Dr. Michael Dohn called from the Dominican Republic. He and I discussed a charla on dental care, oral health, and nutrition for about 140 HIV/AIDS patients and 60 health professionals, aides, and caregivers. Under the able coordination of Michael and Anita Dohn, Bob Burnard, and Liz Harlan, the rest of us will help with participants of all ages, including children. After the educational component of the day we will share teeth-healthy snacks and have a mini-fiesta! Please be sure to be at church on Sunday, June 15th, when our mission team members will share their experiences during the sermon time.

Plan also to be with us on Pentecost, May 11th, when Bishop Breidenthal will be at Holy Trinity—his first visit here. Keep those who are contemplating or planning their confirmations that day in your prayers.

We continue to live and move and have our being in the season of Easter, giving God thanks for new life and finding ways to extend God’s new life to others. May you and yours be particularly blessed during this most holy season!

                                                                                                +Karen

THANK YOU also to Kathleen Carels for coordinating the Easter Vigil liturgy, Sally and Jack Southard for coordinating the Easter brunch, and ALL who made our Easter celebrations meaningful, beautiful, and soft.

The tables abounded with favorite foods of Easter:  breads, fruit, vegetables, eggs, cheese, sweets, champagne, coffee, tea, and punch.  The children delighted in the Easter Egg Hunt.  Thank you each and all.  And a special thanks to young and older, newcomers and old-timers of our Holy Trinity community who made this celebration happen:  Nancy Averett; Jeanne Bassett; Bonne Brown; Chris Church; Anne Davis; Barbara Ellison; Grant Foote; Matt Frericks; Laura Harlan; Bill Houk; Dorothy Gustafson; Stephanie McCabe; Robin McClennan; Nora and Cathy McVey; Sarah Michael; Gitzene Myers; Jael Ojwaya, Andrew, Oliver, and Wagner Mogga; Peter Williams.

                                                                                         Sally and Jack Southard, Co-Chairs

Wish List for Future Occasions …

Contributions to help purchase

150 small (5.5") plates for desserts, appetizers, coffee hour, etc.
salad/dessert forks
soup spoons
step stools
serving bowls and platters
one carton of wine glasses

Journeys will be the topic for Adult Forum for four Sundays beginning March 31. Each Sunday a parishioner will tell the story of the faith journey that person traveled on the way to Holy Trinity. Cleve Callison will lead these sessions in a format similar to the Transitions and Connections series that he led in the last two years.

            Speakers for Journeys will be:
March 31, Judith de Luce
April 6, Oliver Mogga
April 13, Susan Kay
April 20, Mila Ganeva

And then:

            Social Justice will host two upcoming adult forums on the topic of sexual orientation and gender identity and the church. The April 27 forum will focus on sexual orientation and spirituality, and the May 4 forum will be led by Peter Williams who will focus on the recent decision to not invite Bishop Gene Robinson to Lambeth as well as larger issues involving sexual orientation within the Episcopal Church.

In May I will travel with Ambassadors for Children to Malawi, where we will work in the schools and with the orphans of Mtendere Village. Each traveler will take a 50-pound duffel bag of personal and school supplies for the children. If you would like to contribute supplies or money for this program, please tell me and I’ll give you details about what is needed. For more information, see www.ambassadorsforchildren.org.

All members and friends of Holy T who enjoy spring nurturing of gardens and grounds are welcome and needed on Saturday, April 12, 10 am–2 pm  (raindate Saturday, April 19). Sally and/or Dick Lodge will give instruction regardubg what needs to be done. Bring rakes, shovels, pruners, clippers, and tarps. Sign up or call Holy T 523-7559 and lend your help.

note: the Social Justice Commission will combine with Gardens and Grounds to have a BULBS & BULBS day on the  12th/19th. Each person who comes to Holy Trinity that morning(whether she/he works or not will receive an energy efficient light BULB by simply planting a live spring BULB (provided by us) on the Holy Trinity grounds.Y[see below]

VOLUNTEERS for May Pruning and Trimming Flowering Bushes: May 3/10

Can you believe that we even now need to plan for “after flowering”? The bushes at Holy Trinity will need pruning or trimming, so plan now to hold the first two Saturdays in May to help us do the work:

May 3 and/or May 10, 10 am–2 pm.

(Replacing one regular lightbulb with a compact fluorescent lightbulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year! (We could count up the pounds for just Holy T.!)

If you gave up CHOCOLATE for Lent, we have the perfect Eastertide celebration for you! Join our two bishops for the Episcopal Chocolate Savoring Festival (sponsored by the Episcopal Community Services Foundation) at the Church of the Redeemer, Cincinnati on Saturday, April 19, from 2 to 5 p.m. The proceeds will aid ministries addressing poverty and other human needs throughout the diocese. You can:

                        • Just come ($10/adult, $5/child, $20 max/household)

                        • Enter the chocolate contest (see guidelines below), or

                        • Contribute a silent auction item.

Chocolate recipes will be judged by celebrities including both Bishops and well-known local chocolatiers. They will give awards for Most Beautiful, Most Unique, and Best Overall Chocolate Creation. People’s Choice awards will be made in the categories of cookies, brownies, other baked goods, candy, and soft chocolate (sauces, mousses, etc.). Children are also invited to compete in two age categories: under 12 and 12 to 18. To enter the competition or offer an auction item, please register at the ECSF web site www.ecsfsouthernohio.org or call ECSF at 513-221-0547. The deadline for both donations and competition entries is April 11 - please register early so we can plan space and make signs for your entry. Redeemer is located at 2944 Erie Avenue in Hyde Park.

Calling parents in need—or not!

      They say it takes a village to raise a child. And when you live far away from your family, you need to create a support structure where you live. There has been some talk about starting a group for the parents of kids of all ages in Oxford to address this need. But we need your help to plan and form this group. What can a parents’ group provide for you? How do you envision a group like this functioning?

      Please see Carrie Galsworthy after church to share you ideas, insight, and interest. And please pass on the message to other people who might benefit from such an organization.

Anita and Michael Dohn are physicians serving as missionaries with La Iglesia Episcopal Dominicana through the South American Missionary Society. They live along the southern coast in San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic.

      E-mail: < DohnFamily@sams-usa.org >

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

      “If you aren’t keeping score, it’s just practice.” Dr. Tadataka Yamada (President of the Global Health Program for the Gates Foundation) made this point to international health professionals at the 2007 meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. By “keeping score” he meant whether people are getting healthier or not.

      One of our mission precepts is that “the ultimate performance of any health program is only measurable in terms of improved health among the people.” The community health ministries here need to be in the game, not just practicing. However, “keeping score” can be difficult. It is one thing to say we are helping people and something rather different to demonstrate that we are actually improving health.

      “Keeping score” costs money for baseline and follow-up community surveys and other records. Funders do not always want to “keep score;” sometimes they just want to track activity rather than results. Sometimes funders want to assess results, but refuse to cover those costs.

      We do community surveys and other outcome measures because we want to know the score. Knowing the score helps to keep us on track, to show us new directions, to justify the expenses (and, I suppose, our existence as a community health team), and to maintain accountability. More importantly, it is part of being good stewards of the resources of the church.

      We do not keep score in some areas. The community health program brings people to Christ, but we have no numbers of “people saved.” Sometimes organizations want to know how many Haitians we serve. We don’t know; we just enter people without distinction.

      However, we know that we are improving health because we have kept score in many areas (for instance, people with HIV/AIDS have longer survival after entering our full care program – our abstract at that American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting).

      Another quote we like is: “The best ideas are the ones that help people.” We hope and pray that we are always working with the best ideas.

                                                                                    Keep praying,

                                                                                    Anita & Michael

My lifestyle is frugal and fairly green. There’s no more virtue in that than in having blue eyes or being able to carry a tune: it’s just the way I was born. It does seem to be timely, however, and I know there are people out there who share my bent and/or wouldn’t mind talking about it and have tips to share (including maybe recipes, coupons, books, magazines, plants, seeds, old pantyhose or candle wax, who-knows-what-all) but no specific forum in which to share them. So what to do.

      The following “column” on Living Green will be a continuing feature in the Triad, thanks to Jane Strippel, but there is SO MUCH that could go in it that I as Triad editor hardly know how to confine the potential and suggested content to the available space. So completely independently I’m going to start bringing some of my “Green Stuff” to church on Sundays and parking it at some corner table at the coffee hour in the Undercroft. Join me? Bring some too?

                                                                                    See you there?  Mary

The issues of Global Warming and Climate Change seem to technical and comprehensive they are sometimes overwhelming. It is helpful to tap the knowledge and perspectives of those persons and groups we respect who understand the dynamics and implications for us and our planet Earth.

      Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts-Schori addressed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in Washington, D.C., on June 7, 2007. As both a scientist and a priest, she spoke of how all living things are

deeply interconnected and how all life depends on the life of others. She said: “The study of the Bible and of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition made me equally aware that this interconnectedness is one of the central narrativesw of Scripture. I believe that each of us must recall ourselves to the vision that God has for us to realize in our day. It is a vision in which all human beings live together as siblings at peace with one another and with God and in right relationship with all the rest of creation.”

      From Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home (2005),  The End of Nature (2006), and Deep Economy (2008), and Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont: “Our religious communities are deeply important because they are almost the only institutions left in our society that posit some goals other than accumulation for our existence here on this planet.”

      From the National Council of Churches’ “Open Letter to Church and Society in the U.S.,” February 2005: “We firmly believe that addressing the degradation of God’s sacred Earth is the moral assignment of our time, comparable to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, the world-wide movement to achieve equality for women, or ongoing efforts to control weapons of mass destruction in a post-Hiroshima world.”

Websites to check:           Union of Concerned Scientists—www.ucsusa.org

                                    American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy—www.aceee.org

                                    Alliance to Save Energy—www.powerisinyourhands.org

                                    Sierra Club—www.sierraclub.org

                                    Coop America—www.climateaction.org

                                    Natural Resources Defense Council—www.nrdc.org

                                    U.S. Dept. of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy—                                                 www.eere.energy.gov

Some things you can do:

     -Adjust your thermostat: Moving your thermostat just 2 degrees down in winter and 2 degrees up in summer can save about 2000 pound of carbon dioxide a year.

        -Avoid products with a lot of packaging: You can save 1200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you can cut down your garbage by 10%.

        -Check your tires: Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve gas mileage by more that 3%, and every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere!

        -Turn off/unplug electronic devices: Simply turn off your TV, DVD player, stereo, and computer when you’re not using them could save thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and unplugging them saves even more because of leakage even when the appliances are off.