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This warm,
inviting, informative piece is a joy to my heart. I am totally
excited about this and will make every effort to share with all that
I can. This is a wonderful great idea! God Bless.
As a Diaconal Minister in the ELCA, I was alerted to this
resource—it's wonderful. Please keep up
the good work. I, too, am "over the age limit" but will subscribe
anyway.
Women of all
ages need to learn from one another. As a suggestion, you might want
to do an article on rostered and lay ministry opportunities in the
ELCA.
I would like to
respond to the piece on chocolate—very informative and timely for
me. It so happens that I was a weeklong volunteer at the Churchwide
Assembly. I had the opportunity to buy first, one bar of the dark
Divine Chocolate at the Augsburg display, and the next day went back
to buy two more. It is truly the best dark chocolate I have ever
tasted. I agree with your statement that we live in a society that
wants things "on demand", that when we buy something, we want it
immediately. So thinking about buying a candy bar and having to wait
for it is not in our current life style. At the same time, I think
about how many books I have ordered on-line from Amazon and
waited-sometimes weeks- before they arrive. So, we can change our
habits.
And this is not
so foreign to our culture. A hundred years ago our grandmothers
ordered from the Sears Catalog. I'll bring this to an end soon, but
as long as we are on chocolate, how about coffee? If you look in the
Feb. 2003 issue of The
Lutheran you will find an article about the coffee
project in the Greater Milwaukee Synod. It goes above and beyond
what Fair Trade does for the farmers. It too, is a different way of
thinking about, and ordering coffee. Too often, we think that "doing
ministry" is something set apart for people who have been to
seminary and are "called" to serve in churches or other
institutions. Martin Luther gave us the understanding of "priesthood
of all believers". The way we make use of our God-given resources
(in this case time and money) is also part of our "call" to
ministry. OK, I'll stop here. Blessings in this new endeavor (your
ministry to us).
Esther S., Chaplain, Diaconal Minister,
ELCA
Dear Esther, Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments and
suggestions. I am glad that you subscribed. The target age range is
not meant to be exclusionary; rather we wanted women in this group
to know that the church had created something for them specifically
with them in mind. It is a response to a need we tapped into.
However, as I hope you and others see,
Café
has the potential to offer interesting content for all. One comment
you made that I totally agree with--women of all ages need to learn
from one another. Amen!
I would like to direct your attention to
the October 2003 issue of Lutheran Woman Today regarding fair trade,
especially fair trade coffee. Women of the ELCA along with Lutheran
World Relief and Equal Exchange are calling out for support of fair
trade coffee in the yearlong 90-Ton Challenge. This yearlong focus
highlights the LWR Coffee Project that provides 100-percent fair
trade coffee that give farmers from many cooperatives in a number of
countries a fair price for their high-quality coffee beans.
(Interested readers can read a few of the selected articles in this
issue Lutheran Woman Today at
www.elca.org/lwt) after October 1, 2003
Once again I would echo your sentiment in the reference to Martin
Luther's belief in the priesthood of all believers. We have
incredible power to make positive change for all our sisters and
brothers in Christ. Let’s get busy and act boldly on our faith!
Greetings from
the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service communications unit and
congratulations on your new and intriguing e-zine! We are always
delighted to see new Lutheran publications--especially one as
dynamic and different as Café.
Reading through
Café’s first issue, it occurs to me that several of LIRS's
"hot-topics" would be great fodder for an issue (or two) of
Café
(e.g. crisis in the U.S. refugee resettlement program, treatment of
children in immigration detention). Please let me know if you'd be
interested in discussing how we might help you provide young women
in the ELCA with opportunities for faith-centered advocacy.
Thanks and best wishes for the success of Café!
Meg A.
I am delighted to hear that you are
launching this e-zine for women. I am a pastor with a traveling art
show about issues of adolescent girls (it was featured in the March
edition of The Lutheran--it is called “Seen but Rarely Heard: Voices
of Adolescent Girls”. Would this be of interest for a future Café
article?
Warmly, Rev. Laura G.
How about it, readers? The three above emails suggest future topics
for
Café.
Will you weigh in on what you would want to read? The topics for the
five issues in year two of
Café
(starting with the August/September 2004 issue) are wide open. Tell
us what you want you want served at your
Café!
I
was invited to check out the new
Café issue and what a wonderful
surprise. Your team really took advantage of their skills here. The
site is excellent; the information is very thorough and well
managed. Although I am not a big chocolate lover the article
definitely kept my attention and then raised some thoughts of my
own. Thanks for the invite, keep up the incredible work! I will
forward this on to others I know would love this.
Heidi
B., Chicago, IL/Kenosha, WI
What
fun to read Café! I'm outside of the age group, but am excited
about this new outreach! Because I like to print off the feature
article, I would request that a "printer-friendly version"
would also be available with a mouse click. Hope this would be a
possibility. Thank you.
Pastor
Charlotte S-B
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