I’m @PB_Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church (@iamepiscopalian). When I was in elementary school, I came home one day and my father asked if I got my sugar cube.
At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then remembered earlier that day we had been given a little sugar cube—this was back in the 1960s—with some medicine or something that was on it.
And I ate it and took it, well all got it, and it was the polio vaccine. Year later, while I didn’t know why my father always walked with a limp, my aunt Kari told me, “The reason your daddy walked with a limp was because he had polio when he was a little boy.”
And I realized why he was so thankful that his child was able to get the polio vaccine.
Vaccines can help us save lives and make life livable, and we have an opportunity to get that vaccine now for #COVID19. #igotmine, we can get ours, for ourselves, but if not for ourselves, for our children who still don’t have a vaccine yet.
I got the polio vaccine as a little child. Right now, adults can get the COVID vaccine to help to protect our children. That’s what the Bible means when Jesus says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Join @PB_Curry by sharing your own “I Got Mine” story. Post your photo or video with the #igotmine hashtag, tag and invite your friends, and tell the world what getting the COVID-19 vaccine means to you.
One more time we awake to the news of violence. Reports come in, even as you read this, about violence that has caused death, life-changing injury and destruction of property and lives.
Violence which is borne of frustration, rooted in injustice and the violation of international law and in truth, the violation of human rights and human decency.
In the Name of the God of all creation, the violence must stop, regardless of where it comes from and to whom it is directed.
One more time The Episcopal Church stands to say that violence is not the way forward.
This is a tense and troubled moment, as we await the jury’s verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd. Please pray for the soul of George Floyd, for his family, and for everyone everywhere who has suffered because of the sin of racism and oppression.
Pray for all the people of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Pray for this nation that we may find the ways of both justice and healing. Pray for us all.
Whatever comes with the verdict, there is no celebration. Nothing will bring George Floyd back to his family or his community back to us. The struggle continues. If the verdict does not establish guilt, and even if it does, our pain persists and our grief goes on.
This evening, the President of the United States stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, lifted up a bible, and had pictures of himself taken. In so doing, he used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes.
This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us.
The bible teaches us that “God is love.” Jesus of Nazareth taught, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The prophet Micah taught that the Lord requires us to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.”
We really do observe this #Pentecost in the midst of a pandemic. The pandemic of #COVID19 is real. It is painful. And we pray that scientists and researchers and all of the folk who are working hard will find a way to bring this pandemic to an end.
But there's another pandemic, not of the viral kind, but of the spiritual kind. It is a pandemic of the human spirit, when our lives are focused on ourselves, when the self becomes the center of the world and of the universe. And it may be even more destructive than a virus.
This pandemic of self-centeredness, if you will, has been the root cause of every humanly created evil that has ever hurt or harmed any child of God or even the earth itself.