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by Herb Gunn
[Detroit: May 30, 2009] When Sue McCune learned she would need a lumpectomy, she couldn’t utter the words: breast cancer. In the two and a half years since her treatment, she continued to steer clear of phrase as well as its life-saving suffix: survivor.
As it is with many women who have survived the disease, which is diagnosed for 180,000 women annually in the United States, McCune was hesitant to identify herself with other women whose treatment—and rate of survival—seemed more serious. And although she has participated in prior breast cancer events since her own diagnosis and treatment, she kept the distinguishing bright pink survivor T-shirts folded in a drawer.
All that changed last week.
On Saturday, May 30, Lynn VanKeuren will walk, as her strength permits. Sue McCune will wear her survivor’s shirt.
See entire story HERE.
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by Herb Gunn
[Detroit: May 31, 2009] For more than a decade, Monica mingled with the wrong people in Detroit—a lifestyle of homelessness that led her into a daily crack habit and jail.
Now, two years after walking away from both, she still keeps company with some of the same unsavory influences on her life. But those once-a-week encounters have totally changed, and so has Maureen Maniece, who has reclaimed her given name and reclaimed her former life.
In the late 1990s, Maniece walked out on her family, her husband, and two young children, and fell into a web of empty relationships and drugs in Detroit’s Cass Corridor. Halfway through her decade of despair, she was befriended and taken in by John Seltzer, who himself was familiar with stretches of homelessness and poor decisions. Initially, however, his support and what became an ongoing prayer vigil for his companion wasn’t enough to break her addiction to cocaine and its 30-day spells of half-awake wandering and full-blown carelessness.
But he kept praying.
See entire story HERE.
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by Herb Gunn
[Detroit: May 31, 2009] The Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit maintains a breakfast ministry that draws up to 200 people into worship every Sunday morning. Former senior warden Ray Cheney noted that the program, which requires the participants attend the 8:15 worship service before the meal, is, nonetheless, more outreach than evangelism.
“We are providing for people who aren’t able to get a good meal on their own,” said Cheney, who now oversees the program. “The bus fare is too high for many, a few ride bicycles, but most of them walk. They live in the area.”
Between 40-50 stay on for Bible Study following breakfast, explained Cedric Henry, who was the volunteer coordinator of the breakfast ministry for the past two years until recently. He said about 120 men used to attend early in the month—and that number generally grew to 175 by the fourth Sunday of the month. Recently, he said, due to the economy and the weather, the Cathedral often sees 200 per week now.
“You have to get there early to get a seat,” Henry said.
See entire story HERE.
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Detroit, MI
At its meeting on June 23, Diocesan Council prepared a preliminary 2010 budget that will be circulated before its next meeting in September. The draft budget continues a decrease in both spending and reliance on funds from the Extended Ministries Fund (EMF).
by Herb Gunn
If there’s a canary in the mineshaft of the U.S. economic crisis, it is Spirit of Hope Episcopal/Lutheran congregation in Detroit. Worshipping at a six-way intersection of a number of things that don’t work in the city, parishioners of the church—formerly Trinity Episcopal Church—and its pastor, Matthew Bode, note that the neighborhood is so hard hit by decades of neglect, the collapse of the mortgage and financial markets is scarcely felt.
by Herb Gunn