When Elton John comes to Youngstown February 1 to play the Covelli Centre, we’d love it if he would visit and see the work we do to fight HIV and discrimination in our community and how we are working for the #EndofAIDS.
What Can You Do?
1. Post a comment on Elton John’s Facebook Event and include the hashtag #EltonJohnVisitUs
2. Click HERE to buy raffle tickets to win 2 tickets to the concert and dinner.
3. Share our video: Honoring 20 Year in Ministry
Ryan White: “Save the Children of the World”
Ryan White was the Indiana boy whose courage and openness marked a change, if only slight, in public perception of HIV in America. Ryan inspired musician/composer Sir Elton John (seen singing at Ryan’s funeral), President Reagan, Olympic Diver Greg Louganis, movie star Elizabeth Taylor and many ordinary people living with HIV and their community of supporters. Elton John told Andrea Mitchell in an interview about his memoir “Love is the Cure” and years in AIDS advocacy that “Ryan White taught me to be human again.” Ryan would have been 44 yesterday. He leaves a vast legacy–federal legislation that has saved millions of lives, the work of the Elton John Foundation and others spurred by his example, and a challenge to the rest of us of acceptance, compassion and wisdom. A year or two before his death, the teenager spoke to the National Education Association and urged the teachers to fight stigma and ignorance: “Help me beat the odds and together lets educate and save the children of the world.” We are still fighting against those odds. Children are still being born with HIV, young people infected, the poor and sick further marginalized. We have the science, the financial resources and the human capital to end AIDS in our time. Will we save the children of the world?
Elton John: An end to AIDS?
Science has given us the means to find a cure, but the stigma has prevented us from doing so.
Thank you, forever and sincerely
In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
On behalf of those we serve, thank you.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prn2j3qMsjY&w=640&h=360%5D#GivingTuesday and Every Day
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone else planted a tree long ago.”
Warren Buffett’s words call to mind the arc of human generosity, hard work and faith in things unseen that, on our best days, bends toward greatness. Other days may find us selfish, small, myopic, afraid. The challenge today and every day is to trust that who we are is more important that what we have, that what we have is enough, that what we can give to another makes us richer, and that we need to plant those trees even in places that scare us or puzzle us, knowing that the shade they will provide to someone, someday is what saves us.
World AIDS Day 2013
The theme for World AIDS Day this year is “Getting to Zero.” Zero new infections, including zero babies born with HIV. Zero discrimination against those living with HIV. Zero AIDS-related deaths. We have the science. We have the resources. We need the political will, the community solidarity and the faith that we can bring about an end to HIV.
Associate in Ministry
“I have been around Ursuline Sisters my whole life: my aunt Sr. Betty Kerrigan, family friends, at St. Rose and at Ursuline. I learned to try to live values like charity, service and justice. I had Sr. Pauline Dalpe as a teacher in 3rd grade, and we boycotted Nestle for unscrupulous business practices with infant formula and Third World mothers. I’m not sure how the rest of the 8-year-olds felt, but I was sure that writing letters and giving up Nestle Crunch was pretty important stuff. And of course I was raised Catholic; it was in my bones, almost genetic, and cultural in an everywhere-ness kind of way. But somehow, for me, those two streams, service and faith, didn’t really converge.
“And then I began working in AIDS Ministry, and everything changed. Not long after I started as a volunteer, I remember asking Sr. Kathleen Minchin for something to read about service having a spiritual dimension, and I wasn’t even sure what words to use. I didn’t know then that I was being called and feeling being called to live the Gospel. And that it would change everything.
“I have worked and sometimes lived with the community for over 16 years, much of my adult life. And I have been transformed by those experiences. As for living the Gospel, in some ways I have it easy, because the poor and the sick are always right in front of me at work, and I go home to children who’ve been wounded in terrible ways. But I often fail. I let doing the work get in the way of connecting with the people the work is supposed to help. I let ego or comfort or fear keep me from being open to loss and pain. Sometimes it’s just as simple as not being present to the ones I’m with. I’ve got to recommit to it every day, sometimes many times in a day. So what the community gives me and many other Associates is the support to keep doing the hard work of the Gospel, the context to explore and articulate it, and the shelter in which to be vulnerable and transformed by it.
Recently, Jesuit Fr. James Martin offered as an evening reflection the following questions: What have I done for the poor? What am I doing for the poor? What am I going to do for the poor? 20 years of AIDS Ministry and so many other examples from the Ursuline Sisters answer the first two questions well. The third question, what will you do for the poor, is for the Ursuline Sisters, Associates, volunteers and supporters to answer in the coming days. I am confident, to borrow from St. Angela, that we can all be ready for big surprises.”
–Brigid Kennedy
Love
“I find it difficult to conceive of a more concrete way to love than by praying for one’s enemies. It make s you conscious of the hard fact that, in God’s eyes, you’re no more and no less worthy of being loved than any other person, and it creates an awareness of profound solidarity with all other human beings…. And you’ll be delighted to discover that you can no longer remain angry with people for whom you’ve really and truly prayed.” |
–Henri J. M. Nouwen
(From Advocate Health Care’s Grace Notes)
Wine & Beer Taste to Benefit Our Kids
Join us Thursday, March 7th from 6 to 9 pm at Stambaugh Auditorium for a Wine and Beer Taste hosted by the Youngstown Area Grocers Association. Proceeds will benefit our Child and Family program. Enjoy great food, wine and hundreds of craft beers, all for $50 (or $350 for a table of 8). Sponsorship opportunities available as well. Call Brigid Kennedy at (330) 792-7636 x318 or Register Online today!
Grace Notes
“The future belongs to those who give
the next generation reason for hope.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
ursulinesistersaids 