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| Suelyn March 2020 |
IN
LOVING MEMORY
SUELYN
CHING TUNE
Suelyn,
beloved child of God, went on home this past Sunday. Lucille Choy, BFF and
sister-in-Christ to Suelyn, was in daily contact with her and reported to us
that Suelyn handled this time with peaceful acceptance, deep love, and faith.
Suelyn's
parents, Mabel Tom and Hung Leong Ching, were charter members when CCH was
formed in 1934; she was well aware of and treasured their very special legacy
in helping lay the foundation for God's church.
The CCH Prayer Warriors have been keeping
Suelyn and her family solidly in their prayers for a few months. They have sent
many messages, expressing sorrow and heartfelt condolences. Suelyn was beloved and will be sorely missed. This past Monday, Kathy Young reported the following to them.
I am sad to tell you that our dear Sister in
Christ, Suelyn Ching Tune, died late last night. On
April 2, she left the hospital and even though weak, she wrote us:
"Dear Prayer Warriors
I am
now at home, still a little weak and shaky, but in the process of recovering
from pneumonia and a serious case of deep vein thrombosis in both legs.
Good
news is that my COVID test was negative.
Thank
you for your prayers and positive thoughts.
They have made a huge difference.
Me ke aloha,
Suelyn Tune"
Suelyn
enjoyed her family these precious weeks, sequestered because of the
"stay-at-home" statewide directives.
She was in our sanctuary to celebrate granddaughter Teagan's baptism on
March 15. We loved seeing her with
brother Chip, son Rick, daughter-in-law Stacy, grandson Aidan, and Stacy's
parents, Mike and Christi Overton.
Suelyn's
faith was strong, and she knew that God--and loved ones who went before
her--awaited her arrival in God's house.
She is there now, at peace, without pain, and happy.
We
thank our Lord for His precious child, Suelyn Tune. She blessed our CCH 'ohana in countless ways,
and we will treasure our memories of her always.
Please
pray for Rick, Stacy, Aidan, Teagan, Chip, and family.
Cards to the family can be sent to:
Rick Tune
1421 La’amia St.
Honolulu, HI 96821
(Editor’s note: A few
minutes after Kathy Young sent out the news about Suelyn to the Prayer
Warriors, Art Lum replied with this poem that captures our grieving hearts.)
Sitting in silence
Weeping
Not quite ready to leave this
place at the moment
Our beloved sister in Christ
Allowing her presence and
touch to enter
Embraced by her greeting and
smile
Suelyn's ALOHA
Always and forever more.
In the spirit of IPT
Wednesday, let us take a moment today to read this paragraph composed by Art as
our collective farewell.
To our beloved Suelyn Tune,
we love you. May this moment of silence
and prayer be all about you. We come together in unison to offer our circle of
love. For you, Suelyn, brother Chip, son Rick, wife Stacy, grandson
Aidan and granddaughter Teagan. On
behalf of the children, youth, teens and recipients of your amazing life and
aloha; we give you thanks. God be with
you now and forever more. Me ke aloha.
Amen.
CCH
IPT WEDNESDAY (INTENTIONAL PRAYER TIME) by Kathy Young
During
this stressful, anxious, sometimes lonely COVID-19 pandemic period, we are
encouraged to re-examine our lives, reflect on our blessings and challenges,
read Scripture more thoroughly to find God's comfort and promise of hope, and
pray with less cluttered lives and minds.
Our
heavenly Father, we pray:
- with deep gratitude
for blessing our CCH 'ohana with Your never-ending love, protection, and
guidance. You have encouraged us to reach out to each other, keeping
us a loving community in Your name!!
- for your comfort as we mourn the loss of our dear sister and friend, Suelyn Ching Tune. Her faith beginnings were rooted in CCH; her parents and uncles were founders, who built Your church from Queen Emma Street to Nuuanu...allowing future generations to worship You!
- heartfelt prayers of
thanksgiving for the Reverend Dr. Holly Norwick and Music Director Hari
Bayani, for their hard work on creating outstanding weekly YouTube services
that allow us to "gather" from our homes to praise and worship
You.
- that God, be with our
hard-working staff--Associate Pastor Frances Wong, Administrator Ardis
Gomes, Accountant Nate Mau, Music Director Hari Bayani, and Custodian
Glenn Bolisan.
- that the lessons
learned during this months-long "pause" will not be
forgotten. Our lives can be made more simple, with energies better
focused on CCH's New Calling, four pillars, and serving YOU!!
- prayers of celebration and thanksgiving! CCH's Prayer Warriors have been praying for our beloved 104 year-old Sau Chun Wong Chun. She was feeling weak and is now under Hospice at Home care. Daughter Yen just wrote that Sau Chun has had two very good days, is better, and helped celebrate son-in-law Dick Ching's birthday with crab legs!! [Dick's father, Hung Dau Ching, was a CCH founder, too!] Praise the Lord!! Our prayers continue for Sau Chun...
- and for all those in your
heart...
EARTH SABBATH—EARTH DAY
TODAY IS 50TH
BIRTHDAY OF EARTH DAY!
Let us pray for our
Mother Earth:
Creator God, how deep are
your designs!
You made a living earth,
cloud, rain and wind, and charged us with their care. And yet, we know that the
way we live today is changing the climate, the seas and the balance of life, dispossessing
the poor and future generations. Make our eyes and our hearts more open to the
needs of others, especially the hungry, the hurting, and the poor. Help us to
see that in caring for the Earth, we are also caring for one another. And help
us, O God, to live in ways that promote respect, compassion, justice, and peace
for all people, and for all of your broken and yet beautiful creation. Amen.
(Adapted from the Creation
Covenant by FoodGrainsBank)
For the Beauty of the
Earth by Folliott S. Pierpoint (1864)
For the beauty of the earth,
for the splendor of the
skies,
for the love which from our
birth
over and around us lies
[Refrain]:
God of all, to you we raise
this our hymn of grateful
praise.
For the wonder of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and
flower,
sun and moon, and stars of
light
[Refrain]
For the joy of human love,
brother, sister, parent,
child,
friends on earth, and friends
above,
for all gentle thoughts and
mild
[Refrain]
For the good that love
inspires,
for a world where none
exclude,
for a faith that never tires,
and for every heart renewed
[Refrain]
Permission for music reprinted for our worship is granted
through LicenSing, Copyrighted Music for Churches, License #20384312.
YESTERDAY BEGAN THE ANNUAL DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE —TO COMMEMORATE THE
VICTIMS, SURVIVORS, AND LIBERATORS OF THE HOLOCAUST
Remarks made on March 5,
2020, by Holocaust survivor Alfred Münzer, at a public event calling
attention to the crimes by the Chinese government against Muslim minorities.
I am a survivor of the
Holocaust . . . . Sadly, the Holocaust did not spell an end to prejudice and
hate or to mass atrocities and genocide. I deeply appreciate the work of the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum . . . to call attention to new threats to the lives
of minority populations like the one faced by Uyghurs [Muslims] in China and to remind
the world of the solemn pledge made after the Holocaust, “Never Again.”
I was born in the
Nazi-occupied Netherlands. And I am only able to stand before you today because
a Dutch-Indonesian family and their Indonesian Muslim nanny risked their lives
to rescue a 9-month-old Jewish baby. Tolé Madna, the three Madna children, and
their nanny, Mima Saïna, cared for me and protected me from the Nazis for three
long years. They shared their meager food allowance with me . . . . I slept in
Mima’s bed and she kept a knife under her pillow vowing to kill any Nazi who
might come to get me. But what I remember most, is being surrounded by love and
laughter.
My sisters, Eva and Leah did
not share my good fortune. They had been entrusted to a different family but
were betrayed and denounced to the Nazis and killed in Auschwitz. They were 7
and 5, two of 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust.
Mima Saïna could not read or
write and did not speak the Dutch language, only the language of her native
Indonesia. But Mima Saïna had a heart of gold and cared for this Jewish baby as
if it were her own. People asked Tolé Madna why he risked the lives of his
family to take in a Jewish baby. His response was a simple, “What else was I to
do?”
[A] few years ago I shared
the story of my rescue . . . with a group of students from Indonesia and told
them that the only memory I had of Mima was a lullaby she used to sing to me
and it was called "Nina Bobo." And suddenly the entire group began to
sing "Nina Bobo" in perfect unison and young men and women then came
up to me and embraced me and said, “we are family.”
Those simple eloquent words,
“we are family,” describe why we are all here today. It is to foster a world
where no one is viewed as “the other” and a world that celebrates our common
humanity.
https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/blog/holocaust-survivor-al-munzer-delivers-remarks-persecution-of-uyghurs?utm_source=mkto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2004MKTEM05497&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWlRjMU5XRXdPR1EwTXpRNCIsInQiOiJoR1JIb0VhYXRSTE0rVlI0SEwzQlR0eGYxc21ScXA0bXNKZnYySHVaTFJUK2FaOTNGMEF1Ylwvak9YTHNMUGJOVjBiZjdUajJja0o1SCttVFJDaXRnb3htNGFCWUVERFwvK1wveVU3RFY1TWNPc3RoRytlTTh0NmlnWnFxSjdJT0p4MSJ9
(accessed: Monday, April 20, 2020)
RAMADAN
2020 BEGINS APRIL 24TH
Our
Muslim brothers and sisters are entering the important holy season of
Ramadan. For one lunar month, they will
fast from sunrise to sunset. Just as we
felt bereft when we began sheltering at home before our Holy Week and Easter,
celebrating Ramadan physically distanced will be a sea change. For example, "iftar" is the nightly
breaking of the fast. Traditionally,
families, extended families, and mosques break fast together. Just like Christian churches, different
Muslim groups have produced online and digital resources to enable people to
celebrate and to keep fostering community even while staying physically apart.
MPower
Change, a grassroots movement of Muslim communities working together to build justice
for all people, recognized that:
Keeping
each other safe this Ramadan means practicing physical distancing, and learning
how to stay connected without the large gatherings and group prayers we are
accustomed to.
They
have produced a website with a plethora of digital resources. Just like CCH,
they are teaching folks how to use Facebook and Zoom!
You
can check out their online resource at:
https://www.digitalramadan.com/
It
was narrated that Abu Hurairah
said:
"The
Messenger of Allah (صلى الله عليه وسلم)
said:
'There has come to you Ramadan,
a blessed month, which
Allah,
the Mighty and Sublime, has
enjoined you to fast. In it the
gates
of heavens are opened and the
gates of Hell are closed, and
every
devil is chained up. In it Allah
has a night which is better
than
a thousand months; whoever
is deprived of its goodness is indeed deprived."
[Sunan
an-Nasa'i]
THE
MOST BELOVED DEEDS TO ALLAH ARE THOSE WHICH ARE DONE CONTINUOUSLY, EVEN I F
THEY ARE SMALL. [AL BUKHARI]
6
(ACTUALLY, 7!) DAILY QUARANTINE QUESTIONS
CCH'S #7 Daily
Quarantine Question:
7. What did I do to serve GOD today?
The 6 question “post-it”
was created by Brooke Anderson. The list is simple enough but I’ve included a
few of her explanations because they are so wise.
#2. Who am I checking in on, or connecting with, today?
As many have rightly reframed it, it’s not social distance we
need, but rather social solidarity while we maintain physical
distance. Pick three people each day to check in on.
#4. How am I getting outside today?
Nature, fresh air, and sunshine are good for our nervous systems.
While not all of us may be able to get to the redwoods or the ocean, simply
leaving the house is helpful.
#5. How am I moving my body today?
Crisis heightens fear and anxiety. The more we can shift out of
our heads and into our bodies, the more grounded we’ll feel.
#6. What beauty am I creating, cultivating, or inviting in today?
Beauty is a powerful antidote to despair. Recognizing the beauty
in the world and bringing it into our lives is an affirmation of the life that
still exists and is worth fighting for. Becoming creators, not just consumers,
of culture gives us agency and power.
Brooke Anderson, March
24, 2020
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_daily_questions_to_ask_yourself_in_quarantine
(accessed: Sunday, April
19, 2020)
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