Lodging and Directions

Lodging:

Given that this year’s Annual Meeting is a one-day event, there will not be a block of hotel rooms with a negotiated rate set aside for ECW. However, if you’d like to arrive in Raleigh a day early or stay later, here’s a listing of hotels within a 30-minute drive of St. Augustine’s University.

Directions to Saint Augustine’s University:

Saint Augustine’s (www.st-aug.edu) is located at 1315 Oakwood Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27610. The meeting will be held in the Chapel and the Prezell R. Robinson Library, both located adjacent to parking just off of Oakwood Avenue – see the map below.

From the east:

• Approach Raleigh on I-40 E

• Use the right 2 lanes to take exit 289 for Wade Avenue I-440/US-1 N – continue onto Wade Avenue

• In a little over 6 miles, slight right onto US-70 E/Wade Ave (signs for N Carolina 50 S/Downtown/Capital Boulevard S)

• In about half a mile, take the exit toward Peace St

• In 0.1 mi, turn left onto W Peace St

• In 0.4 mi, turn right onto N Blount St

• In 0.2 mi, turn left onto E North St

• In one block, turn left onto N Person St, then immediately turn right onto Oakwood Ave

• In 0.8 mi, Saint Augustine’s University will be on your left

From the west:

• Approach Raleigh on I-495/US-64 W

• Use the 2nd from the right lane to take exit 419 for interstate 440 W toward U.S. 1/Wake Forest

• In 0.5 mi, use the left lane to merge onto I-440 W

• In 0.8 mi, take exit 13A to merge onto New Bern Ave toward Downtown

• Continue on New Bern Ave for about 2 mi, then turn right onto Lord Berkley Rd

• In 0.5 mi, at the traffic circle, take the 3rd exit onto Oakwood Ave

• In 0.6 mi, Saint Augustine’s University will be on your right

When you arrive at St. Augustine’s main gate, stop at the information booth for directions to the parking area closest to the Prezell R. Robinson Library (which can be seen from the information booth.). The Episcopal Church Women’s gathering will begin and end near the library’s main entrance. Volunteers will be present to guide you.

(Click on map to download larger document)

Meet the Keynoter

Our guide for this event will be the Rev. Jill Staton Bullard. Not only is Jill a deacon at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in downtown Durham, she’s the nationally recognized co-founder and Executive Director of the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, a food rescue organization serving the central area of North Carolina.

She started the Food Shuttle, which is headquartered in Raleigh, with her friend Maxine Solomon in 1989 and was the first active volunteer. The shuttle’s early operations were out of Jill’s house, with freezers filling the garage and paperwork filling the dining room table. She has overseen its growth from a small grass roots movement to a driving force in the fight against hunger, currently employing a fleet of 11 refrigerated trucks, a staff of 24, and a workforce of 400-plus regular volunteers who offered 34,000 volunteer hours last year. The Food Shuttle offers food service in two locations, providing meals to over 300 people each day. During the summer, over 1,400 people receive meals each day, as the Food Shuttle is the primary provider of Summer Food Service Program meals in the Triangle region to needy children.

She has served on the National Council of America’s Second Harvest, the national Board of Directors of Society of St. Andrew, the North Carolina Food Policy Council, the Park Scholarship Advisory Council at North Carolina State University, and the Steering Committee of the North Carolina Hunger Summit. She chaired the America’s Second Harvest Service Planning Committee for Food Rescue and is currently a member of the Contract Task Force. Jill is a founding director of NC Hunters for the Hungry, having served as president after serving as treasurer for three years, and has served on the national board of Foodchain.

Her work has been featured in national textbooks, magazine articles and books on the anti-hunger movement. She has been awarded the Exemplar Award from The University of Notre Dame, the University of Notre Dame Award of the Year for Community Service, The William C. Friday Park Scholar Award for Excellence in Leadership, the Salvation Army’s Others Award, the Individual Award for Outstanding Service to the Citizens of Raleigh by the City of Raleigh Human Relations Commission, and received the 2006 Triangle Business Journal’s Women in Business Award. She was ordained in the Episcopal Church in June of 2008.

Feeding our souls so we are better equipped to do the work God has given us to do will be the Rt. Rev. Michael B. Curry. Bishop Curry will give the homily at Holy Eucharist on Friday, November 6th. The morning devotion on Saturday will include a specially designed Stations of the Cross for hunger.

Join us, won’t you?

When: Friday, November 2 and Saturday, November 3, 2018

Where: St. Michael’s Episcopal Church,
1520 Canterbury Rd., Raleigh, NC

Holy Eucharist: The Rev. David F. Sellery,
Canon for Congregational Mission, and

The Rev. Samuel Gregory Jones,
Rector, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church

Been in a heated argument recently? Differing views about government, legislation, how children should be raised, how money should be spent, and a myriad of other subjects can easily escalate into hurtful and harmful words. This program will give you insight, understanding and tools to help you navigate today’s volatile topics ranging from family and religion to politics. We will also address some of the characteristics of our culture which seek to pull us from a peaceful heart, such as over-busyness, technology and the “I-can-do-it-all” syndrome.

Our guide will be the ancient and relevant 6th century Rule of Benedict, along with other contemporary voices of wisdom. Benedict lived in tumultuous times not unlike ours. He can help us learn to be a presence of grace and hope as we struggle with others over the issues and conversations of today. We can become peace-makers cen- tered in Christ, and in the process, receive the gift of maintaining our own sanity!

The Rev. Dr. Jane Tomaine is a priest in the Diocese of Newark, New Jersey and a nationally known retreat leader. She is the author of the Tenth Anniversary Edition: St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Benedictine Living (Morehouse 2015) and The Rule of Benedict: Christian Monastic Wisdom for Daily Living (Skylight Paths Publishing, 2016).

Raised in Minneapolis, Jane received a Bachelor of Music degree from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, and a Master of Music degree from Ohio State University, both in organ performance. Following an eighteen-year career with the Bell System and AT&T, Jane was ordained a priest in 1995, earning a Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Ministry degrees from the Theological School of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.

Jane served as rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Livingston, New Jersey for 12 ½ years, leaving parish ministry in April 2008 in order to pursue a ministry of teaching and writing on Benedictine Spirituality. She currently leads retreats and workshops at parishes, monasteries and retreat centers, and is a Priest Associate at Calvary Episcopal Church in Summit, New Jersey where she offers a weekly 7am Holy Eucharist, Evening Prayer and leads the Benedictines of Calvary, a spirituality group. Jane and her now-retired husband John live in Mountainside, New Jersey where they are serving staff to four family members — Ricky, Esperanza (Espy, for short), Nikki and Winnie – the resident cats.

Pledging To Make It All Possible

The constitution and by-laws of the ECW of North Carolina state, “To have voting privileges (at the Annual Meeting) a Church must have paid a pledge to the Diocesan Church Women’s budget for the current year.” These funds help to carry out the work of women’s ministries throughout the Anglican Communion, our country, our province and our diocese.

While our yearly gathering is open to all, those churches current with their pledge are entitled to send up to five voting delegates to Annual Meeting. Anyone belonging to a church that does not have an ECW and who would like to participate in the Annual Meeting as a voting member can pay $10.00 in the name of their church and be entitled to voting delegate status.

The diocesan ECW treasurer, Kathy MacLeod, has mailed statements to current pledging churches. Contact her at treasurer@ecw-nc.org or (919) 787-7012 if you didn’t receive your statement or have questions about it.

Communication with churches will be via electronic format. Requests for printed statements and/or documents will be available for $10.00 per year, beginning Thursday January 31, 2019.

Stories Are Begging to be Told

One of our contributions to the diocese’s bicentennial celebration will be By Word and Example: Women Who Have Graced the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, 1817-2017. This success of this ambitious long-term project will rely on the gathering of information from people in places large and small throughout all three dioceses (remember, we used to be just one diocese).

Lynn Hoke, archivist and historian for the ECW of the Diocese of NC, is spearheading this project. Read all about it by clicking on the By Word & Example link. Lynn is also happy to visit your parish to talk about how to collect the stories of the women, past and present, who helped nurture its growth. We want to help you tell the story of how these women, in their own special ways, believed out loud.

ENGRAVED WITH LOVE:
CHURCH MEMORIALS TELL THEIR STORIES

by Lynn R. Hoke, ECW Archivist/Historian

A church memorial turns out to be more than a beautiful work of art or a generous gift of money. A memorial can point beyond itself – to the honoree, and to the donor, as well.  In earlier centuries a memorial was often the only place besides a gravestone where a woman’s full name appeared in public. At the upcoming Annual Meeting we will continue the ECW history initiative to “name” the many women who came before us and to share their stories. Two memorials in the Durham Convocation show us how to start answering the question, “What’s the story here?”

What’s the story behind the Eagle Lectern at Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill? Actually, the Diocese of North Carolina gave this lectern as a memorial to MARY RUFFIN SMITH, who at her death left the larger part of her Orange County land holdings to the Diocese. Miss Smith also provided many gifts to the parish, and she figures prominently in the story of another woman – PAULI MURRAY – the first black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest, and the first woman to celebrate the Holy Eucharist at Chapel of the Cross. Pauli Murray was a descendant of one of the slaves who came to church with Mary Ruffin Smith every Sunday and sat in the balcony. Research into the lives of both these women is ongoing as part of the Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center in Durham. 

What’s the story that led several donors to honor BESSIE BELLE BLACKNALL by giving the engraved Book of Remembrance to Henderson’s Church of the Holy Innocents? At Holy Innocents in 1914 Bessie Blacknall attended a Missionary Institute sponsored by the Diocesan Woman’s Auxiliary (now known as ECW.) Inspired then to volunteer for service in Alaska, she spent the next 27 years there. Her dedication likewise inspired 20 members of the Julian E. Ingle Branch of the Woman’s Auxiliary to honor her with a crazy quilt, stitched with their initials and sent with love to St. Mark’s Mission in Nenana, Alaska. When Bessie finally returned home she donated the quilt to the church, where it waits today for preservation and display. A list of the names that coincide with the quilt’s initials, alongside a photo of Bessie in native Alaskan dress, hangs in a small frame on the back wall of the Parish House. Twenty more names … at least twenty more stories!

Look around – what stories will your memorials tell? The Diocesan ECW wants to help you share them.

In Remembrance

Reading from The Book of Remembrance is a cherished tradition at the annual meetings of the Episcopal Church Women of the Diocese of North Carolina.

All churches are invited to submit a list of ECW members who have died since the previous Annual Meeting for inclusion in The Book of Remembrance.

If you have a name or names you want enrolled in the book, the requests must be postmarked by Friday, October 19, 2018 in order to be read aloud at the Holy Eucharist on Friday, November 2.

A Book of Remembrance enrollment form can be downloaded below. You may submit multiple names, but please use a separate form for each name. Forms should be mailed to:

Gertrude Murchison
3025 Airport Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27105-4058

Questions? Contact Gertrude at (336) 767-4635 or via email to winstonsalem@ecw-nc.org.

Download the form in Adobe PDF format

Download the form in Microsoft Word format

In Remembrance

Reading from The Book of Remembrance is a cherished tradition at the annual meetings of the Episcopal Church Women of the Diocese of North Carolina.

All ECW branches are invited to submit a list of members who have died since the previous Annual Meeting for inclusion in The Book of Remembrance.

If you have a name or names you want enrolled in the book, the requests must be postmarked by Friday, October 20, 2017 in order to be read aloud at the Holy Eucharist on Friday, November 3.

A Book of Remembrance enrollment form can be downloaded below. You may submit multiple names, but please use a separate form for each name. Forms should be mailed to:

Gertrude Murchison
3025 Airport Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27105-4058

Questions? Contact Gertrude at (336) 767-4635

Download the form in Adobe PDF format

Download the form in Microsoft Word format

Annual Meeting 2016 – Book of Remembrance

In Remembrance

Reading from The Book of Remembrance is a cherished tradition at the annual meetings of the Episcopal Church Women of the Diocese of North Carolina.

All ECW branches are invited to submit a list of members who have died since the previous Annual Meeting for inclusion in The Book of Remembrance.

If you have a name or names you want enrolled in the book, the requests must be postmarked by Thursday, October 20, 2016 in order to be read aloud at the Annual Meeting on November 4th.

A Book of Remembrance enrollment form can be downloaded below. You may submit multiple names, but please put only one name on a form. Forms should be mailed to:

Gertrude Murchison
3025 Airport Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27105-4058

Questions? Contact Gertrude at (336) 767-4635

Download the form in Adobe PDF format

Download the form in Microsoft Word format