The National Park Service is calling for national bell ringing as part of Healing Day events being held at Fort Monroe National Monument to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the landing of enslaved Africans in Virginia. Churches and people around the United States and its provinces are encouraged and invited to commemorate and remember with repentance and lamentation the bringing of those first enslaved Africans to this country by tolling the bells of churches on August 25 at 3:00 p.m. Our Presiding bishop, the Most Reverend Michael Curry is inviting all Episcopal Churches to join in this commemoration as part of our continued work of racial healing and reconciliation. Therefore, I invite you to join me at St. Luke’s 3:00 pm Sunday, August 25 to remember those who came as enslaved, to lament the more than 350 years of slavery under which their descendants suffered and the 100 years of violent persecution that followed their “liberation”, to repent of the continuing persistent forms of racism endured by many in our country, and to join them in hoping and proclaiming and praying and working for a new future for us all.