Terrapin Station

THE BIG DAY AT ST. MARTIN'S

Today was a BIG CELEBRATION at church. We celebrated the Feast of All Saints (transferred from Nov. 2) and also our pledge ingathering. 

I acolyted at both services.

Fr. Scot dressed as Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and taught the history of the church and the Book of Common Prayer from that persona. 

(if you don't behave he might clock you with that big ole thing)

At the early service, it was a regular sermon/history lesson that reminded me that a lot of people really behaved very badly around all of that. Sheesh. And we have a denomination built on it. 

At the 10:30 family service, it was a lesson/skit with audience participation. Uproarious.

The processional included 2 vergers, a thurifer, a banner, a brass band of sorts (we processed to Oh When the Saints Go Marching In), a parade of little ones dressed up like saints, 2 priests, a deacon, and a cherry on top! Wow. I was crucifer, third in line, so I really didn't get the full effect. I'm looking forward to seeing the photos. 

As usual on first Sunday, the kids gathered around for the Eucharistic Prayer and put their elbows on the altar. We used Rite I, as it's closer to Cranmer's language. I loved it so much. I wanted to lie down and roll around in it. Fortunately for everyone I managed to refrain. 

At communion one of the littles dropped her host on the ground. I collected and ate it. I was reminded of the last time when I took home communion to someone and dropped ALL the hosts on the floor. Oh my. I'm grateful at least that I am not in the days of Mary Queen of Scots when we would probably all have been beheaded or something. 

Did I mention that it was pledge ingathering? yes, and there was a potluck after the second service to celebrate. I didn't stay because I needed to get home for some phonebanking. 

Looking forward to Election Day when all this hoohah can be over. Grateful that Trinity Episcopal in Fort Worth is hosting a day-long prayer vigil and Noonday Prayer. It's what's keeping me from flying off the planet right now. 

Be blessed, y'all. 

Maundy Thursday Thoughts, random

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.  - 1 Cor. 10 16-17

Yesterday, I unfriended someone on Facebook (a passing high school acquaintance who will SO not even miss me) who posted a clip of the Crucifixion from The Passion of the Christ with the message, "The true meaning of Good Friday."  NO.  I don't believe we can get to Easter without Good Friday, but neither do I believe that suffering and death are the true meaning of the day.  Life and resurrection are the true meaning. 

And, compassion.  That is the message for today.  Compassion and acceptance. 

St. Francis, College Station

I often talk about the first place that became church to me as an adult...St. Francis Episcopal, College Station.  I love and miss it, even though I love and am devoted to my current church home. 

Often in my path I have thought, "Ah!  This is just where God wants me to be!  THIS is the pinnacle of what God's got for me, it couldn't get any better." 

Hee hee, says God, and shows me differently. 

I am featured in a "where are they now" article in the St. Francis Dance this month.  This link will take you to their website, and if you click "newsletter" on the lower left side of the page and then go to page 7 of the pdf file, you can see the story about me. 

But I am not what is so cool!  What is so cool...is what is going on there now.  Don't miss page 4, which reports on Children's Joy and the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd...a Montessori based program that formed my own spirituality to great extent. 

I have moved on, and they have moved on.  Yet their corporate life is still so crucial to me.  The Great Cloud of Witnesses only grows as we move along in life.  It is not always an easy path...there were about 8 years after I moved here that I grieved for my church home and could not find another.  Sometimes things are difficult; relationships get broken and people get hurt.  I am especially praying for a pastor friend in such a situation.  But...we keep on because that's our call. 

I just received an e-mail from Sally Williams, who was a leader in my (Houston) childhood church and a friend of my parents', and who had read my story in the St. Francis Dance...because she is now a member of that community! 

I truly believe God had me read in the local paper about the marvelous new organ at Church of the Annunciation in order to get me and Ken to head down the highway and check it out. 

Our Blessing of the Animals in honor of the Feast of St. Francis will be this Sunday at 2:30 p.m.  Josie and Boudreaux are excited and so am I! 

Thanks be to God!

Good Fences

Over at RevGals we are discussing Good Fences:  The Boundaries of Hospitality by Caroline A. Westerhoff.  It's a great discussion...go join in!

The part that really hit me with this book was the baptism issue and the hospitality to the Buddhist monks.  IMHO (& I haven't got the benefit of seminary education nor ordination, so it's a very HO), the grace of this action was outstanding. 

As an Episcopalian, and many have commented on this thread, it troubles me much that we have a statement on our parish bulletin that says, "we do not practice a closed Communion...that is, if you are a baptized Christian and receive Communion at your own church, you are welcome to receive with us."  (my memory of the wording.)  So, if you're already saved, come on up....

And, yet, the Feast of St. Matthew was celebrated last week and here is part of the gospel (Matt. 9:9-13): 

"As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
"While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples.
When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

"On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

I wanted to jump right up in church and say, HEY!  WHAT UP!?  Who do we think we are by closing our Communion and including just us...who are presumably "the healthy"?  (More or less; a lot of times less!)

I get the theology of the importance of the sacrament of baptism (the font in my church is by the door...the altar is in front) and the reasons for the attachment of participation in Communion to it.  I'm not easy with it, though.

In a discussion of this recently, a friend said, "Well, if they weren't baptized, why would they WANT to take Communion?" 

Well, I said, to be A PART OF this community, that's why.  This is where I and this particular friend depart ways...she is more "God said it, I believe it, that settles it," and I am more "Jesus didn't say, 'only allow baptized folks to come to communion' so don't let 'em come..."

Said in another way...I believe God calls me to be hospitable in the world.  She believes that people have to follow her rules, then it's right to include them.  I don't want to be part of that club. 

This friend is a cradle Episcopalian who has recently departed the church for an Anglican congregation.  Because, according to her, our Presiding Bishop is all about good works and not about the Gospel. 

And to me...our hospitality IS the Gospel. 

Redeemer Bread

I spent a lot of time at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer when I was little (6-9?)  This really blurry pic is the enormous mural on the front wall of the sanctuary. 

It was the center of a tremendous renewal in the church at that time.  My parents were going down there a couple of times a week for worship, while maintaining regular Sunday attendance and membership at our west side parish.  They had amazing programs for youth as well as adults and did groundbreaking work in the community. 

Cheesehead's post about varieties of communion bread made me think of Redeemer Bread, which was used for Eucharist there.  When I went to St. Francis College Station, where Jeff Schiffmayer, late of Redeemer, was our vicar, we always used it there too.  His multitalented wife, Sylvia, was our baker. 

Love. this.  Give it a try & let me know what you think...

Houston Redeemer Bread

Makes two loaves

1 cup all-bran cereal (nuggets,
not flakes)
1 stick butter
3/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon salt
2 packages of dry yeast
2 eggs, slightly beaten
6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Pour 2 cups of boiling water over cereal, butter, honey, and salt mixture. Stir to mix. Cool until lukewarm.

Dissolve dry yeast in a half cup warm water. Add yeast mixture to other cooled mixture. Add eggs and flour. The bread will be too sticky to knead so just mix well.

Cover and let rise for 60 to 90 minutes until double in size. Punch down and place into two large, greased loaf pans. Let rise for another 30 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Today in Church...

Today in church...

• Heard an awfully fine sermon from My Favorite Seminarian, one which has convicted me that I need to seriously consider and pray about going on our annual mission trip to Navajoland next summer.  Oh, my, there are so many reasons why I haven't gone along on this trip.  In the meantime, as she preached I remembered an uncomfortable conversation I had with God as a teenager, "I want to be a Christian, and all, but I don't want to be a MISSIONARY."  (Trust me, I know that one week in Bluff, Utah does not a missionary make!)
• We had a visiting priest - a woman!  I think she was there because our rector had planned to be out of town.  I had the delight of seeing a woman deacon and a woman Gospeller, two separate people serving AT THE SAME TIME.  Such visions are few and far between around here. 
• My friend S. was there!  She is scheduled to deliver her third child by Caesarean tomorrow.  This is a sweet baby girl who we initially feared would come very early...like, at 32 weeks.  But she has gone to full term and that is a great blessing!  She had baby Emma with her (9 months) and looked great. 
• My friend C. and her family were there, too...my first time to meet her newly adopted daughter from China.  A darling baby! 
• The announcements took for-freaking-ever
• Fr. David carried on the conversational tone from the announcements to the Eucharistic table by going off on a long riff about when or whether we should kneel or stand during Eucharistic Prayer C, and why.  Mercy!
• As I left the loft for communion, our wonderful organist signalled to me to pass her the hymnal she needed for the Eucharistic hymn.  Since she was improvising with one hand, I offered to open the book for her.  "What page?" I hissed.  "861," she said.  I took about forever to get it open and place on the rack in front of her.  (She was improvising all this time.)  She looked puzzledly at the music, which was an arrangment of "In Paradisum," the part of the funeral service that is chanted at the committal.  Then she started flipping back to get to the CORRECT piece, numbered 816.  Much more appropriate for a communion hymn. 
• I had to stop on the stairs and laugh hysterically at the idea of folks wondering why they were hearing "In Paradisum" at the Eucharist. 
• Sally (organist) didn't need my help, clearly.  She could improvise for hours while finding her own page number plus cooking a full Italian meal and diapering a baby.
• After church we went into the chapel and tied knots in a flannel prayer blanket for my friend Janet.  You have probably seen this done...each knot contains a prayer.  Here's a photo of some folks knotting one...ours will have to be washed and sterilized before it can be given to her, because the chemo is going to wreck her immune system.  But the prayers will certainly not wash out. 
• 
• On the way to church I cross the Lake Lewisville bridge.  That lake - is 9 feet above its "full" level.  That lake - was very, very close to that bridge. 
• It's starting to rain again.

So Much of Jesus, So Little of Us

Over at Cheesehead's place, they were talking about the paucity of the Communion bread provided in some churches.  Like, a leftover bun, or a pita bread, or little perfectly-sized cubes of white bread (Jesus Croutons! hey, what a great name for a punk band!)  In my parish, we use what was referred to in that discussion as "Jeezits," (tee hee) which I don't much like but I grew up on.

Cheese wondered why her people were so afraid to bring a LARGE LOAF, despite having been asked to do so.  As she said, "I have my work cut out for me."

It seems a symptom of our being unable to imagine taking the very best and biggest of what God has to offer us...that we can't imagine PROVIDING a large loaf in the first place!  And the conversation reminded me of something overheard in Catechesis (AKA Godly Play) at St. Francis, College Station, many years ago.

We were doing the pouring lesson, and talking about how in the Eucharist, the priest pours a generous amount of wine from the cruet into the pitcher (word choice?), and a little bit of water.  The first one represents the Blood of Christ, and the second, our participation. 

 

In Godly Play, the children watch the demonstraton and then do the action themselves.  And one little boy murmured, as he did the pouring work,

"So much of Jesus.....so little of us......."

He had the mystery, folks, and he was all of four years old.