Despite a separation of half-a-century, it seems that two historic eras are now fading away:
Frank Buckles, Last World War I Doughboy, Is Dead at 110
and
’60s Muse Dies
Monday, February 28, 2011
Obituaries Of Note
Despite a separation of half-a-century, it seems that two historic eras are now fading away:
Frank Buckles, Last World War I Doughboy, Is Dead at 110
and
’60s Muse Dies
Thanks To The Church School Kids
I'm not sure everyone heard about this, but the boys and girls, and young men and women, of our church school sent Valentine's Day cards to members of the Marine Corps' 1st Battalion/4th Marines, currently stationed in California and preparing for deployment overseas. Also included were phone cards which will enable the Marines to call home, even from some ordinarily desolate areas.
They're good kids and I'm proud to serve them as rector.
[The dragon which appears on the patch above harks back to the days when the 1/4 Marines were known as the "China Marines", as that was where they were stationed from 1927 until 1941, until they were deployed to defend the Philippines in the early days of US involvement in WWII. In recent years, they have been heavily involved in Iraq.]
An Update From New Zealand
Christ Church Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, which was significantly damaged in the recent earthquake [see a before and after photo here], will have to be razed and re-built.
Always a symbol, now one of loss, cathedral to be rebuilt, Christchurch mayor says
Always a symbol, now one of loss, cathedral to be rebuilt, Christchurch mayor says
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Eighth Sunday After Epiphany
The lections may be found here.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
A Request From The Rector
As I mentioned on Sunday, please keep Jack Rowland, our music director, in your prayers. There will be a brief prayer service for healing offered tomorrow at Christ Church shortly after Noon.
O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in
time of need: We humbly beseech thee to behold, visit, and
relieve thy sick servant Jack for whom our prayers are desired.
Look upon him with the eyes of thy mercy; comfort him with
a sense of thy goodness; preserve him from the temptations
of the enemy; and give him patience under his affliction. In
thy good time, restore him to health, and enable him to lead
the residue of his life in thy fear, and to thy glory; and grant
that finally he may dwell with thee in life everlasting; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in
time of need: We humbly beseech thee to behold, visit, and
relieve thy sick servant Jack for whom our prayers are desired.
Look upon him with the eyes of thy mercy; comfort him with
a sense of thy goodness; preserve him from the temptations
of the enemy; and give him patience under his affliction. In
thy good time, restore him to health, and enable him to lead
the residue of his life in thy fear, and to thy glory; and grant
that finally he may dwell with thee in life everlasting; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
A Prayer For New Zealanders
God of mercy, comfort those who are grieving, give peace to those who have died and protect those who are working to save lives. Strengthen the Christchurch community for the long period of recovery and healing ahead. Help us to support them through prayer and compassion. Amen.
If so moved, Episcopal Relief and Development is accepting online donations for relief efforts. Remember, this is the organization that presented us with a plaque last year for our work with their Haitian relief efforts. One hundred percent of all donations is used for relief rather than shared with administrative costs. Their website may be found at this link.
Above are before and after photos of our cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand. Appropriately, it is Christ Church Cathedral.
Today In Christian History
February 23, 155 (traditional date): Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, is martyred. Reportedly a disciple of the Apostle John, at age 86 he was taken to be burned at the stake. "You try to frighten me with fire that burns for an hour and forget the fire of hell that never burns out," he said. The flames, legend says, would not touch him, and when he was run through with a sword, his blood put the fire out.
February 23, 303: Diocletian begins his "Great Persecution," issuing edicts that call for church buildings to be destroyed, sacred writings burned, Christians to lose civil rights, and clergy to be imprisoned and forced to sacrifice. The following year he went even further, ordering all people to sacrifice on pain of death.
February 23, 1455 (traditional date): Johannes Gutenberg publishes the Bible, the first book ever printed on a press with movable type.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
An Obituary Of Note
Chuck Allen, Who Championed Surfing and Snowboarding, Dies at 74
Most important, he founded the National Scholastic Surfing Association.
Most important, he founded the National Scholastic Surfing Association.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Today In Christian History
February 21, 1109: Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury recognized as the "founder of Scholasticism," dies. One of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages, his treatise Why Did God Become Man was the greatest medieval treatise on the atonement. He is also known for his ontological argument for the existence of God.
February 21, 1142: Medieval French philosopher, teacher, and theologian Peter Abelard dies. Abelard made his most important contribution in establishing a critical methodology for theology. Irritated with some of the unreasoning pietism of other monks, he wrote Yes and No, compiling the (sometimes conflicting) sayings of the Bible and church fathers on various controversial subjects.
February 21, 1173: Pope Alexander III canonizes Thomas Becket three years after the Archbishop of Canterbury's martyrdom at the hands of King Henry II's knights.
February 21, 1801: John Henry Newman, Anglican leader of the Oxford Movement, is born in London. The movement sought to reform the Church of England in a "high church" direction, but Newman left the church in 1845 to become a Catholic—a choice he explained in his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864).
February 21, 1945: Eric Liddell, the Scottish Olympian whose story is told in the film Chariots of Fire, dies of a brain tumor. In 1925, he had joined the staff of the Anglo-Chinese Christian College in Tientsin, China (his birthplace). He was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and died just before his scheduled release.
February 21, 1142: Medieval French philosopher, teacher, and theologian Peter Abelard dies. Abelard made his most important contribution in establishing a critical methodology for theology. Irritated with some of the unreasoning pietism of other monks, he wrote Yes and No, compiling the (sometimes conflicting) sayings of the Bible and church fathers on various controversial subjects.
February 21, 1173: Pope Alexander III canonizes Thomas Becket three years after the Archbishop of Canterbury's martyrdom at the hands of King Henry II's knights.
February 21, 1801: John Henry Newman, Anglican leader of the Oxford Movement, is born in London. The movement sought to reform the Church of England in a "high church" direction, but Newman left the church in 1845 to become a Catholic—a choice he explained in his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864).
February 21, 1945: Eric Liddell, the Scottish Olympian whose story is told in the film Chariots of Fire, dies of a brain tumor. In 1925, he had joined the staff of the Anglo-Chinese Christian College in Tientsin, China (his birthplace). He was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and died just before his scheduled release.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Seventh Sunday After The Epiphany
I'm terribly late with this today, so I beg forgiveness.
This week we hear the Leviticus version of The Law, Paul warns of the errant craftiness of human leaders [like any of us don't know that by now], and Jesus takes that which people have heard and fulfils it in their presence. All this plus when the waves change and how scientists just don't get it.
The lections may be found here.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Today In Christian History
February 18, 1546: German reformer Martin Luther dies in Eisleben.
February 18, 1564: Michelangelo Buonarroti, the Italian Renaissance artist whose works include the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, dies.
February 18, 1678: Puritan preacher John Bunyan publishes The Pilgrim's Progress. The allegorical tale, which describes Bunyan's own conversion process, begins, "I saw a man clothed with rags … a book in his hand and a great burden upon his back".
February 18, 1688: Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, issue America's first formal protest of slavery.
February 18, 1564: Michelangelo Buonarroti, the Italian Renaissance artist whose works include the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, dies.
February 18, 1678: Puritan preacher John Bunyan publishes The Pilgrim's Progress. The allegorical tale, which describes Bunyan's own conversion process, begins, "I saw a man clothed with rags … a book in his hand and a great burden upon his back".
February 18, 1688: Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, issue America's first formal protest of slavery.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
The Feast Of Cyril And Methodius
This Was Too Long To Fit On A Birthday Card
Besides, it would embarrass her. So, you can read it instead:
Surfers know something about Valentine’s Day or, as it is known around our house, The Feast of St. Valentine. Valentine was an irregular saint, to be sure, dropped from the Roman martyrology for reasons that still seem unclear, but then I’ve never really understood the politics of canonization. But for all of the candy hearts and increasingly expensive greeting cards, there is something that happens in his octave that is the portent for all good things to come. Namely, in mid-February, the shape of the waves begins to change.
There will be many who will dispute this, but those would be people who limit their understanding of nature to the sciences of meteorology or physics or astronomy. Some of us still use the ancient art, so liminal as to be pre-verbal, of rud a bheithsa dúchas agat to understand tides and gravity. We so often watch the waves, are so often immersed in them, observant of their nature and their potential for transport, that, in a crude translation from the Celtic above, “their nature is in our blood”. We know that the waves have changed and that winter’s power is diminishing and, even if we should suffer still more snow and ice, it will be of shorter lease and far less strength. In short, we’re through the worst of it.
That’s the first, and least important thing, that I note on this day. The second is that it’s my wife’s birthday. While I’ve always been thankful that it falls on a memorable date, so that I don’t become like a grotesque situation comedy husband who forgets his wife’s birthday, I am particularly pleased that it is an event that carries far more importance and relativity than what may be expressed in an abstract Valentine. While I am the one socially bound to offer her a gift, today I also recognize a gift that I receive from her. Not only is her love as constant as that of the Almighty’s, but I have come to particularly appreciate the grace she displays when she fulfills the duties of her call to ordained ministry. There are times when I cannot fathom how she does it.
We were just married when Jenni became the first woman hired by a tony parish in Connecticut; later, upon the departure of the rector, she became the acting rector of the parish. Again, this was a first for the congregation and one that was not well received by all of them. In the 1980’s, there were still too many who believed that ordained ministry was not something for women. Those who held this prejudice were of both genders, I might add. Thus, every decision she made, every action in which she engaged, was strongly scrutinized. Despite that, she prevailed in ensuring that the parish prospered, the giving increased, a new assistant was hired [one who would later be a candidate for bishop], a lovely and appropriate memorial garden was built, a complicated wedding arranged by the more-complicated Martha Stewart was celebrated, and the burial office was read both for a U.S. congressman and for the teenage son of the senior warden, tragically killed in a terrible auto accident. The scrutiny relaxed after these events, especially since they were all squeezed into twelve months. Clearly, she could do the job.
She was then called to be the rector of a parish in the Berkshires. Again, the first ordained woman ever to celebrate the Eucharist and, again, the subject of scrutiny. A few people left the church upon hearing the news of a female rector; others came to see if they could find something, anything, about which to complain for the remainder of her tenure. The couple in the pew in front of me on her first Sunday muttered during the length of the liturgy about the inappropriateness of a woman behind the altar until, somewhere in the middle of the Eucharistic prayer, I told them both, in the name of our Lord and Savior, to shut the hell up. It didn’t matter as the parish prospered, new things were done, infants and adults baptized, couples married, and the faithful bid to the reaches of the Kingdom. When Jenni suffered a brain aneurysm while in the pulpit, and the best the doctors could hope for was a partial recovery of speech and motor function, with one physician even suggesting that giving her last rites “would not be inappropriate”, the treasurer of the parish held a meeting to convince the vestry to reduce her position to part-time. As he stated, her brain damage was actually good news for the budget. While this would have reduced me to a near-murderous rage, or at least a life-long Celtic grudge, Jenni’s response was to recover fully and return to work on a full-time basis. After six months, it was as if the aneurysm had never occurred. I seem to recall the treasurer moved out of town later that year. I seem to recall helping him.
She has been in yet another parish for the past fourteen years. Again, the first woman and, well, you know the rest by now. Even after nearly thirty years of service in the Episcopal Church, there are some strains of narrow-mindedness that resist time, change, and reason. She still deals with the antics of those for whom sourness is the chief feature of their relationship with a parish. I was amused to hear that a male member of her vestry wanted to chair the vestry meeting the other day, as he believed that he could do so more efficiently than she, mainly by ignoring the Canons and eliminating any spiritual reference from the assembly. With her permission, he did so. The meeting took over two hours. I could have reminded him that my wife has been running vestry meetings since he was a pimply whelp, but that would not have permitted him to realize how well the words “hoist” and “petard” work together in a sentence. Well, history generates through people and their experiences, and some folks cannot be blamed for the simplistic provincialism that doesn’t permit them to see what is manifest in my wife’s long and eventful service in the Church. Sometimes small towns in Connecticut seem a lot like small towns in the Ozarks. Except with a country club, of course.
It is my lot as a husband to permit these petty sufferings to attract my attention, but Jenni never seems to regard them as anything other than unimportant portions of the curious responsibility to which we have been called by God. For her the job is about those who pray in strength and weakness, who fight the good fight, who keep the faith; for her it is the infant lofted above the font, the children who work the Epiphany puppets, the couple who kneel before the altar at their nuptials, the kind and good man for whom the burial office is read. Every congregation will bear those who have been rendered sour by their inability to truly hear the Word of God, even when it is revealed again and again through the positive life of a parish. But congregations, and clergy, live by the good works of the muscular Christians who ennoble parishes and invite all to come before the altar, even those who seem the least able or willing to comprehend it.
So, on her birthday, I thank Jenni for always presenting me with examples as to how to be a good priest; one who strives in grace and truth, one who sees the good inherent in any human undertaking, who suffers fools gladly, and who locks each day in prayerful intention. I also thank her for her love, without which I would never have known the good life we enjoy, the great achievements we have experienced, or the simple, plain fun that has marked our common life and our mutual service to God.
Surfers know something about Valentine’s Day or, as it is known around our house, The Feast of St. Valentine. Valentine was an irregular saint, to be sure, dropped from the Roman martyrology for reasons that still seem unclear, but then I’ve never really understood the politics of canonization. But for all of the candy hearts and increasingly expensive greeting cards, there is something that happens in his octave that is the portent for all good things to come. Namely, in mid-February, the shape of the waves begins to change.
There will be many who will dispute this, but those would be people who limit their understanding of nature to the sciences of meteorology or physics or astronomy. Some of us still use the ancient art, so liminal as to be pre-verbal, of rud a bheithsa dúchas agat to understand tides and gravity. We so often watch the waves, are so often immersed in them, observant of their nature and their potential for transport, that, in a crude translation from the Celtic above, “their nature is in our blood”. We know that the waves have changed and that winter’s power is diminishing and, even if we should suffer still more snow and ice, it will be of shorter lease and far less strength. In short, we’re through the worst of it.
That’s the first, and least important thing, that I note on this day. The second is that it’s my wife’s birthday. While I’ve always been thankful that it falls on a memorable date, so that I don’t become like a grotesque situation comedy husband who forgets his wife’s birthday, I am particularly pleased that it is an event that carries far more importance and relativity than what may be expressed in an abstract Valentine. While I am the one socially bound to offer her a gift, today I also recognize a gift that I receive from her. Not only is her love as constant as that of the Almighty’s, but I have come to particularly appreciate the grace she displays when she fulfills the duties of her call to ordained ministry. There are times when I cannot fathom how she does it.
We were just married when Jenni became the first woman hired by a tony parish in Connecticut; later, upon the departure of the rector, she became the acting rector of the parish. Again, this was a first for the congregation and one that was not well received by all of them. In the 1980’s, there were still too many who believed that ordained ministry was not something for women. Those who held this prejudice were of both genders, I might add. Thus, every decision she made, every action in which she engaged, was strongly scrutinized. Despite that, she prevailed in ensuring that the parish prospered, the giving increased, a new assistant was hired [one who would later be a candidate for bishop], a lovely and appropriate memorial garden was built, a complicated wedding arranged by the more-complicated Martha Stewart was celebrated, and the burial office was read both for a U.S. congressman and for the teenage son of the senior warden, tragically killed in a terrible auto accident. The scrutiny relaxed after these events, especially since they were all squeezed into twelve months. Clearly, she could do the job.
She was then called to be the rector of a parish in the Berkshires. Again, the first ordained woman ever to celebrate the Eucharist and, again, the subject of scrutiny. A few people left the church upon hearing the news of a female rector; others came to see if they could find something, anything, about which to complain for the remainder of her tenure. The couple in the pew in front of me on her first Sunday muttered during the length of the liturgy about the inappropriateness of a woman behind the altar until, somewhere in the middle of the Eucharistic prayer, I told them both, in the name of our Lord and Savior, to shut the hell up. It didn’t matter as the parish prospered, new things were done, infants and adults baptized, couples married, and the faithful bid to the reaches of the Kingdom. When Jenni suffered a brain aneurysm while in the pulpit, and the best the doctors could hope for was a partial recovery of speech and motor function, with one physician even suggesting that giving her last rites “would not be inappropriate”, the treasurer of the parish held a meeting to convince the vestry to reduce her position to part-time. As he stated, her brain damage was actually good news for the budget. While this would have reduced me to a near-murderous rage, or at least a life-long Celtic grudge, Jenni’s response was to recover fully and return to work on a full-time basis. After six months, it was as if the aneurysm had never occurred. I seem to recall the treasurer moved out of town later that year. I seem to recall helping him.
She has been in yet another parish for the past fourteen years. Again, the first woman and, well, you know the rest by now. Even after nearly thirty years of service in the Episcopal Church, there are some strains of narrow-mindedness that resist time, change, and reason. She still deals with the antics of those for whom sourness is the chief feature of their relationship with a parish. I was amused to hear that a male member of her vestry wanted to chair the vestry meeting the other day, as he believed that he could do so more efficiently than she, mainly by ignoring the Canons and eliminating any spiritual reference from the assembly. With her permission, he did so. The meeting took over two hours. I could have reminded him that my wife has been running vestry meetings since he was a pimply whelp, but that would not have permitted him to realize how well the words “hoist” and “petard” work together in a sentence. Well, history generates through people and their experiences, and some folks cannot be blamed for the simplistic provincialism that doesn’t permit them to see what is manifest in my wife’s long and eventful service in the Church. Sometimes small towns in Connecticut seem a lot like small towns in the Ozarks. Except with a country club, of course.
It is my lot as a husband to permit these petty sufferings to attract my attention, but Jenni never seems to regard them as anything other than unimportant portions of the curious responsibility to which we have been called by God. For her the job is about those who pray in strength and weakness, who fight the good fight, who keep the faith; for her it is the infant lofted above the font, the children who work the Epiphany puppets, the couple who kneel before the altar at their nuptials, the kind and good man for whom the burial office is read. Every congregation will bear those who have been rendered sour by their inability to truly hear the Word of God, even when it is revealed again and again through the positive life of a parish. But congregations, and clergy, live by the good works of the muscular Christians who ennoble parishes and invite all to come before the altar, even those who seem the least able or willing to comprehend it.
So, on her birthday, I thank Jenni for always presenting me with examples as to how to be a good priest; one who strives in grace and truth, one who sees the good inherent in any human undertaking, who suffers fools gladly, and who locks each day in prayerful intention. I also thank her for her love, without which I would never have known the good life we enjoy, the great achievements we have experienced, or the simple, plain fun that has marked our common life and our mutual service to God.
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