Christmas at St. Mark's: Not so Silent Night

Finally, here are some photos from Christmas Eve night. Bob and his family did a great job of decorating the church (although they hope that someone else will take up the challenge next year) and it looked lovely in the evening. I managed to learn how to take pictures at night with my little digital camera and I wanted to take a picture especially for Dan who was a valued member of St Mark's until his job took him away to the west coast. He is missing us and we are missing him and he said he wished he had St Mark's pictures to share with friends in his new parish. So here they are. St Mark's 5 p.m. service and Scott and Emily getting into the spirit of the Bell Banner during the closing hymn.

Christmas at St Mark's II

A more subdued pre-Christmas party is the party held on a Tuesday in Advent for anyone who would like to attend. Several years ago we had a small faithful group which attended a Tuesday morning eucharist and gradually death and aging decimated the population. Christmas event was begun as a chance for people who could no longer attend church regularly to visit with others and as Christmas gathering for those who can't drive at night or for some other reason choose not to attend the ebullient multigenerational party described in the previous post. Over the years, various people have hosted this party. This year Emily our seminarian hosted and she enlisted her entire family to help her with setting up, cooking and serving. A delightful time was had by all and mothers everywhere are full of compliments about the children's role in the meal.
Here are a couple of pictures from that gathering.

Christmas at St. Mark's I

The St. Mark's "Christmas Party" was held this year on the fourth Sunday of Advent. It must have originated as a party following the hanging of the greens but at some point the party dwarfed the hanging of the greens. This year several of our children played their instruments, flute and violin and all of them did a great job. We had carol singing and then the seemingly inevitable (and not the rector's favorite moment) visit from Santa, to the delight of children and doating parents. Here are some scenes from that joyful chaos,including long time St Markans and a newborn.


Doug and the Nurture Committee did a great job of making sure everyone was invited, we had a good meal at a good price and everyone got home in time for bedtime, since Monday was a school day.

Be Alert

I love it when unexpected things happen in the midst of our very formal liturgy. Until yesterday, my favorite examples were the time the new fire at the Easter Vigil burned so fiercely that we could hardly get near it to light the paschal candle and the year that the pyrex follower on the Paschal Candle exploded on the day of Pentecost. Yesterday, on Advent I, as we processed into church singing "Come, thou long expected Jesus," one of the torch bearers managed to set the spectacular dried arrangement on fire by accident. We kept on calmly processing as the fire spread from the lowest part of the arrangement to higher twigs and flaming grasses fell to the ground. The crucifer/acolyte was on it in a second. He dashed across the altar area and put out the sparks with his bare hands. HE was into the Advent spirit of alertness!

Early on Sunday

Early on Sunday, we arrived in the rain and dark at the Lambert East terminal to send Mo and Anna back to school. It seemed as if every college student studying outside of Missouri was there, too, being sent off by their parents, grimly cheerful, hugging them and getting ready to return to empty nests, watching as they took off shoes and backpacks and jackets and made their way through security and disappeared beyond the barrier. Here I am with Mo and Anna. We look as if we've been up all night partying but in fact I think we got rather disheveled in the cold and windy rain. We tried to get the vintage airplane that hangs in the airport in the background but you can barely see it.

Under construction

Meanwhile, having had a successful capital campaign and designated $35,000 from the Proehl bequest to the project, the vestry has authorized replacement of all five of our flat roofs. The new roofs will be tapered and less likely to have pools of water on them than they were before. No one seems to remember when the last time these roofs were replaced, except for the parish house high roof which was done in 1993. The roofers have been here almost every day with a crane. Sometimes they are working on two roofs at once. For a few days there was a port-a-potty on the office roof but now it is on the grass behind the church. You really have to be here to get the full effect of banging on the roof and of seeing men and women working on the roof. But in case you can't see it for your self, here are some fuzzy crane pix.

Kinloch/Katrina

The week before diocesan convention, Marylen and I went out to see the apartments which are being rehabbed by Faith Beyond Walls/Interfaith Partnership. FBW is working with the city Kinloch to create as many as 31 housing units. They are in the next cul de sac over from some apartments FBW already rehabbed and near a playground FBW helped put up, so they are helping a whole neighborhood to be revived, as well as providing housing for people who have been made homeless by Katrina. The people who will live in these apartments are already living in the Fergson/Florissant school district, so moving into more permanent housing will not disrupt their lives any more than they have already been disrupted by the hurricane itself. FBW is working with Catholic Charities and St Patrick's center to identify the families and offer them the suppor they need to put down roots in a new place. People will be able to live there rent free for six months and then pay a rent scaled to their income. A lot of the work is done by Faith Beyond Walls volunteers from varied faith traditions who come together to work together on projects like this to make a difference in the St Louis community. Below is a picture of the apartments which are being fixed up and of me presenting a check for $5,000 from St Mark's to Beth and Rina from Faith Beyond Walls. The contractor for the work is also in the picture. . I didn't mean to be looking away but I was explaining how the camera worked when I should have been posing. There is still much to be done on the units: window coverings, mail boxes, some appliances. And there are several more units to be rehabbed, after the mold is removed from them. For more on this project and on how you can help, visit Faith Beyond Walls and click on the "Disaster Relief" button.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Anna and Mo are safely home for Thanksgiving. My sister and her family had a safe trip to NYC which included trips to the Met, MOMA, Rockefeller Center and seeing the big balloons blown up on Wednesday evening and then flown on Thursday a.m.

Here at St Mark's Thanksgiving features worshipping with our sisters and brothers at Hope UCC and Gethsemane Lutheran. This year was our turn to host the service. Pastor Kendra Nolde of Gethsemane preached a fine sermon and she read an even more wonderful poem about giving thanks by Gerhard Frost. Steve had done spectacular dried flower arrangements. The offering was for Faith Beyond Walls/Interfaith Partnership's work in rehabbing apartments for people who are settling in St Louis having been flooded out of homes in Louisiana. (More about them below.) Sue from St Mark's made coffee and muffins for coffee hour but most people just dashed home to tend their turkeys or set their tables.

Then we had Thanksgiving dinner at St Mark's parish hall. I can't remember how long we've been doing this for. I refer to it as the "orphans' Thanksgiving dinner" -- it is really for people who don't have extended family to celebrate with or who, for some reason, aren't celebrating with them. This year we had several people from St John's church, including their rector Teresa. We also hosted Bishop Bullen and Fr. John from the Sudan and a gentle who said he'd heard about our dinner at the Friends meeting. There were about 36 of us, I think. At least we set the table for 32 and didn't have enough and had to set up another table. We had a maple glazed "olde New England" recipe from Epicurious.com with an herbed bread stuffing. I forgot to do the maple glazing, however. We also had the orange and basil turkey from Splendid Table. Once carved up they were pretty much indistinguishable. The Spellers also brought roasted brussels sprouts with red peppers, shallots and balsamic vinegar from the Dierberg's Everybody Cooks magazine and mashed potatoes. People brought wonderful and amazing things: mashed potatoes with noodle gravy, sweet potatoes baked with strudle topping, corn pudding, cauliflower cheese, an amazing array of pies, gingerbread and much, much more. Beverly made sure that we had creamed onions, a relish tray and whole berry cranberry sauce, all staples of my childhood Thanksgivings and (thousands of miles away) of hers. My image of Thanksgiving is of gathering as many people as you can around the table and just of eating. Once or twice as a kid, I took part in various Plymouth Thanksgiving costumed processions, back in the days before our eyes were open about the founding Thanksgiving myth. But mostly we just sat around all day and ate. And I realize that some of the people who were fixtures around my grandparents' table may themselves have been people with no extended family to party with: "Uncle John" who never married, varioud dutch uncles and aunts who didn't have children of their own or if they did never spent holidays with them.

Idle hands are...

Several of the needleworkers of the diocese of Missouri sat together for convention. There were others sprinkled throughout the hall, none male as far as I could see. I think it helps me to focus on what is going, helps me to feel productive when what is going on is not terribly constructive and it also makes me think twice before going to a microphone, lest I find myself all tangled up in my knitting. The sock was in attendance at convention but preferred to stay in the room.

A new deacon for MIssouri

This year's diocesan convention was in Columbia MO in a comfortable Holiday Inn hotel. You can read about the formal actions of convention on the diocesan website, here. At the eucharist at Calvary Church, Susan Bartlett of Rolla was ordained deacon. Now there are four Deacons in the diocese of Missouri and three of them are women. Having spent five years on the COM hoping to encourage more people to recognize a call to the diaconate and privileged to have a deacon here at St Mark's, I was delighted that at long last another deacon was ordained in Missouri. Above are: Susan Bartlett in the middle with Marylen Stansbery of Saint Mark's on the left and Susan Naylor of Emmanuel on the right. Below is another picture of Susan with her presenters, including Beverly Van Horne and her husband Peter.

Felting Follies

I've been making felted bags. My first one I made for myself. It was in reddish orange Araucania Nature Yarn with handles from Fiber Trends Fabulous Felt Totes pattern. I only used one kind of yarn and I loved the handles which are a special kind of I-cord. I made a purse for Anna using a lovely tweedy purple yarn which Marylen gave us. It was a shoulder bag with a flap, loosely based on a Two Old Bags pattern. At first it was too big and the strap was way too long and stretched out with use but I shortened the strap and refelted the whole thing and it is much better now. Anna used it all summer, which was pretty nice of her, since even having a wool purse can seem hot in a hot and humid St Louis summer. Then I made another one for myself, to use as knitting bag. This was a Two Old Bags pattern called double handle project bag. Here are pictures of it pre-felting and post-felting. The book is there to help you see the change in size. One of these days I plan to try some needle feling ornament on the green striped bit. Little sheep or something. Here it is big:
And here it is smaller:

Then, Mo decided ze wanted the Knitty Satchel . I knitted it somewhat more flaboyantly than the Knitty website did, putting contrasting color around the pockets and using it to reinforce the strap. Mo picked the colors, also Araucania Nature Wool. Here it is big:


And here it is smaller:


And here it is with its pockets exposed to view:


The main learning experience from this project is that yarn shrinks vertically more than horizontally, or so it would appear. But Mo can probably run it through the washer a few more times and get it even smaller.

I also made a small "Boogie Bag" and matching cell phone cosy and am finishing up another Knitty Pattern, the French Market Bag. Next I want to try felted slippers!

I love the way that felting is so forgiving: mistakes just disappear in the felting process, you can pull stuff out of the washer and stretch it to shape -- even stretch it a little if it is too small. I love the way the fibers join together and make a solid fabric, almost unrecognizable as a knitted project.

On Target

Our new local Target store is open. The official ribbon cutting was Tuesday -- they had live music and everything. And it has been open ever since. The parking lot is packed. It is a LOT bigger than the old one. Sue, who has seen the garage, says that it is great. I walked there so I did not have to focus on parking. We were amazed that there was so much food. No fresh meat or veg. but loads of frozen stuff and a nice mixture of things at good prices. Quite a lot of Target's own brand stuff. Lots of stuff our family likes: delicious Alexius oven fries, Carrs Water Buscuits, brussels sprouts. It is the talk of the neighborhood. We walked all around it but bought nothing but usually we go there several times a week for stuff like printer ribbons and socks and cleaning products. If you think I am obsessed with the Hampton Ave Target you should look at the entries in this person's blog over the last year: Brick City:
http://www.alejandroisonline.com/blog/brickcity.htm

Celebration Sunday

Last Sunday was the Celebration Sunday for the Our Hope for Years to Come capital campaign. The decorators went all out with a festive balloon theme. Ann and others made a nifty balloon arch at the entrance to church. She is pictured here with her mom and members of the 7:30 congregation. You can "come as you are" to St. Mark's, but after this photo Ann changed into a dressier cute outfit to go to 10:00 church.
Kelly made lovely arrangements of balloons in the sconces and had the "vision". Many many people were here at six in the morning to blow up balloons, set out refreshments, etc. so that the 7:30 congregation could enjoy the celebration as fully as the 10:00 a.m. celebration. At 10 we had a trumpeter which added a lot to the music. The choir and organist did a great job with the Vaughan Williams Old Hundredth and the congregation sang along when it was our turn. Here is a picture taken during the peace, which is often a joyful if chaotic moment, here enhanced by balloons.


At the announcement time, Rod and Kevin, the co-chairs, announced that we were very near our goal and expect to surpass it. We received several pledges during that service (the rector is not the only procrastinator at St Mark's) so we probably will surpass it. Even as I type, the property committee is getting the roof consultant to draw up specs and get bids on the three "low" roofs (rectory, parish hall office and kitchens and archives/sacristy wing of the church) and on repairing or replacing the other two (church and main parish hall roof.) The last of these is only about 12 years old. Apparently, one of issues is that in the wake of Hurricaine Katrina, roofing materials may be in short supply or experiencing price increases. The oblation bearers brought up champagne and home made bread for communion. Ken, formerly a barkeep, did the honors, opening the wine with a resounding pop before we poured it in the chalice, a festive touch we usually save for the Easter Vigil. The main joy of this campaign is that the callers had such a great time -- they enjoyed their visits, some reconnecting with old friends, some making new connections, almost all hearing positive enthusiasm about the life of this parish. Roger Ricketts of Ricketts Associates was our consultant for the campaign. He did a really nice job of helping the callers to feel prepared and positive about the whole process. Before we started, he conducted a feasibility study and conservatively but accurately predicted what we could hope to raise. He probably was not including the children of the parish, however, who managed to collect $27.36 for the campaign. Here is a picture of Carter, proudly delivering the banks to the counters, with Celeste the Godly Play teacher in the background.

Sock goes to school

On September 23 and 24, I went with Kathy and Jack from St Mark's to the diocesan Episcopal School for Ministry. Our team is in the congregational development track. The idea is that we will learn things about the dynamics of congregational systems and theories of leadership and of church growth which we can take back home and which will inspire us to grow and thrive as a congregation. This weekend we had a workshop with Michael Burroughs in which we looked at our leadership styles and at situational leadership. It is pretty interesting stuff although Michael does it from his perspective working with the military and with businesses (mainly in the health care field) and has not really given much thought to how the insights might translate into the church. Anyway, the TA for this class is Emily. I was disappointed that she did not bring any knitting -- she was travelling light. I managed to work on two knitting projects during the day and a half we were at ESM. In the timehonored tradition of knitting blogs: Here is a picture of Emily, me and my sock.
The sock in this picture is now finished and has a companion which is more or less the same size but has only made it to the first row of instep.

Experimenting

I have just downloaded Blogger for Word. It allows me to write a document in Word and post it to my blog. I am not sure quite what the advantages of that might be. So this is just an experimental blog. Speaking of experiments, on The Splendid Table today was a man who recommends home coffee roasting. The Christian Education committee has been considering offering three events. One would be bread making. Another beer making. Maybe home coffee roasting should be the third. I’m sure we could think of some rationale for it. I’m not sure about Jesus but I bet Paul would have been a coffee drinker, if it had been around.

Espresso Alert

Today I was driving up Hampton and discovered that there is a new cafe in our neighborhood, just south of Holly Hills on the right hand side if you are driving north on Hampton. It caught my eye because they've stained the sidewalk a nice terra cotta color and have very attractive black cafe tables out front. Inside, the building has yellow walls and nice artwork and attractive floors (tile and wood laminate, I think). It is called Plato Cafe. The young man who confessed that this was his first solo latte said that he had started the business with his brother. He bought the building which "was a mess" a year and a half ago and has rehabbed it in his spare time. Right now they have sodas, bagels, coffees and cookies. They opened Monday. They plan to expand into sandwiches. Their coffee is good although it makes no claims to moral virtue (e.g. Fair Trade or organic). They don't sell coffee, only serve it. Anyway, I am now on a mission to encourage these recently arrived entrepreneurs. It is much hipper looking than The Sweet Life on Chippewa. Also hipper looking than most businesses on South Hampton. Anyway, I hope local readers and St Markans will stop by and give them a try. Maybe this will inspire us to revive Theological Cafe or be a good venue for a Shawl Ministry field trip.

Belle

Our lovely dog Belle was put to sleep today. She has been with us since 1996 when we adopted her as a puppy from the Missouri Humane Society and the girls named her for the female lead in Beauty and the Beast. She was a German Shepherd/ Beagle mix. She used to "roo" like a beagle. She was fierce in protecting our house, not always gentle with children, clear that she was Top Dog over our younger dog Sophie. She was intelligent and reasonably well trained. She was equally able to train us. For example, she used to play an elaborate game, refusing to go out into the garden without a lot of pleading. She had trained us to beg, to play this game of tag. She was sweet and affectionate.

In the last few years she developed a seizure disorder. We let her sleep in our room after that, so that if she had a seizure, we would know about it. This time last year, when we came home from vacation, she had multiple seizures and we had to take her to the emergency vet who, at vast expense, adjusted her meds and got her stable. In the last few months, she'd been having trouble standing up and staying standing, her walking was a little awkward. She tended to be slow to get up. Every now and then she'd surprise us-- dashing out into the garden with Sophie as Sophie chased rabbits and birds.

We were worried enough about her that we took her to the vet before we left town. He seemed to think she had arthritis and put her on another medication. But while we were away, Jim the dog sitter was worried that she was not eating, etc. and took her to the vet again.The vet drew blood and when I called on Saturday, he seemed to think that none of the blood tests were worrying. But by Sunday, she could not move at all, Lynn our other dog sitter took her to the vet who said that she had fluid in her abdomen and had septic peritonitis. John and I dashed home (we got the message leaving church in Holyoke MA at about nine a.m.) driving all through the night. We chose not to subject Belle to exploratory surgery and we kept her on palliative care until we got there at 6:30 a.m. today. Everyone at the Animal Emergency Clinic is incredily nice and supportive and aware of the complex emotional issues about people and their pets. They return calls immediately, they call you with updates on your pet's condition. I can't say enough about what great care they give to pets and owners.

When we got there, we told her we were home and we loved her. Her ears perked up and her eyes moved, which the vet said was more response than they'd seen all day, but she was plainly a very sick dog. So when we were done, the vet put her to sleep. She was a great dog.

Coming Attractions

Today I had lunch with Emily our new seminarian intern. September 11, Celebration Sunday, will be her first Sunday with us. She will be putting her bio in our newsletter (which you can read, on our website, but not until early next week.) We went to Ellie Fortella the only one of the Great Restaurant group in Saint Louis I have never visited. It was Great, their name does not exaggerate. But even more great is Emily who will lead a three class adult series in September on Praying the Lord's Prayer, Living the Lord's Prayer and who will preach about once every six weeks and who will lector and chalice bear and assist around the altar. She is gentle and funny and bright and eager to learn and happy to be coming to St Mark's. She'll do some pastoral visits and hopefully during the time she's with us she'll tell us about Mechtild of Magdeberg, the medieval German mystic on whom she wrote her thesis. And we have all of our speakers lined up for All Speakers Great and Small. Pretty exciting!

End of Summer

Yesterday (Sunday) was a surprisingly busy day. On some summer Sundays, many people are away or people choose a lovely bike ride or other outing over church. But yesterday there were lots of people in church. When we offered a "Back to School Prayer," hordes of people came up, from kindergarten to college and we had three teachers, one of them about to start his first year of teaching high school social studies. One reason that church was fuller than usual was that Lindsay and lots of people from Episcopal Campus Ministry were here for Lindsay's last Sunday in Saint Louis. She was the intern at the Episcopal Campus Ministry last academic year and she's moving back to Philadelphia for the next phase of her work and vocational life. Lindsay prepared for confirmation with our class at St Mark's and because she was staying with Marylen our deacon was part of our common life in many other ways. Lindsay and I share our alma mater Bryn Mawr College so we spent a fair amount of time together on and off this year. So Saint Mark's made a good place for a liturgical send-off. We gave her a yellow shawl that the Shawl Ministry had started for Lindsay when she was having a rough time last winter, we prayed for her new life and her safe travel. We should have prayed for Alicia who has been here helping her pack and who will be driving back with her in Lindsay's aging Volvo. I'll miss having her around and wish her well in Philadelphia. She's full of fun and talents and energy and I don't think it will be long before she discovers work to satisfy and delight her.

The other big excitement this Sunday was that just as we got to the end of the offertory hymn, the organ started to cipher. That means that a pipe sounds without any key being pressed. For some reason that I don't know, it always seems to happen with a high pitched pipe it is impossible to ignore. So the organist turned it off and we said some parts of the service we normally sing and sang part without accompaniment. He kept testing to see whether it would stop by itself, surreptitiously turning on the organ blower to see if the offending pipe would sound. But it did. So finally he played the closing hymn on the piano an dmost of the choir (which has been on vacation for the summer) gathered around him to give him moral support.

I preached as sermon which was rather fun to write, playing fast and loose with the gospel for the day. Someone asked for a copy of it and I may post it here later. Right now I have a zillion things to do to get ready to go on vacation Thursday.

All Speakers Great and Small

We got together this evening to imagine adult education offerings at St Mark's for the fall. We designed a speakers series with outside distinguished scholars (the great) who will be announced as soon as they have confirmed that they are available. Then we decided that three of us had something intelligent and intelligible to say, so we were the small. These sessions will be Sunday evenings from 5:30 to 8:00 with supper, a format that has worked really well for us.

But then we fell to fantasizing about speakers we'd love to have if we could afford it: Marcus Borg, John Spong, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jim Wallis. A Put Saint Mark's On The Map Speakers' series. At some point in its past, either to celebrate the 25th or the 50th anniversary, I forget which, James Pike was a featured speaker at Saint Marks' Church.

This evening we also sketched out two experiential experiences we have yet to calendar, one about brewing beer and the other about baking bread. In both baking and brewing yeast transforms the ingredients into something that is much more than the sum of its parts, a kind of alchemy. We could brew beer on Saint Brigid's day and those who wanted to could plan to drink it after Easter. And bread baking is always appropriate and replete with theological themes.

Here is a poem (prayer) attributed to St. Brigid.

I'd like to give a lake of beer to God.
I'd love the Heavenly
Host to be tippling there
For all eternity.

I'd love the men of Heaven to live with me,
To dance and sing.
If they wanted, I'd put at their disposal
Vats of suffering.

White cups of love I''d give them,
With a heart and a half;
Sweet pitchers of mercy I'd offer
To every man.

I'd make Heaven a cheerful spot,
Because the happy heart is true.
I'd make the men contented for their own sake
I'd like Jesus to love me too.

I'd like the people of heaven to gather
From all the parishes around,
I'd give a special welcome to the women,
The three Marys of great renown.

I'd sit with the men, the women of God
There by the lake of beer
We'd be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer.

Today at the Farmers' Market at the Schlafly Bottlworks, the air was heavy with the sweet smell of fermentation from the microbrewery there. It does make the image of heaven as like a lake of beer quite appealing.