Speaking of Fr. Bob, he is doing well.  We saw a parishioner at lunch who hadn’t seen Fr Bob in a while and didn’t know that he celebrates the noon Eucharist each Wednesday.  I assumed everyone knew this, so I beg your pardon for not making known better.  He has lots of energy and really enjoys celebrating at St Timothy’s.  I received my communion first thing this morning, but I came for Fr. Bob’s homily and the prayers today and was thankful for the congregation that assembles each week on Wednesday.  Fr. Bob fills a vital ministry at St Timothy’s.  He and I are as different as two priests can be (but we really like each other) and he is able to respond to the needs of some better than I ever could.  So I am thankful for his presence and his role.

Yesterday (Tuesday), Andrew Hege and I stopped by the O.W.L.s monthly luncheon.  John Roberts was presenting on the youth ministry and the youth mission trip this summer.  On my way to Wednesday night dinner and class now.

FS+

• said Morning Prayer 
• said Mass
• had a brief program meeting
• did pre-marital counseling
• visited Forsyth County Detention Center
• had lunch with the Junior Warden
• did marital counseling
• worked on the Easter Vigil liturgy
• said Evening Prayer
• attended a Finance Commission meeting

A typical day.

I chuckled to myself as I realized the altar guild probably just glanced at the bulletin that was laid out and saw the first words “The Baptism of…” and kept on trucking.  In point of fact, that’s exactly what happened.  There was a funeral at St Timothy’s yesterday and our faithful guild was cleaning up after one service and preparing for another one.  It made me think about Our Lord’s baptism by John.  I smiled at the thought of Our Lord being a member of our church.  He’s not a member – he’s the head.  I was thankful for that meditation.  They seem to come in the strangest ways, don’t they?

At 11am, Lord have mercy, the fire alarm went off.  This is twice that it’s happened in the past two months – and it’s never happened in the nearly 3 years we’ve been using incense every Sunday at 11am.  I am also pleasantly surprised at how we go about our business in the liturgy as if nothing has happened.  Way to go.

Nothing has changed in the incense or how we use it.  One of my tasks this week is try to figure out what’s happeining.  I think doors are cracked in the stairwell – our ‘smoke sacristy.’  In the meantime, I shall baptize “Piper’s Pass” as the new smoke sacristy.  Our thurifers will get a bit of workout going up and down the stairs – but they’re young and will will ensure the Fire Department only comes to St Timothy’s to worship!

It was a good day with good attendance (293, I think).

I just got off the phone with Christin Barnhardt.  She spent the weekend in Washington, D.C. learning from the staff at St Paul’s, K Street – a parish renown far and wide for their liturgy and especially for their music.  I look forward to learning more about her weekend.  Good things are going on.  Pray for our Costa Rica mission team.  They took off this morning.  I’ll pass on any updates as I get them.

FS

In terms of administration and ‘worldly’ things (although I don’t think it’s worldly – what’s not in the realm of faith??), I am very pleased that St Timothy’s finished the fiscal year in the black.  2012 was a very interesting and formative year.  I will write more about what I mean later; for I have been thinking a good deal on this.

Looking toward the Nashotah campus

As for me I am writing this from a hotel in Delafield, Wisconsin.  According to my phone it is 25 degrees outside and yes, there is plenty of snow on the ground.  I am here until Saturday (I’ll be in church this Sunday) for what should be my final residential class before I complete my Doctor of Ministry degree in liturgy from Nashotah House Theological Seminary.

I am studying the Gospel of John and it has proved to be extraordinarily insightful.  There are five others in this

Studying the Gospel of John

seminar-style class with me and we spend six hours each day in class with Morning Prayer/Mass and Evening Prayer as bookends of the day - just like home.  

The Lady Altar at Evening Prayer

It was a dark and gloomy day.  4:45pm felt like midnight.  Evening Prayer seemed like a midnight service.  As I started Evening Prayer I imagined this is what monks who raise in the middle of the night to pray matins must experience.  We inserted the “O Antiphons” at the Magnificat.  Many know the hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” but you may not know that the verses come from the traditional antiphons for the Magnificat on the 8 days before the Christmas vigil.

In the 1982 Hymnal, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” follows the Roman ordering of the O Antiphons – O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Dayspring, O King of Nations, and O Emmanuel.  The Anglican tradition has kept an 8th antiphon, O Virgin of Virgins.  We can see in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer the mark for O Sapientia  (O Wisdom) on December 16.  7 more antiphons followed until December 23.  On Monday, we included “O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the bush to Moses in flame of fire, and gavest him the law in Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.”

Page from 1662 BCP

On Saturday I came into the church to rewrite my homily.  When I was done, I walked into the nave and sat in front a tiny little statue of Our Lady.  It is a gift from Amanda Schroeder’s family on the occasion of her marriage to Andrew Hege on December 29.  I affectionately call her “Our Lady of the Hege’s.”  I prayed the rosary in front of this olive wood carving of the mother of Our Lord with her arms outstretched as if calling all of the hurt her way.  I remembered those who had died and commended them to the prayers of the Virgin Mary.

The day ended with a sense of peace.  The children had sung and read scripture at the program and they represented the profound hope that lives in the Gospel of Christ.  Despite the weight of the day – it was a good one.

FS

PS: At 11am, Joan Sherrill fell while serving as a torch bearer.  She has given me permission to report that she is just fine.  Her electrolytes were a little out of sorts and she just passed out.  She was treated at the hospital and released with a clean bill of health – and a goose egg.

Rose vestments for Gaudete

Votive candles

Closing hymn at 9am after the children had left

Silent Night from “Light of the World”

I’m asking permission to break my rule this morning as I have a story that is uniquely mine and I want so very badly to stay uniquely mine.  But I’m afraid more and more people will be able to relate.  

There is an elementary school in South Carolina that is named after my mother.  The school has a beautiful name: Eleanor S. Rice Elementary School.  Their mascot is the Trailblazers.   I will say as a proud son that it is the only school in the entire district named after an individual.

My mother was the principal of that school for over 20 years.  Back then the school was known as Oakland Elementary School.  That’s really where I grew up.  My father was a State Trooper and the State of South Carolina frowns upon State Troopers taking their children with them to work, so I would go to school early with my mother, and after she got everything rolling, she’d rush me off to my school and then in the afternoon, I’d return and sit in her office and do homework until her workday was over.  

I roamed the halls and helped out the custodians and started my love affair with office supplies and chalkboards.  

24 years ago when I was in the fourth grade, I was acting silly at lunch.  I had a blue jacket with a hood and I had taken the jacket off and put the hood on my head so the rest would lay down my back like a cape.  I was making it twirl pretending I was a superhero.  I remember the taste of the drawstrings in my mouth.  

My teacher stopped me right in the middle and told me the principal wanted to see me.  I didn’t think swinging a jacket was that big of a deal, but I tucked my tail between my legs and went to the principal’s office – a good friend of my family.

It was there that Mrs. Alston sat me down and told me there was a shooting at Oakland.  Immediately I knew my mother was dead.  I was only in the fourth grade, but even then you knew that the principal would be on the front lines.  Mrs. Alston lied and said my mother was ok.  My mother was ok, but Mrs. Alston didn’t know that.  And to this day, I’m glad she lied.  

2 children were killed that day and more were wounded, including a girl named Leah that I used to tutor after school and a teacher that I had the biggest crush on.  The gunman was 19.  My mother stopped him and held him until the police arrived – which included my State Trooper father.  And this is why Oakland Elementary School now bears her name.  

The days after that event were just like the days that are following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.  There were calls for gun control and questions about the mental health system – the gunman was mentally ill – but those questions and those conversations seemed to be like birds circling a death that was below.  Everyone kept pointing at the birds, but no one seemed to understand there was something dead underneath.

We celebrate the birth of Our Lord on December 25 because it is just after the winter solstice, which falls on December 21 or 22.  The winter solstice is when the sun peaks at the lowest point over the horizon – it doesn’t rise as high in the sky making it the shortest day of the year.  In other words – there is more darkness than light.  

After the solstice, little by little, the darkness recedes and the light challenges this dark reign and there is more and more light and less darkness.

What is at the root of Friday’s tragedy and every tragedy, beyond societal ills and mental health and legislation, is darkness.  Evil.  

When John the Baptist saw a generation of people coming to him to be baptized – he challenged their motives and called the a ‘brood of vipers.’  He wasn’t just throwing them an insult – he was making a specific charge.  Herodotus and Pliny the Elder – a Greek and Roman historian of the time – both wrote about the belief that the offspring of vipers would kill their mothers by eating their way out the womb.  

John was accusing the people of destroying the vision and the direction given to them by their ancestors – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah.  They were not only ignoring a way of life that had been given to them – they were violently destroying it by their disobedience and secular attitudes.  

What worries me when I see the response to this evil in Sandy Hook is that we will only look at the birds circling above the air and not have the courage to go and clean up the death that is below.  This darkness needs light.  And this darkness will only be defeated when there is more light.  It won’t come with more medication, legislation or accusation – only light.  

For this is nothing new.   Our Lord was born into this.  Three days after Christmas we celebrate the countless numbers of children under the age of two who were killed by the decree of Herod because light had come into the world.  It was shining bright as a star and it threatened his world of shadows.  We remember them as the Holy Innocents.  The weapons have changed, but the motives are still the same.

We can do something about this.  We can be convicted by the accusation of John the Baptist.  We too, have been given a vision of how this world can be and of the world to come.  Let’s not destroy it by ignoring it.  

John the Baptist is talking to us when we make this vision – Christianity – nothing more than a hobby or a philosophy or something we just like.  It has to be way of life.  If it’s to be our vision, then it must be the way we see everything – ourselves, each other – the world.  

We make our homes places of light.  Places of faith.  Places where Jesus is talking about, shared, and prayed to.  We make our churches places of light.  Places that are full and hungry for more understanding.  Places of adoration.  Places that scare darkness.  

We humbly submit ourselves as instruments of light.  We ask for forgiveness for ignoring this vision and for being like the children of vipers.  And we press on.

The only place that ever mentions that horrible tragedy at Oakland Elementary School is a sentence on a plaque that bears my mother’s picture when you enter the school.  That’s it.  The kids that go there have no idea it was a horrific war zone 24 years earlier.  

Because there was a vision that that place would not be a place of darkness or fear.  It was going to be a place of light.  

We give all of this to Christ on the cross.  As we approach the altar we are approaching Calvary and we give everything – all of this darkness – to him.  Because he has given us a vision that this world will not be a place of darkness or fear.  It will be a place of light.  

He gives us his Body – and we press on.