Elvina Voigt

This is a photo of my mother and her grandmother, Elvina Voigt (Albert Voigt's mother). It was likely taken in the 1930s, in Michigan.

My mother was short, about 5'2", so her grandmother must have been very short, under five feet tall (it is probable that she was a bit taller when younger, of course). The other thing that is noticeable to me is that apparently my great-grandmother was bald. I think that she did not speak much English, but I'm not positive about that. That's all I really know about my great-grandmother.

Which is not so strange. After only two generations knowledge fades rapidly, and very few people, apart from titled royalty, can name their great-grandparents. Almost no one can name the great-greats.

Steeple chasing

A photo I took from an office window this morning:

On the left, you can see the steeple of the Catholic church that was sold to a developer and turned into low-income housing, and on the right, a church that recently lost its steeple - both, in their ways, illustrating the changing fortunes of churches in Philadelphia and in the country. I posted pictures of both  churches last fall, seen from street level.

I've been thinking about steeples. Wikipedia has a very brief entry on them, in which I learned that their problems include, not surprisingly, pigeons: "Steeples often become havens for pigeons and their feces and rotting corpses damage and eventually compromise structure as they retain moisture and are acidic."

Yuck. I knew that steeples are endangered. Throughout the country they are decaying and being torn down, and local congregations can often no longer afford to preserve these picturesque but dangerous and expensive ornamental structures.

An article in The New York Times outlines the problems and headaches of church steeples.

"Deferred maintenance is a huge problem for congregations," said Jeffrey Gonyeau of Historic Boston, a preservation group that runs the Steeples Project, which works to maintain Boston's historic houses of worship. "It seems like there's never enough time or money to devote to maintaining these."

I don't think the church on the right in the picture above will be able to replace their steeple, which was most likely removed because it was a hazard. The steeples of America are disappearing -- not a huge tragedy in and of itself, but certainly a part of the landscape (both rural and urban) that we may miss some day.

Hidden interest, crouching boredom

I started last Friday, on the train during my morning commute. I gave up this afternoon, during the evening commute, on page 217.

I like long books; it's not the case that I have abandoned "long-form reading," which is the topic of an interesting article by Linton Weeks.

Whatever the case, I couldn't take one more sentence of that long, boring Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. If a book hasn't grabbed you by page 217, it ain't gonna happen.

War preparations?

Another one of those great but mysterious old family photos, in which I do not recognize any of the people. This seems to be a group of young women getting training to dress head wounds, perhaps because World War I has begun (just guessing about the approximate date from the clothing styles).

I've never understood why you would need to practice winding gauze around someone's head; it looks fairly easy to do.

Notice how poorly the blackboards have been erased. I remember my first grade teacher washing her blackboard with a wet cloth - they need someone to do that in their classroom. 

Let's look a little closer.

How calmly she stares at us from the past, this unknown woman.

Beaming

My friend from long ago (he and his wife were student pastors at our church in the nineties) has a new blog, Glory's Beam. Good writing.

I also like the cartoon he recently posted.

Not Smitty's

Not Smitty's bowling team, but what is it? Some kind of show. Neil's grandmother is the one the far left.  No idea what they are portraying, but it looks like fun. The woman in the middle is very pretty.

It’s a sin for church to be boring

Discovery Church
Voorhees, New Jersey
November 11, 2007

I intended to visit a different church that Sunday, but I ended up at Discovery. The story of why I did not attend the other church will appear in the next installment. The reason I did attend Discovery Church is simply that I saw a sign on the road, and decided to check it out. You could say I discovered it.

The sign led me to the parking lot of Voorhees Middle School. I saw some people entering the school by way of the gymnasium, so I followed to see if they were, indeed, going to a church service.

Yup. As soon as I walk through the doors, a woman hands me a program. Christian rock is playing over the sound system. A small stage has been set up, and there are about 150 folding chairs facing it. An enormous video screen is next to the stage. There are black and white curtains behind the stage, and someone is arranging red, white, and blue bunting on a stand in the middle. In the back of the auditorium, a little area called Java Joe’s Café has been set up, where you can buy coffee, tea, pastries, bagels, etc. Two little tables with tablecloths and chairs have been placed near the café. A bookstore has been set up next to the café – large cases that open up to display books, set up on tables. There are also ladders and lights and sound equipment in the gymnasium, but I’m not sure if this is part of the church set-up, or something the school uses.

After I find a seat, a man comes over, introduces himself, and asks if I have a program. Yes, I answer.

Ten minutes before 10:00 am, a slide appears on the giant screen announcing that “Discovery starts in ten minutes.” This is followed by other informative slides about events and programs, including one reminding parents of small children to sit in the chairs to the back and right, so that they can easily slip out of the service and into the hallway if their kids become noisy. Every few minutes the time is updated – “Discover starts in five minutes . . . three minutes . . .” etc.

Another man, wearing a dark blue tee shirt, shakes my hand and greets me. He is walking through the gymnasium, shaking hands with almost everyone. There is a wide range of ages here, but almost everyone is white.

I fill out the visitor’s card in the program, so that I will be ready when the offering comes around.

By 10:00, almost every chair has been taken. People are bringing coffee and bagels to their seats. The screen switches to a short video in which two men make announcement about upcoming events. I think one of the men in the video might be the man in the blue tee shirt who shook hands with me earlier. Perhaps he is the pastor? While the video plays the band gets ready. It includes a drummer, two guitarists, a keyboard player, and a lead singer. Later they are joined by two more vocalists.

When the band begins to play, the picture on the screen switches to a background of wedding rings, upon which the lyrics are superimposed. Everyone stands, and some people clap.

This praise music is not very easy to sing along with. Congregational participation is weak (most of the people near me are not even trying, although a few are clapping). The weakness of the congregational singing is masked by the loudness of the band, much the way that a very loud organ hides weak singing in a more traditional church service. But really, the big problem here is that this style of music is not suitable for group singing. The lead singer is actually a pretty good rock vocalist, but it’s the kind of dramatic, American Idol-type singing that is very, very hard to sing as a group. Lots of melisma.

The lead guitarist, who is one of those jumping-up-and-down type of players, gets in some good licks. The lead singer gestures a lot with his pinkie and index finger extended, a rock habit that might have slightly unfortunate connotations for some people.

At one point the band instructs everyone in a kind of fast hand clapping maneuver, and this starts out well but dies off quickly. The band is very energetic, but they seem to have to work very, very hard to get the crowd moving, singing, or clapping even a little bit. I have the sense that everyone would rather just sit down and watch. (Watching, perhaps with a little arm waving, would be more appropriate to this style of music.)

At 10:20 the band stops and we are asked to turn around and say hello to our neighbors, which we do.

After that someone on stage asks us all to sit down for the next song. So we do, but as luck would have it, the first line of the next song is “We stand and lift up our hands.” Scattered groups throughout the auditorium immediately do just that – stand and lift their hands – while others remain seated. Half the congregation stands, some lifting their hands, and half sit and watch. I am willing to stand or sit, but since I happen to be in a group of sitters, I remain seated.

Then a set of slides honoring the armed forces comes up, showing men and women in the military, including a number of very touching scenes of military funerals. (Today is Veteran’s Day.)

The man in the blue tee shirt says, “They do an awesome job of serving us. It’s amazing and humbling.”

At 10:30 the lead singer, now playing the keyboard, does a nice bluesy-rock version of Amazing Grace. It think it’s supposed to be a solo (there’s no way anyone could sing with him on most of it - again, lots of melisma), but a few members of the congregation try to join in on the second verse.

Next – what’s this? A short clip from an old Popeye cartoon appears on the screen! Popeye is getting married to Olive Oyl, and he needs to fortify himself with spinach in order to make it through the vows. Well, that’s unexpected. I do love classic cartoons, and Popeye in particular.

The man in the blue tee shirt is on stage now, and tells us that today he is going to present the third message in a series called Ourmarriagestinks.com. The first week he spoke on the topic of the Vow of Priority. The next week he spoke on the Vow of Pursuit. Today it’s the Vow of Partnership.

The screen now shows a couple who are obviously unhappy. The three points of the sermon are:
· Couples are always becoming more unified or more divided.
· Couples either complete each other or compete with each other.
· Couples become closer to each other as they become closer to God.

In the middle of the sermon, he shows a short clip from an Asian-American comedian (I don’t recognize him, but others might), doing a shtick on “If men had babies . . .” It’s pretty funny.

The pastor then goes into his own shtick, about how his wife talks more than he does, which gets a decent amount of laughter.

Then he tackles the topic of leadership in marriage. He quotes the famous verses from Ephesians: "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."

The pastor supports a very strong conservative interpretation: man is the head of the household, and has the leadership role.

But then he does the typical thing pastors do with these verses today. After firmly stating that men are the leaders of their households, he spends the next ten minutes explaining that what this actually means is that men and women are equals. Because the leader/follower template just makes people unhappy. He says that the desire for dominance is a sign of insecurity.

He reads another part of that famous passage in Ephesians: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” He says that Satan’s plan for the home is that the husband dominate the wife and wife submit passively, but God’s plan is for mutual submission. He tells a joke about how in heaven there are two lines for men, one marked “Stand here if your wife dominated you,” and one marked “Stand here if your wife didn’t dominate you.” All the men are in the first line except one. St. Peter walks over to the one guy and asks why he is in that line. He replies, “My wife told me to stand here and shut up.”

The pastor tells another joke about how a man and woman agreed at the start of their marriage that he would made the major decisions and she would make the minor ones, and it worked very well because in twenty years of marriage no major decisions needed to be made.

The whole thing reminds me of the great difficulty conservative Christians have today: they have to uphold conservative viewpoints, but they aren’t really comfortable with them. So they first proclaim adamantly that men are in charge, and then explain that what that really means is mutual submission – and then make jokes about how women are really in charge.

It’s one way to adapt to current culture while claiming to hold fast to older viewpoints. And really, after the congregation has just seen and admired vivid photos of women repairing fighter jets, holding guns, and serving overseas in combat – how hard can you come down on the side of women’s subordination? Even quite conservative churches are often quite uncomfortable with this teaching – but they don’t know how to disavow it, so they preach around it, as the pastor today has done.

Another way conservative churches have adapted to modern sensibilities is by changing the terminology. The doctrine that men are the head of the household was called hierarchicalism for many years, and everyone was pretty comfortable with that. Within the last twenty or thirty years this doctrine has quietly been re-named complementarianism, which sounds better. It is explained that men and women have complementary roles in the home and the church. Men teach and women learn; men lead and women follow. Same old conservative teaching, but with a more palatable name. And after proclaiming it loudly, most of them apply it only to church roles - women can't preach or teach in church, or serve as governing elders.

Some churches that hold to this view do not allow women to vote in church meetings. The reason is that allowing them to vote is, in effect, giving married men two votes, since a wife would ask her husband how to vote and then follow his orders. This would be unfair to single men.

The sermon is about 40 minutes long, which definitely makes it one of the longer ones I sat through during my year of visiting churches. Someone plays softly on the keyboard while the pastor closes in prayer, and he then asks people to raise their hands if they need prayer, or want to be saved. The pastor leads us in the sinner’s prayer. The church may show cartoon clips and comedy sketches, but they come back to some pretty old-fashioned, tried-and-true standbys in the end.

Announcements come back up on the screen. The church is putting together a mission team to work on Hurricane Katrina relief projects.

There is an offering and one more short praise song, and the service ends. People immediately begin breaking down the stage and putting things away. Setting all this up and taking it down every week must be a big job. These must be some dedicated members.

I stand around for a few minutes, and walk around the auditorium for a while. An older man (by which I mean, even older than me) shakes my hand and asks me what I thought of the service. Very nice, I answer. He smiles and says, “It sure wasn’t boring, was it? Bet you haven’t seen a service like that before!” I smile. Yes, I’m thinking, I haven’t seen comedy clips and cartoon clips in church before, but I think I’ve seen everything else you have here – most of it I saw about thirty years ago. But I see that he is genuinely proud of his church, and just wants me to like it.

On my way out of the auditorium I shake the pastor’s hand. I can’t help but ask him one question before I leave.

“Thanks very much for the sermon. So my duty as a wife is to follow my husband’s spiritual guidance?”

“Well, yes, unless it’s something from Satan.” He laughs to let me know that this is sort of a joke.

“Thanks; he converted to Catholicism recently and wants me to convert also. You’ve been a big help!”

He smiles uncertainly, and looks uncomfortable. I realize that I’ve taken a little bit of unfair advantage; he can’t really respond in the few moments we have by the door. I’ve seen this trick before – the parishioner delivering what he or she thinks is a zinger on the way out the door. I just never imagined I’d be the parishioner doing it.

It’s kind of fun. (Which doesn’t mean it’s right.)

Epilogue

I received a nice note after my visit, from Bob Smith, Campus Pastor. Apparently Discovery Church has several locations in southern New Jersey, and calls individual congregations campuses. I am on their email and snail mail lists, and I receive lots of both paper and electronic messages over the next few months.

They were raising money to build or buy a facility, or campus. When I checked their website again in 2011, just before writing this post, I got the impression that things have cooled down a bit over the past four years. There seems to be just one location now, in Williamstown, New Jersey. Perhaps the Voorhees site didn’t work out; I’m not sure. If it faltered, it sure wasn’t for lack of energy on the part of the pastors and musicians.

I thought a little more about Discovery’s slogan, “It’s a sin for church to be boring.” I’m reminded of a John Updike short story in which a man attends mass, and is asked upon his return to the house where he and friends are spending a weekend, “How was it?”

He is surprised by the question. How was it? It’s the same as always. The same as it has been for decades. The same old thing. That’s the point.

Some people don’t seem to understand that the sameness – the boringness – of ritual can be very comforting, satisfying, meaningful, and beautiful. People who just aren’t put together in a way that makes them appreciate ritual and tradition are likely more attracted to churches that offer rock music and cartoon clips and comedy skits. Which is not to say that those things are wrong. But I do think that the folks who want church to be exciting and different every week may be missing out on something, something that has sustained this boring old institution for a couple millennia. They shouldn’t be completely positive that the traditions of the past thirty years that they have adopted will be as popular in the long run – or even in the short run, like four years or so.

Two random quotes from Proust

I learned that identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that, whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed.


And if I had been thinking with affection of my parents, and forming the most sensible and proper plans for giving them pleasure, they would have been using the same interval of time to discover some misdeed that I had already forgotten, and would begin to scold me severely, just as I flung myself upon them with a kiss.

AND

. . . . the countries for which we long occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our true life than the country in which we may happen to be.

From Swann's Way

Man, I sure hope I get to use this line some day.

Talking to a friend at work today - her 93-year-old aunt is dying, but is still alert and cheerful. She said to her family recently, "I can't complain. The first 90 years were a piece of cake."

Smitty's Tavern part 4

The fourth and final of these fabulous women's bowling team photos. No Smitty in this one, but I assume it's the same team. Neil's grandmother is on the far right. Seems to be a photo of a baseball team in the background - the Cubs? the White Sox? All the women except the one on the far left are looking directly into the camera. I believe the woman on the far left is thinking, "Next time I'll remove the curlers and brush my hair BEFORE the photographer shows up."

Farewell, ladies - I hope you had a wonderful time bowling together!

Crock pot cake

One of my favorite cakes since I first tried it when I bought a crock pot in the seventies. Here is the recipe:

Pour the batter into the special crock pot cake pan:

I didn't have sherry, so I used Irish cream liqueur. And I didn't have pecans, so I used almonds.

This is the pan, with its vented lid, inside the crock pot:

It's not the most beautiful cake in the world:

But it is very, very delicious.

I looked on line, and found that Rival no longer makes these crock pot cake pans. (Hey - I just realized that I can use the Old Everyday Things tag for this post!) Some people use old coffee cans, and others bake cakes right in the crock pot itself. But you can buy the pans used, as this website points out.

Baking a cake in the crock pot is a nice option in the summer, when you don't want to turn on the oven.

Look what I found for the Easter baskets

With chocolate coins inside. Mario fans will know what this is.

Smitty's, part three

Another great photo of the Grayslake women's bowling team sponsored by Smitty's tavern. Doesn't Smitty look like a character actor from a Frank Capra movie? Hey - wait a minute. I just noticed that this is a different guy than in the other Smitty's photos, here and here. This one looks like Floyd the barber from the Andy Griffith show. So who is Smitty? 

Stella Pizzeria

Met a couple friends after work today. We have been meeting every couple months or so for almost eight years now, ever since we were all laid off as medical journal editors. We ate at Stella Pizzeria, which is in the Old City area of Philadelphia, in historic Headhouse Square:

Good food, excellent friends. On my walk back to the Market East train station, I passed a site of presidential imbibing:

I admired the neon at the Bleu Martini, a scene of modern imbibing:

And I saw people socializing out on the streets everywhere, tables and chairs placed on the sidewalk so that people could enjoy the beautiful weather.

A very nice way to close the week and prepare for the weekend.

Philadelphia St. Patrick's Day treats

at the office. I'm not a native Philadelphian, but over the years I have come to love soft pretzels and mustard for breakfast - and it's nice to have free treats! (Please note that, in addition to the brown and yellow mustard, we could choose vanilla and chocolate frosting - not the Philly tradition, but also delicious with soft, salty bread.)

Early morning light

The fruit truck has arrived!

Just last week, I was lamenting the fact that it was too early for the fruit salad trucks. Today:

Yay.

Growing old

I am going to become an old person at the end of 2011.

I don't mean that I will retire, or that my spine will begin to curve, or that I will develop deep wrinkles all over my face (and yes, I know that these are stereotypes and that these things never happen to many old people). But at the end of 2011 I will celebrate my 60th birthday (God willing), and that is the official beginning of old age according to many experts.

However, I will be among the youngest of the "young old" for quite a while. The young old are people in their sixties and seventies, most of whom enjoy fairly good health. Then, assuming I'm still here, I will join the ranks of the "old old," people in their eighties and nineties, who increasingly become debilitated by such common ailments as arthritis, Parkinson's, senile dementia, etc. That sounds scary.

The last time I remember being so clearly aware of joining a distinctly new age cohort was on my 13th birthday. Becoming a teen-ager sounded so exciting! The year was 1964, the year the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show; it seemed like the perfect time to become a teen.

I am not so excited to join the ranks of the elderly.

Jill LePore has an interesting article on the life of G. Stanley Hall, the founder of gerontology, in the March 14, 2011 issue of The New Yorker.

This portion struck me:

"Old age takes everyone by surprise, and no one really ever comes to terms with it. Hall thought that this was because old age is the only stage of life we never grow out of, and can never look back on, not on this earth, anyway. "

Well, I suppose many people are able to look back on being young old, if they make it to old old. But the fact that it is the only stage of life we never grow out of is a bit unsettling.

The near approach of old age does keep taking me by surprise. You would think I had had plenty of time to get used to the idea, but apparently one never has enough time. Is it true that "no one really ever comes to terms with it"? Surely many people have done so, although just as surely that depends on one's definition of "coming to terms."

A friend on Facebook posted that he was teen in the sixties, and will be in his sixties in the teens. There are many of us in this group -- by 2030 (I'll be 79 if I'm still here), it is predicted that people over 65 will be more than 30% of the US population.

The article by LePore also says that old people are valued when they are rare, and not valued when they are common - not a hopeful sign for those of us who will be old in 2030. Actually, I don't remember a time when it seemed to me that old people were particularly respected or valued. And I have been guilty of that attitude myself. Sigh.

Philadelphia food trucks

I love the food you can buy on the street in Philadelphia, and luckily I work in an area with plenty of it! The weather was nice enough on Friday that I decided to take a photo tour of the food carts on a short section of Spruce Street. First, a cart that has been covered in flames:

The rest are not so dramatically decorated, but the food is just as good. There is Indian food:

There is Chinese food:

There are two carts featuring Mexican cuisine, Mexican Spot and Mexi-Philly:

There is food from the Middle East:

Another truck with Chinese food:

And directly across the street, the name of this food truck seems to indicate that some sort of feud is going on:

A handsomely shaded cart offers more Middle Eastern food:

And of course, you can buy hot dogs:

All this in just a few blocks! And there are other carts (Japanese bento boxes, cheese steaks and pretzels, etc.) close by. The trucks with the street food I buy most, the fresh fruit salad trucks, have not yet arrived. The arrival of the fruit trucks is one of the first signs of summer in Philadelphia. 

First crocus

The first one I've seen this spring, anyway. On the lawn of a neighbor with a hillside facing the sun:

And in my own little garden spot, the bulbs I planted last fall are poking up through the mulch:

Tuscan Whole Milk

Most people have heard of the funny customer reviews on amazon.com. The Tuscan Whole Milk site is the most famous, but check out some of the other products under Customers Who Viewed This Also Viewed.

Let Jesus invite himself into your heart

The Church of the Holy Trinity
Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia
November 6, 2007

It was a bright, cool, breezy day in Philadelphia that Tuesday, and I remembered that one of the churches bordering Rittenhouse Square offered a daily service at noon – so I hopped on a bus during my lunch hour to see if I could find it.

Hurrah – a sign outside the huge stone building tells me that there will be a service of Holy Eucharist at 12:15: “Twenty minutes with God.”

The carillon is playing as I walk toward the entrance. (Am I the only person who always thinks that church bells sound out of tune? They don’t sound bad, but they sure seem to have a different kind of tuning system than most instruments.) I enter the sanctuary a few minutes after noon.

Wow. Just. Wow.

This is a stunningly beautiful sanctuary. In fact, it may be the best one I’ve seen yet in my nearly seven months of visiting churches. I have been feeling very unimpressed with stained glass lately, but now I am definitely impressed. In fact, I’m impressed with everything in this place – the high curved dome over the altar space, beautifully painted and illuminated with a stained-glass skylight, the double rows of stained glass windows on both sides of the sanctuary, the huge raised pulpit to the right, the statue of an angel holding a lectern stand to the left, the painted triptych on the wall behind the altar, the words “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost” painted in large gold letters above the triptych, the ornate altar cloth, the candles, everything. Wow.

The sanctuary, including balconies, would probably seat at least 1,000 people, I’m guessing.

And I seem to be the only person in the building. Wait. That can’t be right.

A few minutes later a black woman enters and sits in the pews up near the altar, pews that might be for the choir. Maybe she is the priest? Someone begins playing the organ. Again – wow. What an organ.

A minute later a man wearing a white alb and a gold and black robe enters, bows toward the altar, and begins the service. The organist joins the woman in the pews up front. The bulletin, which I have barely glanced at because I’ve been staring at the building in awe, is extremely easy to read and follow.

Wait – did the priest just invite me to step up to those pews near the altar, where the other two people are sitting? He said something like, “Please join us,” but he said it so quickly and moved on so smoothly to the next part of the service, that I’m not absolutely certain what he meant. Perhaps he just means, “Let’s begin.”

Using the prayers in the bulletin, we repent thoroughly: “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” The priest prays for the bishop and for the diocese. The Philadelphia diocese has been in a great deal of turmoil in recent years, and especially within the last few days. I remember reading something about the bishop being charged with something or other – I’ll have to look this up later. The priest prays for an end to violence in the city, which seems like a good idea in a city which is currently holds the top spot in the US for its murder rate.

The gospel text is the story of Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector who climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus because he was “short in stature.” Jesus sees him in the tree and invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ home. The priest says that we should note that God does the inviting, not Zacchaeus. Instead of asking Jesus into our hearts, we might be better off just being still and waiting for Him to invite Himself in. A nice twist on a religious cliché.

After the homily we pass the peace, and I walk toward the front to shake hands with everyone. This is a service where it is exceptionally easy to greet every single participant! The woman invites me to join her in the pews in the altar area, so I do.

Hey – these pews are great! There’s a wooden ledge where you can set out your bulletin, Bible, and hymnal for easy access and hands-free reading.

Before he begins Communion, the priest goes behind a short ornamental screen in front of the altar table and closes and locks the gate. At least, I think that’s what I see him doing. This reminds me of the much more elaborate doorways and gates and screens used in the service I attended in a Greek Orthodox church.

One slightly discombobulating thing happens next. While the priest is saying the communion prayers, the woman sitting next to me is overcome with giggles. She is trying very hard to suppress them, but everyone knows how impossible that is. It has happened to us all. She is doing a pretty good job – no snorting, gasping, or tears running down her face – all sins which I have committed in church services – but the smile behind her hand and the shaking shoulders give her away. I can’t help but wonder if I am causing this. I may have looked pretty funny sitting alone in this huge sanctuary. Or I might look funny up here near the altar. Or it could be some private thing that she suddenly remembered at an inconvenient time.

Oh well. No use speculating. This is one of the great advantages of growing older. When I was young I would have been mortified just imagining that someone might be laughing at me. Now it seems that, although I can’t help but entertain the idea that I might be causing someone to laugh, it’s probably pretty self-centered to think that I’m the cause of anything at all. But if I am the cause of laughter – good. We could all use more of it.

We three kneel for communion. We use a common cup for the wine – and I realize with some surprise this is the first time during my year of visiting churches that I have used a common cup.

We sit down again, and there is a blessing and dismissal. The organist snuffs out the candles. I walk to the door, shake hands with the priest, and leave. It did take only twenty minutes!

Epilogue

Later, I check the church website and learn a number of interesting things. The first is that it seems to be impossible to really capture how gorgeous the sanctuary is in photos. I looked online to see if I could find any photos that do this space justice, but I can't. Also:

1. “After four years of planning and building, the Church held its first service on March 27, 1859. Scottish-born architect John Knotman designed and built the church in the Norman style. This style expressed the low-church tradition favored by the founders, avoiding Gothic influences”

This is low-church tradition? This incredibly beautiful, ornate building? Apparently I have completely misunderstood the meaning of low-church and high-church tradition.

2. “The parish’s second rector, the Rev. Philips Brooks, was a noted preacher of the 19th century. . . . [t]hese years saw the writing by Brooks of what has become one of the best-loved Christmas carols, the first written in English by a native-born American, O Little Town of Bethlehem.

3. The church carillon is the oldest manually operated carillon on the continent.

4. “The beautiful stained glass from English, French, and American studios include five by Tiffany and one by Luc Olivier Merson. Brochures allow visitors to conduct a self-guided tour of our splendid works.”

Finally, I look up the controversy about Bishop Bennison. I was correct in thinking that he had been in the news recently. Just a few days before my visit he had been charged (by a judicial committee of the Episcopal church) with failing to respond properly to allegations of sexual misconduct regarding his brother in the 1970s. (His brother was a youth minister at a California church where Bennison was rector.) He was also charged with suppressing information related to his brother's alleged misconduct.

In 2008 Bennison was deposed from holy orders. He appealed, and In 2010 he was reinstated, although the House of Bishops urged him to resign voluntarily. As far as I can tell, he has not done so.

Many people believe that groups within the diocese wanted to get Bennison out for other reasons, but finally were only able to use the allegations from the California church to push their case forward. It’s a long, convoluted story involving almost every aspect of contemporary religious hot issues – money, sex, the ordination of women, the conservative/liberal divide, and power struggles between individual congregations and church authorities. A microcosm of some of the battles taking place in the Episcopal church worldwide and in the religious landscape worldwide.

O morning stars together

Proclaim the holy birth

And praises sing to God the King

And Peace to men on earth.

We would be pretty lucky just to have peace among men in the church.

Tim picked out our dinner menu tonight.

And I love it!

The whites of their eyes

This post from Ambiance is really interesting. I hadn't ever thought that only dogs and humans seem to understand that you can seek visual cues from another person's eyes. I did know that only dogs seem to understand pointing - that when a human points at something, you look toward where that person is pointing, not at the finger itself. Other animals (cats, for example) will inspect the finger that is pointing, if they have any interest at all in bodily expressions.

Ideaboard

The computer group at work has a big white ideaboard on which they post questions. I see people huddled around the board talking, or individuals studying it and writing on it, and most of what I see is fairly incomprehensible.

But some of it even I understand.

On a cold, dark, rainy day

it's very nice to have some hot homemade macaroni and cheese.

Sometimes comfort food is good therapy.

This is the part where Holy Mother Church tells you to give each other a nice, big kiss

Saint Linus Roman Catholic Church
Natick, MA
November 4, 2007


We are in Massachusetts for a wedding this weekend – my nephew Nick was married yesterday at this church, and we are back again on Sunday morning for mass. This is a lot of Catholic churches in a row for me.

The priest, Monsignor Robert Giggi, conducted the wedding yesterday. He has a charming Boston accent. The wedding was quick – only about 30 minutes, no communion. The most memorable part of it was when Monsignor Giggi said, “This is the part of the service where Holy Mother Church tells you to give each other a nice big kiss.”

Saint Linus is a newer-looking (1950s? 1960s?) rectangular tan brick building. It looks as though it seats at least 600, and I estimate that there are perhaps 350-400 people here for the 11:00 am mass.

The front of the sanctuary looks like a bit of a hodge-podge to me. There are small modern stained glass windows on either side of an emaciated Christ on the cross, which is hung against red and gold wallpaper with a very large pattern. There are several other statues, the two flags (Vatican and American), flowers, felt banners, the altar table – lots of stuff up there.

Reading the bulletin while waiting for the service to begin, I notice a question-and-answer column, Dear Padre. Someone has asked if Catholics should take communion in Protestant churches, if they happen to be there for a wedding or some other service where it is offered. The Padre says that the answer is no, because “it implies a unity between our traditions that does not exist.” That seems fine to me. Then he says that “Protestants usually believe that any baptized Christian may receive communion,” which is a little off. Many Protestant churches have closed communion, and wouldn’t expect or want Catholics to participate.

The sermon, which is about twelve minutes long, is good. It’s about three types of brokenness: the broken Word, the broken bread, and broken people. We are encouraged to encounter Christ in all these situations.

At this church they offer only bread for the Eucharist, one of the those Catholic habits that still surprises me now and then. The service is finished in under an hour. Everyone is invited to the fellowship hall for coffee and refreshments, but we need to get back to the hotel to check out and meet relatives for lunch.

When I began this project I thought I would be drinking lots of coffee and eating lots of cookies after church with various groups, but it hasn’t turned out that way at all. Somehow I have managed to hit upon only a few churches that even have coffee hours, and now, on one of the few times I found one, I can’t stay.

Epilogue

I was curious about the name of the church – who was Saint Linus? I associate that name only with the thumbsucking philosopher of Peanuts fame. I began with Wikipedia, where I learned that Linus was the second pope. Some people think he is also the Linus mentioned in 2 Timothy, though there is nothing official about that opinion. Tertullian says that Clement was the second pope, but the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) says that Tertullian was off base on that one.

Only a very few things are known about this Linus, and most of them are disputed. He seems to have been a Tuscan, which would indicate that the church began choosing Italian popes pretty early, after their first Palestinian Jewish pope. Some sources say that he decreed that women should cover their heads in church! Aha – so he’s the guy responsible for that one? Wait, no – the Catholic Encyclopedia says that this story is apocryphal. The same source that says he’s behind the headcovering decree also says that he was martyred, which the Encyclopedia pronounces “improbable. For between Nero and Domitian there is no mention of any persecution of the Roman Church.” For a while, some people thought Linus had been buried alongside Peter, but that view is no longer popular. At one point a letter concerning the martyrdom of Peter and Paul was attributed to Linus, but later this was also declared to be false.

It must be incredibly difficult to do early church history.

You know, some ministers worry about taking over a pulpit after an especially popular or charismatic or famous pastor has left or died, because they tend to suffer by comparison. They should think about poor Pope Linus. Just imagine having Peter as your predecessor!

Basically, it seems we know nothing about Pope Linus. In that respect he’s like most other people, of course – so two cheers for Linus, the unknown Pope!

Alice Monro

Just finished her collection of short stories, Open Secrets, on my ride home from work today. This is one reason I love taking the train to and from work -- lots of good reading time.

What a writer. Cynthia Ozick has dubbed her "our Chekhov." These stories are just so good. So good.

I’m still pretty sure she serves shot glasses wedged in her cleavage to dudes with scurvy, rotting teeth, and breath that smells like mutton.

Funny, snarky, well-written coverage of fashion on the red carpet, at the funny, snarky, well-written blog, Go Fug Yourself.

Will we get to heaven because we are Catholic?

St. Andrew the Apostle Roman Catholic Church
Gibbsboro, NJ
October 28, 2007

I decided to attend this church because I had read in the Catholic Star Herald that they would be having a Mass of African Tradition and Celebration. Having just seen two very nice Ugandan priests, and having seen the video of the African mass that Father Grace loaned me, I thought that this sounded great.

Unfortunately, there was a typo in the article. It said the celebration would take place on “Sunday, October 27.” Since October 27 was a Saturday, I thought they meant Sunday, October 28. But the typo was the other way around – the celebration was on Saturday, October 27. I should have looked into this more carefully.

When I arrived on Sunday morning I heard African music coming out of the loudspeakers in the church – but it had been recorded the day before. Today was going to be an ordinary mass, albeit conducted by an African priest, because this church, like St. Thomas and the Stockton campus ministry, is served by a priest imported from overseas.

The building is one of those big modern structures, with a large skylight over the sanctuary, and lots of angular modern wooden carvings on one wall. There are about 250 congregants, in a sanctuary that would seat 500-600. The most notable thing to me is a holy water fountain in the lobby, which seems huge, and has water flowing on three levels. I had never even imagined that you could have a holy water fountain (I guess I had only seen little basins that people dip their fingers in), but why not?

Once again I find myself in the middle of a congregation that is 99% white, listening to an African priest.

His homily is interesting. It’s about self-righteousness, and follows the reading about the tax collector and the Pharisee. He asks the congregation if they think they are better than other people because they are Catholic, and if they think that being Catholic will get them into heaven. No, he answers. We are not justified by works, and being Catholic is a kind of work. He notes that we can easily assume superior attitudes about our faith – but that doing so is itself a sign of ignorance and lack of compassion. Like the Pharisee in today’s lesson, we can bring this attitude into our prayer life.

He asks us to consider a single mother with two jobs, trying to finish her education, who becomes pregnant. He notes that pregnancy is a far different thing for her than for most of the women sitting in the congregation. He asks us to be compassionate about her choice to turn to abortion – he’s not saying that abortion is okay in this situation, just urging us to avoid condemning the woman facing this difficult situation.

Well, that’s a homily I didn’t expect to hear in a Catholic church.

It’s a lovely day, and when I go outside I notice that they have set aside, rather sensibly, a smokers’ station for people who want a cigarette after church.

Later, looking through their bulletins and materials I see that this church is very active in compassionate ministry of various types. They visit men and women in prisons in Camden weekly, and have helped several women during their release and re-entry into society. Once a month they send people to mentor troubled teens in Camden. They collect household goods that people need, and visit the VA hospital. Seems like a nice group, and if I were a Catholic living near Gibbsboro, I would check them out.

Grade 4, 1944

Another one of those interesting but unlabeled old photos. You know what surprises me about this? I was in fourth grade in 1961-1962, almost twenty years later. And children's hairstyles and fashions do not seem to have changed a bit during those years. Just a few years after that, though - what a difference!