St. Michael & All Angels Arts

The Prophetic Sign

2010-01-18T22:39:00.002-07:00

The new prophetic sign, painted by artist and parishioner Bob Bennett, was dedicated on Sunday, January 16th with readings, prayers and blessings. Here are some photos of the occasion:

More photos on the news blog.

All photos by KFB

Christmas Music, 2009

2009-12-27T18:22:00.002-07:00

Here is some visual evidence of this year's Christmas music at the Episcopal Parish of St. Michael and All Angels. Sorry, no audio!

At St. Michael's, the Christmas services begin with the 5 PM Family Mass on Christmas Eve. This is the service at which children help to set up the creche amid the appropriate Gospel readings and carols. Here, Father Smith leads the congregation in a Christmas carol. The woman at the piano, Better Miller, flies in every Thanksgiving and Christmas and plays for us. (She's mostly here to visit family.)

A major feature of music at St. Michael's is the Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, which I photographed extensively years ago. In a loft at the back of the church is the antiphonal organ, seen here. It's an extra section of pipes far away from the main organ, which is housed in a chamber behind the church sanctuary.

The other main source of music at St. Michael's is the parish choir, directed by Jane Haman, who also plays the organ. Their Christmas performance is the "midnight" mass on Christmas Eve, which actually starts at 10 PM with carols and bible readings. They are supplemented by a string quartet - or is it a trio?

Aha. The fourth instrument in the quartet is the organ, played here by parishioner and choir member Keith Hege. Chuck Haman turns the pages.

The string players are the evening's "hired guns."

There is a Mass held early Christmas morning, but I'm sure you'll understand when I say I always skip that one, attending "just" the other three. The other Mass of Christmas Day is at 10:15 AM. Jane, Chuck and the choir take a well-deserved day off, and composer (and retired English teacher from the St. Michael's Parish Day School) Alan Schultz plays instead. Both his original music and the classical pieces he selects tend to put the organ through its paces, showing off the range of notes a few thousand pipes can produce. My favorite bits are when he has a "call and response" between the pipes behind the sanctuary and the antiphonal pipes in back.

There are openings to the right and left of the sanctuary, through which banks of pipes can be seen. It took me a few tries to get the shot, but I kind of like the underlit versions.

Here's a better shot of the same pipes and poinsettia, taken with flash.

Karen

Images of Michaelmas by Reed Karaim

2009-10-22T00:13:00.004-07:00

From St. Michael & All Angels Arts

Ready to Support St. Michael!

Blessing the City.

Mariachi Brillante Juvenil.

All photos copyright 2009 by Reed Karaim.

Images of Michaelmas by Jim Peterson

2009-10-22T00:01:00.006-07:00

St. Michael icon, Michaelmas 2009

From St. Michael & All Angels Arts

Carrying in the St. Michael icon

During the Mass.

Blessing the City.

Mariachi Brillante Juvenil.

All photos copyright 2009 by Jim Peterson.

From the Camera of Sue Peyron

2009-02-08T02:55:00.002-07:00

Sue has forwarded some photos she's taken at church over the last couple of years, including a series of pictures from a Casa Maria night lst summer. Other photos date back to 2007, and feature Rev. Angela Emerson, Proscovia King and lots of other folks. Enjoy!

Sunday, Apr 21, 2007

From the Picasa album St. Michael & All Angels Arts

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Friday, August 1, 2008

More of Sue's photos can be seen in the Casa Maria section of our Ministries page. Thanks, Sue!

Breaking the Code

2009-01-01T16:16:00.006-07:00

Freely adapted from the Outpost Mâvarin entries Breaking the Code and The Year That Doesn't End.

My sleep schedule has gotten upended in recent weeks, with me sleeping mostly at night - what a concept! That has resulted in me posting in the morning, which historically I almost never did except at the end of a long night of working on the entry. But Tuesday night I was up all night wrangling HTML for the St. Michael and All Angels web site, and afterward I had to sleep before doing anything else.

I pretty much spent all of Wednesday fussing with the St. Michael's site some more, with way more expert assistance from Julie B than anyone could reasonably expect. Every one of the main pages now has a cool individualized header similar to the one at the top of this entry, and color coordinated links at the bottom, and much less text that looks tiny because of a difference of opinion between GoDaddy (which likes modern span tags) and SeaMonkey (which likes old-fashioned font tags). Thanks to Julie, some of the pages are now linked to a style sheet that simplifies the formatting a bit, but I still have much work ahead of me streamlining everything. If being a geek is defined as technological competence, then the day has been a blow to my geek standing. I really, really don't understand css (cascading style sheets) well at all. But I'll learn. I will!

And look what I've gotten from all my efforts to solicit links, update pages and submit technical stuff to Google. As of yesterday, a search for the terms "St. Michael Church Tucson" did not have the church's home page on on first three screens. Only the schedule page showed up, and the old version of the site on mavarin.com, and some malcontent griping about St. Michael's on a blog one day. Google didn't even know about some incoming links that I knew existed, including from Episcopal Church USA and my blog sidebars. But look at the result I got late Wednesday afternoon ago for "St. Michael's Church Tucson," which previously had similar results:

We were the third entry on the first page, right behind two links for St. Michael's Parish Day School. Fair enough: they have a bunch of links from sites about schools, and have had a considerable web presence much longer than the church itself. I've been the church webmaster exactly five years, and frankly I coasted along on static pages (read: stale and unchanging) for much of that time.

But now the pages are bright and new, with nicer graphics and somewhat better coding. Some of them even have dynamic content, after a fashion. The Community page now has two slideshows, fed from the same Picasa albums that store graphics for the church's news and arts blogs. As I upload more photos, they'll be in the slideshows as well. The main Sermons page has a widget showing the most recent entries on the Sermons podcast blog, to which Father Smith will upload more sermons any year now. And the home page and schedule page both feature a widget for recent entries on the news blog. Next I'm hoping to find a widget for the Seasons page that can tell you which liturgical season it is right now, and maybe even how such things are calculated. For the moment I've settled for links to two liturgical calendars that list all the feast days and link to each day's Lectionary readings.

Wednesday night I was so distracted by the Casa Maria section at the bottom of the Ministries page, which refused to align left no matter what I did, that I lost track of the time. When midnight came, I was typing a "div" tag. John gave me a heads up on the time, and I rushed to turn on Dick Clark, kiss John and grab some sparkling Martinelli's cider, pretty much in that order. We missed the ball drop; it was probably 12:01 AM when we kissed. Ah, well, close enough. We marveled about Dick Clark still hanging in there, years after his stroke, acknowledged that neither of us cared for the show's music (admittedly on the basic of one or two songs only), and John soon turned his DVD of the British series Spaced back on. Happy New Year, John, and can you tell me how to fix the alignment on this table?

We got the alignment problem fixed, and sometime after midnight I happened to refresh the Google search. This is what I saw:

As reasonable as it seems that a search for "St. Michael's Church Tucson" would point to a church in Tucson called St. Michael's as its first result, I had recently despaired of ever getting Google to do that on the basis of my amateur webgeekery. So the year ends on a slight up note. I don't have a job, but at least I managed to accomplish something as the parish webmaster.

Happy New Year, folks!

Karen

The Dregs of Christmas

2008-12-30T11:20:00.005-07:00

Adapted from The Dregs of Christmas on Outpost Mâvarin:

What are you supposed to do with the other 11 days of Christmas?

The only way some people know there was ever more than one day of Christmas is from that song with the partridge in a pear tree. For them, Christmas ends with the first serving of turkey or ham, or with the opening of the day's last gift on December 25th. Father Smith mentioned in his Christmas sermon this year that early in his priesthood he once saw a discarded Christmas tree with tinsel and a few broken ornaments by a dumpster, at 9 AM on Christmas morning. I'm guessing that was a corporate tree, an office tree. Or maybe it was the tree of some divorced parent whose visitation ended with Christmas Eve, and did not want the reminder of a Christmas without the kid lingering in a lonely apartment.

In the retail and secular world, it's the run up to Christmas that matters, the shopping and the music, the decorating and the anticipation. Once the gifts are unwrapped and the food is eaten and the in-laws go home, Christmas is over. Time to take the tree down, put the Christmas music away, and figure out how to use up the rest of the turkey.

But in some Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church USA, the run up to Christmas is the four weeks of Advent. Liturgically, it's about preparing for the coming of Jesus, not just historically but at the end of the world, whatever and whenever that may be. I personally find the whole "end times" concept problematic at best, but the practical side of it is essentially carpe diem. If we don't mess things up too badly and don't get hit by too big an asteroid, and if Jesus doesn't decide to return when everything is mediocre as usual, then our species and our planet may survive for thousands more years. We as individuals, however, won't be there. It thus doesn't really matter at the individual level whether the world ends sooner or later, as long as you don't mess things up for everyone else. My high school boyfriend, Dan Cheney (no relation), was convinced by a Hal Lindsey paperback that the world would end in 1986. He was mistaken, but his personal world on Earth ended in 1978, courtesy of a drunk driver during Spring Break. My take-away from all this: we really don't know when the world will end (and Jesus said as much), and we don't know (in most cases) when our own lives will end. It therefore makes sense to prepare for all possibilities. It's like Gandhi said:

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - Mahatma Gandhi

So much for my mildly heretical take on Advent. But what comes next on the Church calendar? That would be Christmas. The observance starts the evening before, and runs through the Feast of the Holy Name (January 1, commemorating the christening of Jesus) and into Epiphany (January 6, commemorating the arrival of the Magi). The liturgical focus is on Jesus being revealed to the world - through the angels and the shepherds, those astrologers from the East (whose number is not given in the Bible, and who probably weren't kings), the people at the christening and John and Yahweh on the banks of the Jordan.

From the Picasa photo album Life at St. Michael and All Angels

So what am I supposed to do about it? In Western culture, you can't completely avoid the story of the birth of Jesus. It's almost become a stale cliche, and you certainly don't need me to tell you about it. The best I can hope for is to touch lightly on the subject here, and hope I'm not being too annoying. Oh, and there's one more thing I need to do. As Nancy reminds me, this is my year to back the St. Michael's Epiphany cake. Now, what did I do with that plastic thimble?

What else should I be up to? At the moment, the mundane part of these additional days of Christmas involve using up the turkey and washing an endless supply of self-regenerating dirty dishes. There's also the ceremonial using of the gift cards and the purchase of additional gifts were missed in our austerity Christmas frugality. Gift cards from my godson's family and my friend Kevin got me most of the way to DVDs of Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest and Prince Caspian with all the extras, and I got John the calendars he needs for home and work, at the post-Christmas half-off price. Barnes and Noble completely let me down on books from my Amazon wishlist: no Scalzi hardcovers, no recent McCaffrey Pern book, no James Burke at all, no Doctor Who books of any sort, no Patricia C. Wrede I didn't already have, no copies of L'Engle's last book (which I ordered online from another gift certificate) or the audio edition thereof. It's getting to where Amazon is the only place to get anything but current bestsellers or royalty-free classics.

What does popular culture say this time is for? One goes back to the office, right? But I can't do that, being still unemployed after nearly four months. Yesterday I turned down my most pathetic lead yet, for a strictly temp job in a position (Accounts Payable) ranked below anything I've done recently, for less money than I was making before I had an accounting degree. And of course I felt guilty about it, but I've got to believe that something better will come along, not necessarily at the level I'm used to or better, but certainly better than that. It's also time to make close-of-tax-year donations (we need to get the old cars hauled away - but then, we say that every year) and start thinking about New Year's resolutions.

I guess for me, it's time to crack open the accounting books that just arrived UPS, and sign up for one of the online seminars I recently paid for. Jesus is here and Jesus is coming, and I don't know whether I have one day to live or another fifty. I'd better get moving, preparing for the possibilities.

Karen

Scenes from the Advent International Bazaar 2008

2008-12-07T23:38:00.006-07:00

As seen by my camera on Sunday after Mass:

Mayan textiles (I think)

Busy shoppers in the Parish Center.

Native American crafts.

Crafts from Ten Thousand Villages.

Native performers in the Labyrinth.

Another Aztec Dancer arrives...

...and two more behind him, as Kevin looks on.

Just Some Photos

2008-12-02T11:14:00.002-07:00

No deep words this time, just some photos I never got around to posting. Click on any photo to get to see a larger version in a small photo album of images from St. Michael's.

Remember, if you are a St. Michael's parishioner, you are invited to submit your photos, poetry, prayers, opinions, essays, rants, announcements, fiction, etc. for inclusion here. I ask only that it be at least tentatively related to the church, faith, mission or ethics. You can email me at mavarin (at) aol.com, or give me your submission in person at any 10:15 AM or feastday Mass. - Karen

Feast of St. Francis 2008

From St. Michael & All Angels Arts

Textile show and sale, October 2008

Episcopal School Sunday 2008

Pilgrim Womble. This is the best I could get from a distance.

Holy Week, Half-Remembered

2008-03-27T23:14:00.001-07:00

Cross-posted from the usual place:

The further I get from the end of Holy Week, the less I actually had to say about it. Nor can I fill an entry with photos I took of Holy Week this year. I didn't always have my camera with me, and was too busy being part of things to photograph them too. Well, heck, maybe that means I won't be too long-winded in covering the subject. (What are the chances?)

For those of you who weren't raised in a denomination that celebrates it, I should explain that Holy Week is basically the week that leads up to Easter at the end of Lent. The Sunday before Easter is Palm Sunday. Then we've got three days of nothing special, followed by Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and of course Easter Sunday. I'm not here tonight to convince anyone of anything, just to explain what all that involves at the Episcopal Parish of St. Michael & All Angels, and what small part I played in all that this year.

Palm Sunday 2006

Palm Sunday, 2007

Palm Sunday: This commemorates Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, to the acclaim of the crowds. At St. Michael's this service always starts outside in one of the courtyards. The members of clergy celebrating the Mass (priests and subdeacon) wear an oddly shaped hat for some reason, on this day and no other. Palms are blessed and distributed, the Gospel is read, and we all process into the church, singing.

Reading of the Passion (Good Friday 2007 I think)

Once we're inside, it all gets darker. The church is decked out in penitential purple, and a second Gospel is sung, of the Passion (the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus). A member of the choir sings the part of Jesus, another one Pilate, another one Peter, another one the narrator, with the rest of the choir filling in the crowd and bit parts.

This year I was either crucifer (carrying the cross) or torch (carrying one of the candles), I forget which. I kind of think I was crucifer. As you can see from the picture above, the cross gets covered up with a purple cloth at the end of Lent. I'm not quite sure why, but by Good Friday all the icons of the church are covered.

Washing of the Feet, 2006

Maundy Thursday: I can never quite remember what "maundy" means. At St. Ann's in Manlius when I was growing up, it was called Holy Thursday. Either way, it commemorates the Last Supper, which immediately preceded Gethsemane and the arrest, and which is the basis for the sacrament of Holy Eucharist (Communion), the ritual transmogrification of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.

The Last Supper was basically a Seder, a ritually significant meal in the Jewish celebration of Passover, commemorating the meal of sacrificed lamb and unleavened bread eaten immediately prior to the flight from Egypt. At St. Michael's we have a lamb dinner in the Parish Center, punctuated by prayers and readings. I was a couple minutes late this year because of John's car breaking down at Oracle and Ina, almost a forty minute drive from our house. When I arrived, Father Smith was just starting the service. He waved me over to a table with a few empty seats, which happened to be the table where Kirk Smith, the Bishop of the Diocese of Arizona, was the honored guest. Before we ate and in between prayers and readings. Proscovia called me away to get my alb on (a one piece white robe), because I was going to be crucifer and would not have time later.

Back at the table, Ila Abernathy suggested that we each give our names and a little-known fact about ourselves. I said that I blog every night, no matter what, which surprised no one. The Bishop also has a blog, it turns out, and mentioned that he's gotten nasty comments on it. When another parishioner mentioned as her fact that she was a fan of Doctor Who(!), the Bishop impressed me by asking, "old series or new series?"

After dinner, the Bishop and Father Smith went around washing the feet of the people who served the dinner at each table, following the example of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples in one of the Gospels. The other Doctor Who fan and I had a good-natured discussion about which of us had the ugliest feet, each of us vying for that distinction but not providing visual evidence. The Bishop gave a little sermon, during which he mentioned having once gone through the motions of washing where a parishioner's feet would have been if he'd had any.

Then I stood outside the Parish Center with Proscovia and the two torchers as everyone else processed past us into the church, singing Shalom, O My Friends. The Mass ended with the stripping of the altar and a haunting musical rendition of Psalm 22. I went back and forth several times between the sanctuary and the sacristy, carrying out cloths and other stuff from the three altars.

Waiting up with Jesus: St. Michael's 11:30 PM (2006)

On Thursday night, overnight, the leftover Eucharist resides in a vessel at the Altar of Repose in the back of the church. People come to the church all night long, usually in pairs, to pray and wait up with Jesus, in commemoration of the night at Gethsemane, when Peter, John and James kept falling asleep while Jesus prayed. I had scheduled myself to do this at midnight, but I was blogging and very tired, and I forgot. First year in a long time I've missed doing it.

The only icon of Good Friday is not a comforting one (2006)

Good Friday. I was crucifer again, carrying the cloth-covered cross. The Passion was sung again, I think from a different Gospel. Then we lined up for the Veneration of the Cross. A five-foot crucifix was held up. First the clergy, and then we acolytes, and then the people came forward, one by one, to kiss the statue's feet, or just touch them; or to bow, or make the sign of the cross, or just pause and move on. After the veneration, the cross was laid on the steps at the edge of the sanctuary, and people lined up again, this time to receive "leftover" Communion. There is no Eucharistic Prayer on Good Friday. As the service ended the acolytes and celebrants "scattered" in disarray, as the apostles did all those years ago. And then I drove a friend home to the south side of town.

Easter Vigil: Saturday night was Easter Vigil. In some churches it's held just before dawn on Easter Sunday, but St. Michael's does it the night before. It began around dusk, with a small fire in front of the church. I was torching, which is a bigger part of the Vigil than other services. The parishioners entered the darkened church, each carrying an unlit candle, or "taper." Father Ireland lit the huge Pascal Candle from the bonfire, and entered the church, where a young acolyte named John and I lit our oil-fed torches off the Pascal Candle. "The Light of Christ," Father Ireland chanted, three times, as he moved up the aisle, to be answered, "Thanks be to God." Between the three of us we provided fire to start the tapers in each pew.

It's a very long service, perhaps the longest of the year, but seemed slightly less so this year. After several readings and chants, little John and I stood by as the Gospel was proclaimed, the story of the empty tomb and Jesus' first post-resurrection appearance. The church was lit and bells were rung, horns played a fanfare and the people sang. I had forgotten my bells, but I noticed later that Father Smith "rang" his jingling keys in the triumphant singing of Jesus Christ is Risen Today. I followed his example, briefly.

The labyrinth, with the baptismal pool uncovered.

Easter Vigil at St. Michael's usually includes a baptism in the pool in the middle of the labyrinth. This year we baptized two kids from the parish day school, Paul and Anthony. People again lit their tapers off our torches. As the newly baptized went off to get into dry clothes, Father Smith led us in song. Then we were back inside for the rest of the Mass. And when all that was over, we had a "Break-Fast" of quiche and fruit and blintzes and punch (or champagne) in the Parish Center.

These two rows of chairs are where I sit as an acolyte. 2008.

Many parishioners figure that after celebrating Easter Vigil, which is the first service of Easter itself, they don't need to show up yet again on Easter morning. But as with Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I was scheduled as an acolyte. I torched again. The church was filled with music and light and flowers, and with CEO (Christmas and Easter Only) people. And this time I actually took a picture or two.

Wow, it's late. Good thing I slept for a few hours this evening. But I feel better now, because I'd kind of promised to write about Holy Week again, as I do every year. Good night!

Karen

Knitting a Prayer Shawl

2008-03-15T22:48:00.005-07:00

Knit. Knit. Knit.

Purl. Purl. Purl.

It's a prayer shawl.

I should be praying, but I have to watch each stitch,

and count them as I go.

How can I pray as well?

Knit. Knit. Knit.

Purl--oops, don't slide off too soon. Purl. Purl.

Every day two rows, fifty-seven stitches.

Concentrate.

Dear God, help me to finish this.

Stitch by stitch, row by row,

Carefully, Fearfully.

Knit. Knit. Knit.

Purl. Purl. Purl.

It will be thick and fluffy.

Warm, too.

Holey, sort of, where the purls succeed the knits.

Should I be praying for the one who'll get this shawl,

who'll need the warmth and comfort of it?

I wonder if she'll sit, enwrapped and quiet,

And hear a distant echo, whispering

Knit. Knit. Knit.

Purl. Purl. Purl.

by Lucy Rasmus

Alan Schultz and the Spark of Divine Fire

2008-03-09T04:36:00.004-07:00

Crossposted from Outpost Mâvarin, as usual: Who Is This Guy? A Recital Review

The antiphonal section of the organ, May 2005

A friend of mine from church took me out to dinner this evening, followed by a pipe organ recital by Alan Schultz in honor of the 50th Anniversary of St. Michael & All Angels Day School. Mr. Schultz (as his former students call him) or Alan (as longtime parishioners call him) recently retired from the school after teaching there for over four decades. I know him mostly as the substitute organist who occasionally plays at the 10 AM mass - not just Bach and such, but his own sacred classical works as well.

Tonight he started us off with Fantasy in G by J.S. Bach, turning much of it into a call and response between the main section of pipes behind the sanctuary in the front of the church and the antiphonal pipes above the back door. He said it was supposed to represent sets of angels singing to each other. It was interesting to hear, and made more use of the organ's capabilities than the average Sunday hymn.

Mr. Schultz introduces a composition.

Next came the premiere performance of Schultz's Psalmist Songs, "a song cycle for mezzo, English horn and organ." This was based on seven psalms (1, 121, 31, 45, 103, 133 and 126) sung by mezzo-soprano Korby Myrick, accompanied by Alan on organ and Kay Trondsen on English Horn. One of the psalms reminded me strongly of the L'Engle novel The Moon By Night, which quotes from it extensively.

Mr. Schultz plays a fugue.

Alan finished the recital with seven selections from his Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues in All Keys for Organ, which was also being premiered. He explained that in Bach's day, an innovation in the way instruments were tuned made certain keys, which sounded awful before, usable for the first time. Bach eventually composed two sets of Preludes and Fugues to cover each of the twelve major and twelve minor keys. Schultz has composed one set. He explained all this, and a little bit about what a prelude is and what a fugue is. I didn't really quite catch on what exactly defines each of this musical forms, but I gather that the fugue part developed from the canon, or round, which in turn arose naturally in medieval times from people not starting a chant at quite the same time. At one point Alan demonstrated the form by having the audience sing Row, Row Row Your Boat. These introductions reminded me a little of Leonard Bernstein's Concerts for Young People when I was a kid. He ended the performance by having us sing a particular hymn that led directly into his Fantasy, Fugue and Variation on "Divinum Mysterium" in E-flat major.

Before and after the recital there were prayers from Father Smith and testimonial speeches from several people associated with the school and its students. I had vaguely gathered that Alan taught English as well as music, but was surprised to learn that this was perhaps the most important part of his legacy at St. Michael's Day School. His eighth grade students learned to write research papers, something I wasn't exposed to until my senior year in high school. One speaker credited him with turning his students into "grammar police," and a former student of his joked that he tries "to never split...I mean, never to split infinitives" because of Mr. Schultz. The student's parents said they needed a dictionary to look up words in Mr. Schultz's report card evaluations, and the father, a professor, said he has higher standards for papers from former St. Michael's students because of Mr. Schultz. The headmaster talked about Schultz joking about buying a supermarket just so that the express checkout would allow "10 items or fewer." He sounds like my kind of guy!

Newspaper photos from his career adorn a centerpiece.

It turns out this man I've seen around the parish for a decade, and occasionally heard play, is a bit of a renaissance man. Today's program calls him a "composer, teacher, conductor, organist, harpsichordist and author." He was music director of the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra for 15 seasons, and he's a former director of the Tucson Masterworks Chorale. He's written a book on teaching organ, had several recordings released, and has had both music and poetry published. Wow! And to think he was basically "just zis guy" to me until tonight.

Afterward at the reception, I tried to express my appreciation upon learning more about him, especially the English teacher bits. I somewhat nonsensically compared the recital to "a cross between Leonard Bernstein's Concerts for Young People and the writing of Madeleine L'Engle," a compliment he accepted graciously. To be honest, I'm a bit of a Philistine with respect to classical music; I do like it, including Schultz's own contributions to the genre, but not enough to seek it out or make an effort to learn more about it. Still, even my relatively untrained ear can tell that his music is creative, ambitious, and well-executed.

I remarked to my friend before the recital that St. Michael's can be represented by a big Venn diagram, with overlapping populations of students, faculty, staff, choir, parishioners who normally attend each of the three Sunday masses and thus seldom meet each other, the social concerns people, the Altar Guild people and ECW. There was a good selection from each of those groups there tonight, including one writer and former journalist I'd like to get to know better.

Given this revelation about someone I took for granted, I can't help but wonder: if this man I see each week at the 10 AM mass can be as accomplished and interesting as Alan Schultz, what about all the other people behind those familiar faces? I overheard one woman this evening mentioning that she was a nurse in Vietnam. Another parishioner is an expert on Byzantine art. We have engineers and astronomers, mathematicians and professors, photographers and who knows what else, some retired, some still working. What fascinating biographies do these people have, unknown by a shy fellow parishioner who barely scratches the surface of their acquaintance?

But maybe it's not important that I get to know each person in depth, learn all about their careers and their hobbies, their trips to Spain, their military careers, and their stories in major newspapers. Maybe it's enough to know and to remember that they're all people, mostly intelligent, talented people, each making unique contributions to the world and its people, each with his or her own "spark of divine fire." Occasionally, if I pay attention, I may even see them glow.

Karen

Is It Lent Yet?

2008-03-05T01:24:00.002-07:00

Cross-posted, as usual, from Outpost Mâvarin:

Thanks for the tip, Julie! SeaMonkey, which I looked into once before without finding any indication that it had an HTML editor, does indeed have a slightly updated version of the old Netscape Composer. It's not perfect; a couple of times it froze up and would not let me select or unselect anything, and when I installed it a Windows Compatibility Assistant wanted to do something or other. Maybe I should have let it. And it didn't show the Hipcast play bar, which made me a little nervous about whether I managed to keep the code in the sermons page as I turned blog entries into a nice table. But it did work. The page has a bunch of new sermon links on it, and it looks nicer than before because I ran them side by side this time, two sermons across instead of a narrow bar down the middle of the page.

I was so encouraged that I took care of another page on the St. Michael's web site that's been languishing since last summer: the Seasons page.

This used to a a somewhat complex and repetitive series of pages showing what church season we're currently in, which one preceded it and which one is next. I had them on my hard drive with names like seasonsepi.html and seasonslent2.html. In theory as each one came around, I'd rename that file as seasons.html and upload it. Only I hardly ever got around to actually doing that!

So tonight I deleted the bars with the previous, now and next seasons, and consolidated the rest into one master table showing all the seasons for the year, with major feastdays within each. Well, some of them, anyway. I had enough clipart to stick an appropriate gif or jpg in each season's cell. Much better! Only problem was that when I checked it just now, Firefox was reading a clear and correct html link to http://smallangelstucson.org/vestmts.jpg as the nonsensical http://smallangelstucson.org/smallangelstucson.org/vestmts.jpg, and therefore not displaying the picture. I specified actual size and supplied alternate text for the two affected images, and that cleared up the problem. Weird.

Silly Firefox! There was nothing wrong with my
link to this image of vestments for all seasons.

It still needs tweaking. There must be a church calendar widget somewhere that will tell people that if today is March 5, 2008, then we're in Lent. That will be more informative than either my rotating season pages or the new combined one. And I can probably get a photo of St. Michael's itself to illustrate each season, either instead of or in addition to the clip art.

But not tonight!

Karen

Looking for Starfish

2008-03-04T01:45:00.003-07:00

Crossposted from Outpost Mâvarin:

Have you noticed that when you feel guilty about not doing something, it sometimes makes you want to continue to avoid doing it? I'm not quite as bad about such things as I was in my misspent youth; back in high school I was a master procrastinator, if not quite a world class one. But even now I have a tendency to put off doing certain things, and once I start, I continue to put them off.

I say all this by way of introducing the fact that I just updated the St. Michael's news blog for the first time in three weeks. It's not a hard task; the church sends me the church bulletin weekly as a Word file. All I have to do is paste and format and proofread. But it takes about half an hour, usually, and I put it off, rationalizing that the announcements don't actually change very much from one week to the next, and stuff is almost always announced a few weeks ahead. It doesn't make it right, though. There may well be something in any given week that should be posted promptly.

One of the reasons I've become so avoidy about it is that I'm supposed to be solving the sermon problem. It used to be that I could paste the sermon podcasts onto the sermons web page, spend about two hours formatting and tweaking, and then it would be done. It would work. But that was on the old computer, when I had Netscape Composer. That doesn't seem to be available online anymore; at least, I haven't found it. I've tried a few substitutes, including Open Office, only to see my web pages ruined as the program automatically updates all the links to point to my hard drive instead of the web. I can't imagine how that would be useful to anyone, let alone the default setting. And so far I haven't found a way to make it stop doing that.

Not that I've tried in the last two months. Not at all. Not once. I was so frustrated the last time I did try that I'm having trouble making myself tackle the problem again. Even if I get the links to remain static, it will still be an awful lot of work.

But for tonight I'm going to call the sermon posting tomorrow's problem, and hope that turns out to be a true statement. At least I got the announcements posted. I spent an hour on it, largely because I wanted a picture of a starfish.

That's right. A picture of a starfish.

It's kind of a parable, you see. The story apparently comes from a writer named Loren Eiseley, according to the Operation Starfish web site. (The names Project Starfish and Operation Starfish seem to be interchangeable.) The gist of it is that a man comes across a kid throwing stranded starfish back into the ocean so they won't die. The man points out that there are a gazillion starfish on the beach, all up and down the shoreline. The kid can't possibly make a difference. The kid throws another starfish into the sea, and says, "I made a difference to that one."

The idea, of course, is that you or I cannot personally solve world hunger, stop the spread of AIDS, end homelessness, etc. A single person, or even a whole parish or a whole denomination, or a whole country, can't completely solve any one of these problems. But we can help one person, or contribute to helping one person, or one family. This concept seems to be powerful enough to have inspired numerous charity efforts with the word Starfish in the title, for a number of different causes.

So what St. Michael's is doing is collecting small donations in a basket, to build a house for someone in Haiti, one of the "poorest of the poor" countries. If you work it right, with volunteers and local materials and labor, money goes a lot farther in a poor country than it does here. Raising enough money for a house is a fairly tall order for a medium-sized parish, but eminently doable. Announcing the effort in the church news blog should help a bit, especially if there's a nice copyright-free starfish picture there (such as one from a government website) to catch the eye long enough to get people reading the accompanying text.

No, I haven't dropped even a dollar in the Project Starfish basket. Yet. I will contribute, but i haven't gotten around to it.

But I did find a starfish picture.

Starfish photo from http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/.

Karen

Is It a Sin to Eat Steamed Sparrowgrass?

2008-02-07T00:45:00.000-07:00

Crossposted from Outpost Mâvarin:

There's a joke my atheist husband John does every year, on the first Wednesday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, or whatever the arcane calculation is. When I get home from Ash Wednesday Mass, he tells me there's a smudge on my forehead, and makes to wipe it off for me. First it was funny; then it got annoying. Now it's a tradition. This year he was already in bed by the time I got home from Mass, so it's perhaps just as well that he got the joke in Tuesday afternoon, over the phone in anticipation.

I got to serve at Mass tonight, carrying the cross in for a change. I used to do that more often than not, but then a nice man named Alex was trained as crucifer. Since that's the task he knows the best, he gets to do it if he's there, and I'm a "torch" (candle bearer) instead. But tonight I was scheduled to do it. Hooray!

In fact I ended up doing three tasks as an acolyte. It's become standard procedure now for the crucifer to torch during the Eucharistic Prayer whenever we're shorthanded, which seems to be almost always. And Father Smith asked me to take the second chalice tonight and serve communion with him on one side of the aisle. I'd only done it once before, served all of two people and messed up one of them. But tonight it was more like forty or fifty people. One person spilled, but that was the only disaster. It wasn't my fault, that one, honest!

Still, when the time comes for a proper Lenten observance, especially a Lenten fast, I'm anything but a paragon. Just thinking about fasting makes my digestive system start torturing me, until I have to eat something just to get rid of the pain. Sometimes I manage to hold it in check with Mylanta and crackers or something of the sort (which is still cheating), but this year I didn't even really try. Well, I sort of tried, but failed utterly. See, my company fed us breakfast (which included sausage or bacon), and later fed us lunch if we presented a ticket, all as part of the Chicken Something event. It seemed silly to turn down free chicken, potato salad and a brownie, so I didn't.

But aside from a 100-calorie pack of Sun Chips, I held off eating again until after church. My plan was to go for two filet from McDonald's. I was kind of counting on it. But there was construction surrounding my local McDonald's, and I didn't want to drive over the metal whatever-it-was blocking the driveway. So I "settled" for shrimp at Popeye's. Their new butterfly shrimp is hardly bigger than their popcorn shrimp, and half dough. It wasn't bad, but I'd have preferred the rectangles of processed fish on a bun across the street.

And I was still hungry. I managed to leave Popeye's without buying a little fried apple pie, but at home I gave in and ate something else. John and I recently discovered steam-in bags of vegetables, so I had a bag of asparagus. Was that a sin? So far, this doesn't look to be the Lent in which I get my eating under control. Then again, it's only just started.

That's not really what Lent is for anyway. Doing something good is as valid a response as giving something up, perhaps better, and it's supposed to be something you do for God, not your waistline. And if I'd actually done anything good, I wouldn't be bragging about it. Jesus and Father Smith both talked about doing the fasting and good works in secret. Seeing as how I failed to do it, though, I figure it's fair game to talk about it, and revive this disused church blog while I'm at it.

May your Lent be secretly successful, as we prepare for an early Easter.

Karen

Silent Night

2007-12-25T04:42:00.001-07:00

BELATEDLY cross-posted from the Outpost:

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Silent Night

Episcopal Pets

2007-10-08T03:12:00.002-07:00

Belatedly cross-posted from the Outpost:
Episcopal Pups and Random Facts

Here, as promised, are some of the 96 photos I took for the Feast of St. Francis at St. Michael's today. The actual feast day was Thursday, but the parish always transfers it to the nearest Sunday, and invites us to bring in our pets to be blessed.

The liturgy began outside in front of the church. Dog owners, the choir and others staked out chairs and benches.

It's a very doggy parish.

The only cat I saw receives his blessing.

Lining up for a blessing

A gerbil and a tarantula await their turns.

Tuffy in church.

Karen

Behold The Quilt!

2006-07-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

St. Michael's Quilters and Knitters have a raffle - Our first quilt is finished, and raffle tickets are available at $2.00 each. Please see Dolores Braren for raffle tickets.

Trinity Sunday in the Land of Mâvarin

2006-06-11T16:46:00.000-07:00

Reprinted from my personal blog:

Writer's Weekly Question #19:
We are a society that is literally besieged by historical, political, social, and even religious upheaval and decisions due to our connection to an information driven world. Do these things impact our creative process and do our opinions concerning various historical, political, social, and religious questions show up in our products (this can be writing, or art, or other things that involve creative process)? If so, how?

Well, the short answer is, "Of course it does." Even if we're writing an historical novel, a romance, science fiction or (as in my case) fantasy, we can't really help being influenced by the world around us, along with literature, art, music, family, and personal experience. But not so fast. That doesn't always mean that our stories are full of GWB and a controversial war, gay marriage and the latest pope. Sometimes the stories have to do with showing a better society, or a worse one, rather than the one we've actually got. Some things we may prefer to ignore and leave out, in the hope that the book will be about things more eternal than topical.

Even if some portion of the work is informed by current events, that may not be the most important thing about the story - and it probably shouldn't be. Sure, old Will Shakespeare had contemporary influences and constraints, but that's not why his plays are still performed. Ambition, politics, guilt, love, struggles between classes and religions, cultures and families... all that stuff is still with us. It transcends the particulars of Elizabethan England, not to mention the nominal setting of each play. Still, the contemporary issues of the day find their way in there, too, often interacting with ageless questions and eternal verities. And when a writer does include a reference to a current controversy, it's often done on the sly, so that a discerning person can appreciate it, and others can ignore it or be oblivious to it. That way, there's a certain level of plausible deniability, and the political, social or religious commentary doesn't stop the story dead in its tracks.

How does all this apply to me personally? You folks know, because I mention it rather frequently, that writing about religion or politics always makes me nervous. I have my own opinions on these subjects, and sometimes I even state outright what they are. But I also have strong feelings about tolerance and pluralism, and respecting the right of others to an informed opinion that doesn't match my own. All this stuff comes together in my personal philosophy. The greatest cause of evil in this world is the tendency to divide the world into Us and Them, and treat Them as undeserving of the same respect, tolerance, compassion and human rights that we accord to Us. This is the attitude that lies behind wars and terrorism, religious intolerance, sexual politics, the rich lining their nests at the expense of the poor, even most crime. So no, I don't talk all that much about Jesus or Dick Cheney, Israel or Ireland, Iran or Iraq. But Us and Them, well, I talk about that rather a lot. It informs and transcends all the specific issues that pop up from day to day.

Now, let's talk about Mâvarin. My first novel, Heirs of Mâvarin, is mostly about three specific characters, dealing with their own internal struggles while on their way to do things that affect the whole country. Religion exists basically in the background, and the politics have no contemporay equivalents that I'm aware of. Yet there's still a little social commentary buried in there, not because I deliberately put it in, but because it's part of the human condition. Rani, my most alienated (and ultimately most heroic) character, is black. That doesn't seem to have made him too much of an outsider or second class citizen growing up, but the fact that he grew up without a father is another alienating factor. It marks him as different, as much as his skin did in a nearly all-white community. Then when he becomes a tengrem (basically a monster), he's the ultimate outsider, alienated from humanity itself, and subject to being hunted down and killed. The fact that he is very much a "Them," even an "It," makes it more significant that Del sees past all that, and knows Rani is still his friend, still deserving of his compassion, affection and protection. At the same time, two "Them" groups that most people distrust, the tengremen (well, some of them) and the selmûnen, work together to help overthrow an illegal and oppressive government in favor of the rightful one. (This is the book that's currently awaiting a reply from a major publisher.)

Then in the second novel, Mages of Mâvarin, comparative religion becomes a major theme driving parts of the story. And here is where author Karen gets nervous. Will people understand what I'm talking about, and what I'm not? Some will, certainly. But for others, the people who think that any mention of magic is Satanic, and any religion that doesn't mention Jesus is sending its practitioners straight to Hell, the books are going to be problematic even before my character Fabi gets to Hemlarbeth. What will they make of this?

Fabi looked up through the rain at the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Câlaren, stark holy places that reached far above the pillars of cloud. Even this late in the day, even in this weather, the snow gleamed as if with a light of its own.

“Impressive, aren’t they?” Baku said. “I can almost understand why the superstitious might believe that the Câlaren are the home of the gods on Earth. The tallest mountains in Mâvarin would be that much closer to the Afterworld, if there were an Afterworld.”

“Here we go again,” Bora said. “Don’t encourage him, Fabi.” She had obviously heard it all before.

“You don’t believe in the Gods?”

“I believe that a human girl named Mâshela was probably born in a cave halfway up the middle peak. She wasn’t the Daughter of Lokvanishmû, though, because there never was a Lokvanishmû.”

“I’m amazed. You don’t believe in the Gods, and yet here we are, about to trade with the priests of the Holy Town.”

“That’s business. Anyway, most of the priests in this town are pretty good people, unlike some of the ones I’ve met elsewhere. They’re just self-deluded, that’s all.”

Fabi shook his head. “Call me deluded too, then, because I believe in the Gods as well. I’d rather not argue about it, though.”

Fabi and his friends, atheist Baku and his wife Bora, proceed to visit four churches in Hemlarbeth over the next couple of days. The Temple of Lokvanishmû, the Father and Creator, mostly contains people with a military or authoritarian sensibility. The Church of Mâshela, the Daughter of God, the Redeemer, has an underground hospital on site. The Church of Thâle, the Spirit of Wisdom who takes many forms, is heavily attended by artists, selmûnen and same-sex couples, people who aren't in the mainstream of society but contribute to it nonetheless. Last of all, off by itself is the little Church of the One, attended by more selmûnen and other mystics, people who have come to believe that the other three gods are really part of One God after all. And visiting all these places, helping the faithful with his honest and fair dealing, is Baku, a compassionate atheist who later is heroically generous to villages devasted by xenophobic massacres.

I fully expect that some people, when this book is published, will think I'm promulgating some kind of evil paganism. Others will recognize the Trinity, but find it an abomination because the names are all wrong, Mâvarin's incarnation of the Son is a woman, and homosexuals and even atheists are tolerated and respected by the faithful. Nevertheless, I have to have it in there, this old and current debate about the Trinity, the role of religion in other worlds, and the need for religious tolerance. I have a whole, hugely defensive disclaimer already written, trying to explain that the books are not anti-Christian, and that while they don't endorse a specific sect and should not be mapped to the real world as exact equivalents, they do represent my beliefs to some extent. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Fabi, Harisi and Shela are all Episcopalians, but they aren't far off.

Let those with ears to hear, hear! As for the rest, if they don't try to get the books banned, I'll be very pleased.

And no, there's no George W. Bush figure in that book, either.

I was thinking about all this today during Father Smith's sermon for Trinity Sunday. Sometimes it seems as though we think of the God of Moses and Jesus of Nazareth as two entirely separate Gods, and barely think of the Holy Spirit at all. It's not really surprising. The concept of a Triune God is a rather tricky one, Jesus is offstage for the whole of the Old Testament, and the Holy Spirit doesn't have a lot of dialogue in the Bible, despite having inspired most of it.

If we really pay attention, though, we see that all three aspects of the one God were there all along.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Mâvarin, Writing, Episcopal, Religion

Easter Conclusions

2006-04-17T02:05:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin:

Thanks to everyone who left comments over the past 24 hours. Most of them were very much appreciated, and the remaining one upset and challenged me. Tonight I'm going to share five more pictures from Easter Day itself, and a few last thoughts before I go back into lurker mode on the subject of religion.

I figured out today the relationship between the people who nearly fill the church for the Easter Vigil on Saturday night and the crowd that does fill the church on Easter Sunday. On a Venn diagram they would overlap, about half of of the population occupying both circles. The Vigil crowd consists mostly of the "hardcore" St. Michael's parishioners, the people who attend most of the major holy days, who know that they're signing on for a very long Mass, but do it because they know how special it is, and truly want to be there. About half of them also show up on Easter morning. The other half, knowing that they've already attended one Easter service, leave the Sunday Mass to the remaining regulars, the semi-regulars, and what Father Douglas once called the CEOs - Christmas and Easter Only.

Toni Sue, our verger, greets my friend Eva,
who will be 101 years old in May.

I was scheduled to be crucifer today, and besides, I'd promised to give Eva a ride to church. No Easter morning lie-in for me! I don't regret it, even though I only had four hours of sleep last night. Some years the Easter morning Mass is almost a rerun, but not this year. It was a different sermon, and there was different music: a little Bach, and little Beethoven, and (mostly) Mozart! Organist and choir director Jane Haman conducted not just the choir, which tends to swell in size for holiday programs, but also what I guess might be called a chamber orchestra: strings, brass and timpani.

Jane conducts the choir and guest musicians.

Easter morning is typically when babies are baptized, as opposed to older children and adults. This morning there was a toddler and a kindergartener. The toddler sucked her pacifier and nodded in preparation for each dousing at the baptismal font - not as if trying to avoid it, but as if cooperating. I make no claims that the little girl had a clue what was going on, but she didn't cry, didn't protest. And what a cutie she was!

Baptismal party - including parents and godparents

The newly baptized.

Now I'd like to respond briefly to what Paul said in his comment about "indoctrination" by baptism, and about there being something very wrong if I get sick on Good Friday. I talked a little bit to the kid, perhaps ten years old, who was baptized last night. Toni Sue, who was herself baptized just last year, chatted with him and his dad for quite a while last night, and previously as well. The kid, Jason, was the very definition of irrepressible. He asked questions during the liturgy, and volunteered his opinions to anyone in range, before, during and after his baptism. There is no way he was merely doing what he was told, what his dad wanted him to do. He made the choice himself, and I think he had the right to do that.

The larger question is, does baptism--of a baby, a child, an adult--do any harm? Is there a reason to try to prevent it? Unless it's done under true duress, or as part of a cult that teaches people to worship some human maniac or suffer or cause some serious harm, I'd say the answer is no. If baptism confers the Holy Spirit, it surely is beneficial to the person, and to the world. If it does not, then the person just gets wet. As for indoctrination, Jason is in danger of learning that there's at least one parish in Tucson (probably many more than one) where the people are friendly and welcoming, and care about human rights and tolerance. He'll be exposed to such dangerous ideas as helping displaced Guatamalans set up medical facilities, saving illegal immigrants from imminent death, helping African refugees find a new home half a world away, and on and on. And oh, yeah: they also believe in Jesus, loving their neighbor and stuff like that. If Jason later decides that those aren't values he wishes to hold, he will be making an informed decision about it. The alternative to allowing the baptism of babies and children is to abridge the first amendment in a major way. As much as religion troubles him as illogical and potentially harmful, I doubt that Paul is in favor of going that far.

As for my digestive inconveniences of the past four or five days, I hope I made it clear that religious concerns are, at most, a contributing factor. I had the taxes to do this weekend, and I needed to go make up a couple of hours at work--and never got there. I'm fussing with two diuretics and combinations of minerals, feel perpetually guilty about diet and exercise, and have chronic IBS. Trust me, Paul, giving up religion would not have helped my discomfort this weekend. It would only have stressed me out more.

But enough. I really hate wrangling about religion. I hate debate and strife and confrontation of any sort. So I'll leave you tonight with a nice little bit of cat blogging from someone who is terribly allergic to cats. John spotted this kitty in the next block early this evening, sitting near a cast iron cat sculpture. He turned the car around so I could take pictures. The cat got up from the sidewalk and lay down at the edge of the road, meowing at me. I meowed back, and took the shots. Here's one of them.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, Episcopal, Tucson

Easter Vigil...and My Annual Illness

2006-04-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

Crossposted from my personal blog...

I got exactly zero comments to last night's entry [in my personal blog] about Holy Week at St. Michael's. This doesn't surprise me at all. People who care about the religious side of Easter are busy celebrating it themselves, and people who don't believe in such things are probably turned off by the subject. I can't really blame anyone for that. I get antsy myself sometimes when people talk about religion, pro, con, or, especially, trying to get people to subscribe to a particular narrow view of The One True Religion. So don't think of tonight's entry as an attempt to turn everyone into Episcopalians. Think of it as a photo study of Easter Vigil customs at one particular church in Tucson, AZ. It'll be reasonably painless, I promise!

. Gathering around the fire that lights the Paschal Candle

The Mass on the evening of Holy Saturday is technically called The Great Vigil of Easter, The Service of Light, and The First High Mass of Easter. The service itself is every bit as long as the name of it is. It starts outside the church, with the lighting of a small fire. The fire is used to light the Pascal Candle. Father Ireland (it's always Father Ireland for ome reason) lights the candles of the "torches" (candle-bearers), who in turn light little candles carried by the congregation. We enter the church as Father Ireland intones, "The light of Christ." We reply, "Thanks be to God."

Inside there is relative darkness for the first prayer. Then some of the lights come on and we hear some Old Testament readings: Abraham and Isaac, the crossing of the Red Sea, something called Salvation Offered Freely to All, and the most unusual of the bunch, the Valley of Dry Bones. "We only did four of the eight readings we could have done," Father Smith joked at the end of Mass, nearly three hours later; but it was true.

...and each man's son was baptised as well, a newborn and a kid.

Back inside the church, we hear in the the Gospel of Jesus' resurrection. This marks the end of the Vigil. The church is brightly lit, including the candles on the altar. The organ plays a fanfare. Two things we've done without during Lent - the ringing of bells and the word Alleluia - make their triumphant return. Those of us who forgot to bring a bell is encouraged to shake our keys!

Ring those bells!

I was going to say a few more words about Good Friday. I'm always sick on that day. I'm not quite sure why, but I think it has to do with stress and guilt. I'm technically supposed to fast, but I get too sick to my stomach of I don't eat. Even the thought of fasting, and the guilt of knowing I won't manage to do it, gives me digestive inconvenience. Plus there's all the stuff I'm not getting done this week while I'mat church, and all the stuff I haven't gotten done at work...you know, the usual.

But I was especially sick yesterday, particularly last night while serving as crucifer at the Good Friday service. I felt feverish, my gut hurt, my back hurt, and I was nauseous. But there I was, commemorating much worse suffering on my behalf. My discomfort seemed like a petty thing,so I did my best to ignore it and carry on.

I didn't feel that much better on Saturday, and in fact John didn't feel well today. Maybe we've got a bug. Plus I really think the diruetics and minerals contribute to the problem. I've been drinking "light" fruit juices and such all night. It seems to be helping a bit.

What about all this religion stuff? What does it mean to me? It means a lot of things - interesting rituals and people I like a lot, and the continual chance to try to connect with God. Over the years I've come to the conclusion that an important part of faith is just showing up. If you don't, there's nothing around to feed it. If you do, you may learn something or be inspired intellectually, even if you don't get some kind of emotional, transcendent experience, the kind I've always wanted but don't seriously believe in. Yet when I look inside for my mustard seed faith, it always turns out to be there after all.

I did have a moment in front of the cross on Good Friday that came close to having a major impact. It was that bloody wooden crucifix I showed you last night. As the crucifer, I happened to be lined up directly in front of it, just a couple of feet away, nobody between me and the wooden Jesus. I took the time to really look at it, and tried to imagine the real person, and what happened so long ago.

And maybe, just maybe, I started to feel a little better.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, Episcopal, Tucson

Welcome to My Holy Week

2006-04-15T04:24:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure of the best way to handle tonight's entry. Aside from the fact that blogging about religion (aside from unadorned church announcements) always makes me nervous, there's a lot of ground to cover. Even if all I did was introduce each of the photos I want to show you, it would make for a very large, slow-loading entry. After all, like many of you, I'm still on dial-up. More important, though, I'm not sure I've processed the past two evenings yet. I need more time to ponder, and see what words come out of me after tomorrow night.

What I think I'll do for now is introduce the topic, show you a few key pictures, and point you toward the entry that announces the next Round Robin Photo Challenge topic: "holy."

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, but it's on the following Thursday that it really starts to get intense. In the Roman Catholic church I attended as a kid (St. Ann's in Manlius) it was called Holy Thursday. At St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church here in Tucson, though, it's called Maundy Thursday. I keep forgetting what Maundy means, if I ever knew it, but apparently it's derived from Old French and before that Latin. I'll just give you the Wikipedia entry and let you explore from there, if you care.

Washing of the Feet.

At St. Michael's, the Maundy Thursday service begins with sort of a Christian version of a seder meal, with lamb, pita, and even semi-bitter herbs. This is accompanied by prayers, hymns and liturgy readings. One parishioner from each table does the serving, and afterward, the priests go around and wash the feet of those who served. Then we enter the church, singing Shalom, O My Friends, and have the rest of the Mass. It ends with the stripping of the altar and a haunting musical rendition of Psalm 22.

Waiting up with Jesus: St. Michael's 11:30 PM.

On Thursday night, overnight, the leftover Sacrament resides in a vessel at the Altar of Repose. People come to the church all night long, usually in pairs, to pray and wait up with Jesus, in commemoration of the night at Gethsemane, when Peter, John and James kept falling asleep. Kevin and I usually do either the 11:30 PM shift or the midnight one. The church is a remarkably peaceful and beautiful place late at night. It's at this point that I try my hardest to connect with God, to make immediate again what is too easily dulled by repetition and nearly two thousand years' distance from modern life.

Not a plastic Jesus.

Friday is of course Good Friday. The altar is bare, with just one little candle behind it, under the hidden purple-draped cross. The Passion is sung by three principals plus the choir. Perhaps the most moving part is the Veneration of the Cross. A five-foot crucifix is held up, and people come forward, one by one, to pay their respects by proxy. Most kiss the statue's feet. Others bow, or make he sign of the cross, or just pause and move on. I watched people come up, and it was highly individual, the way different people responded to their close encounter with this rather grotesque piece of art. This particular cross is not of a sanitized, prettified Jesus. It's very definitely of the Suffering Christ. After the veneration, the cross is laid on the steps at the edge of the sanctuary, and people stand nearby to receive the "leftover" Communion. There is no Mass tonight, no Eucharistic Prayer to commemorate the Last Supper. That was last night. Tonight Jesus has been crucified, and is in the tomb.

After the service, Jesus remains.

Tomorrow night is the Easter Vigil. It's the longest service of the year, with the possible exception of the "Midnight Mass" on Christmas Eve (which at St. Michael's begins with a 10 PM concert). The Easter Vigil begins around dusk, with a small fire in front of the church. We process in bearing candles. The church is mostly dark as we listen of a number of readings. Eventually we come to the commemoration of the Resurrection. The church is lit, and we ring bells as borrowed musicians play triumphant music. The adult baptismal candidates end their months of study and prayers, and make their way out here:

The labyrinth, with the baptismal pool uncovered.

This is the St. Michael's labyrinth, used for meditative walks. The orange cones are marking a small pool, with is usualy kept covered. That is where Tim and Tim and I-think-the-third-name-is Charles will be baptized.

More tomorrow night, including Easter Vigil pics and the story of "my annual illness."

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, Episcopal, Tucson

Signs and Wonderings

2006-04-11T00:25:00.000-07:00

The following is adapted from two entries in my personal blog.

The sign in the photo above doesn't look like anything special, does it? Covered up as it is right now, with a plastic banner advertising the day school, it appears to be nothing but a commercial sign. But if you were to pull off that banner, and peel back layers of paint, you would find something very different. Pastor John R. Smith of St. Michael's calls it the "prophetic sign." The school banner will be down soon, and the prophetic sign will again broadcast its message to passersby.

If you've been reading my personal blog for a while, you may have noticed that I don't write about politics very much. Doing so properly would require a level of research I really don't have time for. And if I did write about it, someone would inevitably disagree with me. Then there would be arguments and harangues and debates, and I'd have to marshall even more facts for a follow-up entry, and...no. Sorry. It's not worth it to me. Now we can move on, to another subject I'm always nervous about covering - religion. And fair warning: politics are going to sneak in here a little bit, too.

About nine years ago, I decided that I was never going to figure out what I believed about God if I mostly ignored the subject outside of my nightly prayers. At the time I was reading non-fiction by Madeleine L'Engle, who for many years was writer-in-residence at an Episcopal cathedral in New York. The Episcopal / Anglican tradition came across in her work as pretty much everything I liked about the Roman Catholic Church, minus everything that had driven me away from Catholicism many years before. Besides, there was an Episcopal church just a couple of miles away from me. So I went there one Sunday. I've been going to St. Michael's ever since.

The reason I had noticed St. Michael and All Angels Church in the first place was that it had a sign out front that I liked. It was a line drawing in black paint of a man, a woman, a baby and a donkey, presumably the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt. Next to the picture were the words, "Jesus was a refugee." That sign made me like St. Michael's even before I drove into its parking lot for the first time.

But that's not the only message "The Church with the Sign," as it's sometimes called, has had on its famous sign. Back in the 1980s, before "Jesus was a refugee," the sign said, "It's a sin to build a nuclear bomb." For the Jubilee Year in 2000, it exhorted us to ask governments and other institutions to "Forgive the debts of the poorest countries." And since 2003 or 2004, possibly a little earlier, the sign has depicted a long line of children of many ethnicities. It says, "Either we are all God's children - or no one is."

The sign in 2004.

Illegal immigration is a big issue in Tucson, which is about 100 kilometers from the Mexico border at Nogales. Every year, roughly a thousand people die in the Arizona desert, trying to get to a better life in the Land of Opportunity. If the heat and dehydration don't kill them, they are often victimized by "coyotes," people who smuggle immigrants in for money. At the first sign of trouble, coyotes tend to abandon their clients in the wilderness, or in the back of an overcrowded, unventilated truck. What do they care if some of the people don't arrive alive? The coyotes already have their money.

This is why a number of churches around Southern Arizona support organizations that try to save the lives of these people, most of whom are here to take jobs that few Norte Americanos would want, especially at day labor wages. Groups like No More Deaths don't encourage people to sneak into the country; but they don't want the border crossers to die, either. So volunteers set up and maintain water stations, clean up trash along migrant routes, and administer first aid. This is all done in uneasy cooperation with the U.S. Border Patrol. The volunteers do not help the border crossers establish illegal residency, but they do render humanitarian aid.

Once in a while, though, humanitarian efforts clash with governmental ones. From the No More Deaths website:

Shanti and Daniel Fight Humanitarian Aid Charges

No More Deaths volunteers, Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss, both 23, were arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol for medically evacuating 3 people in critical condition from the 105-degree Arizona desert in July 2005.

Shanti and Daniel were following the protocol of NMD training (acknowledged by NMD and US Border Patrol) by consulting medical professionals who advised them to evacuate the critically ill men to a medical facility, and then consulting a NMD attorney who approved the evacuation.

A pro bono attorney for Shanti and Daniel spoke at St. Michael's several months ago about their case. After church, she handed out lawn signs that said, "Humanitarian Aid Is Never A Crime." I certainly agree with those words, so at her urging, I took a sign home, although I explained that I would want to consult with my husband before putting it up. She told me to take one anyway, so I did - and put it in my closet.

As of last night, the sign was still in my closet, although John had raised no objection to having it in our front yard. Unlike the woman who is currently in trouble with her homeowner's association for displaying a Support Our Troops sign, I was worried about ticking off the neighborhood association or individual neighbors. Go ahead. Call me a moral coward. I'll probably agree with you. But we get neighbors anonymously reporting us to the city if the grass gets long, the pool gets dirty, or water leaks from a burst pipe. And people just don't have a lot of signs or banners up around here, unless you count the occasional flag --U.S., P.O.W./M.I.A., or Dale Earnhardt.

But in the past week or two, I've noticed that a few neighbors do have signs on their lawns - not just any signs, but this sign:

So I asked John if he would mind if I put up mine. He said he'd never had any objection in the first place, and to put it up if I want to. "Not that it will accomplish anything," he added, "except to alleviate your guilt."

I don't really believe that, so this afternoon I went home at lunch, and put up the sign. Here it is. And here it stays, for a while at least. The trial of the NMD volunteers, previously set for January and then April, has now been postponed indefinitely.

*****

This is my entry for this week's Round Robin Photo Challenge: "Obstruction," as suggested by Nancy of Nancy Luvs Pix. As it happens, it's also a follow-up to the previous RR Photo Challenge, "Signs."

Despite the obstruction, a few of God's
children manage to wave hi.

Remember the St. Michael's "prophetic sign" I showed you last time? It's the one that says, "EITHER WE ARE ALL GOD'S CHILDREN...OR NO ONE IS." As you may recall, that sign has been covered up recently - in other words, obstructed - by a printed plastic sign advertising St. Michael's Parish Day School. You can just see a few children waving at the edges of the wooden one if you peek at the sides.

This past Sunday, I happened to notice that the plastic sign no longer covered the wooden one. I also noticed and remembered the other side of the sign, which is visible from the parking lot, a message to parishioners as we leave church. I set out to take a photo of both sides. The message "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord" is partially obstructed by the pale, thorny sticks of a dead ocotillo. This is appropriate, I think, because the prickliness of our own tempers often gets in the way of our being peaceful and loving.

A message of peace, obstructed by thorns of ocotillo

As I set out to photograph the back side of the sign, three of my friends waited for me in my car, including 100-year-old Eva. I had put the air conditioning on, but I didn't want to keep them waiting for long. So I took a few shots of the "Go in peace" sign of the sign, and left re-photographing the "God's children" side for another day. This was a mistake, it turns out. On Monday, the sign for the school was back.

Nails in the wood hold down the second sign,
and obstruct the children's view.

On Tuesday after work, I walked around and took more pictures of the sign from different sides, all the ones you see here and more. I thought about slipping a few of the grommets of the plastic sign off the nails that are holding it on, and getting a quick shot of the sign underneath before putting it back the way I found it. But it sounded tricky to do, and a lot of traffic was going by, and I was afraid people would think I was vandalizing the church. So I didn't do it.

While taking these shots, I discovered another sign. It's a Notice of Hearing before the City of Tucson's Sign Code Advisory and Appeals Board. It seems that St. Michael's is "requesting a variance to exceed the allowable sign area of twenty square feet frontage on Wilmot Road." The hearing took place on March 15th, but this is the first I've heard of it. Then again, I don't attend Vestry meetings.

A notice of hearing about the famous sign,
and noncomforming crosses.

According to the notice, the St. Michael's prophetic sign is 20.5 square feet, just over the limit for a "Single Family Residential District, Public Uses and Churches" zone. (St. Michael's is next door to the hospital and the public library on one side, houses on the other. The other side of the street is all businesses and offices.) In addition, the notice lists St. Michael's as having "six noncomforming 'crosses,'" which it says have a total area of "31.3 square foot." The requested variance is to increase the allowed signage area enough to include the sign, the crosses, and more. The leftover square footage is probably for the temporary signs the church puts up from time to time to promote such events as the English Faire and the Advent Bazaar.

Two of the noncomforming crosses, as seen from the parking lot.

Now there are two more points about this I find instructive - or rather, obstructive. For one thing, I can only find three "nonconforming crosses" at St. Michael's, at least without an exhaustive search. The ones I did find aren't right up against the "frontage" of Wilmot, anyway. One is over the end of the left wing of classrooms, one is over the arch that leads to the tree-lined walkway in front the the church proper, and one is directly over the church itself. They're not signs, either, in the sense of having words or pictures. They're crosses, and they're part of the architecture. Gee. Imagine a church having crosses on display! And from Wilmot Road, the view of the crosses I saw was partly obstructed anyway. So is the church itself, for that matter. What's visible from the street is mostly the school.

One of the crosses is near the white truck,
above and to the left

And the sign. That's very visible from the street. I have to wonder why this hearing took place just this month, when the wooden sign and the crosses have been there for many years. Did someone try to use zoning laws to achieve a political or religious purpose, namely the censorship of a sign the person found objectionable? Or was it simply a matter of the church trying to ensure it doesn't run afoul of city sign regulations in the future? I don't know, and I don't think I'm going to ask.

But I sure hope the Sign Code Advisory and Appeals Board agrees to the variance, and doesn't obstruct the church's ability to "sign" its messages to travelers on Wilmot Road.

Karen

Mary's Eggs!

2006-04-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

I've seriously neglected this blog recently. Let me start to make it up to you, "you" meaning anyone who actually bothers to visit this blog. Tonight: Mary Urich's eggs. Tomorrow: a photo essay on the St. Michael's "prophetic sign."

Mary has been making egg ornaments for a number of years now, designing and experimenting all along the way. One of her more recent innovations has been to use goose eggs to accomodate larger, more ambitious patterns.

Most of the eggs shown here are goose eggs, photographed shortly after Christmas at the St. Michael's coffee hour after the 10 AM Mass.

This last batch is chicken eggs:

I'll have a second entry with more eggs sometime between now and Easter.

A Day of Dilemmas (excerpt)

2005-11-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

The following is adapted from a much longer posting on one of my personal blogs, Outpost Mâvarin:

I had an interesting day on Sunday. It was full of friendship, crises, mild stress, and more ethical choices than I normally run into in a week. Let me tell you about it.

Act One: Church

Before church this morning I rushed into my office and, while checking my email, quickly scanned a sermon by Father Douglas. I've had the thing for four weeks, but hadn't yet turned the hard copy into an electronic one. So I put it on my scanner it this morning, in the hope that later I would be able to save the file both as a jpg or something and as a Word file. I needed to do both, because when I do OCR (Optical Character Recognition - cheap software trying to "read" the words), the poor thing gets confused by handwritten edits. I have to type what it's supposed to be, and clean it all up in Word when the OCR is done.

So anyway, I had this old sermon I was rushing to get into the computer, because I was afraid Father Douglas would be there and want his sermon back. I should have done the scanning and clean-up before, but I'd put it off, first because of a dead phone line in my office, which resulted in my computer and my scanner being in different rooms; and later because, well, it's a lot of work, and I was busy! By Sunday morning, I didn't have time to do the OCR and corrections. But I did what I could, stuffed the sermon in my purse, and went to church.

It turned out that Father Douglas will be back next week. So I have more time to do this right. Whew!

See, I was already feeling guilty, because I've been a slacker on the church web site lately. I think I didn't get the first half of last week's announcements typed and uploaded until Wednesday, and the second half until Thursday. I still hadn't gotten the Advent Bazaar flyer posted. Bad Karen. No biscuit!

But when I got to church, did anyone complain? They did not. Two different people told me that because of my notice about making egg sandwiches for the Casa Maria soup kitchen, three people who Googled Casa Maria saw that announcement, and drove all the way from nearby Vail, AZ to help make sandwiches on Friday. Good thing that notice was in the Wednesday batch. Had it been in the Thursday announcements, it might not have hit Google in time.

So I got away with those two things for now, but I need to do better.

Then came the real moral dilemmas of the morning.

1. At the end of Mass, the Sunday School kids came up and sang two verses of O Come O Come Emmanuel. They were so cute! They sang very well, too.

Father John wanted me to take pictures of them, so I obliged. But I was also mindful of Internet security guidelines that I read a few months ago, that one shouldn't post pictures of other people's kids without parental permission, especially if you identify a place where predators can find them, such as at a particular school. Or St. Michael's, I suppose.

So, since I was serving as Mass anyway, and was therefore sitting behind the kids, I took pictures of them from behind. The photo has no identifying features for anyone to use to get to these children. Did I do the right thing? Should I post this picture? I'm not sure, but here it is.

2. About a month ago, two 23-year-old volunteers for a humanitarian group called No More Deaths were arrested by the Border Patrol for driving sick, dehydrated illegal border crossers to a Tucson hospital, on a doctor's advice. No More Deaths provides water and first aid to try to reduce the horrendous, ever-growing number of deaths in the Arizona desert each year, often in cooperation with the Border Patrol. But this time, two people were brought up on federal charges, and could go to prison for 15 years.

The pro bono lawyer for this group was at our church on Sunday, at all three masses. I heard her speak at two of them. The stand the group is making is that it should never be illegal to give humanitarian aid, to provide succor to suffering people in an attempt to prevent needless death. Now understand, these border crossers would have been deported after their hospital stay anyway. Nobody from No More Deaths was trying to smuggle anyone. They were just trying to save lives.

So anyway, the lawyer handed out lawn signs after church. I ageed to take one, but I didn't promise to put it on my lawn, saying only that I would talk to my husband about it. (John's stance is that he wants to know more about the specific situation from an unbiased source, before putting up the sign). But to be honest, I'm a little afraid to display the sign on our lawn. I agree with it, absolutely, but the border problem is a very divisive issue around here, with a lot of kneejerk sentiment and thinly-veiled prejudice. If I display this thing, will a neighbor take it away? Will I be harrassed? Or will nothing happen at all?

I'm such a coward sometimes. I hate confrontations and ill-will. I have no problem at all writing about this online, because I can explain the situation. I've even written about this problem before. But a lawn sign has to be its own explanation. Do I trust it to be up to the task, in a neighborhood where I don't know my neighbors?

There's got to be some irony in there, somewhere.

Karen

Whimper

2005-08-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

No pictures tonight. I'm not in the mood.

Call me thin-skinned. Call me oversensitive. I'll even agree with you. This is a fault I've worked to overcome over the years, but I've never entirely succeeded. For example, I always get upset when a conservative Christian pops up out of nowhere to attack something I wrote online. Usually the comment is anonymous, so I can't even respond directly. Instead I look the comment over, and consider again whether the criticism has merit. I second-guess myself. I feel guilty for any deficiencies I think I see in my own writing, beliefs, or character. I get upset and frustrated for not having communicated effectively enough to be understood, to win the person over.

But really, it usually comes down to one thing. What parts of the concepts of compassion and tolerance don't these people understand? I'm not talking about all Christian conservatives, mind you, but occasionally I get a comment like this one, that basically takes me to task for loving my neighbor.

This St. Michael's Arts blog is ancillary to the main church (news) blog, started so that parishioners can contribute photos, essays, prayers, poetry, art--well, pretty much anything, as long as it is compatible with the fact that it's a church's blog. But nobody sends me (or the church) anything for it, so rather than leave it completely neglected, I occasionally post something on it, usually adapted from something in my personal blog, Musings from Mâvarin.

Tonight, someone left a comment to this blog. (Actually, it's the second one this week. The first was commercial comment spam.) It was posted to an entry of pictures and a tiny bit of text provided by Ila Abernathy, about her annual trip to Guatemala to help displaced Maya in remote villages with medical supplies and training. That happened to be the oldest entry on the face of the blog at when the comment was posted. The newest entry at the time, the one this anonymous person was talking about in the misdirected comment, was my rant from June about how poorly a Wiccan friend of mine is treated by doctors, social workers,etc. because of her affiliation with a fringe religion. The commenter felt that I --and St. Michael's generally--was betraying God by advocating compassion and tolerance toward this friend.

But for me, the story of the Good Samaritan, the edict to love one's enemies, and any number of other passages from the New Testament, demand no less. The idea that you can and should be mean to someone, discriminate, condemn, maybe even beat up or kill that person, all because he or she is not one of Us, not a Christian/ Muslim/ Jew/ Democrat/ Republican/ American/ Whatever, is exactly the sort of thing that leads to suicide bombings, the Holocaust, and really, most of the evil in the world. Not that the commenter was advocating anything of the sort, but clearly, my plea for tolerance was being condemned. So what is the person advocating, if not intolerance? The difference between that and those other horrors is one of degree, not one of concept. A person can be wrong about something, terribly wrong, but that doesn't give us the right or the responsibility to treat that person with hostility.

So as I said, it's appropriate for me to disagree with my friend's religion, but it's not appropriate for her pain doctor to refuse to see her, or someone to label her a troublemaker and deny her services, solely on the basis of religion. And really, how does preaching at her, shunning and mistreating her, and implying that anyone who defends her is betraying God...how does any of that follow Jesus's teachings and examples, or convince D/S to become a Christian again? How does the song go? They'll know we are Christians by our hate? Of course I want her to find her way back to Christianity eventually, but this is no way to accomplish that.

Maybe I'm being harsh here. Maybe it's a mutual misunderstanding between me and Mr. or Ms. Anonymous. Maybe I made this person feel attacked, and this was the response.

But either way, I'm feeling all hurt and insecure here. I want to go in a corner and whimper. You don't like me! You think I'm bad! And in this case, I was already feeling a little guilty. I wanted to post something early in the week about the losses St. Michael's has recently suffered, the deaths of Janet Womble and Sherwood "Woody" Bowker. I wanted to say that in the midst of death we are in life. Ila is back from Guatemala, school is starting at St. Michael's, and the choir will soon be singing for us again. Life goes on, and no doubt in the coming months we will have new arrivals, baptisms, renewal. But I got busy with work and other parts of my life, and didn't post in time to give you a heads-up for Janet Womble's funeral on Wednesday. Woody's Mass and reception is on Saturday, August 28th at 8AM. So even before I saw this comment, I was feeling guilty about my recent performance as Webmaster. I could have, should have done more, posting at least an announcement to the news blog if nothing else.

But the comment was not about that kind of shortcoming. It struck at the heart of what I believe as a Christian. And have you ever noticed that saying you will pray for someone can sometimes be a passive-aggressive attack on a person with whom you disagree? The implication is that I'm on the fast track to Hell, and only your prayers can turn me around, so that I will agree with you and go to Heaven after all. Yes, sure, go ahead and pray for me, and for my friend. I pray each night for everyone everywhere, no exceptions. I pray that we will all come to know that God is real, that God cares, that we will all understand better what God wants fromeach of us, and for help to get through the difficult times in each of our lives. I pray that we will learn to live up to our potential, using our talents well. I pray that we will learn to truly love and help one another, not just our particular insular groups but everyone. But don't tell me you're praying that I will see the error of my wicked ways. I'm far from perfect, but I'm not all that wicked. Your prayers will neither keep me from Hell nor send me there.

One of the commenter's criticisms was the claim that I had posted an "evil symbol" on a church blog. This confused me at first. I looked at the entry where the comment was posted, and saw pictures of Guatemalans, and a picture tha a child in Guatemala drew. Was this person seeing something in the drawing that wasn't there? But no, I later noticed that I had a right-side-up pentagram in the entry about my friend, mostly because I didn't have any other illustrations for it. This symbol is not Satanic, but perhaps I should not have put it on the church blog, even as an illustration of the beliefs of others.

Understand: I am not a minister, priest or deacon. My only formal course in religion was nearly thirty years ago at Syracuse University. I've read much of the Bible but not all of it, and I've read some modern translations of rejected (non-canonical) scriptures and other modern scholarship. I am the church webmaster, and I help out at Mass in minor ways, mostly as crucifer and lector. But I don't speak for the church, except to post announcements, mostly written by others. The opinions I post on the Arts blog are my own unless otherwise marked. They're intended to be one person's opinions and spiritual journeys, to be interspersed with the contributions of others. Unfortunately, others don't contribute.

So what should I do? Should I let this comment spook me, again? Should I stop posting to the Arts blog until I find others to contribute, so it's not all me, assuming an authority I don't have or want?

Or should I still express my opinion from time to time, and hope that most people will see Christian values in my words, instead of anti-Christian ones?

Karen

P.S. Obviously I took the advice of readers, and posted a version of this entry, originally written for Musings, to the SMAAARTS blog. This probably pushes the entry with the comment off the front page, but it's still there to be seen in the Archives. I also emailed Father Smith, who was also attacked in the original comment, asking for his input. And I received a lovely, loving email today from a self-identified conservative Christian and fundamentalist, saying that I was right to love others, to keep my chin up. Thank you, and God bless you all--whether you agree with me or not.

Ubi Caritas Et Amor - Or Lack Thereof

2005-06-27T01:18:00.000-07:00

Run for the hills, because Karen is going to talk about religion again.

I always get nervous about entries like this one. Some so-called Christians will probably be angry, if they ever read this; and non-Christians who come across the similar entry on my personal blog will probably skip it. I may even get a hateful comment or two--it wouldn't be the first time. Still, I'd prefer that you stick around. It may not be quite the sermon you expect.

I had lunch yesterday with a friend I've known for fifteen years. This friend has numerous problems--multiple physical and mental illnesses, family and money problems. She also happens to be Wiccan.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Wicca, especially as practiced by 21st century Americans. In my extremely limited experience, it seemed silly and fake, more like a self-conscious fantasy role playing game and snubbing of the prevailing culture than a deeply held set of beliefs. I could be totally wrong here, and probably am, but the only Wiccan ceremony I ever witnessed left me with that impression.

Still, D/S believes in it, probably more deeply than I would be inclined to credit from my one brief encounter with the religion. She does absolutely no harm thereby: does not curse or sacrifice or worship the devil, or partake in any other evil practices of which witches have been falsely accused over the centuries. Wiccan, as I understand it, is predicated on a respect for life, human and otherwise. She commits no crimes or atrocities, and is therefore entitled to her consitutional right to freedom of religion. It is appropriate, perhaps, to briefly express gentle disagreement with her, but she should not be subjected to discriminatory treatment, harrassment, hatred, or neglect because of her beliefs.

Nevertheless, as she moves through the patchwork system of government social services and government-sponsored health and rehab programs, my friend frequently encounters all of the above. She is labeled a troublemaker and treated with hostility by people in authority, or expected to change her ways if she wants to be helped. "They wanted me to move to a facility that has three hours of Bible study every night," she told me. A former Christian, my friend is already familiar with the Bible, but that's not the point. The implication is that she would receive nightly pressure to recant and change her mind about religion, as a condition for receiving government-sponsored treatment. Sorry, but that's just plain wrong, on several counts. It's unconstitutional, it's unfair, and it's unChristian.

Equally wrong is the treatment she gets from her pain doctor--or rather, lack of treatment. Having seen a "Goddess Bless" sticker on my friend's mobility scooter, the doctor immediately expressed his disapproval. My friend has since been told by the doctor's staff that she never will be allowed to see him again, and will only deal with the nurse practitioner instead. Aside from the insult, and possible violation of the Hippocratic oath, the treatment itself is inadequate. My friend's pain medication was changed to a famously addictive drug that's "as cheap as dirt," as a result of which she recently spent time in the hospital with withdrawal symptoms.

Not right. Not fair. Not Christian.

I just posted Father Smith's sermon from earlier today on the St. Michael's sermons page. Two brief quotes are appropriate here:

In this age it is not enough to throw biblical statements to the outsider. For God’s words remain empty until they are lived. But when the word is demonstrated in our lives, relationships, lifestyles and loves, it becomes "alive and active," manifesting the living Christ in the world so that the unbelievers or the enemy themselves are forced to ask: where do those Christians get this love and this peace?

But it's never an easy peace. Jesus goes on to say to His disciples, "I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter in law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household." In Jesus’ time, Semitic peoples had a striking way of expressing the love they felt for different people. Instead of saying, "I love you more than I love him," they would say, "I love you and hate him." This was their way of expressing preference in relationships, and did not mean the second person was hated. So when Jesus said these words it was not meant that we should hate our families but, that our love for Him should come as a priority. Some of you live this reality: a family member doesn't believe in Jesus, but you love them and would do anything for them, but your belief in Jesus Christ and knowing Him as Lord and Savior is a priority. You still love them and help them, but you won't follow their beliefs.

This sermon follows on a recent Gospel reading at St. Michael's, in which Jesus eats with tax collectors, 1st century pariahs who were considered sinners and collaborators. In a choice between the self-righteous or the sinners, the rich and powerful or the humble laborers, Jesus always chose to hang out with the lowly ones: the pariahs, the fishermen, the tax collectors and the lepers.

My friend is as close to being a metaphorical leper as you'll find in the modern world. She has no husband, no money, and lots of illnesses. Her own son seldom consents to see her, although he lives nearby. She is terribly lonely. My friend is fat because of her disabilities, and a vegetarian in a McDonald's world. She wants to work, but even self-employment seems to be beyond her at this point. She furnishes her small apartment mostly out of dumpsters. To top it off, she's an adherent to a minority religion that is little tolerated and less understood. And yet she is intelligent and generous and kind, with a keen sense of justice.

So how would Jesus treat a woman like that? Certainly not with disdain and hostility and neglect! He would bring her love and peace and healing. This is what we should also try to do.

But contrast this with the text of a banner I saw last night on a website that a Jewish friend of mine considered absurd enough to be funny. The web page was primarily about Noah's sons riding dinosaurs. Frankly, I was too angered by the page's header to be amused by the pseudoscience:

WHERE THE WORTHWHILE WORSHIP. *UNSAVED ARE NOT WELCOME (AS JESUS COMMANDED)*

I totally missed the fact that the page was satirical, no more in earnest than The Onion. The words on this banner are more blatant than most of what one sees from the religious right, but I found it all too plausible. Churches all over the country struggle with issues of tolerance, and all too many come down on the side of exclusion. I'm thinking particularly of the gay issue here, but it also extends to the denial of communion to politicians who don't want to pass secular laws to enforce church doctrine. Admittedly, there's a serious issue of morality involved here, but it seems short-sighted to place that single issue above all others, especially since reasonable people disagree on the subject. Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, birth control or abortion, but that's all some people seem to care about, not the "love your enemies" stuff that Jesus did talk about.

Some groups of Christians routinely declare that other Christians aren't really Christian at all, because they don't pass some sectarian litmus test. Come to think of it, I suppose I'm doing that myself here. It's not that I think that the most homophobic, intolerant Christian conservatives don't believe in Christ. It's just that they have a twisted way of showing it, informed more by Us and Them mentality than by the Beatitudes.

It galls and astonishes me that after all these centuries and all we've learned, after crusades and pograms, burnings and persecutions and an Inquisition, people still use Jesus to promote hatred and discrimination instead of love and peace. My friend will never be inspired to return to a religion that's supposedly about love and peace, when its practitioners primarily exhibit the opposite qualities in dealing with her.

Father Smith's sermon today pointed to a much better approach, and St. Michael's sets a much better example. This church and its parishioners feed the homeless, help the sick, and welcome refugees and the marginalized. Despite the current strife over the gay clergy issue, the graphics provided by the Episcopal Church USA send a better message than those who hate others in the name of Jesus. They tell us we are welcome. We are here for each other. We are one.

When religion and hatred and intolerance go hand in hand, neither God nor humankind benefits thereby. Instead there is evil and malice. This is true whether the religion in question is Islam, some form of Christianity, or anything else.

If, on the other hand, a person practices peace and love and tolerance, helps others and does not judge them harshly, that person is following Jesus's example. This is true whether the person believes in Jesus or not. These principles are universal ones, taught by many religions as well as secular ethicists. The Ten Commandments are not a Christian invention, although certain presentations of them may be. Even the numbering of them varies by denomination. But the basic principles of honesty, kindness, and fairness are acknowledged the world over in one form or another.

Myself, I'd rather eat lunch with a kindhearted Wiccan, or Jew, or atheist, than someone who claims to love Christ and yet treats non-Christians (or gays, or any other category of "Them") with hostility and disdain.

And so, I think, would Jesus.

Karen

Ubi caritas et amor, ibi Deus est. - "Where charity and love are, there is God."

Beyond the Door: A Peek at the Antiphonal Division

2005-05-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

Note: I originally wrote this as part of a photo challenge on my personal blog. If it has a few odd references to "mysterious doorways," that's because that was the theme of the challenge. . - Karen

Mysterious Doors

The doors I seem to pass most often without ever going in are all at St. Michael's. This one, for example, the one to the Bride's Room, is mysterious in a couple of ways. What's inside that a bride needs before a wedding? Why is there no "groom's room?" More important, going through that door means that one is about to embark on the much greater mystery of married life itself.

I've never been through that door. There could be anything in there. But I imagine that it's basically a dressing room. There was nothing like that at St. Patrick's in Syracuse when I married John--not that I recall, anyway.

But for me the main mystery door at St. Michael's is just to the right of the main ones that lead into the church itself. It's usually locked and barred, but not on Sunday mornings. Just as Mass begins, Proscovia or someone else opens it and pulls on one of the two ropes inside, setting off the (probably electric) church bells. I always wondered whether there was a real bell pull, or just a button to push. And was the space beyond the door just a closet-sized chamber with the bell controls in it, or something more? It didn't look as if there could be room for more than the bell mechanism, whatever it might be, and maybe a broom or something. Oh, and a fire extinguisher. The red and white sticker in the window says, "Fire exinguisher inside." I don't know how you'd get to that fire extinguisher in a hurry, except when the door is unlocked for Mass. That makes sense, though, because that's when acolytes and deacons and priests are lighting matches, carrying candles and burning incense.

Well, on Sunday, May 22nd, totally by accident, I found out what else was beyond that mysterious door. And it was much more than I could have imagined.

It happened like this. That afternoon, a nationally-recognized organist named Todd Wilson was going to play a concert on the church's Æolian-Skinner pipe organ. This pipe organ rededication performance was to celebrate the fact that the antiphonal section of the organ (the part in the back loft of the church) had been installed by the organ builder and is now operational. I'd been seeing those shiny copper-colored pipes for months, and had tried repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to get a good picture of them. It's hard to get a good angle on the "choir loft" (except that the choir never goes up there, as far as I know!) from ground level in the rather dark church.

Anyway, I was pretty sure that I couldn't make the concert, but I wanted to get a picture of Todd Wilson for the church web site. So I left coffee hour and Eva's gingerbread and went back into the church. Wilson was warming up with a truly glorious and complex piece that reminded me of a (much simpler) Christmas song I sang in choir many years ago.

I waited a few feet away in an empty pew of the almost empty church until he finished playing. As he played, another man was walking around, checking the openings to the main banks of organ pipes, adjusting doors and the evaporative cooler to control heat and humidity--in short, tweaking. This was the organ builder, Grahame Davis. He's important to the rest of this story, and deserves recognition for his work.

When Mr. Wilson finished his organ solo, I introduced myself as the church webmaster and asked to take a photo of him for the church blog. He recognized me from Mass (I got to read Genesis, Chapter One on Sunday) and graciously posed for me. He's a very nice man, and clearly very talented and dedicated to his craft.

As we chatted about the organ, I mentioned that I'd been trying unsuccessfully to get a good picture of the pipes in the loft. Wilson immediately suggested that I go up and get a closer look at them! Grahame Davis agreed, and immediately took me off on a private tour. And guess how that tour started? Yup: he led me through the mysterious door to the right of the church entrance!

Antiphonal!

From there we went up narrow wooden steps to the loft where the new Antiphonal division of the organ was installed. From the back of the loft, there's not much to see, at least under normal circumstances. Most of the pipes are housed in a big wooden box structure. The builder explained that this was to help mute the powerful pipes within, so that they can be played softly and still have the proper tone and pitch. When the organist (usually Jane Haman) wants to play them more loudly, foot pedals can be used to open wooden flaps behind and between the pipes, letting more of the sound out. Grahame Davis opened a couple of doors, one in the back and one on the side, and I took a bunch of pictures of this hidden treasure.

When I came around to the front of the pretty copper ones, I got to hear at least one of them, up close and personal!

The last of the interior pictures is of the upper door to the loft, and the completely unimpressive room beyond it. If you didn't pay attention to that long duct-like pipe thing on the floor, and the giant wooden box thing on the right, you wouldn't know there was anything special here.

I didn't take a picture of the tiny room where the bell pulls are. I forgot / didn't have time. Besides, we should preserve a few mysteries!

Now, the main reason I never knew that door went up to the loft was that I always assumed that this other external door was the way up to the choir loft (except that the choir never goes up to the loft). This door is on a balcony above the main double doors. I don't know how you would even get up to this door to go through it. Perhaps a ladder? And if you do, I'm still not sure what you'd find on the other side. I didn't see that door from inside the loft. Maybe it's where the bells are. Or maybe I just didn't notice it. Either way, the mystery of the upper door remains unresolved. I could ask Father Smith or Alicia, but where's the fun in that?

Karen

Just some pictures

2005-05-08T02:27:00.000-07:00

Here are some previously unposted pictures (I think!). I'll try to write something for this page soon.

Karen

An open-door policy.

Looking out

Sacristy

Father John Hooker

Choir rehearsal

Karen's Sermon

2005-04-11T01:13:00.000-07:00

(reprinted from Musings from Mâvarin)

Today after church, I asked to borrow Father Douglas's sermon to put on the St. Michael's Sermons page. He agreed to loan me the sermon printout, and sent me to the pulpit to get it. So for the first time ever, I ascended the steps to the pulpit at St. Michael's. I was carrying a sickly lily left over from Easter, and my silly pink purse; and I had to turn sideways a little bit to get past the narrow opening at the top of the steps.

The church was well on its way to empty by then, but I felt a little guilty, as if I were sneaking into a special place where only a few people are entitled to go. I suppose I was doing just that. Yet at the same time, I was tempted so say something while I was up there, to proclaim a little unauthorized sermon of my own. I didn't say a word, though, so now the online world gets my sermon instead.

Confessions of a "Cheesemaker"

Yesterday, I found myself mediating a dispute between someone I like a lot and another person who is a complete stranger to me. I was glad to attempt this, because I hate to see people in emotional pain, especially when the source of the problem is essentially a miscommunication or misunderstanding. It's all so tragically unnecessary. When I see this happening, and I have an opportunity to try to make peace, I usually go for it.

My favorite line in Monty Python's Life of Brian is "Blessed are the cheesemakers." In the movie, this is how people toward the back of the crowd at the Sermon on the Mount mishear the words, "Blessed are the peacemakers." John Cleese explains to others in the crowd that it should not be taken literally, but can be applied to "all makers of dairy products." I like this bit a lot. For me it's a self-deprecating reference to my own fumbling attempts to be a peacemaker. My contributions may be trivial, foolish, ineffectual or misunderstood, and yet, as with Jesus saying the right words a quarter mile away, it's worth the attempt.

I'm not going to mention here what yesterday's misunderstanding was. That's not the point. The point is that it happens all the time. That's why the snappy sentences of "My Philosophy (Your Mileage May Vary)" on my woefully out of date home page include the following:

Far too many friendships are damaged or ruined by miscommunication. Try to stay on the same page.

In the early 1990s, I accidentally ruined a friendship by saying something online that deeply offended someone I'd known for a couple of years, and liked a lot. She thought I'd called her a liar, and I was too distracted by my own problems to defuse the problem. In the mid-1990s, a club I was in split in two for a while, because two groups of people misunderstood each other's words and intentions. Then in the late 1990s, my best friend was hurt because we were both working on the same project, and unaware of each other's efforts. That only exacerbated a strained relationship already damaged by a miscommunication over a dinner invitation.

Those are just three examples. I'm sure you can come up with more from your own life, in which someone's words were given the worst possible interpretation, resulting in anger and hurt feelings.

So what do we do, when someone says something that seems hurtful or unfair? Most of the time we lash out defensively, saying things that others will find equally hurtful or unfair. Both sides see other's position in the worst possible light, which sets off another round of angry remarks. This happens whether the other person is a stranger, a friend, or even the person you love the most. It's a very human thing to do, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. In my case, though, I tend to worry about whether I've offended someone somehow, giving misinterpreting the other person's words and actions as evidence that they're mad at me for saying...well, whatever I just said. Other times, I blame the other person, while still feeling guilty myself.

None of this is good for us. So when something like this starts to happen, I suggest the following procedure:

Seven Steps to Resolve Misunderstandings

1. Check the facts. Look for any mitigating factors you may have missed. Did she really say that? Is a different explanation of the evidence possible? Do the research, and ask for clarification.

2. Be charitable. In light of #1, go over what the other person said or did, and find the best possible interpretation of it. Can it be that the person really meant no harm? Was it a simple mistake? Was the person merely thoughtless or forgetful or angry, rather than malicious? Could the person be partly reacting to some other problem--health, drugs, relationship problems, etc.? Is there a way of looking at the person's words and actions, and seeing just an ordinary person, trying to get by, and messing up as we all do from time to time?

3. Check for reasonableness. Now, think about your original interpretation of the other person's words and actions. Is it really that much more likely, in light of the facts, than the more generous interpretation you've just worked out? Does it make more logical sense? Is it in character for that person?

4. Critique yourself. Take a look at your own words and actions. Is there a way they could be seen as mean or unfair? Did you overreact, and say something hurtful? Could the other person have found a way to see malice or unfair accusations that weren't really there?

5. Put it all together. Try to see the other person's point of view. If at all possible, assume the best rather than the worst, and be aware of how your own words and actions may have contributed to the problem. Explain your position gently and dispassionately as possible. Apologize if you know you've been at fault, and try not to demand an apology yourself. The other person may still be convinced he or she did nothing wrong--and may even be right!

6. Let it go. Once you've done all that, let the conflict be over and done. Don't let the fight escalate with accusations and attacks, even if you've inescapably concluded that the other person really is mean and selfish and unpleasant. You will probably want to disengage from the other person for a while (or forever), which is almost certainly a good idea.

7. Be nice. When you must deal with the other person, be polite. It will all be strained, but it doesn't have to be actively unpleasant. After enough time goes by, you may be able to rebuild what you've lost.

End of sermon. Go in peace!

Karen

Palm Sunday Heresy, Good Friday Reflections

2005-03-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

Reprinted from Musings from Mavarin, Sunday, April 4, 2004

When I was about six or seven years old, I used to hold my own little mass in what my family called the game room, the library-shelved, leftover furniture-filled finished room next to the basement, in which my mom met with her patients in private practice. I would put a purple towel on my mom's desk, set up a statue of Mary that my godmother had given me, and read through the Weekly Missal, very fast. I didn't quite credit, at that age, that it didn't count unless there was a real priest present, and that only men were priests. In those days, no women served at Mass at St. Ann's in Manlius, New York. Acolytes were called altar boys, and even the readers were male deacons at least.

By the time I reached high school, some of the altar boys were girls, and there were lay readers, some of them women. I wasn't among them, although I still sat in a pew every Sunday. I was in my Jesus Person phase, illustrating a Jesus Christ Superstar album cover for art class with a somewhat graphic depiction of the crucifixion, singing songs from Godspell at Area All-State, going up to the front at the War Memorial when invited to do so by David Wilkerson protegé Nicky Cruz, where some disciple wrote down "H.S" as the reason I came forward. Despite everything, though, I didn't get what I was looking for, a little spark of feeling in my soul that I knew for sure to be God, waving and calling out, "I'm here. I'm real."

I kept looking for that through college. I went to church at St. Patrick's across town to see Father Ed Van Auken, who once said, "Theology's not my bag." I attended get-togethers at Newman House where a priest whose name I've forgotten preached against the Pill I was taking. I had long discussions about God with a close friend who wanted to be among the first female Episcopal priests, but who was rejected. I agreed less and less with the Catholic Church and the Creed. I wasn't sure what I believed any more, in something, certainly, but not in "the resurrection of the body." Then I married an agnostic, soon to be an atheist, who liked to say, "one man's religion is another's belly laugh." That was the end of my churchgoing, except for the occasional Christmas, for many years to come. If I didn't believe it, why go to church to say it?

Fast forward nearly 20 years, during which I hardly ever went to church, hardly ever looked at a Bible. In all those years of waiting for inspiration to hit, waiting to find out what I believed, I never really worked at it. I thought going to church and saying the creed would make me a hypocrite. I did, however, build a rather impressive collection of Madeleine L'Engle books, including a bunch of religious nonfiction. I've never read most of them, but I got the impression from what I did read that the Episcopal Church, a cathedral of which L'Engle attended, was worth a try. It seemed to have all the things I liked about the Catholic Church, and none of the stuff I didn't. That's an oversimplification, but it proved to be fairly accurate.

So I went to the church up the street from me, the one with a socially conscious sign out front. I've been going there ever since. It turns out that faith, for me, at least, is more a function of doing in public than of thinking in private. I was never going to find faith (much less prove anything to myself logically) by ignoring the subject most of the time, never going to church, never reading the Bible or any other books on the subject. I had to go to church, read the readings, listen to the sermons, think about the prayers, and maybe have a cup of ice tea in the Parish Center afterward. Once I started doing these things, I discovered that the Nicene Creed didn't bother me nearly as much at age 40 as it did when I was 20. I don't believe every word on a literal level, but I believe them on some level. And I learned that maybe there is a little spark inside me that says that God is there, God is real, even if I don't feel it every second, even if I don't understand, even if I don't know exactly what to believe.

These days I act as crucifer about twice every six weeks, and read to the congregation about once every ten weeks. I never quite get it right, somehow. When reading, I go a little too fast, or lose my place and blurt out, "Wait a minute...," or stumble over a word. Carrying the crucifix on a long pole near the front of the procession, I walk a little too fast, or too close to the thurifer (incense-bearer), or let the candles (candle-bearers) get ahead of me, or knock into something, especially outside before and after Mass. Up in the sanctuary, I forget to go get the stand for the readings, or to put it back, or to retrieve the cross during the prayer over the catechumen, until Proscovia nudges me or gives me a look or says my name. So I don't do it perfectly, ever, but I get by. Afterward I eat high carb food at coffee hour, and go home and update the church website at http://smaa/mavarin/com/smaa.html, or more likely just the schedule page.

Why do I forget to do what I'm supposed to do? I'm thinking about what I believe, or the parts of the ritual others perform, or the pain in my knees as I kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer. I'm trying to sing a hymn without the hymnal, because I never have one when I serve as crucifer. I'm wondering whether 98-year-old Eva's okay, because she didn't come to Mass, or she fainted, or she just stepped outside. I'm thinking about the readings, and the prayers, and the styles of the different priests and what they each have to say. I'm thinking about my novels, or my school work, or my stomach ache. So my mind wanders, until Proscovia nudges me or my mind wanders back on its own.

It's not good enough. I know it's not good enough. I'm not attentive enough. I still don't know exactly what I believe. I don't do much to save the world or feed the hungry. I don't have faith the size of a mustard seed.

But at night I go to bed and pray my repetitive, idiosyncratic prayers, full of gimme and give us and not at all full of praise, because I'm not good at it and don't know how to say it sincerely. I think about Heaven, which I neither understand nor reject entirely. And I talk to God, as I've always done. He never really answers, but I know he's there. He's real. He's listening. There's no ecstatic revelation, just a feeling, the same one I've always had.

And, because of Him, it is enough after all.

******* Update: 2005 ******

It's been a year, almost, since I wrote this. Eva is 99 now, almost 100. I'm done with school. I've gotten better at being lector, and I don't make quite as many mistakes as crucifer. But really, overall, not much has changed. I haven't accomplished much this Lent, in terms or fasting or readings or special devotions. Nor have I learned anything much about my faith, such as it is. I still don't understand what Father Smith calls "the scandal of the cross." I don't understand the reason for what happened on Good Friday all those years ago. Oh, the human reasons - jealousy, politics, power, and sectarian disagreement - seem clear enough, but God's reasons remain obscure to me.

But I know that something happened, something that matters, something that resonates through 2000 years of translations and interpretations, of the same or similar words repeated so often that meaning threatens to slip away. It matters, whether or not I understand it, whether or not I'm clumsy or distracted.

And I pray that by next year, I'll understand why it matters and what it means, at least one percent better than I do now.

Karen

New Camera

2005-03-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

Anyone who looked at the pictures I uploaded recently from Confirmation and Bishop Smith's visit probably noticed that they were, well, terrible. My five-year-old Mavica digital camera just doesn't handle the church interior well. Everything comes out too dark, and when I lighten the image it just ends up grainy.

However, my wonderful husband (you haven't met him; he's an atheist) gave me a new digital camera for my birthday. It's smaller and lighter, and it measures its resolution capability in megapixels (4.0). Best of all, it's capable of taking reasonably well-lit photos in the relatively dark church interior.

Here are some samples, taken March 13th, 2005, before and after the 10 AM Mass. More will follow: I hope to photograph the choir and parts of the 10 AM liturgy on Palm Sunday.

Karen

The main altar.

the coals for the incense.

Proscovia lights the candles.

Father Smith.

Random Thoughts About Lent

2005-02-10T18:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, of course, the first day of Lent. "Already?" some of you may have thought. "Isn't it awfully early this year?" Well yes, it was about as early as it gets. Due to the complex and rather confusing method used to calculate when Easter is, which has to do with the interplay of the lunar and solar calendars, Easter can be as early as the first day of spring, or as late as April 18th. This year, Easter is at the early end of the range, so Ash Wednesday was, too.

Ash Wednesday kicks off the "40 days of Lent" that precede Easter, but the numbering of that is odd, too. Lent is actually about a week longer than that, because the Sundays in that period don't count as part of the 40 days. Weird, huh? No wonder Lent has always seemed longer than it ought to be.

As a friend mentioned to me many years ago, Easter either coincides with Passover (as well it should historically), or misses it by about a month. This is because the two religious calendars differ in the way they calculate the moon's contribution to the dating of their respective holidays.

Obviously, since it was Ash Wednesday, I spent part of my evening at St. Michael's. Unfortunately, I didn't bring the camera along. The place has a very different feel to it on Ash Wednesday and other Lenten evenings than it has on Sunday mornings: quieter, more solemn and peaceful and even a little sad. Part of this is because of the darkness one steps out into afterward, the front walk under the trees strung with lights. There is no coffee hour or other distraction, no final organ solo to play us out, nothing to do but go home in silence. I like it.

Lent is an interesting time in other ways. For one thing, it begins and ends with reminders of death. Lent starts with the imposition of ashes on the forehead in the shape of a cross, a reminder that on our own we are "but dust." It ends with the crucifixion and Jesus in the tomb.

The end of Lent is another example of weird dating. Have you ever wondered how Friday afternoon to Sunday morning counts as three days? I often have, until Father Ireland finally explained it a few years ago. Since first century AD didn't have the concept for zero, Friday was the first day, Saturday the second, and Sunday the third day, although the whole period comes to less than 48 hours.

Another interesting thing about the season of Lent is what people do during that time, aside from eating fish on Fridays. People talk about "giving up something for Lent," but that's only part of the story. Sure, I may avoid hi-carb delights and blogging at work for the next 40-days-excluding-Sundays, but Lent isn't supposed to be about dieting or being a good employee. It's about repentence and reflection, bringing body and brain under control rather than giving in to them all the time, and dedicating that change in behavior to God as part of an effort to prepare spiritually for Easter. I can't say I completely understand this, but one of the things it means is that part of Lent can be in what one does, not just in what one avoids. Last year (it doesn't seem that long ago!) I read my way through the Gospels during Lent. If I were braver and more outgoing than I am, and less broke and busy (that's right; let's pile on the excuses!), I might volunteer at Casa Maria or some other soup kitchen or shelter, or head down to Guatamala with Ila. But I'm no good with that stuff, as I've mentioned here before, so I guess I'll just give blood again, and donate some more stuff to the Salvation Army or whatever.

I've updated the St. Michael's Seasons page for Lent, by the way. I have a feeling I may have missed Epiphany on that page, but I'm caught up now. Check it out!

Karen

Photoblogging the End of Epiphany

2005-02-07T01:05:00.000-07:00

I took my camera to church today. I was also crucifer today, so I didn't take pictures during Mass, only before and after. Here are the best of them:

The Labyrinth as seen from the sacristy

the rack of red albs

candles and crosses

The Epiphany Trunk - filled again!

the Samaritans table at coffee hour

Karen

A Few Thoughts about Martin Luther King, Jr.

2005-01-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I looked at a couple of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s most famous speeches, and was impressed with him all over again. That guy was an amazing orator, perhaps the greatest of the twentieth century. I urge you to take a look at some of the things he said. Typing key phrases into Google will bring up lots of copies.

I was eleven years old when he was murdered, and even I knew I was a secondhand witness to important history, in an amazing, often horrible year. Vietnam was a big mess and getting bigger, RFK's murder was still to come, and George Wallace was running for president. It was a violent, divisive time, and yet with hope for a better world to come. In his last speech, King spoke of that better world as the promised land. "I may not get there with you," he said, "But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

Around the end of that summer, my Mom staged her musical and political revue They'd Rather Be Right. The most touching part of it was a slide show, featuring pictures etched on our memory: the assassinations and funerals of JFK, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. These were accompanied by the Association song Requiem for the Masses, which probably explains why a member of that group was in the audience for one of the perfomances.

Mom's major source of pictures for the slide show was Life Magazine. One of the shots was of the cover about King's death, titled "The Murder in Memphis." Mom's slide cut off the right edge of the cover, so that it said, "The Murder in Me." When I objected to this, Mom said she liked it that way, because it would encourage people to consider their own murderous impulses.

Dr. King was a freedom fighter, seeking justice and equality, but he was more than that. He believed in non-violent means of achieving his ends, a collaboration in which people of all colors could work together peaceably to overcome ignorance and ill-will. It's an ethic in which the ends do not justify the means, and skin color is no excuse for hatred.

All these years later, his words are still words to live by. Too bad that so many of us today are too cynical, too parochial, too angry, to look from his mountaintop or share in his dream.

Karen

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Steps of the Lincoln Memorial
August 28, 1963

Guatamala

2005-01-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more Guatamala pictures, courtesy of Ila Abernathy.

Child's drawing, El Tesoro 31 de Mayo, Uspantán, Quiché

Guatemala Project remains an ongoing, open ended, head-in-the-clouds and toes-in-the-mud, practical exploration of the provocative question asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" Its strengths are continuity (the "intercambio" began in 1993), flexibility, respect for indigenous cultures and indigenous self determination, the collaborative nature of the work, and you. --Ila

Christmas Pictures

2004-12-29T02:13:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from the 10 AM Mass on Christmas Day 2004. I'd love to have pictures for you from Christmas Eve, but unfortunately I didn't have the camera with me (not that I could have taken pictures while serving as crucifer anyway).

At the conclusion of the 10 AM service, Father Smith led stragglers in a round of Happy Birthday to You in honor of Woody, who turned 90 years old on Christmas Day. Congratulations, Woody!

Unfortunately, my digital camera is old enough that it's not really up to the challenge of taking really good photos of the interior of St. Michael's. It's just too big and too dark to show up well. However, I'm sure I saw someone else's flash go off over Christmas. If anyone has any better pictures of any of the Christmas services, I'll be delighted to post them. Please email me at mavarin @ aol.com. -- Karen

A Message from St. Nicholas

2004-12-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, has had plenty of magic attributed to him, but earlier in his career, such deeds were called "miracles." In the song below, Nicholas tells a small part of the story of his life.

The Bishop of Myra has something to say
About celebrations of each Christmas Day:
"It's not about me,
But rather for He
Who preserves all our souls, and o'er Heaven holds sway.

"You know me as Santa, and sometimes St. Nick,
Father Christmas, Kris Kringle...my legends grow thick.
But in my mortal life,
I ne'er had a wife,
Nor reindeer--and those are not names I would pick.

"In Patara, in Asia in the third century,
I was orphaned while young, and yet blessed, as you'll see.
They left me with wealth,
And my very good health,
And the chance to indulge generosity.

"It was my great joy to look after the poor,
For Earth's treasures mean little; Heaven's treasures I store.
I gave wealth away,
And to this very day,
I've a penchant for gifts children still thank me for.

"When in Myra, Lycia, they could not decide
On a bishop, replacing the one who had died,
A dream said, 'Watch for
Morning's first through that door,
That worshiper will next in Myra abide.'

"As you may have guessed, I rose early that morn,
Ignorant of the station for which I was born.
'What's your name, lad?' they cried.
'Nicholas,' I replied.
Soon a bishop's tall miter my head would adorn.

"I've averted a famine, and calmed storms at sea,
Resurrections of children they credit to me,
I'm patron to poor,
Children, poets and more,
Professions and churches and lands like Sicily.

"At Nicea a council was held, and I went,
From all the known world, other clergy were sent.
I slapped one who denied
God in Three doth abide.
The creed called "Nicene" our group soon would invent.

"The things I did then, in my time on the Earth,
All came about because of our dear Lord's birth.
Once a baby, he grew,
And conquered death, too,
Reconciled us to God, and gave all our souls worth."

KFB, 12/9/04

My semi-original melody was similar to the Johann M. Haydn melody for the hymn How Firm a Foundation. Mine wasn't as good, so let's adopt the Haydn.
MIDI borrowed from www.cyberhymnal.org

Fiction for the Feast of St. Nicholas

2004-12-06T01:53:00.000-07:00

In honor of the Feast of St. Nicholas on December 6th (which is today as I write this), here is a short story I wrote about three years ago. I hope you like it. - Karen

Snowflake
by Karen Funk Blocher

The archbishop of Myra returned to his prayers with satisfaction, wonder, and guilt. Satisfaction, because the girl had awakened at the sound of the bag of gold hitting the dirt floor, and received it joyfully. The dowry meant that she would marry, and have a good life instead of one of degradation. Wonder, because only the Almighty knew the source of the gold. Guilt, because he had accidentally seen the girl unclothed. What if that was not what the Lord had wanted him to do?

Nicholas prayed for an hour or more, and went back to bed. Dawn would come soon, and with it morning vespers. In his dreams he was no longer a clergyman, but a toymaker. He had a wife, but no children except the world's children. He wore strange red and white garments to keep out the cold, for he lived in a place of snow and ice. He drove a chariot without wheels, pulled by strange deer never seen in Asia, and gave toys, not gold, to children who called him by dozens of names.

When he awoke, he wondered: was this a prophetic dream, a nightmare, or both? He got up, pulled on his cassock and slippers, and stepped outside for the short walk to the church. The dawn air was still and warm, and the stars were fading into the growing daylight. Nicholas heard a jingling bell that was not a church bell. A single snowflake fell from heaven into the bishop's hand.

St. Nicholas: Discovering the Truth About Santa Claus

Communicating With the Dead

2004-11-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

Adapted from my personal blog

As I stood in the sacristy at St. Michael's Sunday morning, October 31st, chatting about blogs, something happened that really delighted me. Our organist and choir director, Jane Haman, started playing her chosen prelude for the October 31st (22nd Sunday After Pentecost) 10 AM Mass: Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor! You know this piece, whether or not you recognize the name. It's the quintessential spooky organ music, and probably my favorite classical piece of all time. I stood there grinning, listening. Nor was I the only one delighted by Jane's choice. Everyone was listening, and enjoying. After Mass, Jane said, "I've never played it before in my five and a half years here. It was about time." This was the same piece I asked another church organist to play at my wedding, back in 1979. He wouldn't do it (it's kind of long, and not at all appropriate), but he did play it for me in private in an empty church.

In his Halloween sermon, Father Douglas talked about communicating with the dead. (I'll be posting his sermon in the next day or so on the sermons page.) He told a story of a family Back East who wanted to bring a medium in at the local churchyard, to extract financial advice from some ancestor. The then-youthful Fr. Douglas refused the request. However, he pointed out in the sermon that in going to churches decades old, partaking in liturgies centuries old, reading texts by saints and patriarchs who died millenia ago, we are communicating with the dead. We are paying attention to words and traditions our long-dead forbears considered important, and trying to learn from them.

The same, I suppose, can be said of many activities, even in the information age. Every time we carve a jack-o-lantern or put on a Halloween costume, every time we read Shakespeare, listen to Bach, learn about Newton and Einstein, or research a family tree, we are communicating with the dead. No mediums (although there may be media), no mumbo jumbo, no time machines required. We partake of the past through what the people of the past left behind.

Somewhere in my house is a white folder from Adair Funeral Home. I looked all week for it and didn't find it, just as I looked all week in vain for a box of missing Halloween stuff. In that folder is a funeral preplanning questionnaire, filled out by me and my mom at Villa Campana in 2002, perhaps four months before her death. If I could find that, I would probably know more about my mom than I do now.

You would think that I'd know pretty much everything about a woman I lived with for eighteen years, visited many times after that, took to lunch almost every Sunday for at least six years, and visited nearly every night as her health failed toward the end. Nope. There are many things I never know or have forgotten, many questions I could have asked and didn't. I asked about some things, but overall I didn't want to seem to be too obviously pumping her for information in preparation for her death.

But I found an envelope full of genealogy my brother sent her years ago, and dug out three reference books in which she's listed, including an old edition of Who's Who of American Women. I've entered the info I found onto her tribute page and the family Find A Grave pages, except for things I know to be inaccurate. I've found and posted old pictures, even though I'm not sure who some of the people are in my mom's collection of prized wallet photos, plus one sepia portrait that's probably of my grandfather. I've looked through some of the files of plays Mom wrote in Florida, stuff I've never read or seen performed.

I'll continue to go through papers, but I'm sure there will still be gaps. Where did Mom work in San Bernardino, and where in Brevard County, before her stint at Barry University? Exactly how many plays did she write or co-write, and in what years? Where in New York City did my mom teach English in the 1940s? Was my grandmother a WAC or a WAVE, in WW II or Korea or neither? My mother's been dead two years, but there's still a lot I want her and other dead family members to communicate to me, the ordinary, historical way, through physical evidence.

I'm at an earlier stage of the same situation with my dad. He's 81, still active and generally healthy, but I know he won't last forever. He doesn't like to reminisce. He's much more interested in talking about the present and the future. He was uninterested when I mentioned finding only one online reference (other than mine) to his many years as Assistant Dean and then Dean of University College at Syracuse University. He'd be even less pleased if I pumped him for information about his childhood, his experience in Stalag 1, how his plane got shot down, or even what years he was at Lehigh University or what he did for Voice of America there. So I have to piece it together from my memories of what Mom said, and what my brother knows. Tricky. However, my brother tells me he's got family tree stuff for dad already posted on his web site, some of it researched by my cousin, Ed Oliveri. To get to the info, though, I'd have to subscribe to Genealogy.com. In other words, I'd have to pay. Not today, thanks.

Earlier in this posting I mentioned Find A Grave (www.findagrave.com). This web site has supposedly millions of grave listings, contributed by a hundred thousand registered users. Some people have traveled around with a camper and a camera, cataloging entire cemeteries. The idea is to build a database of all the nation's graves, plus listings for people whose ashes her interred, scattered, or stored. The result is a good, free resource for people researching family trees, biographies or history, and a nice way to commomorate someone's life. Naturally, I thought first of cataloging part of East Lawn Palms, where my mom's grave is. It also occured to me that it would be nice to upload listings for the St. Michael's memorial garden. Father Smith has given me permission to do this, but I also want your input. If you have a loved one interred at St. Michael's, I'd like to hear from you. Is it all right for me to post the information? Is there something in particular you want included in the listing, whether it's a biographical detail or a favorite photo? Please email me at mavarin @ aol.com, and let me know your wishes on the subject.

And please, everyone - this blog is not meant to be Karen talking to an empty virtual room. Please contribute your poetry, prayers, essays, photos, and parables to this page. Thanks!

Karen

Repose

2004-10-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

(Note: I wrote this on Good Friday, 2004, for my personal AOL Journal. Rather than move it awkwardly to the past tense, I'm leaving it pretty much as I wrote it then. - KFB)

At midnight on April 9th, 2004, my friend Kevin and I spent half an hour reading and praying at the altar of Repose in the back of St. Michael's & All Angels Church. The Eucharist lies hidden away there for nearly 24 hours each year, from the end of Maundy Thursday mass until the beginning of the Good Friday service. Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper, with its institution of Holy Communion, otherwise known as Holy Eucharist, the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Maundy Thursday also commemorates Gethsemane, with its sleepy apostles, the sweating of blood, and the arrest of Jesus. Good Friday commemorates his death and burial.

Some of the Eucharist consecrated on Thursday is set aside for Friday, which has no Eucharistic Prayer of its own. While it's there at the Altar of Repose, parishioners and clergy keep vigil in half hour shifts, usually two at a time, all night and all day. In effect, we are waiting up with Jesus on the anniversary of the Passion, staying awake as Peter, James and John did not.

At St. Michael's, all this takes place in an area between the last pew, the ushers' table and the church's heavy wooden doors. The Altar itself is in an alcove on the right. Behind it is a painting of Jesus, attended by angels as he suffers. In front of it are two large candles, which I long to straighten--they both list to the right. To the left is a bank of votive candles, which may be burned for 25 cents each. Accommodations for the faithful include a rickety kneeler with attached rail, a couple of folding chairs, and the usual books: the Book of Common Prayer, the Eucharistic Lectionary and the Hymnal, not that we would sing through this. Some years there are laminated printouts of suggested prayers. Not this year. We're on our own.

This year at the Altar of Repose I did pretty much what I always do on this occasion. Part of it I spent in prayer, of course. This consisted mostly of a rather self-absorbed monologue in which I attempted to make a connection, intellectually and emotionally, with Jesus: who he is, why he did what he did, and what he wants now. The rest of the time I read a couple of psalms, two chapters of Acts and two of John, and the Maundy Thursday readings I'd missed in favor of a four hour class about the equity method and the purchase method of accounting for business combinations.

At the end, just before Father Smith and his daughter Annie arrived for the next half hour slot, I found myself wondering: did I get anything out of this? Am I supposed to get anything out of this? Or am I supposed to be giving something to it? If the latter, did I manage to do so?

I don't know, but I tried.

Karen Funk Blocher

Good Friday, 2004

What God Looks Like

2004-10-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

Fifteen, and smallish for his age, with hands
As fair and delicate as are a girl's,
A look that says he doesn't understand,
Nor wants to, where the world is being hurled.
A golden ascot underneath a mane
Of golden silk (if such can be endured),
A giggle as he makes a gravy stain
On any piece of clothing so adored.
A void between his lips and in his eyes,
That sucks men down in bottommost seduction.
To look at him is called a Paradise,
To lose yourself in him severe reduction.
His name is Idic, and a thousand years
Men come to him, until he disappears.

by Kevin Harrington

Just a Little Poem to Get Things Started

2004-10-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

Travel virtually with me
Through time and space and memory
And worlds of our design.
We'll ponder reason, ethics, love,
What's below and what's above,
And what may be divine.

KFB

Welcome to the St. Michael's Arts Page

2004-10-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

This blog is for creative endeavors by the parishioners of St. Michael & All Angels Episocopal Church in Tucson, Arizona. We're looking for poetry, essays, meditations, prayers, (very) short stories, photos and art, preferably with a religious or spiritual theme. To see your work here, email it to Karen at webmaster@mavarin.com. Regular contributors will be given access to post directly on this page. Remember, this is for the many creative people at St. Michael's, including you! So do contribute something, won't you?

Ground rules:

1. No profanity or coarse language.
2. This is a church-run blog. Your work should be compatible with this.
3. No personal attacks.
4. The pastor and webmaster reserve the right to remove inappropriate material.

Beyond that, feel free to be yourself. I look forward to seeing what we all come up with.

Karen

St. Michael & All Angels Arts

The Prophetic Sign

Christmas Music, 2009

Images of Michaelmas by Reed Karaim

Images of Michaelmas by Jim Peterson

From the Camera of Sue Peyron

Breaking the Code

The Dregs of Christmas

Scenes from the Advent International Bazaar 2008

Just Some Photos

Holy Week, Half-Remembered

Knitting a Prayer Shawl

Alan Schultz and the Spark of Divine Fire

Is It Lent Yet?

Looking for Starfish

Is It a Sin to Eat Steamed Sparrowgrass?

Silent Night

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Silent Night

Episcopal Pets

Behold The Quilt!

Trinity Sunday in the Land of Mâvarin

Easter Conclusions

Easter Vigil...and My Annual Illness

Welcome to My Holy Week

Signs and Wonderings

Mary's Eggs!

A Day of Dilemmas (excerpt)

*Whimper*

Ubi Caritas Et Amor - Or Lack Thereof

Beyond the Door: A Peek at the Antiphonal Division

Just some pictures

Karen's Sermon

Palm Sunday Heresy, Good Friday Reflections

New Camera

Random Thoughts About Lent

Photoblogging the End of Epiphany

A Few Thoughts about Martin Luther King, Jr.

Guatamala

Christmas Pictures

A Message from St. Nicholas

Fiction for the Feast of St. Nicholas

Communicating With the Dead

Repose

What God Looks Like

Just a Little Poem to Get Things Started

Welcome to the St. Michael's Arts Page

Whimper