The Message January 2020

JANUARY 2020 • Volume 22, Number 1

On the Road: 3 Building Muscle Memory: 7 A New Year’s Resolution for Parents: 9 More Resolutions: 11

The Message this month: Contents:

Contributors:

Christ Church Staff: The Rev. Patrick Gahan, Rector

From Our Rector ..............................3

The Rev. Scott Kitayama, Associate Rector

Music Ministry ................................7 Family Ministry ...............................8

The Rev. Brien Koehler, Associate Rector for Mission and Formation

World Mission ...............................10

The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation

Great Commission...........................11

PATRICK GAHAN

Carol Miller, Pastoral Care Administrator

Page Turners...................................12

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry

Photo Album...................................15

Lily Fenton, Nursery Director Amy Case, Youth Minister Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist

Cover photos: Gretchen Duggan

JOSH BENNINGER

Jennifer Holloway, Assistant Music Director Charissa Fenton, Director of Children’s Music & Receptionist

Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations

Sunday Services:

Darla Nelson, Office Manager Donna Franco, Financial Manager

7:30 a.m.

Holy Eucharist, Rite 1 9:00 a.m.

Family-friendly Communion Service with Music

Gretchen Comuzzi Duggan, Director of Communications

HALLETA HEINRICH

Monica Elliott, Executive Assistant to the Rector Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager

10:00 a.m.

Christian Education for Children, Youth, and Adults 11:00 a.m.

Choral Eucharist, Rite 2

Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager Joe Garcia, Sexton KAY GAHAN

6:00 p.m.

Holy Eucharist, Rite 2 Visit us on-line at www.cecsa.org

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2019 Vestry: Darrell Jones, Senior Warden

Annual Parish Meeting Sunday, January 26 at 10 a.m. in the Sanctuary

Matt Markette, Junior Warden Andy Anderson

Sudie Holshouser

Barbara Black

Andy Kerr

Lisa Blonkvist

Paul McSween

Meagan Desbrow

Lou Miller

Tobin Hays

Robert Rogers

On the Road to Enchantment

by Patrick Gahan

Nairobi, Kenya’s traffic is so frightening

that it betrays imagination. Making our way to the airport, our car was wedged into six lanes of traffic merging into two that intersected three more roads of six lanes forced into the same narrowing funnel and all were converging at a fourway “stop.” Imagine the ranches of the King, the XIT, the Spade, and the Briscoe all amassing with their cattle on W. Houston Street between San Saba and N. Alamo at the same time, and you will conjure up the picture. “Stop,” by the way, is a rather incredulous term in this case, for in Nairobi, population 3.1 million, road signs, traffic lights, and policemen are either non-existent or ignored, such that veteran missionary Marthe Curry advises, “Shut your eyes and pray,” when traveling the Nairobian thoroughfares.

Shutting your eyes is a good exercise, not only for visual solace, but for the sounds you do not hear in Nairobi – car horns.

Kenyans do not shriek their horns in frustration or anger. In fact, they only lightly tap their horn to alert the car

ahead that they are passing. No road rage is evident, and if one car, truck, or bus beats another in the duel for position, the losing driver generally nods and grins in appreciation of the other’s dexterity and downright temerity.

I thought about my Kenyan road odysseys while crossing the street yesterday. I arrived home a bit earlier than usual and realized I needed a few items from HEB, which is merely a half mile away.

I put on my tennis shoes, white hat, iridescent orange running shirt, and strode out into the bright autumn afternoon.

Twenty steps from my house, I “looked both ways” and started across Howard.

Suddenly, a navy-blue Land Rover topped the hill at 50 miles an hour. Seeing me at mid-road, the female driver sped up, indignant that I would cross her path, albeit car-less. I looked at her, interceding for mercy, but she gazed past me as if I were not in the street at all. With a deft last moment maneuver that would make Andy Granatelli wince, she steered clear of me, and I followed her Land Rover barreling through the yellow light at Hildebrand, which I presume was her prized goal.

To be clear, I live in an historic quarter of the city, with sidewalks bordering each avenue and lane, on which neighbors are walking dogs and babies at all hours of the day and night. Not hardly Loop 1604 at rush hour. Nonetheless, the lady was hellbent for somewhere. But did she know where? I suspect she does not, just as I presume that many of us have lost sight of where we are headed and why we are racing to get nowhere so darn fast.

Most certainly, we have not considered the cost of our harried steeplechase: the dehumanizing of those daring to cross our paths and slow us up, and the dehumanizing of ourselves. We screech through one intersection after another but are clueless as to why.

These questions were already dancing in my head as I ventured across Howard and found myself in the sights of the navy-blue Land Rover. Spending hours on overstuffed aircrafts, streaming over the dark Atlantic and biding hours more in frenzied airports soaked in sickly-sweet malodor issuing from the Cinnabon vendors, gave me ample time to read and think. I kept my head in a newly released book, On the Road with Saint Augustine, by James K. A. Smith.

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From Our Rector...

Scott Kitayama handed me the hardback volume just as we were leaving for Kenya, knowing, as he did, that only months before I had enjoyed Sarah Ruden’s newest translation of St. Augustine’s classic text, Confessions.

Quickly arresting those thoughts, we consume our coming days vying for a still further shoreline. Augustine discovered that his real epic journey was not directed to a yet more distant land but was a return. This realization overcame him when his usually formidable guard was down. Relaxing in a Milanese garden one temperate afternoon, he heard children playing and singing a repetitive juvenile chorus, “Take up and read. Take up and read.” At once, Augustine picked up the Bible and the pages fell open to Paul’s Letter to the Romans, where the apostle directs, ‘Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh’ (Romans 13:13-14).

African saint’s garden song playing in my head, I realize this is the inevitable chapter in my own life where I must venture inward. Doing so, my oft recurrent prayer to God has resounded, “Through all of this, Lord, make more of me.”

Until recently, I had considered As for Augustine, his own deep-seated Augustine’s most famous work to be an mantra to God, after his garden encounter autobiography or, at least, a memoir. was, “Lord, You have made us for Yourself, True, the towering Bishop of Hippo and our heart is restless until it rests in cleans out some of the dank closets of You,” which is, no doubt, the most quoted his past life in the pages he penned in line from Confessions.1 Augustine’s stark about 400 AD, although he does not do affirmation lives because we acknowledge so in a self-serving way. Smith, a studied the most important voyage before us is Christian philosopher, believes Confessions actually a return. Shipwrecked on the should be considered a “generic” piece shore to Nowhere, we set sail for the heart, of writing, meaning it is every person’s where God awaits. This is not wishful story who has ever found themselves on thinking. No, this is the return to Eden, the road to nowhere. Retrieving a term where we re-claim our image-ness in coined by Sigmund Freud God. ‘In the image of God, He – Umheimlich, which means created them – male and female “not at homeness,” Smith He created them’ (Genesis describes Augustine’s life as 1:27). Just because we sped well as our modern ones. out of Eden, grabbing Augustine pressed on from a fruit snack on the way his birthplace in Thagaste out, does not mean we lost (present day Algeria) to our image-ness or God’s Carthage (Tunisia) to unceasing longing for us Rome to Milan, believing to return to His embrace. with each step, with each We are not consigned to promotion, that he was not-at-homeness. St. Paul, drawing ever closer to in a passage of transcendent his real home. Instead, depth, illustrates God’s upon finally entering the bedrock desire: emperor’s imperial service in the glittering court God has made known to us at Milan, Augustine felt in all wisdom and insight the The Conversion of St. Augustine, Fra Angelico, 1430-35, tempera on wood, Musee Thomas Henry more estranged from life mystery of His will, according and from himself than ever. to the purposes He set forth in The young libertine, who had caroused his Serendipitously, I was reading Smith’s Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to way across northern Africa and southern book while flying over the same real estate unite all things in him, things in heaven and Italy, was suddenly confident that he was in Africa that Augustine was so desperate things on earth. Ephesians 1:9-10 being called to experience humanity’s to leave. Wedged between two blissfully most important and exacting passage – sleeping travelers, I considered my own That our ultimate destination is to be the inner journey of transformation, the case of “not at homeness.” united to God through Christ may return to God and self. sound too simple, too formulaic, like a Like the young Augustine, I have most kindergarten jingle you can’t expunge Augustine’s ordeal weighs heavily on me often considered my life as an epic voyage from your brain. Yet it is only from the in this season of my life. Midway in my into the unknown, feverishly straining vantage of that shore that we can ascertain seventh decade, I am confronted with toward the next shore. I presume most of our particular purpose and our proper challenges that I do not understand and us have our own “Milan” – the place of role in the lives of others. To this notion cannot heal. My instinct is avoidance, our own ambitious striving. Nonetheless, of return, author Smith adds, “Your to cut and run, and make for a brighter once arriving at that place, we wonder hometown is the place you’re made for, shore. Constrained by a version of the why we feel let down rather than exultant.

1 Confessions, 10.22.32.

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From Our Rector... not simply the place you come from.

Your hometown – where joy is found – is the place you arrive at and immediately ‘feel at home’ in, even though you’ve never been there before.”2 Furthermore, returning home is not defeat or, in any way, a lesser destination, for Smith insists that it is at home we discover “we were made for enchantment.”3 Returning to God is home. We are the work of art seeking again the Artist’s touch, a yearning that has been echoed through the centuries in the psalmist’s song: Where can I go from Your Spirit?

Where can I flee from Your presence? … For you created my inmost being, You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139:7, 13-14 And yet we race through the intersections of the material world – one after another.

We expect that we are headed to our journey’s end – to fulfillment. Instead, we are dashed on the rocks far from the shore of enchantment.

On the morning that I’m parsing these lines, I’m recounting my homecomings, my encounters with enchantment. From age twelve to fifteen, I served as the weekend sexton of our church. My duties included the special holidays. I would set up for worship and Sunday School and afterwards clean up the nave, the parish hall, the dishes, the classrooms, and lock up the maze of doors before heading home. In those days, the Christmas Eve celebration began at 11 p.m., with every pew packed from wall to aisle. I would finish cleaning, locking up and make the mile and one half walk home around 1:30 a.m. or so. Upon arriving home one particular Christmas Eve, the house seemed so quiet that I actually felt it was breathing the sonorous rhythms of sleep.

The dining room table was adjacent to our one floor furnace, so I decided to sit there and warm myself before making my way to bed.

James K.A. Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2019), 48.

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Smith, 49.

I lay my head on my arms and sleep overtook me. In the dream that visited me, I was raised from that table into the heavenly court. Coming fully awake in my dream, I stood next to God, but not as comfortably as I would have accompanied my genial Uncle Bob, but more like I was suddenly situated next to my exacting headmaster, Fr. Martin. God and I were peering north towards a vast orchestra, whose strings, woodwinds, brass, and timpani could not be numbered. Taking a deep breath, I broke the silence to ask God, “What will they play?” He turned to me and replied, “You’re the conductor.” Astonished and fearful but not waiting, I raised both arms, and when I brought them down, the orchestra roared, “O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant…” When I finally awoke and lifted my head from my arms, I was weeping, and the sleeves of my shirt were soaked. Never before or since can I recall crying in a dream. Perhaps it was more than a dream.

“Our desire for God’s endlessness” is our longing for enchantment. The human heart knows the divine Architect who made us can also refashion us for childlike wonder.

Perhaps, too, Jacob’s repose upon that stone pillow at Bethel was more than a dream. Jacob is running, having crashed through the intersections of his young life. In so doing, he has destroyed his relationship with his father, Isaac, and his brother, Esau. The only home he has known is closed to him, and he’s a refugee heading to a land unknown to him. Then, falling down exhausted, with only rock for a pillow, he is given a dream. In the vision, he spies a ladder connecting earth with heaven, with the angels of God scurrying up and down its rungs. At the dream’s conclusion, the Lord speaks clearly to the vagabond miscreant, ‘I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring

you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you’ (Genesis 28:15). Raising his head from the stone pillow, Jacob, mystified, states, ‘Surely this is the LORD’s place, and I did not know it’ (Genesis 28:16).

Jacob on the run; Jacob, the undercutting, sniveling, snot-nosed scoundrel; Jacob, the least likely person in all of Canaan to receive a heavenly visitation – gets one.

Jacob is you and me. Having scoured the material world for meaning, we’ve raced through one intersection after another looking for home. Our frantic flight, like Jacob’s, has conjured up nothing but not-at-homeness. God awaits our utter exhaustion, so that he can give us enchantment. “Surely, the LORD has been in this place all along – but we did not know it!” Considered in this light, Jacob, seen with all his unattractive luggage, becomes a sort of anti-Adam.

That first man of the Bible and his consort Eve seek completion on their own terms, and through their own grasping.

Absconding with the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil does not, however, set them on a course to fulfillment, but consigns them to exile (Genesis 3:23-24). Jacob, on the contrary, has reached the end of his pathetic enterprise, so that breathless and denuded of his cleverness, God gives him what he cannot gain on his own: grace. Grace is our home, because grace is the embrace of the Father for all of us long-estranged children (Luke 15:20). Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and an Augustinian scholar in his own right, addresses our Jacobean journey to God: Our holiness begins with our acceptance of restlessness, not as a good in itself, and not as a shifting and turning and wishing for something better, simply the steady acceptance of our incompletion and the radical nature of our desire for God’s endlessness.4 “Our desire for God’s endlessness” is our longing for enchantment. The human heart knows the divine Architect who made us can also refashion us for childlike Rowan Williams, On Augustine (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 19.

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From our Rector... wonder. That is why our heart is restless, for we know deep down that we have settled for less than enchantment – much less. Letting our guard down like Augustine or falling down exhausted like Jacob are the avenues back to wonder and enchantment, rather than our racing about and grasping. Isaac Watts, who, along with his near contemporary John Wesley, composed the lion’s share of the hymns we treasure, sings out this truth for all the ages, “All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood.”5 The paradox intersecting our sacrifice and exhaustive search for completion is that God has already made the sacrifice, and His search for us has never wavered.

We seek God’s love and the meaning He can confer on our lives, only to discover his love has encircled our every step.

Glenn Tinder, esteemed professor at the University of Massachusetts and one of America’s leading Christian intellects, illustrates this paradox of divine discovery with an episode from his younger life.

Like so many of us during our emerging adulthood, Tinder felt that he had outgrown his faith in God. Nevertheless, that was a time in his life that he was consistently drawn to hike high up in the remote portions of the Sierra Mountains in search of cougars. His was obsessed with seeing the big cats in the wild, and, yet, in all his many exhaustive treks into the Sierras, he never spied one. Making his way down the mountains, however, he would often see unmistakable cougar tracks imprinted across the path he had earlier taken. While he did not see the cougars, they certainly saw him, and, in fact, surrounded him on his journey. This was Tinder’s revelation. Whether or not he was seeking God, God was already pursuing him. Caught with his guard down, much like his cerebral brother Augustine, the end of all his striving has already encircled him.6 Augustine voices this paradox of our exhaustive striving, racing, and grasping in his most aching cry from Confessions: Isaac Watts (1674-1748), “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” verse 2.

6 Gordon T. Smith, Lecture: Christ Episcopal Church, November 30, 2019.

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Late have I loved You, Beauty so ancient so new, late have I loved You. Lo, You were within, But I outside, seeking there for You And upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.

You were with me, but I was not with You. 7 Tinder and Augustine were seeking enchantment on the periphery – Tinder in the august mountains of California and Augustine in the gilded courts of Italy. I was “seeking you in the shapely things You have made,” admits Augustine, but, “Lo, you were within!” Here, I see that Confessions truly is “generic,” for the ancient African uncovers the lie we feed ourselves. We are convinced that we will be fully enchanted by the created order, the material world. Fueled by that deception, we race through one intersection of our lives after another seeking that which cannot be found in the places we are looking. More arresting still, is what becomes of us if we continue on this vain, frenzied search: We become “misshapen.” It’s not that we just innocently wander from the right path.

No, we gradually become malformed.

How many of my friends testify that they experience God on the ranch, the deer lease, the golf course, the mountains, the seashore, and so on. Those are all grand “things,” and they should be enjoyed, but not a one of those vistas or venues is God. They are the “shapely things He has made.” In the same way, I seek God in my books, but they are not God either. I’m stuck on the periphery, on the outside looking in. Jesus warned us of this deception in stark terms: The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17:20-21 So, if our furious pursuit has brought us no closer to completion, not an inch nearer to enchantment, what do we do?

We stop. We stop like Augustine in the garden, who swears he heard children 7

Confessions, 10.26.37-39

singing, but he never saw them. I believe the song was coming from within him.

We stop, like Jacob, and fall down on a stone pillow, able to go no further on our own, and perceive the panorama God has painted within us. We stop, like Glenn Tinder, and look down to acknowledge the prints of God – not on the path – but embossed on every inch of the soul.

By the time you read this, it will be Epiphany, which unsettles me, as I am finishing these lines early on the morning of the 1st Sunday of Advent. Nevertheless, in the quiet of my home office, my thoughts carry me to the most notable personalities of the Epiphany season – the Wise Men. In turn, those thoughts lead me to recall a poem by T.S. Eliot that I have not read for many years, “Journey of the Magi.” Eliot begins his verse with the voice of one of the wise, determined seekers, “A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of a year for a journey, and such a long journey.” With that opening line, the great 20th century American-born, turned English poet, grabs us all by our lapels, for we are personally familiar with that long, cold journey. It’s our life’s voyage, and we fear what we may find at the end of our travels. Is “not-at-homeness” our terminus? The magi, the story goes, find the Christ child hidden in a cave full of livestock in an insignificant Palestinian hamlet. Not until they are returning does it fully dawn on them Whom they encountered in that tiny child. When they do realize in Whose presence they had delighted, the speaker concludes: We returned to our places, these kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Our journey ends in the presence of the One who loved us into being and artfully construed our every atom. Our false kingdoms will fade from view. Our old gods will lose their hold on us. We will die to the life that was no life, for we will have arrived on the threshold of enchantment.

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When the Going gets Tough CEC Music Ministry

by Josh Benninger

The siren blared, abruptly ending our

sleep. We leapt from our cots, hastily donned our gas masks, grabbed our chemical protective suits, and sprinted to the nearest bunker. Once inside, hundreds of us, sandwiched hip to hip, awaited further instructions. Even though this was for many of us our first real world bunker dive, we had prepared for this scenario so many times that our actions were instinctive. This did not alleviate our anxiety or fear, but the high volume of training made us calm and confident because we trusted in our experience to get us through.

It was the pre-dawn morning of March 20, 2003 at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar.

Merely a few hours before the alarm the United States had authorized a preemptive strike against targets of opportunity in Iraq, namely Saddam Hussain and his top leadership. In retaliation, Iraq launched Scud missiles towards allied troops in Kuwait. Though we were stationed hundreds of miles south, we assumed an identical attack of Scud missiles possibly filled with chemical weapons was headed our way.

Woman kneeling in prayer, George Henry Broughton, American, 1860

Fortunately for us, nothing happened. The base alarm had been activated because an unauthorized aircraft had flown too close to the airbase and the pilot failed to acknowledge the tower’s instruction to turn around. Out of caution, the base commander ordered all personnel to seek shelter while fighter aircraft were scrambled to counter the threat. The pilot smartly changed course, resulting only in giving us a good scare.

We had trained many years preparing for this type of situation. For my part, I had eight years of military service under my belt. Those years were filled with all flavors of training to include annual firearm proficiency, combat tactics, and chemical warfare classes. The steps to follow during a chemical warfare attack were simple: If you hear an alarm, you stop whatever you are doing, don your gas mask, and seek shelter. No hesitation. So, when the alarm did go off, we did not care about, question, or assume anything. Instead, we relied on our training.

Training can be boring, especially when it’s repeated year after year. The repetition becomes tedious and viewed as a waste of time––time that could be better spent doing actual work. However, training rewards us with muscle memory. Training transforms practice and skill into habits that become second nature. Training grants us fortitude when we enter the bumps, potholes, and valleys of our

lives. No doubt you’ve heard the phrase “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” In this context, please permit me to change one word so it reads “when the going gets tough, the well-trained get going.”

Can we train to pray better? I’m neither qualified, nor willing to judge anyone else’s prayers. However, I do believe and know from personal experience that when trouble invites itself into my life, my choosing to pray first, regardless of its merit, negates potential fallout that happens when I try to solve things on my own. Our Rector, Patrick Gahan, reminds us that God doesn’t want our leftovers.

Instead, God desires a relationship with us.

He wants us to approach him first and not be sought as a last resort.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33) Learning to pray first when faced with hardship takes training. And like all training, it takes effort, patience, and time.

The reward arrives when muscle memory kicks in during a crisis. Fear is replaced with calmness, and doubt is replaced with certainty. Paul says it best in his letter to the Thessalonians: Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) 7

We Will!

CEC Family Ministry

to reflect over what we should resolve to do as Christian parents and grandparents.

I challenge you to bring your children and grandchildren to Sunday School as often as possible as your new year’s resolution and bring yourself while you’re at it!

your children to Sunday School.” My oldest, Joshua, was five years old. It was time. In order to hold myself accountable, I signed up to be Joshua’s Sunday School teacher. The church we attended in Corpus Christi was grateful, and I really enjoyed teaching and as a result, friendships were built within that church through my commitment. Then God really spoke to my undisciplined soul and called me to full time ministry at Christ Church and the rest is history. My two children, Bethany and Zach, hardly ever missed Sunday School and good fruit was born from that. They love Christ Church and come here whenever they are in town.

Enough of my story! Now, on to you and your children.

First of all, I’d like to share the story of what began my commitment to Sunday School for my own children. I will confess, I was an undisciplined soul who preferred to sleep in on Sundays, but a small, still voice inside of me said, “It’s time to bring

When our children are baptized, we as parents and godparents answer these two important questions: “Will you be responsible for seeing that the child you present is brought up in the Christian faith and life?” and “Will you by your prayers and witness help this child to grow

by Halleta Heinrich

A New Year’s Resolution – “I Will Make Sure My Kids Go to Sunday School!”

As we begin the new year, it’s a good time

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into the full stature of Christ?” Our response as written in our baptismal liturgy is, “I will, with God’s help.” Yes, and we as parents really do need God’s help in keeping these promises and living up to this huge responsibility. We also need the support of our Church Family. Those who witness these promises made by the parents answer the question put to them, “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?” The strong answer from the congregation is “We will!”

Christ Church provides so much to support our parents in raising their children in the Christian faith through worship, Children’s Chapel, special Children’s and Family events, and Sunday School. We keep our promise of “We will!” in support of our children and parents. But what about Sunday School?

This is the heart of our program and some of our children and parents are missing out on this valuable offering. Yes, it’s true

With God’s Help that parents are the number one faith influence in a child’s life and attending church service as a family is most important. But Sunday School provides a vital faith building opportunity that should not be missed. Let’s look at these opportunities: Why Sunday School?

1. It is an opportunity to build relationship with peers who are brothers and sisters in Christ and come from different schools and parts of town. That is a very freeing thing for our kids! Hopefully these friendships will last through the teen and adult years.

2. It is the heart of establishing Christian Community in a smaller group atmosphere, where all are accepted and loved as the Children of God. The support that Christian community provides is vital to our faith. We all need it!

3. It is a chance to be inspired by the great women and men in our church who commit to teach much of the year and know that the Christian

education they provide is the most important one we can ever have. It’s eternal!

4. It is a place where there is no competition for who makes the best grades, who is the most popular, most beautiful, best dressed, scores highest on the SAT, or the most athletic.

How refreshing! It’s a safe and nonjudgmental environment we all need. Our children really need this!

But you may say, “My child doesn’t feel comfortable in the class because their friends aren’t there.” Well, they will soon feel comfortable and make some new and lasting friendships if they will come. You may also say, “But there’s nothing for me as a parent to do during the Sunday School hour.” That is not true. There are at least four great Christian formation opportunities for adults, including a parenting class. Or you could join a Sunday School teaching team. You will be surprised at how much you will learn.

Or, if you have a good idea of something you would like to study that concerns the Christian faith, please approach our clergy or lay staff. We are very open to new ideas here!

You may say, “But I only want to be at church for an hour.” You and your children would be missing out on all the opportunities listed above that Sunday School provides. “What about sports?” Well, sports are great, and the team relationships are important, but sports don’t need to happen on Sunday mornings, neither do academic competitions. Let’s have the courage to state that to those who are in leadership of these activities.

We are the Body of Christ and we are not complete if you and your children are not here in the Sunday School community.

We will be that much better, and so will you, in fulfilling our purpose as a supportive community of faith. Let’s keep the promises we made at the baptism of our children. Let’s all say, “We will!” in support of the children of this church and their parents. And if you really need to sleep in, come at 10 a.m. for Sunday School, and go to the 11 a.m. service. I do understand!

With Gratitude and Love, Halleta

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CEC World Mission

by Kay Gahan

I wish that I had been more excited

about our trip to Kenya, but the plans happened so fast I had a hard time getting my mind around it. We hustled to get immunizations, packing lists, and presentation plans done in advance of our departure. Plus, we had 41 hours of air travel, including layovers, and then an 8-hour car trip before we would arrive at our final destination. It was just daunting. I didn’t realize what was in store for Marthe Curry, Patrick, and me, but now I know that I should have been more excited about it.

I tried to stay awake for the 8-hour car trip so I could see the sites of Kenya as we made our way north up the spine of that great country, which is about the size of Texas. Unfortunately, I was too exhausted to keep my eyes open. It was dark when we drove up a very bumpy, unpaved mountain road and pulled up to our retreat center.

I awoke the next morning and the mountaintop was enclosed in fog, but the air was fresh and cool. As the fog burned away, I viewed lush, green mountains and small farms. Birds were singing and 10

Out of Africa baboon families ambled along the edge of the retreat center parking lot.

On the first day of our conference on Christian Marriage for Kenyan pastors and their wives, I looked out at about 30 couples sitting in the large room. I wondered what we three mzungus (white people in Swahili) could offer them. The room definitely warmed up once they started singing and praising the Lord in voice and movement. I loved listening to them and watching them sway and jump to the music. It was beautiful and they were beautiful too. The songs were mostly in Swahili and I desperately wanted to know the words, but usually had to settle for just humming along.

The teaching presentations were honest and thoughtful. We gradually came to know each other, not as “us and them,” but as fellow Christians on our own journeys. We had the privilege of walking with each other on the journey for a while and it was awe inspiring. We loved hearing each other’s stories and drew closer as we shared our experiences in marriage and ministry. Rarely have I felt such love and acceptance.

As the conference ended, we were hugging and crying and trying to get pictures with each other so we could remember our time

together. I knew that I was going to miss these new brothers and sisters terribly and felt sad that I didn’t know if or when we might see each other again.

My sadness began to lift as we entered the Samburu National Game Park. We spent the next 3 days at the game park where we saw elephants, giraffes, baboons, monkeys, antelope, water bucks, gazelle, dik-dik, ostriches, hippos, warthogs, and gorgeous birds. We failed to see any of the large cats, though we were told there were more than 500 of them on that reserve. I guess we will have to go back and try to see the lions, cheetahs, and leopards on another trip.

Yes, I fully intend to return to Kenya. I long to be with the beautiful people of that awesome country again. However, the next time I go to Kenya, I will be over-themoon excited about it.

2020

New Year’s Resolutions Great Commission Society

by Patrick Gahan

2020 is the perfect year to make and keep our New Year’s resolutions. Among other things, it is a nice round number. What’s more, it brings to mind perfect vision.

So, with our more perfect vision, let’s consider making three resolutions worth keeping: #1 Roll out the Beethoven – As 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of the great master’s birth in Bonn, Germany, let’s fill our homes, or at least our earphones, with

his music. Known as the composer for the human spirit, Beethoven’s symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets, and concertos have no equal. At the very least, let’s take fifteen minutes and listen to the 2nd movement of Symphony #6, his Pastoral Symphony, and fifteen minutes more to take in his timeless Moonlight Sonata. #2 Thank a Nurse – Also, 2020 is Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday.

Born in Florence, Italy in 1820, the lady transformed medical care from head to toe…quite literally. One celebrated academic stated, “People look up to a doctor, but they look a nurse in the eye.”

I’ve been looking a beautiful nurse in the eye for 44 years of marriage, and I can tell you that she leaps out of bed at 4 AM just as eager to take care of people as she did when she was in her twenties.

#3 Add Christ Church to Your Will – When I arrived here almost eight years ago, our Buildings and Grounds Endowment totaled a paltry $100,000.

Today, the fund has increased to $1,623,000. The Vestry, Treasurer, and I are grateful for the response of those who have made this possible. ($300,000 was given by a single lady who served as a clerk for her entire working life!) However, we cannot rest, because our goal for this fund is $3,000,000, so that we may draw the essential $75,000 to $100,000 per annum for capital maintenance and replacement on this gorgeous campus bequeathed to us.

I suggest the moral of this note may be intentional generosity is music to the ears and medicine for the soul. Resolve to give it a try!

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PAGE TURNERS – From the Rector’s Book Stack Thirty-eight

jumbo jets filled with 6,700 passengers from 92 different countries, as well as seventeen dogs and cats and a pair of Bonobo Apes – all landed in Gander, Newfoundland, a town of 11,000, on September 11, 2001. For the first time in history, the airspace of the United States was closed, and the stampede of aircraft had to set down somewhere. Due to once being a major U.S. military hub, Gander had the broad runways needed for the titan commercial aircraft, and so they came. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede, tells the miraculous story of how this small town took in all 6,700 people (and their beasts) joyfully, expectantly, and without complaint.

At our family’s and friend’s insistence, Kay and I read this book. Serving in the Washington, D.C. area during the time of 9/11 intensified our experience of that great tragedy in our nation, second only to the ghastly loss of life at Antietam during the Civil War. (At that time, our home was only five miles from that sacred battlefield where 23,000 perished.)

Furthermore, Kay’s father, served as an air traffic controller with the Army Air Corps in Hawaii just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Most importantly, however, Kay, the kids, and I served in Newfoundland only months after I was ordained priest.

We have experienced firsthand the selflessness of these rare, isolated people.

So, if you have grown weary of the many voices chronicling humanity’s demise, read this book. You will encounter two Americans returning home with toddlers they have just adopted from the former Soviet Union. Amongst the refugees are a group of Moldovan Christians, who are embraced by the tiny 1st Baptist Church of Gander – even though they cannot speak a word of the others’ language.

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A school principal takes particular care of an orthodox rabbi and his family with their complicated dietary needs and strange customs. Two women work around the clock to take care of the traumatized animals. A local pharmacist works with other druggists from the area to fill the prescriptions of all six thousand passengers at no cost, while he stays at his computer for over forty hours straight interpreting the manifold, differing drug names from ninety different countries.

Canadian Tire Company provides every item in their inventory for the stranded people absolutely free, as well as sending a firetruck full of toys to the marooned, restless children. And you will spend agonizing hours with a mother, whose son is a missing firefighter sent into the crumbling remains of the Twin Towers.

She and the others are surrounded by those Newfoundlanders or “Newfies,” as they proudly call themselves, who encircle those who are afraid and far from home with boundless love and practical care. I call this “miraculous” because it is as Bishop Frey and Irenaeus (130202) contend, to read this story is to see “human beings fully alive.”

During her early teens, Anne Lamott watched her brother put off writing a research paper on various avian species until the night before it was due. Her father walked in to notice his son’s agony.

Questioning him on the problem, the wise father said, “The only way to write the paper is bird by bird.” His instruction remained so deeply ingrained in Lamott’s psyche, that she entitled her book for aspiring authors, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I pulled the 1994 volume off the top shelf of our den’s bookcase where it had been languishing in order to dissipate my latest case of writer’s block. I had no idea that Lamott would go to work on my “spiritual blocks,” as well.

The author has certainly been successful in her writing career; however, the fact that she is a practicing Christian and a recovering alcoholic intensifies her voice to birdbrains like me. Besides, her unguarded, impolite, altogether honest outbursts make her fun to read. Here’s a few crumbs from the book that may incite you to read it yourself – writer or not: In regard to dying people: Often the attributes that define dying people fall away— the hair, the shape, the skills, the cleverness.

And then it turns out that the package is not who that person has really been all along.

Regarding babies: Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world’s worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come to stay with you.

About being sober: A sober friend once said to me, ‘When I was still drinking, I was a sedated monster. After I got sober, I was just a monster.’

As for work: Annie Dillard has said that day by day you have to give the work before you all the best stuff you have, not saving up for later projects. If you give freely, there will always be more.

Getting published: You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for writing… There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

Plainsong, by Kent Haruf so enchanted me that I actually delighted in my recent nights of insomnia. Set in the rural town of Holt, Colorado, the novel first centers on the life of Tom Guthrie, a high school teacher and rancher. Guthrie is desperately trying to hold his two young sons’ and his life together after his wife, shrouded in depression, retreats first to her bedroom, then to a rental house, and finally to her sister’s Denver apartment two hours away. Secondly, in the high school where Guthrie teaches, one of his

Book Stack Cont’d.... students, Victoria Roubideaux, is pregnant and immediately locked out of her home by her mother – never allowed to return.

Against all odds, Victoria elects to keep the baby, even though she has no place to live and rear the child. Her crucible leads her to the two most memorable characters in Holt, Raymond and Harold McPheron. Never married, these roughhewed, raw-boned, crass-talking bachelors, invite Victoria to live with them. With the McPheron brother’s introduction, Haruf concocts the three strands of his narrative that will eventually wrap around each other like silk ribbons on a maypole.

Akin to Our Souls at Night, which I reviewed in these pages some months ago, this novel draws the reader into the lives of the characters, where we catch sight of our naked selves – unmoored from pretense.

No one can read Haruf dispassionately; although, he never works the reader with inflated emotion. He merely presents life as it is actually lived. When he died in Salida, Colorado in 2014, we lost one of the best. Read every line he has composed and rejoice that an author understands us so well.

I began an exhaustive study of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and very soon I realized that I did not really know the great apostle well at all. At once I remembered that I had graciously been given Paul: A Biography by N.T. Wright, and from the first pages of the introduction, I realized Wright knows Paul as if the two had grown up next door to one another in Tarsus. Not only is the 400-page volume exhaustive in its content, Wright also reveals Paul’s deep ardor, introspection, delight, and pain. The apostle was anything but mercenary and mechanical in his relentless wanderings across the Roman Empire and in his voluminous trove of writings to those he met and hoped to meet in present day

Greece, Turkey, and Italy.

Wright knows what moved Paul to expend his entire life’s energy is the cause of Christ. Writing well before the four Gospels were composed, Paul knew that Caesar, for all his fanfare, pronouncements, and statuary was not lord or “Kyrios,” as he was hailed. No, Jesus Christ, whom the emperor imagined he had executed, was the true Lord of the realm and, indeed, of the entire universe.

And that is why Paul was so insistent that he one day plant the standard of Christ in the capital city of Rome. Paul does so and receives the same payment from Caesar as Jesus. No matter. Rome is but a memory.

Christ is the living reality behind all there is and will not be vanquished. That is why Kyrie eleison rings through the ages – “Lord, have mercy!”

I cannot capture this exhaustive work in this brief review. Therefore, out of respect and gratitude, I will give Wright the last word: People have often written as if Paul believed himself to be living in the ‘last days,’ and in a sense that was true. God had, in (Christ) the Messiah, brought the old world of chaos, idolatry, wickedness, and death up short, had taken its horror unto himself, and had launched something else in its place. But that meant that, equally, Paul was conscious of living in the ‘first days,’ the opening scenes of the new drama of world history, with heaven and earth held together not by Torah and Temple, but by Jesus and the Spirit, pointing forward to the time when the divine glory would fill the whole world and transform it from top to bottom.

Curiously, Rob Gifford begins his travelogue China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power, with a review of the Magna Carta, the historic charter of rights demanded of King John of England at Runnymede

in 1215. That document has been the foundation of all democratic movements since that auspicious day in the ides of June. Gifford begins with the Magna Carta because China has not experienced any such event in its 3,600-year documented history. Effectively, the country has gone from a series of suffocating imperial dynasties to harrowing Maoism from 1949-1976 to the pernicious, unscrupulous Communist Party of today. Nevertheless, Gifford, having lived in China for the past twenty years as a reporter for National Public Radio, loves the people of that land and comes closer to understanding them and their history than any other modern journalist.

The “China Road,” as Gifford terms it, is Route 312, the key east-west route that stretches across 3,060 miles of the cyclopean nation – beginning from Shanghai and extending through cities, farmlands, mountains, over 1,000 miles of the Gobi Desert, and ends only at the border of Kazakhstan. Speaking near perfect Mandarin, Gifford chooses to engage truck drivers, farmers, steel workers, salesmen, cooks, and prostitutes, rather than public officials, fellow journalists, and celebrities. He wants to reveal the real China to his readers, which includes marginalized Tibetans and Uighur Muslims. While Gifford loves the Chinese, he does not shy away from tough conversations with them. The seductive assimilation of the Buddhist and Islamic young systematically orchestrated

by Beijing evokes heartbreak amongst the parents Gifford interviews. The most painful of his conversations occurs on a crowded bus with a female physician and her assistants, who are deployed by the central government to perform enforced abortions.

Any effort to report what is really occurring in China must include the fact that 225 million have migrated from the rural areas to the mushrooming cities, where an individual can earn as much in one month as she or he did in an entire year on their farm. And there are plenty cont’d on page 14

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Books on the Road of large cities from which to choose. China has 160 cities with populations above 1 million. The U.S. has ten. China, in fact, has ten cities with populations above ten million. The U.S. has one, if you stretch New York’s census into the burbs. In fact, the population of China is nearly 1.5 billion – more than the total population of the U.S. and Europe combined.

Acknowledging these nearly incalculable numbers, makes Gifford’s trek across the spine of China all the more admirable, if not downright intrepid.

The Hong Kong protests have persisted for months in the face of beastly state retribution and Beijing’s torrent of fabricated misinformation. At the same time, Ilham Tohti, a Uighur Muslim, was awarded Europe’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. However, Tohti is amongst the one million of Uighurs held in brutal captivity. He has languished in prison since 2014 for the crime of insisting upon “human rights, equality, and autonomous regional rights.” Perhaps we should take the journey with Gifford to learn from him, lest we, like the NBA, merely acquiesce to China’s demands.

Road Books Packing for fifteens days in Kenya is exasperating, especially when you must travel light and there is only a remote possibility of clothes’ washing in your future. What to take? What to leave?

With upwards of 90 hours of travel time on planes, trams, automobiles, and languishing in airports, books are essential.

You can just catch up with so many films you’ve missed while soaring over the Atlantic or Pacific, conversation wanes, and you cannot drug yourself to sleep through it all. Reading uninterrupted is a great gift of travel, and on our grand safari to northern Kenya and back, I read three books: Shroud for the Archbishop, by Peter Tremayne. This book was imparted to Kay and me by Pat McMillian, and the author is as interesting as the fiction 14

he writes. “Peter Tremayne” is a pseudonym for the distinguished British author, Peter Berresford Ellis. Born in 1943, Ellis’s mother could trace her Saxon lineage back fourteen generations. Thus, Ellis’s heritage has moved him to write 98 books to date.

His most famous are novels centering on his sleuth, Sister Fidelma of Kildare, a Celtic nun in relationship with a raft of Saxon Christians, who rankle her theology and sensibilities. While on a mission in Rome representing her Irish bishop, the candidate to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury is murdered. With the lingering pain of the Synod of Whitby (664), where the Celts submitted to Roman ecclesiastical direction, just barely in their rearview mirror, the Pope and his advisors are eager to put this matter to rest. In a city dominated by men, only the fastidious, painstaking detective work of this Irish nun will do.

Reading Buechner: Exploring the Work of a Master Memoirist, Novelist, Theologian and Preacher, by Jeffrey Munroe, is a book I chose from the IVP Press catalogue. In March 1982, my grandmother, affectionally known as “Greenma,” gave me my first Buechner book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC’s, and he has spoken deeper Christian understanding into me ever since. Buechner’s four memoirs, especially Telling Secrets, let me know that I was not alone in my desire to understand my life, my doubts, and my family in the face of disappointments, estrangements, and reversals. What I appreciate a great deal about Jefferey Munroe’s work is

that he is not a thoroughbred academic, but a university administrator. However, Buechner spoke through Munroe’s unexpected pain, and due to that gift, he became the foremost chronicler of Buechner’s life and writing.

On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts,

by James K.A. Smith was given to me by Scott Kitayama just a few hours before we hopped on our first aircraft of the journey. I saved it to read last, because I knew Smith would speak deep truths into me. His book, You Are What You Love, convicted me on the essential, transformative habit of worship for all Christians. Smith’s new book on Augustine convinced me that all Christians are restless souls looking for home. Juxtaposing Augustine’s Confessions with Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Smith deftly leads the reader to recognize his own rootlessness until “his heart finds itself in God.” We are – each one of us – the Prodigal Son, according to Smith, looking for home in all the wrong places until God pulls us to Him by the heartstrings. Smith declares, “To map our roamings like that of the prodigal is not a cartography of despair or self-loathing and shame; to the contrary, it is a geography of grace that is meant to help us imagine being welcomed home.” Moving towards his conclusion, Smith avers that in Confessions, Augustine was not writing an autobiography or a memoir. No, he was composing something far more “generic,” a story in which we could see ourselves.

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Christ Episcopal Church 510 Belknap Place San Antonio, TX 78212 www.cecsa.org

The Message (USPS 471-710) is published bi-monthly by Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Periodical postage paid in San Antonio, TX. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Volume 22, Number 1.

Shepherds and their little lambs in the Christmas Pageant