The Message January 2021

January 2021 • Volume 23, Number 1

How do we pray?: 3 Seeking Serenity: 9 Thoughts on Food: 10 Joyful Giving: 14

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 ................................8 Family Ministry ...............................9

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

World Missions ..............................10

The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation

Kitchen Ministry ............................11

Karen Von Der Bruegge, Director of Vocational Discernment and Pastoral Care

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

PATRICK GAHAN

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry Lily Fenton, Nursery Director

Great Commission...........................14

Amy Case, Youth Minister

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

Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry JOSH BENNINGER

Front Cover photo: Gretchen Duggan

Jennifer Holloway, Assistant Music Director & Director of Children’s Music

Junior Singers at Lessons & Carols

Back Cover photo: Gretchen Duggan

Charissa Fenton, Receptionist

Lessons & Carols

Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations

Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Darla Nelson, Office Manager HALLETA HEINRICH

Donna Franco, Financial Manager Gretchen Comuzzi Duggan, Director of Communications

Live Stream Services:

www.cecsa.org/live-stream or www.facebook.com/ChristChurchSATX/live

Monica Elliott, Executive Assistant to the Rector

9:00 & 11:00 a.m. Sundays 9:15 a.m. Wednesdays

Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager TERRY KOEHLER

In Person Services:

Joe Garcia, Sexton

2020 Vestry: ELIZABETH MARTINEZ

Darrell Jones, Senior Warden Barbara Black, Junior Warden

Christian Education, Small groups and Bible studies for Children, Youth, and Adults are offered in person on Sunday and via Zoom

2

Andy Anderson

Sudie Holshouser

Lisa Blonkvist

Andy Kerr

Catherine de Marigny David McArthur FERNE BURNEY

Visit us on-line at www.cecsa.org

Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager

Sunday 9:00 & 11:00 a.m. on the lawn Holy Eucharist, Rite II Sunday School 10:10 a.m. outside on the grounds

Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist

Meagan Desbrow

Margaret Pape

Tobin Hays

Robert Rogers

How Do We Pray in a Pandemic?

VBS 2013 photo by Susanna Kitayama

by Patrick Gahan

They could not find the words to say

when they returned. Three million men from Britain, many still teenagers, would march off to the fields of Belgium and France in 1914. Women swooned over the new conscripts in those early days and danced with them in the streets. Still others were known to tickle the faces of reluctant men with a white feather, accusing them of cowardice. A third of those men, nearly a million, would be killed at the Marne, the Somme, Passchendaele, and Verdun, so many that Lieutenant Colonel Winston Churchill called it “a welter of slaughter.”

Even so, silence met the two million who returned in November 1918. No more dancing in the streets, the white feathers embarrassingly purged from women’s purses, and all pretenses about war’s glory abandoned. The country had moved on, leaving the soldiers returning from WWI with no one to talk to. Their pain was held in their hearts under lock and key until they could no longer find the words to say.

Some tried to speak, and none more

poignantly than Second Lieutenant J.R.R. Tolkien. Unable to converse with polite company at Oxford about the wasteland of death he endured at the Somme, he turned to fiction. He termed his writing “fairy stories,” but his Two Towers, the second volume of The Lord of the Rings, is in no way a child’s bedtime yarn.

Describing Mordor, the haunt of evil in Middle Earth, Tolkien at last finds the words to describe the murderous fields of Northern France: The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.1 Now with our 300,000 dead and over 10 million infected, some modern American hospitals are treating the sick on temporary cots in suffocating corridors.

Granted, the face of the dark Covid-19 pandemic hardly compares with the 1 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1954), Chapter 2.

spectral, moon like landscape of France and Belgium with young, lifeless bodies piled atop one another. Nevertheless, we are reeling from the covert assault of the virus, fearing the onerous onslaught of winter, and we are bereft of words.

Like those young men returning from the trenches of WWI, the experience of the Coronavirus has left us feeling uneven, like we have entered a wholly different land that we no longer recognize. And like them, we dream of home, of what was once normal, but home has changed. Last night, in fact, Kay and I drove the four blocks to the HEB, and just as we pulled into the crowded parking lot, I sheepishly admitted, “Oh no, I forget my face mask.”

Kay reached for a spare she keeps hidden in the console of her car, yet when she handed me the paper mask, she groaned, “Is this going to be our permanent reality?” And before I could assuage her lament with patronizing words, she filled the front seat of our car with desperate questions, “Who knows how this virus will mutate? Can a vaccine be updated to meet the virus’s renewed assaults? What about the armies of people already vowing to 3

From Our Rector... refuse vaccination? Where does that leave us?”

Unbalanced is where it leaves us. The Coronavirus, which is catalogued in the Sars-CoV-2 family of viruses, unbalances a person’s cell programming, which is why treating its effects have been elusive and frustrating for medical professionals. The controversial naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), acquainted us with the wellworn term “survival of the fittest,” which we generally take to mean a fox catches the slowest, the least “fit,” rabbit in a warren. Humanity is waging a much more intense fight for survival, however, versus bacteria and viruses, and they reproduce a half million times faster than we do. We are bringing a sling shot to a gun fight!

at war with itself.2 With this agile virus already morphing and reforming its assault, coupled with long months of an unhelpful, unstable political climate, we feel like defendants in a North Korean courtroom. Charges have been made against us, but we can’t muster a word in our defense. What’s worse, in this time of desperation, we cannot find the adequate words to say to God. We may feel somewhat like John of the Revelation, exiled from all vestiges of home, and reduced to throwing up prayers amongst the rocky outcroppings of Patmos.

supplies the prayers we need. After all, God’s ultimate gift to humanity is the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ (John 1:114). He is the human embodiment, the incarnation, of God who fully expresses God’s will for us. ‘Whatever you ask in my Name, I will do it’ (John 14:13-14), meaning we are meant to align our prayers with the living witness of the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible, the written word, is the continuing revelation of Christ, the incarnate Word, to believers. Recall, for instance, when the resurrected Christ walks with the two disconsolate pilgrims on the road to Emmaus.

When the two finally realize who it was who accompanied them, they exclaimed, ‘Did not our Don’t be misled, however, hearts burn within us, while our bodies are programmed he talked with us by the way, to put up formidable, and when he opened to us the double-layered defenses. For scriptures?’ (Luke 24:32) instance, dangerous, alien Christ, who disappears microbes outnumber the from the two and soon natural human microbes in will vanish from the view our gut a whopping tenof all the disciples, leaves to-one, but our hardwired his written word – at that cellular defense systems time the Old Testament sort them out day after Scriptures – for their day with remarkable consolation, spiritual St. John the Evangelist at Patmos, Tobias Verhaecht and Gillis Coignet, growth, and life of prayer. efficiency. Our impressive 1598, Hermitage Museum, Saint Ptersburg defenses emanate from both Finding the words to pray, our circulatory system and from our bone therefore, is not a secret reserved for a few The good news is that during this marrow. I am quickly entering scientific illuminati. The words we need are printed unbalanced, disorienting chapter in our territory for which I am ill-equipped to on the neglected book summoning us from lives, we do not need to find the right explore, but as I understand it, our body’s the den shelf like Bilbo Baggins’s One words to say to God, nor do we need sophisticated cellular alarm system utilizes Ring of Power calling to him from the to undertake innovative techniques to interferons and cytokines to signal danger floor of Gollum’s labyrinthine tunnel. speak to Him. He has given us the words to neighboring cells and to the circulatory He desires – the written word. The Bible systems respectively. Herein lies the For my own part, I unknowing received a contains the most exhaustive collection insidious nature of Sars-CoV-2. Most of prophecy to this effect inscribed in a Bible of words for us to pray, such that we will the viruses we humans duel have evolved given to me some thirty years ago. When never run dry. We should not be surprised so to shut down both of the body’s alarm Bishop Ben Benitez ordained me a priest by the assertion that the word of God systems. The Coronavirus shuts down in Austin, TX, he handed me a small 2 “Immune Disorder,” James Somers, The New only one, leading the body to fight itself. black Bible during the Examination phase Much like a person suffering from an auto- Yorker: November 9, 2020, 24-30. Since writing of the celebration. Opening it, I found my first draft of this essay, Pfizer and AstraZeneca immune disease, the Coronavirus infected this inscription written in his own hand, Pharmaceuticals have announced the developperson may endure inflammation of the “Pat, so read the word of God that to those ment of RNA related vaccines that deftly make proteins from the virus to build an impressive, lungs and swelling and clogging of vessels whom you serve you will be a word from 90% effective, defense against Covid-19. Now and airways – all because the body’s God.” Kay and I have used that Bible for the final testing and distribution challenges will cellular system is critically unbalanced and unfold. our daily prayers and scripture reading 4

From Our Rector... each day for many years now, yet only recently have I understood the importance of Ben Benitez’s inscription. He did not only want me to learn the lessons from the Bible; although, he did expect his clergy to be unquestionably moral and upright.

No, he desired that the words would live in me, find expression through me, and, in some small way, the words would become incarnate. Ben Benitez believed the words of the Bible actually lived amongst the community of faith, just as God promised Isaiah nearly three millennia ago: The word that goes out from my mouth; shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:11 I realize how arcane that sounds. So, I will state plainly that the words of the Bible are for praying, not only for learning.

Today, in fact, I was reading the daily compilation of four scriptures designated by the Prayer Book.3 The Gospel assigned was Luke 13:1-9, recounting when Jesus was teaching about repentance to those gathered around him. To illustrate his point that no one rises above the need for repentance, he told the short parable about a landowner and a barren fig tree.

For three years one particular tree had not borne a single piece of fruit. In a huff, the landowner commands the gardener to chop it down. Surprisingly however, the gardener intercedes for the tree and asks that he be allowed to dig around it, fertilize it with manure, and see if it bears figs in the coming year. The landowner relents, but only for one year. After my eyes rested on the final word of the scripture passage, I closed them in spontaneous prayer: O Lord, I am the tree. Do not give up on me.

Dig deeply in the hardened soil of my heart.

Pour your Spirit onto my roots. Bring me to fresh repentance, so that I see what sins keep me apart from you. Heal my barrenness, Blessed Jesus Christ, and bring forth fruit from my broken life that will please you and sustain others. AMEN.

3 Book of Common Prayer, “Daily Office Lectionary”, pp.934-1001. To learn more about praying the Episcopal Daily Office, join the Christ Church adult class, “Opening the Prayer Book.”

Before reading the Holy Scripture this morning, I did not have honest words to pray. God’s word convicted me and gave me the words that align with Christ’s will.

In fact, as is so often the case, the Bible gave me the images I needed to more fully open my heart to the Lord. Throughout the day, the picture of the barren fig tree loomed in my mind’s eye and reminded me that repentance is the fertilizer of a fruitful life. Something akin to that can occur between two people when they watch a movie or read a book together.

Words and images that are shared open up deeper conversation between the two, and they can converse about things that really matter instead of gravitating on the surface of life. Scriptural prayer takes us deeper than we imagined we could go.

That is why Thomas Cranmer insisted the Prayer Book be laced with the Bible.

In fact, 87% of the Book of Common Prayer proceeds from Holy Scripture.

Episcopalians really are the community’s Bible church!

Jesus, the living Word is broken open for us, giving us an indelible portrait of God’s greatest act of love for us.

Going back to the Walk to Emmaus, the image of Christ opening the Scriptures for the two dejected pilgrims is helpful for uncovering the Bible’s larger purpose for Christians. At Sunday worship, the first lector, the reader of the Old Testament lesson, should overtly crack open the Bible in front of the assembled people.

Her or his action is commensurate with the celebrant’s visible cracking apart the bread at the altar. Jesus, the living Word is broken open for us, giving us an indelible portrait of God’s greatest act of love for us. Thus, it is easy to see why earlier in the celebration the written word is broken open for us by the lector. Both remind us that we come to Sunday church primarily to pray in thanksgiving for God’s gifts poured out for us. Hence, we call our gatherings “worship.” The Bible is broken

open to assist our prayers and praises to God. While instruction is part of our Sunday celebration, it is subordinate to our main object, which is to praise God and offer prayers of ecstatic gratitude to him. This fact is accentuated during the Eucharistic prayer – We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving (BCP,363). These days forced to worship outdoors in order to avert the spread of Covd-19, we are on our feet during this part of the Eucharistic celebration, which is the Christian’s proper posture of praise. How ironic that an insidious virus has propelled us to our feet where we belong.

How Would Jesus Pray?

Rubber WWJD bracelets were all the rage twenty years ago. “What Would Jesus Do?” filled the airways amongst Christians, and, by the present look of things, we would do well to revisit the question. Oddly, I never heard anyone ask the more basic question, “How would Jesus pray?” The question is not a mystery.

Jesus prayed the Psalms. Few Christians are not deeply moved by Jesus’ agonizing words from the cross at mid-afternoon on that Friday, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ For his part, Jesus was not proffering another memorable line for the faithful to later recount. No, he was quoting Psalm 22:1. Perhaps if those few huddled at the foot of the cross had listened more attentively, they would have heard our Lord continue in a gasping, tormented whisper, ‘…and why are you so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?’ (Matthew 27:46) Jesus did not have to search for words to pray during his gruesome trial and agony; he offered the prayers he had been saying his entire life which were taken from the Old Testament’s prayer book, the Psalms.

The Psalms, in fact, are the only book in the entire Bible – both Old and New Testaments – where we are talking to God instead of the other way around.

At first glance, many modern Christians (and Jews I suspect) are repelled by the raw, unfiltered, unfettered speech of the psalms. They represent the entire range 5

From our Rector... of human emotion – devastating sorrow, – was too desperate for new believers in unrestrained anger, onerous appeals for Christ to hear. Those first Christians and “Profound change happens always in revenge, aggrieved isolation, all amidst the many of us who have followed would the presence of God,” declares Davis. other lines revealing – That is what I have discovered about the unfettered praise, ecstatic Psalms; they place me in the presence of The Bible’s prayer book is anything but jubilation, enduring faith, God. This is a late discovery which began dishonest. The uncensored conflicting lines and undiluted wonder. unexpectedly one late Friday afternoon Often these contrasting twelve or so years ago. I had been called give voice to the human heart opened to God, lines occur in the same to a nursing home where the mother where pain, joy, anger, shame, hope, and psalm. The Bible’s of one of our parishioners was dying. prayer book is anything When I entered the room, I discovered gratitude exist in close association. but dishonest. The the daughter-in-law of the dying woman uncensored conflicting sitting next to her bed, Bible in her lap, lines give voice to the human heart have been deceived about our Lord’s reading one Psalm after another. I took opened to God, where pain, joy, anger, crushing crucible on the cross and his a seat and listened respectfully. At first, I shame, hope, and gratitude exist in close thoroughly human reaction to the pain of was disturbed by the disconnected lines association. it. The psalms, if prayed, will not allow marching off the Bible’s pages in quick such personal deception. succession, yet after sitting there for a Psalm 137, made famous in the while, I noticed a sense of sanctity and Broadway hit “On the Willows” from the Ellen Davis, the much beloved Old peace was filling the room and filling my musical Godspell, offers an almost baffling Testament professor at Duke Divinity heart, as well. Even the stark, institutional, example of this revealing parallelism. The School, expresses the vital importance urine-smelling room took on a different Psalm begins, By the waters of Babylon we of the psalms for Christians. Here, she guise. The reading of the Psalms, even in sat down and wept, when we remembered you, discusses the psalms as “Common Prayer,” the final throes of death, had opened us O Zion. As for our harps, we hung them up on which should catch the notice of us to the transforming presence of God such the trees in the midst of the land… How shall Episcopalians: that I knew death would not have the final we sing the LORD’s song in an alien land? The word. The Word has the final say. lines are all the more poignant once we The Psalms model ways realize that a Psalm is actually a song, and of talking to God that are The Psalms model ways of talking to God yet those exiled admit they can no longer honest, yet not obvious: at sing. The lyrics take us deep into our own least, they are not obvious that are honest, yet not obvious: at least, pathos of displacement, joylessness, and to modern Christians. they are not obvious to modern Christians. loss of purpose. All at once, at verse They may guide our 8, the Psalm takes a dark bootleg from first steps toward deeper disconsolate sorrow to vengeful fury, involvement with God, because the and the singer announces, O Daughter of Psalms give us a new possibility for Our hyper-rationality can become a Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one prayer; they invite full disclosure. The wall keeping us from recognizing God’s who pays you back for what you have done to us. point of the shocking Psalms is not to presence. The Psalms serve as a gate that Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and sanctify what is shameful or to make us opens our deeper recesses to Him. For dashes them against the rock! feel better about parts of ourselves that over 1,600 years, Benedictine Christians, stand in need of change. Rather, the who are the forerunners of our Episcopal The final words of Psalm 137 were so Psalms teach us that profound change way of life, have insisted that the Psalms distressing that some members of my happens always in the presence of serve as the mainstay of their spiritual seminary class took up a petition to ban God. Over and over they attest to the diets. Unlike most modern Christians’ its use from our daily worship. The dean reality that when we open our minds Bible reading, the Psalms are not auxiliary wisely denied the petition, insisting that and hearts fully to the God who made but primary for them. Since Benedict we worship using the entire Bible during us, then we open ourselves, whether formed his first community at Monte our years at seminary and not just choose we know it or not, to the possibility Cassino in 529, monks and nuns have the parts we like. He also knew that if of being transformed beyond our said or sung all 150 Psalms each week. we “cherry pick” our favorite Scripture imagining.4 Our Book of Common Prayer reflects readings, we will also glaze over the parts the practice by mapping out the entire of our lives we’d like to keep closeted.

4 Ellen Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Cowley: Chicago, Consider, for instance, if St. Matthew 2001), 5. I would recommend Davis’s book to thought Jesus’ utterance of Psalm 22 – anyone interested in integrating the Old Testa‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me’ ment in your devotional life.

6

From our Rector...

Psalter to be offered each month.5 I am learning, however, that the number of Psalms that are said each day are far less important than how they are said. As I have noted previously, our Prayer Book directs us to offer Psalm 95, the Venite, or Psalm 100, the Jubilate, every day as part of our Morning Prayer.6 Kay and I customarily sing one of these two Psalms on alternating days. After all, the Psalter is Israel’s ancient hymnal as well as their prayer book. Singing the old words activates our “right brain,” bringing down the walls insulating us moderns from God. My challenge has been to keep my heart open and my mind aware of God’s presence all through the day. I get a running start in the morning with my 5 o’clock devotions, yet by 10 a.m., I am back to Patrick’s ego-centric “business as usual.” Again, I turn to our Benedictine grandparents for guidance. Like most of us Americans, Benedict believed every person in the monastery or convent needed to get out the door to work. That being true, he did not want the person working in the field, kitchen, workshop, scriptorium, or laundry to neglect prayer as the rudder of their daily lives. Benedict, therefore, instituted the “Little Hours” of prayer to meet this challenge: Terce, the third hour or 9 a.m.; Sext, the sixth hour or noon; and None, the ninth hour or 3 p.m.

At those times, it would be impractical for the brothers or sisters to run back to the chapel for prayer. So, instead, they would recite the Psalms from memory at 5 Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p.585. See the italicized heading: First Day: Morning Prayer.

These headings are spaced throughout the Prayer Book Psalter to denote which Psalms are to be read each morning and each night for a month.

6 Book of Common Prayer, 1979, pp.44-45 & 82-83.

COME,

their respective workplaces, which meant that certain Psalms were their constant companions.

That is what I have discovered about the Psalms; they place me in the presence of God... ...The reading of the Psalms, even in the final throes of

death, had opened us to the transforming presence of

God

I knew death would not have the final word. The Word has the final say.

such that

Of late, I’ve been attempting to imitate this Benedictine practice. Setting my watch’s alarm to alert me at 9 a.m., noon, and 3 p.m., I stop and offer Psalms 51 and 67 from memory. If I am alone, I kneel and say the two psalms aloud. If I am in public, I quietly recite them to myself.

Often in the middle of the night, when worries awaken me, I will recite the two Psalms in my head, which returns peace to me. These two psalms are foundational in Benedictine practice and have been since the order’s beginnings.7 About these Joan Chittister, the famed Benedictine abbess, states: Two things Benedict does not want 7 The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 13 – “How the Morning Office is to Be Said on Weekdays.”

Note: some Roman Catholic monasteries number the psalms differently. That is because they use the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, which joins Psalms 9 and 10 into one. Most Bibles we use are translated from the ancient Hebrew Masoretic text, which coincides with our numbering of the 150 Psalms.

LET US SING TO THE

LET US SHOUT FOr JOY TO THE

LET

us to omit from our prayer lives, Psalm 67’s plea for continued blessing and Psalm 51’s need for continual forgiveness, a sense of God’s goodness and our brokenness, a sense of God’s greatness and our dependence, a sense of God’s grandeur and our fragility.

Prayer for Benedict is obviously not a routine activity. It is a journey into life, its struggles and its glories. It is sometimes difficult to remember, when days are dull and the schedule is full, that God has known the depth of my emptiness but healed this broken self regardless, which of course is exactly why Benedict structures prayer around Psalm 67 and Psalm 51. Day after day after day.8 I am completing this essay on a cold, dark morning, having just received some bad news about which I can do nothing. Bereft of anyone with whom to share this pain, I fester in it until it becomes anger and my insides become dark and cold like the pre-dawn world outside my window. Not enthusiastically, mind you, I sit and close my eyes and recite aloud Psalms 51 and 67 – like David and those who followed him in Zion 3,000 years ago, like Benedict and his charges in the ravaged Roman Empire 1,500 years ago, like the procession of Anglicans who have endured epidemics, floods, hurricanes, injustice, and terrible wars these past 470 years – the darkness lifts and the anger relents because I have the words to say.

8 Joan Chittister, Rule of Benedict: Insight for the Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 8182.

LORD;

ROcK

OF OUr SALVATION.

US cOME BEFOrE HIS PrESENcE WITH THANKSGIVING ANd rAISE A LOUd SHOUT TO HIM WITH PSALMS.

-PSALM 95:1-2 7

Looking Back on 2020 Music Ministry

by Josh Benninger “If you don’t know what to do, there’s actually a chance of doing something new. As long as you know what you’re doing, nothing much of interest is going to happen.”

–Philip Glass, Words Without Music: A Memoir

Patrick Gahan and I glanced anxiously

at each other from across the restaurant table as the world we knew fell away. It was Friday, March 13, 2020, the day Christ Church was compelled to eliminate in person worship. You, the reader, know the reason. By the time you’ve read these words, ten months will have passed since we abruptly departed from the old way of doing things. I say old because even when the chance of contracting COVID-19 diminishes as vaccines roll out, the normal we return to will probably not resemble the old normal. We will have learned a great many things. Our ability to adjust and our resiliency will have increased exponentially. As we reflect on 2020, the challenges we overcame should not be remembered as setbacks, but as opportunities gifted to us by God to grow beyond what we thought was possible in order to bear new fruit in God’s kingdom.

We were given an opportunity to either embrace complacency in our comfy castles or lower our drawbridges to seek solutions 8

outside our walls. To help us along, we had a secret weapon: Christ Church has never been complacent. Your church’s leadership has consistently sought new and inventive ways to advance understanding of the scriptures, teach our children that God loves them, take care of the needy and sick, and enliven our worship. Failure to do any of these would be a slap in the face to the very God that emboldens us to do these things through the power of his grace, mercy, and love.

“If you play it safe in life, you’ve decided that you don’t want to grow anymore.”

–Shirley Hufstedler, United States Secretary of Education 1979-1981 Evil revels in laziness and complacency.

Evil desires us to take it easy and have us believe that we’ve made it. Like me, I’m sure you’ve experienced this feeling of having arrived at your destination. But we are children of God, we have a different modus operandi. Christ Church’s track record of living on the front lines of change, even in the face of great challenges, paved the way for us to seek new ways to worship, love each other, and spread the gospel both virtually and in person.

When COVID-19 forced us into lock down, it was in our power to put up our hands and do nothing. I wonder what that would have looked like had we taken the safer road. Would it have meant saying no to in-person worship? Saying no to baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals? No Christian education? No

Sidewalk Saturday? No singing? But we didn’t do nothing. From day one we said yes to all of these, and we did so while keeping you safe. Christ Church bloomed and became stronger in the face of adversity. As a music minister I learned so much about what hymns you look forward to singing and the types of music that give you the most joy. The music team learned new and creative ways to offer their talents to you and to God. As the Church with a big “C,” we discovered things about each other and our faith that will carry on to whatever new normal lies ahead.

Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

–Ephesians 6:13 My years in the military taught me that any problem can be solved, and that failure is expected and necessary for future success. I impress on you that the obstacles and technical challenges we surmounted in those first days of lock-down were formidable, and oftentimes we did not know what to do. However, as one body in Christ, we embraced the challenge to not surrender and play it safe. We put on the armor of God and rejected the temptation to be idle or complacent in our duties.

God’s power supersedes COVID-19. It extinguishes fear and triumphs over all human institutions. We live under the banner of Christ, and because of this we can choose to let go of our fear and live more fully with joy in his kingdom.

May We have Serenity this New Year

CEC Family Ministry

by Halleta Heinrich

Dear Parish Family, By the time you read this, we will be in the Epiphany Season and getting ready for Lent and Easter. Our holidays have been filled with highs and lows, ups and downs.

I think we are all seeking Serenity – a calm and peace within based in our trust of God rather than anxiety, anger, and worry that leads nowhere but down. As I was reflecting on our past year, the words of the Serenity Prayer came to mind. I discovered the less known original and complete version written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and found it even more relevant to our time. It is a very complete prayer in setting us on the road to serenity – peace in God. I was blessed by this prayer and want to share with you.

Serenity Prayer

By Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971) God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time, Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.

Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, Not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will make all things right If I surrender to His Will.

That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next.

Amen

I pray you, too, will be blessed by this prayer as we start the new year. I believe it covers all the bases – acceptance, courage, wisdom, joyful gratitude, trust, surrender, and hope, all based in our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the manifestation of our loving God of All Creation. Happy New Year and Happy Epiphany!

Love in Christ, Halleta

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Honduras Food Relief CEC World Missions

by Terry Koehler Note from Brien: Our overseas missions partners have all been suffering from wide-ranging hunger emergencies resulting from the pandemic.

Christ Church has provided help to Uganda, Kenya, Kurdistan, and Honduras in response to the emergency. I asked Terry to tell the Honduran story below:

only for purchase of essentials, such as food.

We felt we had to try to help purchase food. We selected four lay leaders in the Episcopal Church congregations in the Copan Deanery that we have known for more than ten years. These leaders had a total of 76 families in their care. We were/

damage done by rushing water, none of our friends were hurt. However, it made the situation more difficult, and food relief even more imperative. In December, we decided that there was a need for some cheer among the families. So, the amount of support was doubled for this one month. The extra provided tamales and torrejas (Latin America’s version of French toast) for their Christmas dinners.

Sadly, most were not able to make pork tamales because the pigs in their region were lost to the flooding from the hurricanes. Apparently, the chickens made it, so there were chicken tamales!

In July 2020, it became apparent that Brien and I were not going to be able to make our August trip to Honduras We expect that we will need to continue to meet with the embroidery ladies’ the food support for a few more months group, Hilos de Dios, because of as the crops are replanted and brought the Covid-19 pandemic. We knew to harvest. The funding for this project that this would mean many of the has been provided by Brien and me, ladies whose embroidery would along with members of Christ Church be purchased on that trip would and other parishes who have been be “hurting” for income to help to Honduras with us over the years.

Children of the Copan Deanery, Honduras with their families. As we looked into the None of this support would have been bags ready for distribution situation in Honduras, we discovered “do-able” without trusted lay people that because of heavy rains and wind that are able to send funds by Western Union to in Honduras – Josefina Santos, Yolanda they had already experienced, the usual these four leaders. They hire a neighbor Portillo, Etelvina Orellanos, and Gregorio corn and bean crops they depend on, had with a small pickup truck to take them Garcia. THANK YOU! been wiped out. The situation was more into La Entrada (the largest town near desperate than expected. them), where they are able to pick up the money and do grocery shopping. The As Covid-19 spread, the Honduran food is taken back to their village where government instituted a harsh lock-down they divide it up and distribute it to the of their citizens. The health care system families. We began sending wires monthly in Honduras is very poor. Many people, in July and have continued. The money especially the older ones already in poor doesn’t provide all of the food needed for health, were told to go home to die. The a month, only basic essentials. It comes to hospitals, maxed out, could not help them. about $20 per family per month. A typical The citizens were allowed to leave their shopping trip might include some (not all) homes only once every two weeks, and of these things: Maseca (corn flour for tortillas), sugar, flour, oats, milk, coffee, sardines, rice, beans, matches, lard, soap for laundry, spaghetti, tomato sauce, salt, and crackers. We receive a monthly report from each of the lay leaders listing what we provided, and the persons served.

Food purchased and ready for bagging

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Then came TWO HURRICANES that passed directly over Honduras – Hurricane Eta, Cat 4, November 14, 2020 and Hurricane Iota two weeks later, Cat 5. Although there was a great deal of

Leader Marilu (r) with a food recipient

More Food for Thought

Breakfasts from the past

CEC Kitchen Ministry

by Elizabeth Martinez

Do you have a favorite recipe that is

worth sharing? Christ Church is due for a new cookbook and the kitchen ministry is looking for a few good recipes to add.

Whether it is a favorite dessert, main dish, side dish, or a healthy dish, please send recipes of your family favorite dish to Elizabeth Martinez by mail or email at elizabethm@cecsa.org. We hope to have a new CEC cookbook in the Fall of 2021.

Let’s bring in the new year with some delicious recipes to share!

Here is a favorite breakfast casserole, from MyRecipes.com, for Men’s Thursday Morning Bible study:

Cheddar Cheese Grits Casserole

Ingredients: 4 cups milk ¼ cup butter 1 cup uncooked quick-cooking grits 1 large egg, lightly beaten 2 cups (8 oz.) shredded sharp cheddar cheese 1 tsp. salt ½ tsp. pepper ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

How to Make It: Step 1: preheat oven to 350°. Bring milk just to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat; gradually whisk in butter and grits. Reduce heat and simmer, whisking constantly, 5 to 7 minutes or until grits are done.

Remove from heat.

Step 2: stir in egg and next 3 ingredients. Pour into a lightly greased 11x7 inch baking dish. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese.

Step 3: bake, covered, at 350° for 35-40 minutes or until mixture is set.

Serve immediately.

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PAGE TURNERS – From the Rector’s Book Stack Stumbling into the

storefront Church of the Second Chance, with its droning fluorescent lights shining down on the small assembly, college freshman Ian Bedloe undertakes a life change that will redirect his life. Not only his life, but the lives of his parents, his nephew and two nieces, and the procession of wounded misfits who will also find their way into the church will be changed, too. Ian believes he caused the deaths of both his brother Danny and his sister-in-law Lucy. Seeking atonement for his sin, he leaves college and commits himself to raising the couple’s three children into adulthood. Along the way, he gives up his longtime romance, dreams of a professional life, and swears off alcohol, caffeine, and even sugar.

No American author understands the challenges confronting everyday people from middle-class families like Anne Tyler. This was my second time through Saint Maybe. Twenty years later, the book continues to speak deep truths to me.

I picked up the book again because I fear we Americans continue to trivialize our Christian faith. Admittedly, the theology professed by the Rev. Emmett, the Pastor of Second Chance, is far from orthodox; however, he eschews any notion of “cheap grace.” For him and for those desperately seeking reconciliation and healing at the Church of the Second Chance, there is a dogged dailiness to undertaking the way of Christ. A complete life change is necessary – even if it knocks one off their career path and moves them away from refined company. Recall that St. Paul was knocked into the dust on the Damascus Road, from which he took a drastic U-turn in direction. The story of Ian Bedloe begs the question, “Are such dramatic changes only for other Christians?”

Saint Maybe moved me back into Anne Tyler’s orbit, which led me to her 2020 novel, Redhead by the Side of 12

the Road. Her protagonist this time is Micah Mortimer, whose life is slipping away in dreary predictability. His invariable routines consist of vacuuming on Monday, cleaning cabinets on Tuesday, dusting furniture on Wednesday, and so on. Micah does not live in a split-level home but in a basement apartment in the heart of Baltimore. He has staged his life like a soldier on guard duty, carefully keeping anyone from gaining entrance to him. Micah’s isolation is trumpeted in the name of his one-man computer repair company – Tech Hermit.

Micah’s defenses begin to crack with the visit of an eighteen-year-old boy, Brink, who insists Micah is his father. Although Micah’s supposed parentage of Brink is deemed impossible, the arrival of the frightened, lost boy gives birth to latent questions long stifled by Micah: “How had he retreated to this basement cell?” “Why could he not sustain any relationships?”

“Where was the origin of his pain?”

“When could he exit his long-suppressed misery?” As with most of Anne Tyler’s twenty-three novels, her characters seem entirely ordinary. She teaches us that no one is ordinary…to include her battalions of readers. Tyler takes the questions resounding within us seriously, because she is honest and serious about the human condition. Few are surprised that she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Breathing Lessons, and even at 78, I trust she may win another.

By the end of this book, a gift from my dear friend Linda Fugit, I was disciplining myself to two to three pages at a time.

When I truly love a book, that is my almost subconscious response. In that way, I put off the ending

of The Sisters of Sinai by Janet Soskice as long as possible. Soskice, a Cambridge professor, has written a heroic biography that will both fascinate and challenge anyone who loves the Bible and relishes the adventure of mining its truths. The sisters, identical twins Agnes and Margaret Smith, are button down Victorian ladies and strict Presbyterian Scots, with nary a university degree between them. Nevertheless, they venture, not once, but six times, into the deep, dangerous recesses of the Sinai Desert in order to discover some of the oldest existing texts of the Bible. They undertake these journeys in the mid to late 19th century, making their way atop camels, led

by Bedouin, and sleeping in canvas tents.

The sisters’ tenacity is rewarded with the discovery of one of the earliest known copies of the Gospels, one that is written in Syriac, a language very close to Jesus’ native Aramaic.

Agnes and Margaret’s pursuit of knowledge is as alluring as their hunger for adventure. Growing up in a provincial Scottish town, their widower father promised he would take them to any country for which they learned the language. One by one, the girls taught themselves French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, and eventually Arabic. Because they could practice with each other, they quickly became competent and conversant in each new language, and off they went. The two were devoted, practicing Christians and enchanted by the growing number of stories about discoveries of ancient Biblical texts across the Middle East. To assuage their sorrow after their father died, the two take off to Egypt, which eventually leads them to St. Catherine’s Monastery, situated next to Moses’ holy mount, Mt. Sinai. The ascetic and deeply suspicious monks take a liking to the eccentric duo, and they are shown a treasure trove of decaying documents.

When Agnes discovers a palimpsest, which is a document with writing covering a far more ancient text, she knows she is on the precipice of something monumental.

She sets out to learn ancient Syriac just to see how consequential her find is.

Academic roadblocks, the jealously of

PAGE TURNERS – Continued male professors, physical hardships, and arduous study are no match for these two indomitable, utterly inquisitive ladies. Our daughters and granddaughters should learn about these two heroines whose actions defy social convention and all expectations, never losing their faith while doing so.

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) defined the politics of my childhood. Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, his name was invoked with horror as we Baby-Boomer children huddled under our school desks awaiting nuclear holocaust. Only his predecessor, Josef Stalin, was considered more sinister. While Khrushchev defined my political life from afar, he nearly destroyed the art of one of his nation’s greatest writers, Vasily Grossman (1905-1964). After his mother was murdered by the invading German Army in 1941, Grossman turned to journalism and chronicled the Siege of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow, and, when Russia’s fortunes turned, he covered the Battle of Berlin. His well-received novel, For a Just Cause, is the story of his 1,000 days on the front line of Stalingrad. Grossman’s star began to fade with his sequel to that celebrated book. Life and Fate, the second installment of his Stalingrad saga, is often compared in content and majesty to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. In the novel, however, Grossman dared expose Soviet barbarism while vilifying its Nazi invaders. The KGB raided his apartment and thought they had collected the entire novel. Two friends had safeguarded copies of the banned novel, and it was published posthumously in 1980.

All that is preamble to Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook. Khrushchev sentences Grossman to a sort of traveling prison for his sins against the state. He is ordered to journey nearly 2,000 miles from Moscow to Armenia to translate an

Armenian book into Russian. Grossman has no interest in the book or its arrogant author, but he is quite taken by the spartan surroundings and strange Christian people of Armenia. Grossman is a Jew, while Armenia may be the world’s oldest Christian country, which, while not overt, magnifies the author’s engagement with this strange procession of quirky, peasant Christians. The book, which would be his last, is a relaxed, conversational travelogue of the great author’s interaction with the common people and his wonder at the rugged landscape. At the same time, the reader begins to see inside the artist. My sister-in-law, a longtime Russophile, gave me the book in the hope that I would fall in love with Grossman’s art. The verdict on that is still out, but I did enjoy my visit to post-war Armenia, especially now that the country’s unique people and beauty are again in peril from the Azeris and the Turks knocking at their “front and back doors.”

I am not an intellectual, but I do enjoy challenging my intellect. Quite often when I am at home, sitting in the quiet of my office, studying the Bible or reading a theological, historical, or political text, I will stop mid-sentence just to tell God how much I love my life.

No joke. I am really a library nerd of the first order. Thus, when Kay and I were getting excited about our getaway to the mountains of Tennessee this summer, I indulged myself and ordered a book I read about in an obscure journal: Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of the Intellectual Life, by Zena Hitz.

Published by Princeton University Press, I read every page in rapt wonder when Kay and I would return from our hikes.

are good universally, it belongs in taxi cabs, at the beach house or at the book club, in the break room at work, in the backyard of the amateur botanist, in thoughtful reflection whether scattered or disciplined, as much or more than it does at universities.” Not only does the pursuit of the intellect belong to all of us and in all those places where we spend our lives, but if more of us do not commit to deep reading, challenging study, and concerted contemplation, our personal, civic, and spiritual lives will stagnate. Summaries and Twitter feeds famish the soul. As Richard Hooker (1554-1600), one of the key figures in the development of our church, averred, “Bare reading results in bare feeding.” While he was speaking about reading the Bible without reflecting on tradition or reason, he could have just as easily been describing the thoughtless ways we engage our faith and politics these days. According to Hitz, “To exercise the love of learning is to flee what is worst in life for the sake of what is better, to reach for more in the face of what is not enough.”

The book, after an extended Prologue and Introduction, consists of three carefully crafted essays. Along the way, she reintroduces the reader to Albert Einstein, Malcom X, Primo Levi, Saint Augustine, Dante – as well as to lesser known, amateur intellectuals, such as William and Caroline Heschel, who discovered unknown planets at night after work and John Baker, who, after his grueling clerical job, studied falcons and became the foremost authority on them. Those who dare to go deeper find delight in our world at every turn. They dive deeply into life instead of skimming the surface.

In the Prologue, Hitz, a tenured professor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, insists, “Intellectual life is not a merely professional activity, to be left to experts. Because its central goods 13

The Joy of

Giving Great Commission Society

by Ferne Burney John: What in the world am I going to get Ferne this year for Christmas? What did I get her last year?

Ferne: I hope John gets me something nice this year! What did he give me last year?

Do you remember what you got for

Christmas last year? Or do you remember what you gave for Christmas last year or the year before?

Sometimes, it’s a pretty futile effort. We feel obliged to give a gift and we want to give a gift, but we wonder if it will be enough and will it be the thing that a person wants? I routinely bow out of gift 14

exchanges among my friends for parties or Secret Santa events. The gifts are mostly unimportant and often a waste of money for unwanted things. The focus should be on gifts that are memorable and meaningful.

Our friend, Les Thomsen, is the founder and supporter of Noah’s Farm which aids a community in Africa. Through the years, this charity has established a freshwater system for the village, educational opportunities for the children, and a solid church in their midst. His fundraising efforts have built a strong presence in God’s kingdom and even supported Wounded Warrior families in San Antonio. It was Les’ idea that the gift he and his wife would exchange would be a gift to their charity. There would be no more wondering about what was given or received, and the “just the right thing” was always achieved.

John and I picked up on this idea, and our gifts to each other have been to a selected charity each year for the past five years.

This year is no exception. We do these gifts anonymously which makes them all the more special to us. We have often enjoyed the warm thoughts of that mom and dad, who are struggling with the finances of a child in college, receiving a check during the first week of December. We enjoy the thoughts of those people having no idea where the money came from.

When you are reading this, Christmas will have already passed. But the gift giving opportunities go on and on, and there’s always next year! Did I mention that each of these gifts, including those to Christ Episcopal Church, are tax deductible?

Happy giving!!

Photo Album

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E P I S C O PA L 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 23, Number 1.

Sing, choirs of angels