The Message - January 2022

JANUARY 2022 • Volume 24, Number 1

Of Maps and Recipes: 3 Sing a New Song: 8 CEC Around the World: 10 A Tasty Recipe: 12

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

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

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

The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation

World Missions ..............................10 Outreach ........................................11

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

PATRICK GAHAN

From the Kitchen ............................12

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry

Page Turners...................................13

Lily Fenton, Nursery Director Avery Moran, Youth Minister

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

Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry JOSH BENNINGER

Front Cover photo: Susanna Kitayama

Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist

2021 Children’s Pageant

Jennifer Holloway, Assistant Music Director, Children’s Music Director & Social Media Manager

Listening to Lessons & Carols

Charissa Fenton, Receptionist

Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations

Back Cover photo: Joe Kaski

Live Stream Services: www.cecsa.org/live-stream

Darla Nelson, Office Manager

HALLETA HEINRICH

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

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

Monica Elliott, Executive Assistant to the Rector

In Person Services: Sundays 7:30 a.m. - Rite I 9 & 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. - Rite II

Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager BRIEN KOEHLER

Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager Joe Garcia, Sexton

Sunday School 10:00 a.m.

Christian Education for Children, Youth, and Adults Wednesdays 11 a.m. - Morning Prayer with

2021 Vestry: Andy Anderson, Senior Warden

MELISSA CARROLL

Margaret Pape, Junior Warden

Communion

Lisa Blonkvist

Visit us on-line at www.cecsa.org

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Andy Kerr

Catherine de Marigny David McArthur

Follow us:

facebook.com/ChristChurchSATX @christchurchsatx @cecSATX

Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager

AMY JOHNSON

Meagan Desbrow

Lisa Miller

Rick Foster

Garry Schnelzer

Tobin Hays

Garnett Wietbrock

Recipe for the Good Life A Plan of the Road From the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, Adapted to The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan, 1821.

by Patrick Gahan

Kay loves maps and recipes. If she has

a day off from the surgery center, I will arrive home at 5 o’clock to find the kitchen counters strewn with cookbooks and with so many pages marked with post-it-notes that the books appear to have grown feathers. On a tiny space next to the sink, the only spot not submerged beneath the gravy-splashed tomes of Betty Crocker, the Joy of Cooking, and the Junior League of New Orleans, she will have piles of diced vegetables and minced herbs poised for the soup pot.

It’s much the same way when we are on a trip – urban or rural – the motel bed will be blanketed with maps and flyers. Kay is the darling of Welcome Centers, transfixed by every unique facet of a city or region. By

our second day in London, she knew the routes of the Tube better than the English.

In the New Hampshire Mountains, she is forever asking natives about peaks and trails they did not realize loomed above them. Map or brochure in hand, we exit the door for the day’s adventure.

Resistance or feigning exhaustion is futile.

I grab the backpack, and we’re off.

I suppose recipes and maps are alike. Both chart a way from departure to arrival. A good soup travels from a cookbook to the table much like a good walk starts from a map and ends at a shrine or a summit.

A recipe charts a way from where we are to what we need as sustenance. A map plots the way from where we are to where we want to be. Both insist the status quo is untenable. Sumptuous, aromatic foods summon us to delight. Summits and museums beckon us to wonder.

As I move ever closer to three score and ten, I have become convinced that we are given this short time on earth to delight and wonder in God’s creation and fall more deeply in love with Him. I cannot help but compare my life with God alongside my life with Kay. Forty-six years with her and my delight in her companionship and my wonder at her curiosity and creativity have steadily increased. I have given up “figuring her out” in exchange for loving the mystery of her, which is immensely more fun. The same is true with our life with God. To imagine we will ever pin down the mystery of our Creator is sheer silliness or worse, ignorance. Recall God’s cross-examination of Job: ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations…while the morning stars sang together, and all the angels sang for joy” (Job 38:4-7)? As in a marriage, we are to “love and honor” God as we 3

From Our Rector... do our spouse. Defining either one is not our job but delighting in them is. How telling it is that at the end of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), which claimed over sixty percent of Germany’s men in futile religious combat, saintlier heads came together to write the first lines of the Westminster Catechism:

18th century New England Primer, The Lilly Library, Indiana University

Question: What is the chief end of man?

Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Witnessing the holocaust of horror men could unleash on others, especially as those others were fashioned in the image of God as they were, I surmise the writers of the classic catechism did so to remind them of their life’s true destination.1 Two questions follow this noble statement: First, why would we make it our life’s pursuit to glorify God and enjoy Him forever? Second, if we undertake this quest, how do we accomplish it?

In answer to the first, I will quote Henry David Thoreau’s (1817-1862) best known line from Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”2 While I won’t try to position the naturalist and 1 Genesis 1:27 2 Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Public Domain, 1854), 7.

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transcendentalist Thoreau as an orthodox Christian, I should note that in the very next paragraph of his classic text he uses the first line of the catechism, “What is the chief end of man?” He does so to advance his point that most people live and die in a state of profound dissatisfaction and unease with themselves. Why? Because they do not retain an ultimate goal for their lives, and if they have a goal, it lacks ultimacy.

A century after Thoreau, the German émigré and Christian theologian, Paul Tillich (1886-1965), would insist that all men harbor an ultimate concern for their lives, a pursuit that commands their utmost allegiance.3 Tillich, escaping the horror of Hitler’s Germany, realized that allegiance to the state or to a personality can utterly consume a human being’s life – even if the state or person proves to be monstrous. At the time, Germany was the most theologically astute country in the world, and yet Christian people were surrendering their souls to the Third Reich and its leader by the millions. The problem, of course, is that the nation – no matter how celebrated, or a statesman – no matter how appealing can never be ultimate. Only God bears that distinction.

Americans are hardly above such temporal seduction. We pursue parties and personalities, investments and markets, career and advancement, and entertainment and escape. Then we wonder why our lives rise and fall with national elections and heroes’ indiscretions, sell-offs and real estate gluts, capricious bosses and corporate buyouts, and too much wine and too much food. Those things may be ingredients of life but not one of them can provide a reason for living.

Only the One who made us can do that. If our list of pursuits centers on glorifying self, it will inevitably grow thin, and we will, as Thoreau predicted, grow desperate. That’s because deep, enduring satisfaction in life comes through glorifying God. How do we glorify God? It’s easier than we may think. We are made in God’s image; therefore, we glorify God by becoming 3 Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper, 1954), 1-2.

His image-ness. John Piper (b.1946), the lauded modern theologian and evangelist, gives a simple explanation of image-ness: “Why do people make images? People make images to ‘image.’ They want to image forth something. If you make a statue of Napoleon, you want people to think not so much about the statue as they do Napoleon. You make the statue in a way that shows something specific about the character of Napoleon.”4 Kay and I experienced this dramatic sense of image-ness in the Republic of Georgia.

We were there visiting our youngest son who was serving in the Peace Corps at the time. When we arrived in Tbilisi, the capital city, we learned that the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle would be celebrated at Holy Trinity Cathedral that night. Kay, John, and I went, expecting to find a sparse older crowd. Arriving thirty minutes before the celebration, we were astonished to find the Cathedral filled with young people, many in their twenties, so many that it was hard to move across the nave in any direction. Heightening our amazement was the fact that lines of worshippers queued in front of various icons hung across the north and south walls of the cathedral. One-by-one, the people took their turn in front of the icons and peering at the images, many began to weep. The young Georgians were seeing something Kay and I were missing. The loving, enduring character of God was coming alive for them through the images revealed in the ancient icons. As an aside, those beautiful icons had been hidden from Stalin, who was born in Georgia, just 89 miles from the Cathedral.

When we become a living image of God, we glorify Him. At the point when we image God and emanate His character, we have come fully alive. By stating that, some of you will, no doubt, recall Bishop Frey’s favorite quote of Irenaeus, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” Irenaeus (130-202), an early leader and bishop of the Church in both Asia Minor and Gaul (present day Turkey and France), 4 John Piper, quoted in The New City Catechism, Collin Hansen, ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 30.

From Our Rector... of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit’ (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Every Christian should expect to image God, to exhibit His glory in some way consistent with our one-ofa-kind make-up. I do not have to look very hard to see the brightness of God Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi - Icon, July 2018, © Gerhard Huber in those surrounding is best known for his refutation of the me as they are busy listening, serving, Gnostics Valentinian and Marcion. teaching, repairing, cooking, singing, Gnosticism proffered, among many other praying, waiting, watching, hugging, and things, a dualism that insisted human crying. On the other hand, some of us earthly existence was of little account in believe in the love of God given to us comparison to the spiritual realm. For through Christ, but hold our gifts close to instance, the Gnostics considered Christ’s our chests. Christ deems such camouflage physical suffering on the cross akin to a brazenly absurd: ‘No one lights a lamp and magical act. Irenaeus was having none puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, of that and was relentless in denouncing and it gives light for all who are in the house’ them. Accordingly, the unyielding bishop (Matthew 5:15). believed that human beings were to reflect or image God in their concrete, day-to-day I can anticipate the next question: How lives. This led him to write, “For the glory does glorifying God lead us to enjoy Him? In fact, of God is a living man; and the life of man how does a person enjoy God in the first place? We consists in beholding God… so that those are apt at this point to ramble on about who have yielded obedience might justly long walks in the forest, catching sight of a possess what is good, given, indeed, by mountain range, and pondering the stars.

God.”5 Those of us who are obedient to Certainly, all those sensory experiences God and come to love Him, begin to shine are, in some part, enjoying God through forth aspects of His character that are His creation. Such experiences, even if consistent with our unique creation. one has a home in the Texas Hill Country Recall the vision of Moses when he descended from his meeting with God on Mt. Sinai. His face reflected the radiance of God so brightly that the people begged him to cover himself.6 Those gathered at the base of the mountain were unprepared to encounter the radiance of God reflected in a flesh and blood human being. And yet each one of us who has submitted to God in faith should expect a transformation like that of Moses. Paul, contemplating Moses’ appearance, insists: ‘But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory 5 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 4, Chapter 34, Section 7 6 Exodus 34:29-35

or Colorado, are fleeting and are not part of our being but external to us. No, something must happen to each one of us as it did to Moses for us to enjoy God fully every day. Again, it is Paul who clearly understands what must transpire in us so that we will enjoy God:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans

12:1-2 If we do not read Paul’s words carefully here, we are apt to miss their punch. The apostle is contrasting our transformed life in Christ to that of a sacrifice offered to God on the altar of the Temple. The sacrifice on the altar is a dead animal.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a fully alive human being. Try as we may, we cannot enjoy God until He transforms us.

Before Christ does an extreme makeover of us, we are subordinate to our fallen nature. We are trapped in a daily cycle to gratuitously glorifying ourselves. In that arrested state of development, we are insatiable in our efforts toward personal fulfillment. It is a leaky jar that is never filled. Worse, it is like barbecuing an animal and expecting that ceremonial act, which we complete at arm’s length, to indelibly change us into human beings who love God more than we love our catalogue of desires.

“Who are we in reality when we take away the artificial supports to which we have become accustomed?”

The question emerges, “Who are we in reality when we take away the artificial supports to which we have become accustomed?” Is that not the indicting truth exposed by the Exodus? Moses no sooner leads the people out of bondage than they beg to return to Egypt.7 In the wilderness, bereft of the vestiges of their old life in urban Goshen, they yearn for slavery over freedom. In the same way, the disciples take a stab at their old life after Jesus’ resurrection, which as they will come to learn is their own exodus.8 In the epilogue of John’s Gospel account, Peter makes the abrupt announcement, ‘I’m going fishing,’ and at least six of the remaining eleven follow him. When Jesus unexpectedly appears on the shore of the lake, Peter, stripped of his clothes at 7 Exodus 16:3; Numbers 14:4 8 1 Corinthians 5:7; Book of Common Prayer, 337,364.

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From Our Rector... that point, dives headlong into the water (John 20:3,7). Removed from the security of Jesus’s daily physical presence, the seven had been set adrift and attempt a return to their old life rather than bravely sojourn into the new and unknown. Their cowardly retreat stands pitifully naked before the Savior who freed them.

We are all a bit like Peter and those hapless six. Transformation sounds good until we realize we must be stripped of our old life.

The prospect of starting a new diet sounds hopeful, until we realize we must forego the fries we crave at lunch. Reading the Scripture first thing in the morning seems the right thing to do, except that we miss the exhilaration of ESPN replays on our smartphones. Attending worship every Sunday may be a pivotal step in recovering ourselves, if only we had not filled our Sundays with so many other demands.

For me, no modern story exposes the heart of our struggle more graphically than Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The novel is autobiographical, revealing Solzhenitsyn’s immense struggle with the inhuman treatment he experienced in Stalin’s gulag in Kazakhstan from 1950-1953, where he served as a bricklayer. As evidenced by the title, the novel follows just one day of the labor group Gang 104 in a Soviet gulag from reveille to lights out. The protagonist, Ivan Denisovich “Shukhov,” also a bricklayer, is thrust into this inhumane world due to bureaucratic error. Freed from a German prison camp at the end of WWII, Shukhov is accused of spying for the enemy rather than being commended for bravely fighting against the Nazis as a soldier in the Red Army. An appeal is out of the question. He is sentenced to ten years hard labor, just as Solzhenitsyn is sentenced to eight for making a minor criticism of Stalin in a personal letter to a friend.

Prisoners, known as zeks in the gulag, are stripped of all dignity and human freedoms. From sunup to sundown, they have a total of twenty minutes to themselves, five minutes at breakfast, ten at lunch, and five more at supper. Their 6

days are filled with interminably long roll calls, where they stand in statue-like formation for hours at a time – even in sub-zero temperatures. Backbreaking work consumes every minute of sunlight.

Sleep is merely a far too brief interlude separating the horrors of one day from the other. The overarching question Solzhenitsyn poses in the book is will a zek succumb to the inhumanity of his environment as personified by the Soviet guards or will he retain the nobility of his personhood no matter the cost. “The (latter) course of action leads to inner freedom, the other to slavery worse than any gulag, because it enchains the mind and the heart.”9

Juan de Rojas y Ausa (1622–1685) Representations of the seven mansions of St. Teresa’s Interior Castle. Madrid: Antonio Gonçalez de Reyes, 1679, Bridwell Library Special Collection, Southern Methodist University

While Shukhov is as cunning and shrewd as any in Gang 104, goodness and compassion cannot be beaten out of him, nor can the line between right and wrong within him be worn away by the endless Siberian days. Shukhov may deftly steal an extra bowl of soup, but with a sense of playfulness, he is apt to give it to a clueless and terrified newcomer to the camp.

When forced to complete humiliating 9 Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos (New York: Convergent, 2021), 192.

acts of service or obeisance to the guards, Shukhov does so with unexpected levity.

Sohrab Ahmari, an Iranian Christian author, makes the graphic observation that Shukhov “leaves his interior castle of freedom intact and undefiled.”10 By drawing on Teresa of Avila’s (15151582) most famous depiction of our developing life in Christ, an interior castle, Ahmari gives us the map of the way we can enjoy God forever. Teresa describes the interior castle as a journey into our soul, our innermost self. She envisions the human soul as a splendid crystal castle, whose beauty only intensifies as one enters its seven successive inner chambers.11 The journey inward necessarily begins with the acknowledgement of grace, the gift from God from which all Christian pilgrims embark. From our base camp of grace, we are drawn deep into our journey with the help of prayer, humility, and divine love. Nearing the center of our true self, Teresa declares our love of God becomes so intense and constant that our soul is wedded to Him. The great surprise that comes to us during the journey is that we imagined that we were seeking God, only to discover that we, in fact, were rapturously pursued by Him. Outside of the interior castle, Teresa describes our way beset by dreadful creatures who are intent on impeding our journey to our heart’s desire and true self.

Most Christians profess we are on a journey, and yet our way bears no resemblance to Teresa’s quest for her interior castle. We are forging our way without a divine map. Thus, we press onward in a course of life that is really all about us and nothing about God, except for a feeble nod here and there.

The wisdom of the enlightened Puritan John Owen (1616-1682) comes to mind here. When he describes human sin, he does so, not as isolated actions – a splash of greed here, a tablespoon of lust there, with a dash of anger in the mix. No, 10 Ibid, 192.

11 Teresa was certainly influenced by Dante’s journey up the “seven story mountain” in his Divine Comedy two hundred years before.

From Our Rector...

Owen describes sin as a course of life.12 Occasionally, we are temporarily scared off the path of our self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement by a health concern, a business reversal, family pain, or perhaps even a pandemic. Soon enough, however, we are back on the same predictably sinful course that leads literally to a dead end.

Just recall Jesus’s Parable of the Rich Fool.13

his remarks to the 20,000 in the drenched crowd by noting Harvard’s motto, Truth.

And the truth of what Solzhenitsyn observed and experienced in America rained down on them. He saw the increasing number of lobbyists, partydriven politicians, and unethical media mavens obscuring real freedom in their pursuit of self-interests. Furthermore, the true excellence of inquiry, thought, and expression were being drowned out by the clamor of the mob. Solzhenitsyn’s words infuriated the sodden assembly in

We admire Solzhenitsyn’s Shukhov because he journeys inward and retains his true self, even though his outer world is littered with nearly unbearable ugliness. He is ‘Men go abroad to admire the heights of unique amongst the millions of Stalin’s filthy, faceless, mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the numbered zeks. Shukhov is broad tide of rivers, the vast compass of the emblematic of the modern ocean, the circular motion of the stars, and contemplative Christian pressed amongst the morass yet they pass over the mystery of themselves of persons, who contemplate without a thought.’ nothing further than their next sensory experience.

Augustine, writing 1,500 years earlier, described humanity’s neglect of the Harvard Yard: “Should I be asked,” he inner life: ‘Men go abroad to admire the heights lamented, “Whether I would propose the of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the West, such as it is today, as a model for broad tide of rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, my country today, I would frankly have to the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass answer negatively. I would not recommend over the mystery of themselves without a thought.’14 your country as an ideal transformation of ours.”15 Before we break out the barrel and slap Solzhenitsyn on the back for putting Stalin The media fed on Solzhenitsyn’s words and his insipid, godless Soviet empire in like piranhas. Eventually, they settled its place, we had better hold on. In the on the patronizing defense that he was spring of 1978, Solzhenitsyn was invited just “a homesick Russian.” Even as early to address Harvard’s graduating class. The as 1978, without the aid of Twitter and Russian exile had lived in Vermont for Instagram, Americans were busy ridiculing two years, but rarely accepted invitations and “cancelling” a voice we did not want to speak or make public appearances. to hear. One truth-teller emerged from He did not like his rigorous writing the media pack, George Will, who, at routine interrupted. Harvard approached age 80, is still writing with unanticipated him repeatedly, until he acquiesced. and unfettered honesty. Only 43 in 1978, Cambridge experienced a deluge the day Will concluded the wholesale rejection of the commencement, which predicted of Solzhenitsyn’s speech was “a study in Solzhenitsyn’s speech and Americans’ intellectual parochialism” and evidence of response to it. the “flaccid” American consensus.16 The steely, long-bearded Russian began 12 The Works of John Owen; Vol.13, Thomas Russell, ed. (London: Richard Baynes, 1826), 200-201.

13 Luke 12:13-21 14 Confessions, Augustine, Book Ten, Edward Pusey, trans, Harvard Classics, 176.

this age, nor could we in any other. To do so is to detour down a dark alley. Christ alone is our compass. ‘Whoever follows me’ he assures us, ‘will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life’ (John 8:12). Of course, it is easy to get lost amidst the dissonance of so many escalating and insistent voices.

We should not be shocked by the state of things. Christians are now a cultural minority. The Christian consensus has been abandoned even in the bosom of America’s Bible Belt. In that, we are much like the early Christians. Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 may have insured the security of Christians in the Empire, but it could not keep them from the assault of the hedonistic and materialistic society that surrounded them. How could Christians develop and maintain the image-ness of their Lord in a world where they are terribly outnumbered? The Church decided to create a map for those entering the faith – the catechumenate. The catechumenate, from the Greek katekhesis = “teach by word of mouth,” was an extended time of instruction demanded of all who desired baptism into the Christian faith. To submit to be a catechumen was to be given a map of how to follow Christ and glorify the One who made us throughout the mundane, daily rhythms of our lives. To undergo this instruction was to be given a recipe to reflect the image-ness of God. It is probably time to reinstitute a sort of catechumenate for all of us because the Christian life sets us on a road of unpredictable and unanticipated surprises, which is why we call it an adventure.

Seasoned Christians know that we cannot follow the reigning cultural consensus in 15 Ronald Berman ed., Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1980), 3. As cited by Ahmari.

16 Ibid,, 26.

The Catechism Lesson, Jules-Alexis Muenier, 1890

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New Music for a New Year

Music Ministry

“Epiphany Praise” is a new song of praise I arranged for the Epiphany season. The words come from the following three hymns, set to familiar music from “This is my Father’s World”:

by Josh Benninger

Hymn 117 – “Brightest and best of the stars of the morning” Hymn 135 – “Songs of thankfulness and praise” Hymn 136 – “O wondrous type!”

Epiphany Praise

A new song of praise for the Epiphany season arr. Josh Benninger

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TERRA BEATA

Christmas Joy! CEC Family Ministry

by Halleta Heinrich

What joy this year’s Christmas Pageant

“Santa’s Favorite Story” brought to Christ Church on the evening of December 5!

Joy and a sense of normalcy is what we all longed for this Christmas season. We got that and much more! We had so many children – more than we’ve had in a while.

The church was full, not only with parents, but with many who didn’t have children, but were seeking joy.

I want to thank the many parents who enabled their children to be in this year’s

pageant. They brought them to Sunday School and Chapels to practice songs with the amazing Ruth Berg – a joy herself.

Parents brought their children to our big All Cast Practice on Saturday morning before the pageant to polish the final details. We had more kids and parents show up for this final practice than I’ve ever seen.

I thank the children who made our church the brightest and most beautiful as they processed in behind Mr. And Mrs. Santa Clause and the Star of Bethlehem and lined up within the sanctuary as the Nativity Stars, Christmas Angels and Stars, Santa’s Helpers, Woodland and Manger Animals, and Sheep and their Shepherds. I pray that all these children

who were cast according to their age and grade level grow in close friendship as brothers and sisters in Christ as they progress in Children’s Ministry and Youth Ministry and beyond. Maybe they’ll bring their own children to Christ Church someday to be in the pageant! There were many in the congregation on the eve of the pageant who did just that – kids of kids who were in much earlier pageants. That truly is a joy!

Make sure to watch the video of the pageant on our website as a remembrance or to see it for the first time. Thank you, Charissa Fenton, for filming this joyous event!

Love in Christ, Halleta

Children’s Communion Class Our Children’s Communion Class will

begin Sunday, February 13, at 10 a.m. for all First and Second Graders. Class will be held in our Level 2 Good Shepherd Atrium FMC room 208. This class has been designed to enrich our children’s Communion experience. Halleta Heinrich will lead the class along with parents of the children. There will be a Parent Orientation on Sunday, February 6, at 10 a.m. in Children’s Chapel.

Each Sunday we will discuss topics vital

to our understanding of Christianity as it is supported in the sacrament of Holy Communion. Communion Class Topics follow: • • • •

Who is Jesus? The Names of Jesus What is the Lord’s Supper?

Biblical Background and Reenactment of the Last Supper How Do We Celebrate the Lord’s Supper/ Holy Communion? Altar Presentation in the Church How Do We Prepare Our Hearts

•

to Receive Holy Communion?

Lessons on Prayer – The Hand Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer Who Are We as the Church Community? How Jesus Is with Us in Holy Communion

The Communion Class concludes with a Communion Retreat at the church on Saturday, April 23, and a Children’s Communion Celebration honoring the class on Sunday, April 24.

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What in the World Missions?

CEC World Missions

by Brien Koehler

Covid took the wind out of our mission

Kurdistan: When need for winter clothing and heating equipment for refugees spending winter in refugee camp tents was discovered by the Koehlers in November 2021, support from unallocated funds was voted by the committee and sent immediately ($6,000).

trips. Christ Church hasn’t sent a team to Uganda, Honduras, or Kenya during the pandemic shutdowns. Terry and I were able to visit Kurdistan in November, and we will be in Honduras (God-willing) in late January. The Schnelzers and Eric Fenton have plans to return to Africa in 2022. With God’s help, our long-delayed work in Navajoland Area Mission will finally make forward motion in 2022 as well.

But Christ Church hasn’t allowed the pandemic to stop the mission. Here is a summary of our highlights from 2021: Missionary Support: Continued our long-standing direct (and significant) support of our overseas missionaries serving in Spain (The Millers), providing security for the world-wide network known as Ethnos (The Olsons), and evangelism in Kenya and Uganda (Canon Alison Barfoot). $45,000 sent in 2021.

A Syrian refugee grandmother in Kurdistan who will receive winter clothing and heating supplies from Christ Church. Her daughter is part of the embroidery project

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Students at Bethel School, Nebbi, Uganda; a ministry led

by Phoebe and Archbishop Henry Orombi

Global Mobilization Ministries and other education support ($5,000).

Navajoland: Although personal involvement has not yet been possible because the Navajo reservation remains closed to most outside visitors, the Missions Committee has allocated funds for use in 2022 ($5,000).

Honduran Episcopalian receives food from Christ Episcopal Church

Honduras: Completed 18 months of food support for nearly 100 Episcopal Church families suffering from unemployment due to Covid and famine due to two hurricanes (in partnership with the Diocese of West Texas and gifts from individuals--$25,000); provided clean water home filters for 100 households in partnership with Carelink Foundation of Naperville and DWTX ($10,000); provided college scholarship support for clergy children ($10,000); support for 2022 mission of Hilos de Dios embroidery ministry ($3,700).

Uganda and Kenya: Emergency Assistance for two dioceses and the Nebbi Women’s Center providing food and operational support ($7,500); support for the 2022 Band & Bible Mission led by Eric Fenton ($3,500); supported an innovative re-structure to provide sustainability for Threads of Blessing embroidery ministry when North American participation was impossible, by putting local leadership in the field serving hundreds of women ($6,600); support for scholarships to new Muslim Background Believers through

Give thanks to God that our parish is so committed to the work of the Gospel and pray that we may be stronger in our commitment to the Great Commission!

Join me in this prayer for our missions in the year ahead: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen (Book of Common Prayer, p. 101)

Terri Koehler leading a small group for the embroidery project in Kurdistan

Making the Holidays Merry and Bright CEC Outreach

by Melissa Carroll Thanksgiving for Our School Families

Whatever else it means, Thanksgiving is

a time for family gatherings. Sixty families that CEC supports received a turkey and sides to help make their meal even better.

The families are among those recommended by their school social workers and counselors as needing extra help with food. Christ Church supports Madison and Maverick Elementary Schools, Longfellow Middle School, and Jefferson High School.

Twenty-eight of the bags were delivered by volunteers from Sidewalk Saturday, who had already worked a full morning, going into the world as Jesus commanded.

The Well, our young adult group, shopped for and sorted food that provided our twenty Madison families with food for the week since there were no school lunches during the Thanksgiving break.

The turkey and sides were gratefully received. A junior at Jefferson HS said her

younger brother, who attends Maverick Elementary, was just diagnosed with special needs. She was very excited to be able to get the turkey and sides.

The young woman was also excited and nervous about her approaching senior year. It may seem early to some, but she is the first person in her family to receive a diploma. Her career interest has been influenced by her brother and she is thinking about some sort of field in social services or medicine.

gone, and the gifts started arriving.

The gifts were distributed Dec. 12 as parents drove through the church parking lot to pick up the large black bags full of gifts. Some also picked up their monthly food distribution.

One little boy asked Justin Lindstrom why the church was giving the gifts.

“Because we love you and God loves you,” Justin replied. “Okay, cool!” said the boy.

“Making money is not as important as being able to help people,” she explained.

Other moms were moved to tears as they accepted the gifts on behalf of their children.

Spreading Christmas Joy

Christ Church is very generous. Ninety kids will have Christmas this year through the amazing gifts of our parishioners.

This is not just about gift giving but the transformation of lives.

Christmases for 90 children were brighter this year, after Christ Church parishioners bought presents for them.

The children were selected by social workers and counselors at Madison and Maverick elementary schools.

The children’s parents submitted the gift ideas. Members of the School Support Ministry created paper “ornaments” with the child’s name and wished-for gift and decorated a Christmas tree in the Parish Hall.

Within a week, all of the ornaments were

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From the Kitchen

CEC Kitchen Ministry

by Elizabeth Martinez

Do you have a favorite recipe that

is worth sharing? The Christ Church Kitchen Ministry is planning a new cookbook and is looking for a few good recipes to add!

We’ve all been cooking at home more since the pandemic hit. What have you been making? Whether it’s a favorite dessert, main dish, side dish, or a healthy dish, please send recipes of your family favorites to Elizabeth Martinez via mail or email at elizabethm@cecsa.org.

The new CEC cookbook should be available in the fall.

Mamaw’s Banana Bread from Whitney McCarthy & Matthew Landers Ingredients 1 ¾ c. all-purpose flour 1 ¼ tsp. baking powder ½ tsp. baking soda ¾ tsp. salt 1/3 c. butter or margarine 2/3 c. granulated sugar 2 eggs, slightly beaten 1 c. mashed bananas 1 ½ c. pecan pieces Directions: Sift and measure flour into one bowl. Add baking powder, baking soda, and salt; sift again. In a separate bowl, cream butter/ margarine and add sugar. Gradually continue beating butter/sugar mixture until light and fluffy. Add eggs and whip until smooth. Add dry ingredients alternately with mashed bananas, mixing just enough to combine thoroughly. Do not beat. Turn into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

The Library

by Amy Johnson

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.” –Albert Einstein

Of course there is far more you need to know. Happily, much of this you can find in a library.

Christ Church has a small but respectable collection in the CEC Library. Books and magazines that reveal and discuss all aspects of Christian living are available as are sources for serious study. Our library is located on the ground floor of the office hallway. Walking from the sanctuary to the Parish Hall, you pass right by.

Knitters in the Library in 2018

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Nancy Hall, Sally Munford, and I have been putting the books in order using the Dewey Decimal system making sure the books are properly numbered and

recorded in the card catalogue. I realize this is not “state of the art” but it is “state of the easy to use.”

Our library is open for anyone to use.

Occasionally, there are meetings in this quiet space. There is one meeting I would like to propose……. a reading group.

The first step is to have a meeting of all interested folks. There will be no gender, age, or church membership expectations toward participation. The gathering of those interested will come to an agreement as to time, place, and books for the group.

I was in a group for twenty years….it was great. The initial meeting shall be announced in the Sunday worship bulletin.

Your not by profession librarian, but happy to help librarian, Amy Johnson

PAGE TURNERS – From the Rector’s Book Stack

The Reader (Young Woman Reading a Book), Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1875-76, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France

This morning

after Kay left for work at 5:30, I sat down to write a long letter to our two sons, Clay, 43 and John 36.

My aim was to remind them what I consider timeless and important. I have no idea how they will receive my lines composed in the early AM, but I do hope they will take to heart how much I love them. Perhaps my letter writing was inspired by a book I recently dashed through, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos, by Sohrab Ahmari. The author is a story in himself: escaping to America from Iran at age thirteen, raised as a Muslim, becoming an agnostic skeptic in his college years, he converted to Christianity in his early adulthood. Ahmari is a serious Roman Catholic Christian and a wellread scholar of Western literature, history, politics, and religion. He serves as the Op-Ed editor of the New York Post, the conservative daily. The Unbroken Thread, however, is not written to his literate public but to his four-and-half-year-old son, Max.

Ahmari, who fiercely loves America, is one of the many educated voices raising the alarm for its future. Now that we’ve made unconstrained freedom our god on both the left and the right, we are awash in a lavishly wealthy, shallow, technologically advanced society that has unmoored itself from traditions and responsibilities in a quest to fulfill the insatiable ego. Ahmari, being newer to the Christian faith than most of his readers, knows this route to freedom is delusional. The only freedom is to be subject to Christ, the people he gives us, and the nation where we are set. To guide his son’s future decisions, Ahmari asks several surprising questions, which serve as comprehensive, compelling chapters in his book: Why would God want you to take a day off? Can you be spiritual without being religious? Does God need politics? How must you serve your parents? Is sex a private matter? and What’s good about death? – among others.

To support his points, Ahmari marches in St. Augustine, Howard Thurman, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and John Henry Newman. Those of us who want to leave something of substance to our children instead of the remnants of an unspent IRA, would do well to read this book.

These days the term Rust Belt brings up visions of dilapidation, ignorance, and hopelessness harbored in the vast midsection of our country.

Greenstone, Minnesota, situated along Highway 61, mere miles from the Canadian border, is a Rust Belt town. With its rotting pier jutting out into the cold waters of Lake Superior and its hulking, empty factory buildings casting a shadow over Main Street, it fits the description of “rusting away and beyond hope.” Virgil Wander, the protagonist of Leif Enger’s latest novel by the same name would be amongst the walking dead of Greenstone, except, against all expectations, he has refused to close the Empress Movie Theater. With its

insect infestation, leaking roof, and sparse patronage, why does he bother? Because Virgil still believes magic floods the room when the projector lights flicker across the screen and celluloid actors tramp into the people’s lives and lead them far from their dead-end habitations and expectations.

Speaking of magic, a procession of enchanted people drifts through Greenstone and alight at the Empress.

Rune, a puzzling Finnish kite maker from the remote shore of Finland, some 200 miles above the Arctic Circle, arrives in the forlorn town without announcement.

He sails his magnificent creations along the coast of Greenstone, drawing people to the beauty of the lake and the sky that have become invisible to them. Bjorn is Rune’s teenage grandson, although he cannot accept the stranger from Finland until he comes to life himself while deftly operating the antique projector at the Empress. Nadine, Bjorn’s mother, has been in a holding pattern since her young husband disappeared while piloting a tiny aircraft across the frigid waters of Superior. Because of her son’s newfound facility with aging film projectors, she, too, lands at the Empress. She falls in love with Virgil, who, heretofore, could not imagine he was loveable. Those who have read Leif Enger’s previous works, Peace Like a River and So Brave, Young, and Handsome have come to know that love brings the dead back to life, even those in a decaying Rust Belt town.

In April of 1983, Eudora Welty was invited to give the inaugural address of the William E. Massey Lecture Series at Harvard University.

Today, I cannot imagine that she would be invited onto the campus at all, let alone be invited to speak. In fact, I did a quick sweep of the Harvard University Press website, which hosts the lectures. They have scrubbed both Welty’s name and her book 13

PAGE TURNERS – Continued from its offerings and index. No matter, Scribner offers the book, One Writer’s Beginnings, which beguiled me from the very first syllables. To be honest, even though I purchased the book, I elected to listen to it, as it is a live recording of Welty delivering the three lectures in Longfellow Hall at America’s most august university.

Two gifts proceed from her addresses.

The first is her acknowledgement that you write about what you know. The three talks are entitled: Listening, Learning to See, and Finding a Voice. Welty simply paid attention, close attention, to her life and wrote about the ordinary people and events that surrounded her. Her characters are composites of those she has known and what she comes to know about herself.

Second, Welty takes us back the to the South, which we have largely forgotten.

She was a child and citizen of Jackson, Mississippi. Through her lines, one can hear the bells of the Presbyterian Church and smell the talcum-powdered sweat of a passer-by. Welty does not objectify, vilify, or defend the South. She merely brings to life what she knows and loves. Shakespeare did no more.

One of the many aspects of classical music I appreciate is the fact that when I listen to a recording of a piano concerto, symphony, or opera, the name of the composer is emphasized rather than the artist.

Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989) was a magnificent concert pianist, yet if he took the stage to play Moonlight Sonata, the name of Beethoven was emphasized over his own. The same is true for the celebrated Yo-Yo Ma (b.1955). When he plays the Cello Suite in G Major, the name of Bach is heralded first. Highlighting the work of the composer over the performer coalesces with my Christian conviction that God the creator is to be extolled over human beings, who act solely out of what has been given to us by God. I love so much more about classical music, but I know 14

very little. Taking Jesus’ cue ‘to become like a little child’ (Matthew 18:3), I listened to the children’s book, The Story of Classical Music by Darren Henley in my Libby App. Lord Henley, OBE since 2013, has forged a life since age sixteen of making classical music accessible to children and adults alike. The grand sweep of the Baroque Period through the Classical and Romantic Periods of music began to take better shape in my mind due to Henley’s clear explanations and lively revelations.

“I’m not feeling it, Timmy,” his mother confessed as she was dying of glioblastoma, a gruesome cancer whose tendrils strangle the brain.

A faithful, dutiful Roman Catholic Christian, she lamented, “I’m not sure anymore. I don’t know what to believe or what’s ahead.”

Sitting at his mother’s bedside, Timothy Egan, an Irish American, New York Times columnist, whose own faith was faltering, decided to make a pilgrimage.

The pilgrimage Egan undertook was the 1,300 mile Via Francigena (pron. Via Fran-chee-jeh-nah), which extends from Canterbury to Rome. The record and reflections of his trek by foot, rail, bus, and car is A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith. Egan’s walk takes him through Calais, Reims, Lausanne, Geneva, and Siena, but it is the out-of-the-way, less unheralded stops that are most interesting, such as Saint-Omer, Laon, Besancon, Pavia, and his treacherous ascent of the Alps through the Saint Bernard Pass. There is a dark side of Egan’s pilgrimage. The Christian faith, which defines the ancient Via Francigena, is nearly extinct on the continent of Europe and a mere fifteen percent of people in England identify as Anglican. Thousands of ancient churches are being shuttered or repurposed as restaurants, gift shops, and antique malls. However, it was Egan’s personal struggle with faith that carried

me along on the walk with him because I know he articulates the questions of so many. Thanks to Dan and Mary Sponhaltz, I was introduced to Timothy’s Egan’s exceptional historical writing in The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Dustbowl, which won the National Book Award.

I considered it an ominous omen that the day I finished The Dog Stars,

by Peter Heller, the Omicron Coronavirus Variant made its petrifying debut in South Africa. Hig, the protagonist and narrator of the novel, is one of the few survivors of a global pandemic that mercilessly sweeps the globe. After his wife dies in an unstaffed hospital, Hig retreats with his dog Jasper to a private airstrip outside Denver, where he teams up with a ruthless survivalist, aptly named Bangley. Coldblooded assaults from those few remaining around them convinces the two that people, set loose from society and security, regress to animalistic savagery.

But the novel is not a dystopian survival thriller as much as it is one about the need for other people. Making his daily surveillance flight in his 1956 Cessna, Hig catches a scratchy broadcast, which thrusts him on a perilous quest to find another human being. “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18), echoed through my head while I was immersed in the final chapters of the work, and I realized that Heller was recasting a modern version of Eden. That is why Heller has emerged as one of Kay’s and my favorite modern authors. A pilot, kayaker, offshore fisherman, logger, sailor, ecologist, an explorer through the remotest regions of the continents, and a poet, Heller leads his readers on penetrating adventures across myriad landscapes and into forgotten places in the heart.

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 24, Number1.

Soaking in the sounds of Lessons & Carols