The Message - July 2022

JULY 2022 • Volume 24, Number 4

Learning to be the Good Society: 3 Yellow and Red make ORANGE: 9 A Journey to Indian Country: 10 A Few Good Books: 13

The Message this month: Contents:

Christ Church Staff:

Contributors:

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

The Rev. Patrick Gahan, Rector

Music Ministry ................................8

The Rev. Scott Kitayama, Associate Rector

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

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

Youth Ministry ...............................10 World Missions ..............................11

The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation

PATRICK GAHAN

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

Great Commission...........................12 Page Turners...................................13

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry

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

Lily Fenton, Nursery Director JENNIFER HOLLOWAY

Front cover photo: Terry Koehler

Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry

Marthe Curry leading VBS in a barn on the Cheyenne River Lakota Reservation

Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist

Back Cover photo: Gretchen Duggan Brien Koehler leading Lakota children in the Chicken Dance

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

Charissa Fenton, Receptionist

Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations

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Darla Nelson, Office Manager Donna Franco, Financial Manager

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Lisa Miller

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Gretchen Comuzzi Duggan, Director of Communications Monica Elliott, Executive Assistant to the Rector

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Christian Education for Children, Youth, and Adults

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Avery Moran, Youth Minister

JUSTIN LINDSTROM

Rick Foster

Garnett Wietbrock

Spencer Hill

Julianne Reeves

David McArthur

Scott Rose

Statue of George Brackenridge on Broadway photo Scott Ball/San Antonio Report

The Good Society

by Patrick Gahan Alligator Undercover!

Until I returned to San Antonio in

2012, the word “Brackenridge” occupied a secreted file in my brain subtitled “terror.” And no wonder. In 1974, during my freshman year at Trinity University, Steve Cordes put a five-foot, 135-pound alligator on my bed in Murchison Dorm.

Cordes, an All-State guard and scholarship player for the University of Nebraska, transferred to Trinity just in time for his life to intersect mine. I made the mistake of escorting his girlfriend, or should I say, “his perceived girlfriend,” to a sorority formal, and he responded by climbing over the security fence at Brackenridge Park, which, at that time, harbored one hundred or more alligators. Walking amongst the

snapping horde of reptiles, Cordes chose just the right one to tuck under his arm, climb back over the fence, and place the tail-wagging, snout-snapping monster next to me in my single bed. He terrorized me for two hours until he withdrew with his pet and placed him in the large university fountain outside the Student Union.

Once found out, I was the darling of syndicated newspapers and nightly television public interest features. The foray with my strange bedfellow eventually reached my maiden Irish Catholic great aunts, who wrote me scathing letters criticizing my collegiate escapades. None of my impassioned arguments convinced them that I did not choose to sleep with the alligator due to some aberrant Protestant proclivity. “This would have never happened,” they harped, “if I had only attended Notre Dame.”

I will spare the reader any additional details. Suffice it to say that the encounter with the alligator gave me nightmares for the rest of the semester, such that the word “Brackenridge” evoked dry sweats and panic within me well into my forties.

What possessed Kay and me to move to Rosewood Avenue, a mere mile from the park that had long haunted me, I do not know.

George Washington Brackenridge – the Alamo City, Alamo Heights, UT & Reparations What I do know, is that Nancy Torgerson came to me as an angel of semantic mercy when she gave me a brief biography of the man who bequeathed the park to the city. Once known to me for its creepy island of alligators, I now realize that George Washington Brackenridge, is the 3

From Our Rector... noble patriarch of San Antonio for his efforts extending well beyond the park.

Brackenridge, in fact, is the father of philanthropy for our fair city.

Brackenridge’s story rings out like Horatio Alger’s. Trained as a surveyor in the Midwest, he set out for Port Lavaca, TX to try his hand as a peddler. He was so successful that his entire family left their established abode and careers in Indiana to follow young George’s example. Not surprisingly, many of the family members are buried outside Port Lavaca in the Jackson County Cemetery.

Eventually, several of the family members migrated north to San Antonio, where they confronted the specter of the Civil War. Just as George valiantly strode out to Texas before his three brothers, he bravely remained faithful to the Union, while the other three donned the Confederate uniform. An addendum to the family’s war story is that brother Robert John Brackenridge was captured by Union troops and endured harsh imprisonment.

George, who by that time had become somewhat influential, negotiated the release and return of his brother. Robert John was so grateful for his freedom and his eventual return to health that he spent the rest of his days raising funds to support health care in his newly adopted hometown of Austin, TX. The great public hospital of the capital city, Brackenridge Hospital, is named for him.

Young George’s first magnanimous act made this possible.

George would outpace all his brothers in altruism. Making his fortune as president of the Bank of San Antonio, George advanced two projects in his young, adopted state: the City of San Antonio and the University of Texas. To the former, he gave the 343 acres, which now comprises Brackenridge Park, as well as the land for Mahncke Park. Furthermore, George made his home in an area north of the city, which he renamed Alamo Heights, and sold his beautiful homestead, Fernridge, to the Sisters of Charity, along with its attendant 280 acres. In gratitude, the sisters renamed the house Brackenridge Villa, now a centerpiece of the University of 4

the Incarnate Word.

While George established the San Antonio School Board and served as its first president in 1899, his fiercest love of education was demonstrated in his devotion to the University of Texas. He served as a regent for twenty-five years, which still stands at the longest tenure of any UT trustee. Seeing oil was the future of the fledgling college’s stability, he saw to it that the university was deeded large tracts of land in West Texas. A prophet of fortune, the year that George died the Santa Rita No.1 hit, and its income became the Permanent University Fund, which has provided the lion’s share of the University of Texas building expense. In a move sadly reflective of our own day, Governor “Pa” Ferguson (term: 1915-1917) threatened to cut off operational funding for the University because he politically disagreed with their hiring practices. George, publicly refuting the governor, promised to pay the total expenses for the college for the next two years. The governor retreated.

George’s most astonishing duel with his culture was his irrevocable belief in the payment of reparations. Because his father was a slave owner, he personally witnessed the cruelty of slavery. He calculated the wages those enslaved would have earned and gave that amount, hundreds of thousands of dollars, for African American education. Unlike most men of his age, he was an avid proponent of women’s suffrage, insisting women be admitted into UT, and that an equal number of female faculty be hired commensurate with men. When the UT Medical School at Galveston refused women admittance with the disguised excuse of no available housing, George immediately built them a dormitory.

Nearing his death at age 88 in December 1920, George acknowledged to a friend, “I hope the world is a better place for me living in it.”1 Undoubtedly, George’s wish came true. An untold procession of 1 W.F. Strong, “The Grand Giver: Brackenridge’s goodwill and generosity continue to enhance life for San Antonio park goers and students across Texas,” Teas Coop Power (December 2021), 29.

people walking through the verdant paths of Brackenridge Park, those enjoying the colorful passages of the Witte Museum, and the throngs of students of diverse backgrounds who crowd UT classrooms carry the witness of this man without ever knowing it. Those few of us who read this magazine, who now know the bones of George Brackenridge’s biography, cannot ignore his high calling. After all, he is the Father of Alamo Heights, and, therefore, the iconic conscience for prosperous San Antonians.

Prosperous Egotists “Prosperous San Antonians” would, of course include most all of us – living in or outside 78209. By the measure of past generations, we are decidedly wealthy.

When I was first commissioned in the U.S. Army, I qualified for Federal Food Stamps. My initial compensation as a teacher instructing five classes of English composition and coaching three sports in a 6-A high school was $14,000 per annum (only $11,000 without the coaching supplement). That was in 1982. The boon in my income a generation and a half later is staggering.

Furthermore, our leisure hours have substantially expanded. Once thought out of reach for all but top percentile of American earners, Americans have been accorded far more hours for entertainment and relaxation. According to the Social Security Administration, I entered the workforce in 1965. Summers and holidays I worked two jobs – one during the weekdays and another during the weekend. Consequently, the long hours demanded by the military or coaching high school football and basketball were not surprising to me. Today I enjoy a month’s paid vacation, continuing education leave, a sabbatical, and can rest on most public holidays.

As a Baby Boomer, I know that most of my college educated contemporaries have seen their incomes and leisure hours expand many times beyond the abundance that Kay and I enjoy. With some exceptions, most members of our

From Our Rector... parish are prosperous beyond expectations.

Our affluence has given us security, health, and opportunities to assist others through philanthropy and personal gifts. The most negative aspect of our prosperity is self-centeredness, which issues from us as entitlement, gluttonous behavior, addictions, abdication of civic engagement, religious lethargy, and – worst of all – greed. What is far worse is that we are fostering this negative behavior on the generation following us, such that some expect wealth conferred on them like a knighthood, eschew challenges for “safety,” and are indifferent to both political and religious knowledge and responsibility. I realize my assessment is a gross over-generalization, and that within our parish are individuals from both generations who stand in stark rebuttal to my critique. But you do not have to look very hard to see that my observations ring painfully true across American upper-middle-class society. We are not living according to George Washington Brackenridge’s legacy.

Jesus’ Homecoming Crash More pressing is the fact that we are living in direct opposition to the Bible’s repeated description of The Good Society. To illustrate our sickness and the cure, we should turn in the Scripture where Jesus himself began – Isaiah. Most will recall how Jesus’ homecoming to Nazareth went from warm to frigid due to Jesus’ public reading in the synagogue, his place of worship for twenty-five years or more. To honor the nascent rabbi, the convenor of the synagogue asked Jesus to step forward and read to the assembled townspeople. Jesus chose to read a portion of Isaiah 61: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ Luke 4:18-21

To the people amongst whom Jesus had grown up, he chooses to disclose God’s picture of The Good Society. Those of us who have been lulled into a false notion that the Christian life is strictly an individual affair will react to Jesus’ words as caustically as his Nazarene homefolks.

They want to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:29). We too have become comfortable with our notion of the good life, and do not want any religious interference in the way we live, save casting a token declaration of faith “upstairs.” This adulteration of the Christian life would have seemed ridiculous, if not ludicrous, to the thirty-year-old Jesus. Taking a closer look at the declaration he culls from Isaiah, we can surmise that The Good Society of today works to change the bad news of the poor to good, asserts that justice is exercised in our courts and jails, insists all receive the requisite medical care to be healed, and citizens never cease to upend oppressive systems in our government and private sector.

We are not living according to George Washington Brackenridge’s legacy... we are living in direct opposition to the

Bible’s repeated description of The Good Society.

Most disturbing, however, is Jesus’ last prophetic statement, ‘I have been anointed to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ Many in the synagogue would have known that the Torah commands that every seven years all debts were to be forgiven (Deuteronomy 15:1). That command may have been observed during Jesus’ lifetime. We know that the injunction was close to his heart.

Sometime later, Peter approaches Jesus to ask how often he should be compelled to forgive – ‘seven times,’ which is an allusion to Deuteronomy 15:1. Jesus exponentially magnifies God’s demand, ‘No, forgive seventy times seven.’ (Matthew 18: 21-22). Jesus does the same thing in the synagogue of his hometown. He declares that in him

the Jubilee Year, ‘the year of the Lord’s favor’ has arrived. This Jubilee Year, also found in the bosom of the Torah, declares that every seven years times seven plus one – the fiftieth year, all property returns to its original owners (Leviticus 25:813). So, it is no surprise that when Jesus ends his preaching debut with ‘Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,’ the congregation became so violent that they attempt to publicly execute him.

His execution will have to wait for later.

But we can see why the Nazarenes are so incensed. This smacks of Soviet collective housing and farming. Today, the mere suggestion that Christ would align himself with socialism over capitalism evokes furor.

Perhaps a more palatable way to look at Jesus’ declaration is that he is calling The Good Society to seek an equilibrium or a recalibration of opportunity.

This is no easier for me to write than it is for you to read. Yet it is beyond denying that God expects the Church, as He did our predecessor Israel, to exercise authority and privilege justly and to extend good into the world, both individually and corporately. Eden is the image we should keep before us. When God calls Abraham and Sarah to leave the family and land they knew to start a new people in a new land, God was acting to create a new Eden amongst people who would love Him above all else and from the strength of that love, extend themselves generously to others (Genesis 12:1-3).

This new family “would till God’s Garden and keep it” in a way that the first family did not (Genesis 2:15). Abraham’s and Sarah’s grandson, Jacob, who is initially a mess of the first order, will, nevertheless, be renamed “Israel,” but not before he wrestles with God regarding his calling (Genesis 32:22-28). How telling it is that when Jacob continues his journey home to Canaan, he immediately encounters Esau, his brother whom he had underhandedly cheated. Rather than fight to the death or even mildly quarrel, the two reconcile.

This bodes well that the twelve tribes that will proceed from Jacob’s lineage have a chance of establishing The Good Society (Genesis 33:9-11).

5

From Our Rector...

If the drama of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, establishes the beginnings of Israel, then the sensational story of Pentecost marks the beginning of the Church. On that day, celebrated amongst the Jews as the day the Law was given at Sinai, a conflagration of the Holy Spirit caught fire amongst 120 of Jesus’ followers. Those disciples, with Jesus now absent from them, were surely as apprehensive as Jacob encountering his brother Esau. Yet no sooner does the Holy Spirit alight on each of them that they can speak to strangers from different lands, a dramatic demonstration of reconciliation (Acts 2:1-12). Soon after the Spirit is given to those 120, their number rockets to 3,000, and they begin to live in a measurably different way from the culture surrounding them. We might say the emergence of this new community is Eden revisited: All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. Acts 2:44-47 There is no denying that the earliest followers of Christ were anything but rapacious profiteers. (Capitalism would not emerge for another 1,600 years, and it would take another century for Scotsman Adam Smith (1723-1790) to define the economic system.) What is undeniably clear is that those foundational believers were centered on the welfare of the community over individual advancement.

Just as Jesus had called and focused his ministry on the twelve during his earthly walk, Christians center our lives on the community of faith where we are set.

Buoyed by the love of that community, we extend substantive compassion to others.

We at Christ Church call ourselves a parish, a word perfectly descriptive of who we are. Derived from the Greek paroikos, the original word translates “dwelling beside; stranger, sojourner.” The Good Society are 6

strangers amidst the prevailing culture, which can be painful at times, but we are never static. We are always on the move, yet we do not travel alone.

Isaiah’s Good Society…and Ours Circling back to Isaiah, the prophet is consumed with Israel as The Good Society, the community of faith assembled under the LORD (Yahweh). On that fateful day at Nazareth’s synagogue, Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1-2, while adding a short clause from Isaiah 58:6 – to let the oppressed go free. The addition from Isaiah 58 is not to be overlooked, as that entire chapter is the LORD’s remonstration of Israel for making their religious priority personal piety over the exercise of kindness and justice to those most in need. Israel cannot be The Good Society if their priorities are compromised, a lesson that should not be lost on us.

Isaiah is replete with lessons for the modern Christian. Early Church leaders often termed Isaiah the Fifth Gospel due to its prophecies and descriptions of the coming Messiah – ‘the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel (7:14). ‘a voice crying out in the wilderness’ (40:3), “a man of sorrows” (53:3). The prophetic book is also known for its repeated descriptions of The Good Society – “beating their swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks’ (2:4), ‘the wolf dwelling with the lamb’ (11:6), ‘a light to the nations’ (42:6), ‘good news to the poor’ (6:11), ‘the Prince of Peace’ (9:6), ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (65:17). Perhaps most popular to Christians today is Isaiah’s description of the Suffering Servant (42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12). In fact, Isaiah 53 alone – ‘Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows’ – is quoted a remarkable eighty-five times in the New Testament.

Of course, the Suffering Servant comes to portray Jesus, the crucifixion-bound Messiah. Initially, however, Isaiah was instructed by the LORD to prophesy what Israel was to become after it suffers the destruction of Jerusalem and exile at the hands of the Babylonians. Yahweh’s desire is that a humbled, contrite Israel will finally become a transformed community,

a ‘suffering servant’ and a ‘a light to the nations’ (Isaiah 49:6), in other words, The Good Society.

Isaiah is a long book, sixty-six chapters of meandering prophecies possibly covering as much as 230 years of Jewish history.

The book, like most of the big three – Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel – poetically moves back and forth through time and subjects. While Isaiah may not have a clear prevailing theme, the entire book springs from a simple love song found in the fifth chapter: 1Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

2 He digged it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.

7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry! Isaiah 5:1-7 To understand the gravity of the poem, imagine a group of men surrounding Isaiah. When the prophet begins, ‘Let me sing for my beloved, a love song concerning his vineyard’ (1), the men would have been all smiles because in that day it was the familiar opening of a popular romantic ode. The men’s smiles would have disappeared when the poem takes an unexpected bootleg, ‘He looked for it (the vineyard) to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes’ (2). This romantic ode is not describing the relationship between a man and a woman but one between Yahweh and Israel. The verse describes a love story that is careening downhill.

The stomach-turning power of Isaiah’s verse is best understood through two wordplays in the poem. Ancient Jewish humor – especially dark humor – is often

From Our Rector... expressed through clever homonyms. In v.7 for instance, the text reads, ‘he (the LORD) looks for justice (Heb. mispat) but behold, bloodshed (Heb. mispah). In Hebrew, mispat – justice – is understood as leadership that is exercised in the right way. However, in the poem, the LORD2 finds that Israel’s leaders are “squeezing the blood out of those who are weaker.” Verse 7 ends with, (The LORD) looked for righteousness (Heb. sedaqa) but behold, a cry! (Heb. seaqa).

The ancient Hebrew conception of sedaqa –righteousness – are individuals doing the right thing by others. The poem ends with a thud, because there is no righteousness being extended in the vineyard – that is in Israel. Only the haunting cries of pain can be heard throughout the land.

Falling close on the heels of this bright love song turned dark is the LORD’s cinematic call of Isaiah to undertake his prophetic call (Isaiah 6:1-8). Most public readings of Isaiah’s vision end neatly at verse 8, ‘Here am I! Send me.,’ as if the prophet is heroically riding off into the bright sunshine like the Lone Ranger.

Verses 9-10 dispels that assumption: ‘The LORD said to Isaiah, “Say to the people, ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on hearing but do not perceive.” Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes.’” Israel has lived so un-justly and so un-righteously for so long that they have become listlessly indifferent to the LORD’s call to be The Good Society. They are a vacuous people who are numb to God and numb to the needs of others.

Jesus calls out the same behavior in the New Testament. He lambasts the religious leaders in Jerusalem for the same reason voiced by Isaiah. The leaders camouflage their abandonment of God’s justice and righteousness by ornate displays of personal piety: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat 2 LORD in all capitals signifies the divine Name Yahweh.

Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1834, based on Isaiah 11:6, National Gallery of Art

but swallow a camel!’ Matthew 23:23-24 While the leaders’ personal tithes are important and in accord with God’s clear direction in the Torah (Deuteronomy 14:22), it is far more pressing that they lead the community with justice and righteousness. Recalling God’s creation of Eden, His desire from the beginning was to create a people who would live in loving fidelity to Him and, in turn, be faithful and loving to one another. The establishment of The Good Society is more pressing than acts of individual piety because the community’s overall well-being and, perhaps, even survival are at stake. That’s the “camel” in the room!

Return to Eden I speak a great deal about the vision of Eden that pervades the Bible. To say that the entire Bible is a lengthy commentary on Genesis is not saying too much. I do not have enough words remaining in this essay to fully explicate this subject, but the first four chapters of Genesis are about much more than just our origins. They outline our purpose. We should remember that while the stories in Genesis are very

old and most certainly were shared orally for hundreds of years until some were scripted in David’s court (c.1000 BC).

The book, however, was not put in its final form until after the Babylonian exile (586-538 BC), whereas our best estimate is that Abraham was born about 2150 BC and Moses about 1520 BC. So why the painstaking work to write down these stories after the exile? Two reasons: For one, Israel knew how easily they could lose their history and thereby their identity. For another, they needed to re-identify with the foundational purpose for which they were created. The vision cast in Genesis 1-4 is that the entire world is Yahweh’s sanctuary. This reminder was especially poignant with Israel’s forced sojourn in Babylon because the prophets insisted even pagan Babylon and Persia are part of the LORD’s tabernacle. Not a square inch of earth exists that is not part of God’s holy temple. And because that is undeniably true, we are not in the dark regarding our purpose: We are to love God and praise Him with our lives by serving him through our care of others. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Cain sarcastically asks the LORD (Genesis 4:9). God’s answer echoes across the centuries in deafening silence.

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All Things Bright and Beautiful

Music Ministry

by Jennifer Holloway

out to my back patio with my dogs and a cup of coffee. I watch the sun come up, listen to the birds, and revel in the calm before my family wakes up and the house springs to life with activity. Much to my surprise as an avowed night owl, this morning time of solitary meditation has become my favorite time of day.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to many of you when I say that there is rarely a time when I don’t have some snippet of a song running around in my brain.

Often these songs come to me in the midst of a conversation when someone says something that reminds me of a ditty. My family is quite accustomed to me bursting into song in the middle of conversation.

Most of the time they just ignore me and wait for my outburst to pass. Sometimes my moments of musical inspiration come from what is happening around me.

I have never been a morning person. For

much of my life, I have enjoyed staying up until the wee hours of the night and snoozing my alarm in the mornings, often hitting that snooze button several times before finally giving in and rolling out of bed in search of coffee. But I have noticed this changing over the past few years. I suppose my internal clock has altered due in part to the 12 years I spent as a school choir director and the early mornings required of all teachers. I’m sure my age has something to do with not being able to stay up as late as I used to, but we won’t talk about that.

Much to my surprise, I have recently discovered that I love to get up well before the rest of my family is awake and head 8

On one of my recent quiet mornings, I watched as a wren couple built a nest in one of my hanging potted plants.

There are now five beautiful, speckled eggs in that nest. I cannot help but hear

Natalie Sleeth’s “Hymn of Promise” as I watch Mama Wren tend to those eggs.

This beautiful piece of music has always brought me hope and comfort and has recently served as my morning prayer.

“Hymn of Promise” Words and Music by Natalie Sleeth (1930-1992) In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree; in cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!

In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

There’s a song in ev’ry silence, seeking word and melody.

There’s a dawn in ev’ry darkness, bringing hope to you and me.

From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity; in our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity.

In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see. © 1986 Hope Publishing Company

Let Our

OC ur CHopesJ forW the F all G F W hildren ome to esus as

CEC Family Ministry

by Halleta Heinrich

Many years ago, when I became

Director of Children’s Ministry at Christ Church, Ted Schroder, the rector at the time, asked me to create a Philosophy of Children’s Ministry. I did so based upon my own experience as a mom, teacher, and new Episcopalian. I felt called by God to use my teaching gifts to serve Him. I believed in the words of Jesus, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14) and “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3). The philosophy I wrote was based on these verses which

by Catherine DeMarigny

e row in aith

proclaim a double blessing for the children and those who become like them.

I have been blessed by helping to bring the children to Jesus and in the process becoming more like them in the work to which God has called me. My hope is that more will receive this blessing, especially our parents, as they become more involved in teaching Sunday School and leading Children’s Chapel this fall. It is a tremendous witness to our children to see their parents be leaders in Children’s Ministry. Spiritual development experts have written that the most important faith influence in children’s lives is their parents.

These experts have also said that the most fertile time for a child to develop faith is in the years before middle school.

Christ Church will be using a curriculum this fall which enables parents to be

ith Them

more fully involved as Sunday School teachers – Orange. We will still be utilizing our beautiful Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Atriums for Preschool Sunday School and for our first and second grade Children’s Communion Class, but Orange will be used as our main Sunday School program for kindergarten through fifth grade.

Recently, Catherine De Marigny delivered a great talk in church explaining Orange.

Catherine has taken on the important role of being our Orange expert and administrator as we implement this new method of Christian formation. Please be open to responding positively to God’s call to be actively involved in the ministry to children. You and they will be blessed!

Love in Christ, Halleta

Why Orange?

Well, orange, as we all learned many

years ago, is created from the colors red and yellow yellow. In this curriculum, the light of the church is yellow, and the heart of the home, the love of the family, is red.

Together not only do yellow and red create orange, but by combining the light of the church and the love of the family, we increase the potential to influence kids’ lives through God’s love.

Christ Church wants children to have a better future where they love God, love others, and love life, like in Mark 12 where Jesus tells the Pharisees about the Greatest Commandment. When kids learn to love God they make wiser choices, create stronger relationships, and develop a deeper faith. Through the Sunday School program, we want to give our children caring leaders and a predictable, safe space

where they can grow spiritually. We teach kids the Bible, not teach the Bible to kids.

Together, we help children rediscover God in new ways through stories and help them mature in their ability to relate to God.

Sunday School Teachers are not alone in this endeavor. Orange provides a parent class, led by Justin, that parallels what the kids are learning, and through a weekly devotional and memory verse that will be sent out for children to do either on their own or with their parents. We have staff members available for questions, resources, and feedback. And yes, there’s even an app for that.

The church is the body of Christ and when you peel back the outer part, you can see if you are a part of a sour church or a sweet church. We want teachers, mentors, leaders, and ministers who share in the vision of telling God’s Big Story, the Journey of God’s Love Through Time, our

2022-2023 theme. We want people who share in the vision of creating relationships and community between children and adults that will grow and deepen over time; and who will do ministry with kids and give them a place to belong, a place where they can be themselves and let God do His work through them.

This summer we are previewing Orange curriculum for Children’s Summer Sunday school, but we need you to sign up to be a part of making the children and youth ministries sweeter than any orange.

Peel back the uncertainty and jump in, get ready to have fun, create memories, and most of all, share the incredible love God has for each of us with these most precious little people.

Job descriptions and sign-up at www.cecsa.org/orange 9

Building Relationships Youth Ministry

by Molly Duggan

This past June a Christ Episcopal

Church mission team took a trip to the Lakota Native American Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. I had the pleasure of being invited on this trip as a representative of Christ Church youth. My purpose was to be the eyes and ears of the youth and really soak up the experience that this trip had to offer.

I didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into when I first agreed to do this.

It was a strange experience being out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of church adults, some of whom were total strangers. What I didn’t know was that by the end of the week nobody in that house would be a stranger to me anymore. They were my mission family. That is part of the reason that I feel mission is a critical experience for Christ Church goers. Aside from the actual mission work, it really is a great opportunity for relationship building.

And especially on the road to recovery from COVID, I think that growing our connections within the church is so necessary.

Some of the CEC Middle School Youth have heard my speech about service and how crucial it is to the journey of young people in the Episcopal church. For others I’ll summarize here that for my personal journey in the church, the biggest 10

connection I’ve felt with God was through serving others. I believe that service is a tangible and direct connection to God. The South Dakota trip was an incredible service experience. I was able to work up close and personally with the children of the Lakota community who are in such dire need. It was a chance to see the hurt in the community and to see our part as the Episcopal church to walk alongside these peoples in the healing process. I felt that what these children needed, more than anything, was attention and love from people who really care. They needed to see the effect that Christ has on our own community, and they needed to share in that love.

We set up a small three-day VBS program with some of the community children. I have had the pleasure of working as a teen helper for many VBSs at Christ Church and it’s a wonderful experience every time. Getting to teach the story of Jesus to little kids is so magical. Our mini VBS out at the Black Horse Ranch, yes there are horses involved in this mission, was my most rewarding experience in teaching the Bible so far. I really felt the change we were bringing.

The other main part of this mission trip was the cultural/historical element. We read up on some of the ways and historical trials of the Lakota peoples before departure, however no book or movie can capture the immersive experience of talking with a real Native American elder. There were many opportunities throughout the week to witness with my

own eyes the beautiful, and endangered, traditions and culture of the Lakota. I had chances to talk to people with fascinating stories and rare wisdom. I truly think that every young person should have exposure like that. It is so critical that in this stage of development in our lives where we are figuring out what we want to do, who we want to be, and what the world has to offer, that we really get outside of our bubble and learn.

There’s no better teacher than experience, and it isn’t every day that you get an opportunity like this. An opportunity to be amongst like-minded Christians and to meet new people, experience new culture and to build cross-cultural and lifelong connections. I know for a fact that when the opportunity presents itself, I will be going back to South Dakota, and I really hope that you will be there too.

Being the Hands of Christ CEC World Missions

by LaRhesa Moon

Before we went on our mission trip to

the Cheyenne River Reservation, our experienced leader Marthe Curry asked us to read several books to familiarize ourselves with the Lakota people and their history (see list on the next page). These books gave me a deeper understanding of the church’s history with Native Americans as well as a perspective on history and culture from a Native American’s point of view. I found this additional insight very helpful and helped me look through a different lens as we entered the vast Reservations in South Dakota.

The Hubers, the Reservation’s new husband and wife team of Episcopal priests, arranged the VBS and construction projects for us but also brought different people each night to share their lived experience of being sent to Native American Boarding Schools, living a life of or affected by addiction, and the physical, sexual, and verbal abuse experienced by one in two people on the Reservation. At times the heaviness of their sadness and trauma felt almost overwhelming… and then there would be a glimmer of hope… as they would understand our group was here simply to listen, to learn, and to love them in the name of Christ.

We were willing to do the dirty work of renovating the bathrooms at their church because that was what was needed most.

The church, St. John’s Episcopal, was hosting approximately three funerals a week, becoming a de facto funeral home and community gathering place for grieving and healing. It was a visceral example of what we as a Christian community are called to do: open our doors and hearts to those that are lost, without hope, feeling unloved, grieving, despondent and/or seeking something greater than themselves.

The moment I knew our work was being effective was when I was sitting alone on the floor of the men’s bathroom, frustrated by bending yet another finishing nail, thinking that as beautiful as the bathroom would be, we really needed to redo the floors too but just wouldn’t have time. I heard this familiar noise in the background that filled my heart. It was the chattering and laughing of people in the church kitchen sharing stories between our group and the Lakota people who’d come to make a hot lunch for the children at VBS. It was the man sharing that he was going to have a sweat ceremony that night but would be with us the next day to understand the equine therapy and to offer a blessing for us. It was the diabetic woman telling how she’d stayed with us telling stories until 10:00 p.m. the night before only to have to be at a dialysis appointment at 5:00 a.m. the next morning, and following that, there she was cooking at 10:00 a.m.

The sound was a church community, everyone bringing their gifts of service to share with one another—some of us doing construction, some of us cooking a meal to share, someone serving coffee to others who wandered in to see what was happening at the church—and another simply witnessing, wondering why these people would take time away from their jobs, families, and lives to visit and serve those on a reservation— experiencing, even if not understanding, the love of Christ in action. It was like the hum of a finely tuned machine that was running perfectly—working just as it was designed—each part with a job to do but integral to the smooth running of the whole. My heart was filled with how God never fails to work through even the least skilled “worker” or even in the most impoverished circumstances and can bring very different people together in His name. I raised my hammer, drove the nail, and said a prayer of thanks because God “nailed it” again.

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More from the Lakota Mission LAKOTA MISSION READING LIST: Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder by Kent Nerburn.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

by Dee Brown and Hampton Sides.

Lincoln’s Bishop: A President, A Priest, and the Fate of 300 Dakota Sioux Warriors by Gustav Niebuhr.

Lakota elders sharing their stories and songs with the mission team

Building a Legacy of Outreach Great Commission Society

by Justin Lindstrom

Jesus commands us to love our neighbor.

Jesus’ first action of love was always beyond himself: it was outreach. He turned water into wine. He healed a blind man, a leper, a paralytic, and many more.

His first actions were always outward.

Jesus loved and served.

It is in this call to action that we are reminded that God loves all people with no preconceived ideas of how they are — we are not defined by race, religion, economic status, mental and physical health, employment status, and education achievements. You can do nothing to gain favor with God or “get more love” and there is nothing you can do to fall out of God’s grace. God’s love is a free and abundant gift that accepts us where we are and transforms us. We are the messengers of God’s love and grace, and we share this message through how we reach out to others.

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Jesus also trained his disciples for the journey that awaited them. Our primary work in outreach is to form people into vessels of love and into caring companions for others through the power of the Holy Spirit. When the disciples came to Jesus at the feeding of the multitude, they asked Jesus, “It is getting late and dark, will you do something Lord?” Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat!” (Mark 6:35-37 and Matthew 14:15-16).

Love heals. Love focuses on assets, not deficits. Love recognizes everyone’s worth. Love rises and carries the broken and wounded until they are healed and restored with no timetable. Love is expressed and experienced in community.

Love is sacramental action and sacrificial giving. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called into outreach — called into the generous sharing of God’s love — with our neighbors. We should expect renewal, transformation, restoration, and rejuvenation of everyone in miraculous ways. In our outreach, we are called to be consistent, resilient, intentional, relational, sustainable, and adaptable, as community is built, and partnerships are forged.

At Christ Church, our Outreach Ministry falls into four action areas. The first is

School Ministry. We have adopted four schools: Madison Elementary School, Maverick Elementary School, Longfellow Middle School, and Jefferson High School.

In these partnerships, we work closely with the school counselors and social workers to care for the families that are in deepest need. The second is Community Health and Wellbeing, where we provide vaccinations, flu shots, community fellowship events like Trunk or Treat, and much more. The third is Community Partnerships. We have built relationships with Christian Assistance Ministries, Good Samaritan Center, San Antonio Food Bank, and San Antonio Metropolitan Ministry to work with them to care for people in our community. Finally, our fourth area is Sidewalk Saturday where every Saturday we serve our community through worship, prayer, food, clothing, toiletries, and housewares.

For our Outreach Ministry to continue fully funded every year we need to build an endowment of $1.5 million. This would allow us to continue to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to our community in the ways outlined here but to also meet the needs of the community in the future.

PAGE TURNERS – From the Rector’s Book Stack Modern

Americans are swimming in the high tide of dopamine stimuli.

We are drinking in everything from food to drugs to shopping to alcohol to texting to Facebooking to Instagramming, and it is drowning us. “The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 to a wired generation,” says Psychiatrist Anna Lembke in her book, Dopamine Nation. An active therapist and physician at Stanford University, she has taken difficult concepts from neuroscience and recast them into metaphors and actual stories to illustrate the extent of our feverish addictions, which are at full flourish in the United States. Lembke states her thesis this way, “The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.” Along the way, Dr. Lembke is candidly honest about her own struggle with addiction and the dangers it posed to her family and professional life. I found the book both mesmerizing and terrifying. Listening to the author read it on my free library Libby app, I switched it on every time I jumped in the car – even on short drives. At the end of her book, Dr. Lembke issues this unapologetic challenge to the reader: “I urge you to find a way to immerse yourself fully in the life that you’ve been given. To stop running from whatever you’re trying to escape, and instead to stop, and turn, and face whatever it is. Then I dare you to walk toward it. In this way, the world may reveal itself to you as something magical and awe-inspiring that does not require escape. Instead, the world may become something worth paying attention to.”

In 1971, when I was beginning my junior year of high school, two Chinese boys of my same age were being sent from the city to a rural mountain hamlet to

undergo Mao’s “reeducation.”

Both are sons of highly placed medical professionals and, therefore, bourgeoisie and dangerous to the Cultural Revolution. The two boys, while fictional characters, would have been amongst the 4.7 million students exiled from the cities to the countryside to be reeducated for two to five years. Dai Sijie, who actually is my age and one of those sent to be reeducated in Mao’s China from 1971 to 1974, is now a well-regarded filmmaker in France.

He has written a heart-warming and heart-wrenching novel reflecting his exilic experience in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The protagonist narrator, who remains unnamed (perhaps it is Sijie himself), and his neighbor Luo are sent so far up into the mountains that it would be like a San Antonio youth being sent into the deep, dark unreachable crags of British Columbia. The boys are made to hoe the fields, excavate the mines, and carry human and animal excrement for miles up the narrow mountain passes.

Both are utterly miserable until they meet the beautiful and enchanting daughter of the region’s most notable citizen, the tailor. They refer to her only as The Little Seamstress, and both fall madly in love with her. Eventually, the boys stealthily filch a suitcase full of banned European novels, which they read to the illiterate Little Seamstress. At first, they captivate her with the tales and lessons from the larger world outside her little village. In the end, the literature transforms The Little Seamstress in ways unexpected and unwanted by the two boys. The last scene reveals the boys doing the unthinkable for reasons only the heart knows. Kay and I read this book aloud to one another, and I enthusiastically recommend it as a story worthy to share and an insight into what China is, again, becoming under Xi Jinping.

I treated myself on Easter Monday, my unexpected day off. I finished Walking

the Himalayas

by Levison Wood.

I am a fool for travelogues, and Levinson Wood, called “Lev” by his friends, is the most intrepid writing traveler today.

After completing ten years in the British army, Wood has explored over eighty countries and has lived in the wilds of both Asia and Africa. In this trek, he sets out to walk the ancient Silk Road, by traversing the foothills of the Himalayas from war-torn Afghanistan to mysterious Bhutan. Along the way, he ventures through Pakistan, India, and Nepal. Jungles, deserts, remote monasteries, hidden cities, and perilous mountain passes repeat through his six-month journey. Traveling with his longtime Nepalese friend, Binod Pariyar, the two encounter a procession of colorful individuals along the way, making this as much a human story as a geographical one.

Every time I read a book by Eugene Peterson, I am flummoxed by what I do not know about being a pastor or, for that matter, being a Christian.

Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration of Vocational Holiness Peterson has again brought me to that place of unknowing. Comparing the pastor to the reluctant, disobedient prophet Jonah and our vocation to his refusal to warn Nineveh of their impending doom, Peterson honestly and painfully paints the picture of American Christianity…

North American religion is basically a consumer religion. Americans see God as a product that will help them live well, or to live better. Having seen that, they do what consumers do, shop for the best deal.

And then he goes on to complete the painting with American pastor’s continued....

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PAGE TURNERS – Continued complicity in this aberration…

Pastors, hardly realizing what we are doing, start making deals, packaging the God-product so that people will be attracted to it and then presenting it in ways that will beat out the competition. A staggeringly high percentage of pastors actually collaborate with the enemy, the world that wants mostly entertainment with occasional breaks for moral commercials.

When I read Peterson, I imagine I am sitting across from a straight-backed, Norwegian grandfather, who is just in from tending the fields and has forgotten more God-knowledge than I will ever hope to attain. Yet, when he looks at me and speaks, he wants nothing more than to spare me all the misbegotten forays I make into the shallow waters of secular faith and, instead, redirect me to bathe in the depths of the Spirit. He readily admits that…

Functionally speaking, men and women are not that different from virus or bacterium, specks in the universe. It is by means of imagination that we pack in the glory… It is the imagination that must shift, the huge interior of our lives that determines the angle and scope of our vocation. A long prayerful soak in the Biblical imagination of Ezekiel and St. John, those robust antitheses to flatearth programmatics, is a place to start.

If it’s imagination we lack in our spiritual life, he knows to whom he must take us – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wendell Berry, Chaim Potok, Ezekiel, John of the Revelation, and, of course, Jonah. Peterson, who pastored a medium-sized congregation in suburban Maryland for twenty-nine years, knows well the shortcomings and the lack of imagination in the Church, but he also knows that it is within those people who make their way to the pews each Sunday that God’s glory resides.

I squirrel-away colored paper clips, ballpoint pens, #2 pencils, and writing paper.

Kay and I joke that I have become Bert from Sesame Street. The truth be known, I also love books about books.

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How strange I am to hungrily study the reflections others have written about novels and non-fiction accounts I like, as well as volumes I will never read. The authors’ relationships with their favorite books simply delights me. I am, indeed, Bert in the flesh. Proving that fact is the book I finished on this unseasonably hot Saturday afternoon of Mother’s Day Weekend, Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Book, by Maureen Corrigan.

Some will recognize Corrigan’s name as National Public Radio’s Fresh Air book critic. A columnist for the Washington Post and a literature professor at Georgetown University, Corrigan’s favorite book genres surprised me no end. She has long been drawn to women’s extreme adventures, detective stories, and Catholic martyr accounts. The main three chapters of her book, along with the ample introduction explain in detail (and book-by-book) why these three disparate genres spoke to her through the years and still do. My favorite parts of Corrigan’s book are her reminisces of fetching her daughter from an isolated orphanage in China, her attendance at her father’s battleship reunion after his death, and her trip home to Brooklyn just before the Twin Towers were destroyed. Books about book lovers are like books about intrepid adventurers.

Both take us places beyond ourselves.

Why I would take on another history of WWII, and one with 651 pages at that, is a good question.

WWII fascinates me for the very reason author Max Hastings states: What occurred between 1939 and 1945 “was the greatest and most terrible event in human history…some individuals scaled the summits of courage and nobility, while others plumbed the depths of evil, in a fashion that compels the awe of posterity.”

Coming to the end of Hasting’s Inferno: The World at War, 1939-

1945, I can commend it above all other WWII histories I have read. Why? Because Hastings takes a much broader view of the conflict. Most WWII histories I have read are written from the British-American point of view. While Hastings is British, he sees the “entire battlefield,” which includes both the glorious and inglorious aspects of all the armies and nations involved. For instance, it is undeniable that Great Britain’s painstaking, mathematical development of Ultra, the code-breaking interceptor, was key to defeating the Third Reich, but it is also undeniable that Britain’s military, for much of the war, was inferior to both the Germans and Japanese. At the same time, it is beyond question that America’s immense industrial might and war-machinery production was foundational for the defeat of both Axis forces, but it is a sad truth that the U.S. had no intention to go to war with Germany. Only the belligerence of Japan, a race held suspect by many Americans, pushed Congress to act.

Then Hitler made the foolhardy decision to declare war on the U.S. Speaking of Hitler, he knew by December 1941 as winter set in at Leningrad and around the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, that he could not win the war. He continued to “play hardball” (which the German military did effectively to the end) to push the Allies to make a settlement. Likewise, Japan’s sanest military leadership realized after the Battle of Midway in June 1942 that they could neither compete with the U.S. in armament nor supply the necessary logistics to their overextended war machine. Furthermore, Hastings asserts that Russia was the key to victory in Europe. Stalin and his generals, buoyed

by American armament imports, would sacrifice wave after wave of soldiers, some 9 million, in the defeat of the Wehrmacht – losses western European countries and America would have never accepted.

Finally, France’s shameful complicity with the Nazis under Philippe Pétain and Poland’s gallantry with the British – only to be snubbed by them at war’s end are facts most other histories ignore. continued....

Photo Album

Making a stab at complete mental escape, I read Your Inner Hedgehog,

by Alexander McCall Smith.

The book was a most thoughtful gift from Elizabeth and Caroline Cox. Previously, I had read several of McCall Smith’s popular novels in his African series, The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. This most recent book is taking playful aim at academia. The setting, of all places, is Regensburg University in Bavaria, where our son John and his wife taught before their present assignment in Berchtesgaden.

This novel never lets up in its humor at the expense of stuffed-shirt professors, power-wielding administrators, and nonnonsensical regulations and customs. As such, the book offered the requisite comic relief.

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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, Number 4.