The Message March 2021

March 2021 • Volume 23, Number 2

Remembering Bishop Frey: 3 A New Song: 7 Learning About our Navajo Neighbors: 10 SNOW: 15

The Message this month: Contents:

Contributors:

Christ Church Staff: The Rev. Patrick Gahan, Rector

From Our Flock ...............................3

The Rev. Scott Kitayama, Associate Rector

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

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

Youth Ministry .................................9

The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation

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

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

Page Turners...................................11

JOHN BOYCE

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

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

Amy Case, Youth Minister

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

Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry JOSH BENNINGER

Front Cover photo: Robert Vajello

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

Historic snowfall at CEC

Back Cover photo: Halleta Heinrich Children’s Sunday School

Charissa Fenton, Receptionist

Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Live Stream Services:

Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations Darla Nelson, Office Manager

HALLETA HEINRICH

Donna Franco, Financial Manager

www.cecsa.org/live-stream

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: AMY CASE

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

Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager Joe Garcia, Sexton

2021 Vestry: BRIEN KOEHLER

Andy Anderson, Senior Warden Margaret Pape, Junior Warden 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

Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager

Sunday School 10:10 a.m. outside on the grounds Christian Education, Small groups and Bible studies for Children, Youth, and Adults are offered in person on Sunday and via Zoom

Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist

PATRICK GAHAN

Meagan Desbrow

Lisa Miller

Rick Foster

Garry Schnelzer

Tobin Hays

Garnett Wietbrock

“God is Good – All the Time; All the Time – God is Good” A Tribute to Bill Frey

by John Boyce

What will he say? June 20, 2010. Sitting

in the pews at Christ Church dare we wonder what was next. Demoralized, we had faced an inglorious division. Years of festering emotions – slathered in politeness – came to a head in May in an angry, bitter Vestry meeting. Fifteen percent of the church walked out with some 25% of our budget.

As with so much conflict, its causes were murky; it had taken on a life of its own.

What appeared to start out as a theological dispute regarding human sexuality in the Episcopal Church morphed into personality conflicts magnified by leadership failures. We began disputing what we were disputing. A sock in the gut, a fracture of the Body of Christ.

Was imploding next? We needed a critical mass of revenue just to operate; we could not mothball half the church.

One week later, then diocesan Bishop Gary Lillibridge called retired Bishop William C. Frey to step in as emergency

interim. Bill had played a more typical interim role here in 2000, when newly retired, as Christ Church searched for a new rector. We knew him. He loved Christ Church. His voice was reassuring and resonant. (He had been a radio announcer in the forties.) When preaching on any passage of scripture, one had the feeling Bill had ten other sermons he could have used. He was fun to listen to. He had great stories. Each one cast a wide net. I had seen his spell cast on many an indifferent listener. When Bill officiated at the Eucharist he seemed to connect with the very fervor of those priests of the 3

first or second century who had actually known Christ, his apostles, or Paul. Bill conveyed that apostolic succession was real. Through him you could see the host “turn” into Christ’s body, the wine into His blood. When Bill recited a rote prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, many written by Thomas Cranmer 470 years ago, it was as if one had heard it for the first time. He breathed life into it. It all exemplified a man who had decades of experience in the life of the church. Here was a master.

Still … what would he say?

Then, with that same voice we heard ten years earlier, he began with the title above in a sermon whose power and efficacy were more than a match for the exigency at hand. Within a few spellbinding minutes, calm captured the nave. Hope intersected with despair. We knew then that God had not forgotten Christ Church. We would be fine. (Indeed, the headiest days of Christ Church lay ahead.)

In the context of a specific crisis, that came close to the finest sermon I have ever heard. My eyes filled with tears when I read it while waiting in airports. But it was about more than our pedestrian problems whose impact would cease once our turmoil had passed. It was a timeless sermon that could have been preached in 1210, 1510, or … in 2021.

It was Bill’s manifesto, his distillation of sixty-plus years of Christian experience.

His journey had come to full fruition. It is a map of the Christian life for each of us in our age of pathological skepticism of anything and everything and of selfdefeating cynicism.

After a homespun story about melting cheese in the summer sun, whose metaphor seemed to be that nothing more could happen to the Episcopal (or any) Church, he continued: But I also have a working metaphor for the promises of God. It’s actually more than a 4

metaphor – it’s the controlling reality of my whole life – and that is God is good – all the time. There is one enduring fact without which all other world views are deficient and misleading. And that is that the God who created the universe visited this tiny planet in human form to rescue us from all of our destructive ways. He was rejected by the very society he came to save, executed, buried, and then by the same power that brought the cosmos into being, was raised from the dead, and ever lives to make intercession for us. In fact he is, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God.

This fact makes me, to use Zechariah’s phrase, a “prisoner of hope.” And I am convinced that hope is not an optional accessory to the Christian faith, but an essential part of it.

God’s promises are bigger than our personal problems (believe it or not), our problems at Christ Church, our problems with the Church, our problems with Western civilization, and on and on. Yes, God is bigger. And hope is the operative conviction in those promises.

Bill then used the Bible as a record of the Church’s relationship with conflict: Isn’t the Bible great? Among other things it gives you a great sense of perspective in dealing with times like these by reminding you that we haven’t given God any surprises. It’s the same old same old. The Church is no stranger to

conflict, in fact it was born in the midst of conflict… as if it were our natural condition.

We have faced obstacles even greater than those facing us today, and God has been faithful in every generation.

God is good... but people are not. If we didn’t know it already, the Bible warns us over and over again the dangers of putting too much trust in ourselves or in any other human beings.

We’re bound to be disappointed.

We are people who trade in the currency of hope. For so much of the world God is a non-issue, salvation irrelevant. The world’s hope is a paradise on earth; with the right amount of social engineering, man’s nature can be perfected. But the record of its efforts in the last century with revolutions and two world wars ended with abysmal failure with tens of miserable millions.

If the Church has been in conflict, then the world itself has been in conflict exponentially more.

Particularly in these times of political and pandemic turmoil, I suppose we can take perverse comfort that conflict is more the norm than the exception. We don’t have to be intimidated by it. God is faithful even though we are not and is working through the conflict to accomplish his purposes. Bill used a colorful metaphor about witnessing where one is placed: I’ve often felt as though the Church has been taken over by pirates. But years ago, when praying about the future, God said something like, ‘Don’t let the pirates tempt you to jump overboard. If they make you walk the plank.

Ok. But don’t do it voluntarily. After all it’s my ship.’

It’s always been a sinful church. In the Bible, the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord far more often than they did what was right, yet none of the prophets suggested that the people quit and form a new Israel.

We are placed in community, the Body of Christ. However fallen and sinful, our task is still to witness to God’s enduring grace to heal and restore. As Bill said, we are “samples of what God can do with a human life that is wholly committed to the living God.” That sample must take place in the context of community, i.e., people, not avatars. There are no lone ranger Christians. That community demands a network of faithful people. Our job is neither to reform the Church or to save it for democracy; it is to live faithfully, not necessarily successfully. Regardless of changing theology, of social movements, or of council resolutions, man’s nature has not improved. We are beset with the same problems of loss, angst, evil, and death.

Why are we here and does our life matter?

These are questions that each of us must answer one way or another. Bill reminded us that only God working through the church can restore humanity to its rightful relationship with God.

generational church: children during Sam Capers’ ministry now with grandchildren of their own; a church seeped in Scripture as foundational, open to the Spirit, mission-minded, with strong Christian identity.

He ended: There is plenty of work for love to do.

And plenty of resources to get it done. We have a solid foundation, and, I pray, a willingness to walk into the adventure that God has waiting for us. We have a solid hope rooted in the resurrection of Jesus, and the conviction that God is good - all the time.

How could Bill do that? What magic did he possess? Did it come from textbooks, practice, pills, or what? In that very moment and in the following year and ten months, until Patrick Gahan became rector, I have never witnessed such a fine example of leadership, one that should be studied at West Point or in MBA school.

It could only be the palpable work of the Holy Spirit.

Bill Frey died last month at age 90.

He was among the greatest men I have ever known.

His belief in community underscored what Bill said to his son Paul on the eve of his sermon: he did not know how it would all work out, but his highest priority was to preserve relationships between those leaving the church and those staying, that would encourage those leaving to one day return.

He reminded us that we were a storied congregation, like no other: a multi-

His greatness lay not in the many markers of his life. He came of age as a young rector in the salad days of the fifties when patriotic Americans went to church. Called as a curate to the diocese of Colorado, he spoke of driving Sunday mornings to Leadville, Colorado in 50° below zero weather. He spent the rest of that decade at Trinity-on-the Hill, Los Alamos, New Mexico ministering to those families working at the atomic national laboratory nearby. He counseled the many men who returned from battlefields of the Second World War with spiritual and emotional challenges unimaginable.

Fluent in Spanish, he was called to be Bishop of Guatemala. Years later, he, his wife Barbara, and five children were forced to leave at gunpoint on short notice. Next, he became the Bishop of Colorado during the social turmoil of the sixties where he pioneered a form of communal living (among them a movie star). In the seventies, he was candidate for the Presiding Bishop of the U.S., only later he served as dean of a new seminary responding to the liberal drift in the Episcopal Church. Retired, he moved to San Antonio. Our city was Barbara’s first choice.

No, his greatness lay in his visceral fidelity to God: a beatific vision of a life lived in union with God on the order of what Timothy and Paul describe: God “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has even seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16), but when God reveals himself to us in heaven we will then see him face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). Yes, Bill had seen God face to face. He knew that he was a member of redeemed humanity soon to be in the community of the saints.

I observed this firsthand. After Barbara died in 2014, Bill joined our small group of six that has met at 7:15 a.m. every Friday morning for 36 years at Christ Church. For the next six years (until the coronavirus), he faithfully attended. He was one of us. Typically, we read the lectionary of the upcoming Sunday’s passages. We traded turns bringing tacos (Bill liked bean and bacon) and leading 5

the discussion. At his turn, Bill’s opening prayer was simple: usually thanking God for the food and the group. As lively as discussions were, when Bill talked we piped down and consumed eighty plus years of wisdom. There was so much that came from his decades of personal experience. He did not pontificate; he did not moralize. He did not impress upon us obscure theological points. When he led, he talked as one of us, but weaved in profound truths in the most subtle of ways. Bill was candid about his life, not “vulnerable” in its narcissistic sense, but open and honest, as if God were using that very openness to work His ways. Bill had known so many of the great thinkers and writers of the era. We would mention an author of a book published years or decades before, he would matter-of-factly say, “Oh, yes, I knew Jack well.” This went on week… after …week… after week.

After our group, I had the privilege of driving Bill back to The Franklin, a retirement facility, where he lived alone with his dog, Pepper. On the way, he expanded upon so much of his sixty plus years in the ordained ministry. Bill had worked in so many churches and denominations. He had personally known many of the leaders in the church here, in England, and elsewhere now long since gone. He described their personalities.

(They were hardly perfect. One, for instance, was a successful media selfpromoter; another prayed as he if he were at parade-rest!). Bill described the political angles of various General Conventions and Lambeth Conventions over the years.

Talk about institutional history.

In those years, Bill taught us about living.

Few were as effective as Bill with people.

It stemmed from him deeply loving them. Loving, not in the world’s sense of reflexively affirming them without accountability, but in the sense of seeing them as lost children of God with gifts. He was always scouring the thicket for that one lost sheep, among the hundred, stuck in the briars. He actively listened while threading in his faith. No doubt he had seen the spectrum of all sorts and conditions 6

of men, from the most benighted - to those ever more sanctified. He had the capacity to love them all, in spite of themselves. But Bill was no pushover either; he knew how to gracefully turn down so many requests that came his way.

Had that been all, it would have been enough.

But he witnessed to us even more about death. In those six years he laced it in conversation. In his matter-of-fact attitude one could have thought he was talking about weekend plans. So calm, not a trace of fear, almost like it was just another step on the journey and subsumed by life itself.

Death was OK; he had total confidence

in the life to come. Taking Romans 8:11 to heart, Bill’s optimism was grounded in Christ’s resurrection, without which there is none. Things will work out though seldom by our playbook. Besides, we are already one with Christ. As he said many times referring to Romans 8:1, for those of us in the Lord, judgment has come and gone. All this stemmed from his conviction in God’s promises, the “controlling reality of my whole life.”

Most of us spend our whole lives unaware of our striving to enter heaven. (At heart, we are convinced we can earn salvation,

with just a little more effort.) To Bill the yoke of Christ is far lighter than we imagine; the veil between is gossamer thin.

A relationship with Him is so simple, just for the asking. That’s all. It is not about how hard one has worked, whether one has lived a clean life, or even had the right thoughts. They may enrich one’s relationship with God, but they do not create it.

How did Bill convey this? Again, he did not lecture or direct us to a series of sermons. Was it in his prayers? No, they were really quite simple. (Maybe that is the point.) I put my finger on his very mien: part voice, part inflection and the movement of his body. But mostly it was those dark, piercing eyes. The eyes said it all. I searched them for clues. What Bill’s eyes communicated was more enduring, more ineffable than any words could describe. They articulated the inarticulable. But it is ever more powerful and permanently ingraining. One had to be there. A personal relationship with Bill was critical; TV could never have conveyed it.

Bill did not deny death: he brushed up against it with a series of strokes during our years together. But he returned to our group, always with the same confidence, as if it were all a bump in the road. Bill did not “confront” death like the knight, Antonius Block, in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal playing chess with Death (he would have been checkmated); he didn’t “resign” himself to its inevitability (save that for the Stoics). Death was the necessary frontier through which one passed to the eternal. With Bill one had a sense of being enveloped by a timeless Presence which would carry us along in its tide and see us through. So, even in death, as in life, Bill could say …

God is Good – All the Time; All the Time – God is Good

Sing a New Song!

Music Ministry

by Josh Benninger Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. – Psalm 96:1

Have you ever taken God’s works for

granted? Do you pause every once in a while, to take in the beauty of this world and to reflect on who created it? I, for one, find myself ignorant of His works more often than I’m comfortable to admit –– more on this in a moment.

Having not produced any new music in a while, I considered writing a hymn for Lent. And, as with all my compositions, I chose the text first. I felt drawn to use a psalm, so I pulled out my Bible and flipped to a random one. With the words of Psalm 111 staring back at me, I read them with fresh eyes. After ingesting the text, I found myself accused of failing to acknowledge the greatness, goodness, righteousness, and timelessness of God’s works. The psalmist also reminded me that not only should I give praise to the Lord for his works, but that I should delight in them.

Consequently, I went immediately to work marrying the text of Psalm 111 to music, hoping to highlight the greatness of God’s works through word and song.

By the time you’ve read this article we should have already sung this hymn a few times on Sunday mornings. But here I present it to you in print so that I might invite you, as part of your Lenten discipline, to use this hymn to help guide you in praising God for all the works he accomplishes in our lives, both seen and unseen.

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Hope Springs Eternal

Spring Plans for our Children and Families CEC Family Ministry

by Halleta Heinrich

Jacki Walker, a dear friend of mine and long-time active Christ Church member before her move to Santa Fe, regularly sends wonderful meditations via email.

The following one really struck me:

“Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues.1” I became filled with hope at our recent Staff Calendar Planning Meeting as we plugged in Spring events for the church. We scheduled Easter and the Children’s Easter Egg Hunt and Liturgy of Light, The Children’s Communion Celebration and Retreat and a tentative date for Vacation Bible School. Sadly, 1 Brother Lawrence, French Carmelite Monk of the 17th Century and source of wisdom found in “The Practice of the Presence of God.”

and unbelievably, we had to cancel all of these joyous events last year due to the fear and danger of a worldwide pandemic.

Who would have thought? We seemed so invincible!

curriculum is waiting for us in the FMC!)

But we are God’s people, and our invincibility and hope is in Jesus Christ.

Nothing can remove us from his hand. We will have these Spring Events even if they are carried out differently than before. We have a faith that nothing can shake and a love that springs from the Holy Spirit that lives within us. So, mark your calendars now for Spring at Christ Church!

Gratefully Yours, Halleta

Children’s Palm Procession – Palm Sunday, March 28. (I’m ordering palms today!)

Children’s Easter Egg Hunt and Family Liturgy of Light -- Saturday, April 3 Children’s Flowering of the Cross - Easter Sunday, April 4 Children’s Communion Retreat – Saturday, April 10 Children’s Communion Celebration – Sunday, April 11 Vacation Bible School – Tentatively set for early June (Margaret Pape and Lauren Vielock have agreed to direct. Our

2020 Communion class - remember being in the church?

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May the Spring bring you Hope, Faith, and Love! We are so blessed to have Jesus and each other.

Palms in 2019

Children’s Communion Class 2021 Vale Aderhold Emma Allison Eleanor Biechlin Byron Burton Josie Canavan Mary Mc Claine Carter Jonah Desbrow Lucas Demarcantonio Andrew de Marigny Taylor de Marigny John Wilson Kothman Lucia McClane Sydney McClane Jackson Miller Lillie Muecke Hallie Pape Finley Sethness Hadley Sethness Blake Sykes Riley Sykes Jack Thurmond

I Will, With God’s Help Youth Ministry

by Amy Case

Like the buds and new leaves soon

emerging on our San Antonio landscapes, spring also brings one of the most special times of the year in Youth Ministry – confirmation season. Like all gatherings in 2020-21, the class is taking a different and exciting new form. All youth in 6th – 12th grade will take the same Sunday School class (outside on the lawn of the Parish Hall) designed to enhance their understanding of the Christian faith within the Episcopal tradition – an “Episcopalianism 101 for Youth,” if you will. We are using the curriculum I Will,

With God’s Help by Mary Lee Wile. This class is meant to bring the Episcopal tradition alive for our students through hands on activities. In the first class, student built an altar from individual stones they selected, revisited their own baptisms, wrote a communal psalm and shared their own personal “trinity” – the three things that bring balance, stability and strength to their lives.

In the following weeks, the students will explore the areas of their baptismal covenant together including prayer, Eucharist, fellowship, repentance, witness and service. Once our youth have completed all six classes they may choose to be confirmed with the bishop on May

2. For those students who have already been confirmed, or those who aren’t quite ready, the class is meant to deepen their understanding of the beautiful liturgy, scripture and traditions Episcopalians all over the world celebrate each Sunday.

We have over 25 students participating in our Youth Sunday School class this spring! Please keep these wonderful young people in your prayers, that their faith may blossom and they see their baptismal promises come to life with God’s help.

Amy Case & Avery Moran, Youth Ministers

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Outreach Partnership in Navajoland

CEC World Missions

by Brien Koehler

Mission partnerships are not new

for Christ Church. We have mission relationships that stretch from San Antonio to Honduras, Uganda, Kenya, Kurdistan, Spain, and the Philippines.

Our outreach ministries in San Antonio are extensive, touching schools, families in distress, children at risk, the unemployed, and the homeless. But something new is coming.

Christ Church World Missions and Outreach are sharing a new sister parish relationship with Good Shepherd Mission (Fort Defiance, AZ), an integral part of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland.

Good Shepherd Mission was organized more than 120 years ago. The sister parish relationship was facilitated by the Diocese of West Texas. It is an “arranged marriage” organized by the bishops of Navajoland and West Texas, and we are taking our first steps into this exciting opportunity.

This “sister relationship” will be built on the same principles that guide all of our

mission and outreach work. The most important aspect of any shared ministry is relationship. Relationship among the people of both partners leads to trust, productivity, and blessing. Dominance by one or the other leads to dependency, frustration, and failure. Christ Church never enters a mission relationship from a position of dominance. It is contrary to the Gospel.

What will our sister relationship be? How will it be realized? What will we do? The answer is simple: we don’t know…yet.

Justin and I, along with Marthe Curry and Catherine Markette representing the Diocese of West Texas have begun a conversation with the clergy of Good Shepherd Mission. We have asked them to identify their priorities of ministry, their most pressing needs, and the ways that we at Christ Church might be of most help to them. When the time is right (soon we hope) mission trips, work projects, youth exchange opportunities, and other ways of making our relationships personal will develop. We expect this partnership to last for many years.

As our conversation develops, ideas and opportunities will be apparent. With prayer and the leadership of the Holy Spirit, we are confident that the work of

the Kingdom will be advanced and God will be glorified.

And, at this point, we are asking for your help. It is basic, essential, and vital: please pray for God to bless and lead this venture. Without the Father’s leadership, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the Holy Name of Jesus this will all come to nothing. We are looking only to build this work on trust, blessing, and productivity.

So, please put this on your prayer list. It will take months (maybe years!) to bear fruit. But with prayer and care, the harvest will be abundant.

To learn more about Good Shepherd Mission, visit goodshepmission.org.

Area rock formations, left. At right, the beautiful chapel of the Good Shepherd Mission which was built in 1955, designed by Sante Fe architect John Gaw Meem. It has the characteristic high ceiling with vigas, stucco walls, and Navajo weavings. Above, the Mission cross inlaid with turquoise and silver.

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PAGE TURNERS – From the Rector’s Book Stack I do not know

which surprised me more – the fact that after 33 years in the Episcopal ministry I discovered the foremost study of the The Book of Common Prayer or that the author resides just up I-35 at Baylor University.

Regardless of my incredulity, The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography is a highly readable, engrossing examination of the Prayer Book. The author, Alan Jacobs, is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Baylor. What’s more, Jacobs grew up in a working-class household in my hometown of Birmingham, AL. And you dared to ask, “Can anything good come out of Birmingham?”

The book opens on January 28, 1547 with Thomas Cranmer holding the hand of King Henry the VIII as he dies.

Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, did not read any of the familiar Roman Catholic prayers for the dying. Rather, he asked the king to make some sign that he placed his trust in Jesus Christ. Henry squeezed Cranmer’s hand and moments later died. With Edward VI ascending the throne at age nine, Cranmer set to work on the book that would characterize our church on every continent. Most tellingly, the archbishop warms up the people to having a Prayer Book through his Book of Homilies, which stresses the new direction of this nascent English church. The first homily is A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading of Holy Scripture. Above all, Cranmer wants the English to be Bible readers and comprehend “the misery of all mankind,” so that all may “learn the one plan made for the salvation of all mankind.” The Prayer Book was conceived, not primarily as a collection of liturgies, but as a pivot towards salvation and sanctification.

Along the way, Jacobs colorfully reports the ups and downs of the Prayer Book.

When Catholic Mary succeeds Edward on the English throne, Prayer Books become the kindling of great bonfires. John Knox,

the radical Scottish Calvinist, denounces the book as too “popish” and threatens to pare it down like Thomas Jefferson would do later with the Holy Bible. My final surprise was the significant influence exercised by Anglo-Catholics in shaping the Prayer Book, starting with such notables as John Henry Newman (18011890) in Victorian England.

known as “the kid,” is making his way to their town and leaving the tortured bodies of his innocent victims all along his path.

Reading the novel, I envisioned Gary Cooper awaiting the arrival of the train in High Noon. If I have one complaint about Buckskin, it is that there is far too much dialogue. But, then again, it was penned by a movie man.

Princeton University Press published this volume as part of their Lives of Great Religious Books. In the mix are other titles I would like to read which include The Dead Sea Scrolls; Augustine’s Confessions; The Book of Job; and Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison.

For those who have long loved the man Robert B. Parker, his wife found his dead body fallen upon his typewriter. He died as he lived – writing for us.

My dear friend, Doug Daniel, handed me an ornately wrapped Christmas present and added, “I have appointed myself the job of insisting that you read for fun, too.” True to his word, Doug gave me the Robert B. Parker Western, Buckskin. Parker, died in 2010, but not before he wrote 40 novels, most bestsellers. His most famous works, by far, were the books in the Spenser detective series. These were followed by his books about the down-on-his-luck sheriff Jesse Stone, immortalized on our televisions

by Tom Selleck. Third on the list is Parker’s western sagas about Marshalls Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. Buckskin is a continuation of that series and was actually written by television writerproducer Robert Knott. The Parker Estate agreed to keep the three great series going for readers who had come to love them.

Over the holidays, I honored by my friend Doug’s determination and I read the fastmoving, gritty saga of Marshalls Cole and Hitch. Reading the novel is like being on the set of a traditional western. Appaloosa, the New Mexico Territory town they serve, is being riddled with gunfire from two rival mining factions. All the while, a young, deceptively murderous young man,

On the evening of Wednesday, January 6, when Washington, DC police were still rounding up members of the mob that stormed the Capitol, I experienced, all at the same time, anger, nausea, and hopelessness. Three people phoned me during the night to say they were scared and asked for prayer. Because I am not particularly drawn to the television and do not have a cable connection, I retreated to my study to read. I chose two books to regain my footing and my optimism: The first was First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How that Shaped Our Country, by Thomas Ricks, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner at the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. My longtime friend Tom Berger from Annapolis, MD, gave me the book. The second was Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country, by Michael Novak and his daughter Jana, he is a prominent professor and she is a noted Washington speechwriter. Charissa Fenton gave me this book. That’s a rather long preamble to say the “Lord really does work in mysterious ways” and He can work through more than one book at a time!

First Principles carefully reveals the Latin, Greek, and Enlightenment writers that influenced our 11

PAGE TURNERS – Continued first four Presidents. Washington was the only one of the four who did not pursue higher education, but he was self-educated through reading, the arts, and inquiry. While he was also the only one of the four who could read neither Latin not Greek, he was, nevertheless, drawn to the brave Roman statesman, Cato, who dared to resist Julius Caesar’s attack on the Republic of Rome.

Unflappable in the face of Caesar’s bribes and threats, he chose death rather than submit to dictators ruling in the place of the people. John Adams, our second President, was similarly smitten by the Roman philosopher and orator, Cicero.

He successfully fended off an internal conspiracy to upend the Roman Republic, yet he too, was destroyed by Caesar’s men, specifically Marc Antony. Thomas Jefferson, our third President and the brightest of the four, read Greek fluently and remained committed to the simple tenets of Epicureanism for his entire life.

Epicurus’s prescription for a virtuous life – Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice – were woven into the founding documents of our nation. James Madison, the fourth President, was the most radical of the four, which may surprise many, as he was the chief architect of the Constitution. At Princeton, the most progressive college in the United States at the time, Madison fell under the spell of the 18th century French philosopher Montesquieu, who insisted that only a republic which separated the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the nation could endure. Thus, the French gave us more than the victory at Yorktown and the Statue of Liberty! First Principles reminds us that our selection of books and our choice of heroes matter.

Washington’s God is a detailed study of our first President’s speeches, letters, and official correspondence in order to assess his Christian devotion.

Even cursory examination of these documents dispels any notion 12

that Washington was a Deist, like his compatriot Benjamin Franklin. Deists believe that God created the universe but does not intervene in history. Nor would one conclude that the first President was a revisionist, like his younger contemporary Jefferson, who edited the New Testament down to a pamphlet, 84 pages total to be exact. While Washington was no Bible thumping George Whitfield, he was undeniably a Christian. His farewell address at the end of his two terms in office confirms his devotion: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion (his capitalization) and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens… Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

“Books you may like.” – words that live in infamy in my house. If you have ever tried to make a hasty exit from Amazon once you selected a book, these words appear in your line of sight, which for a reader are as sweet as the Witch’s Turkish Delight with which she entices Edmund in The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. Abebooks.com, a great used book website Scott Rose recommended, is more militant still: “Customers who bought this item also bought…” I have learned through experience these briberies are actually gifts, because most books we choose to read come to us serendipitously.

We find something good without really looking for it, but we do so with our eyes wide open. Thus, when I purchased Alan Jacobs’s The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography, I could not resist the siren call of Amazon to also add Jacobs’s Reading for Pleasure in an Age of

Distraction. Once again, it is one of those books that once finished, I could have turned back to page one and started over… except that I immediately gave my copy to Colonel Bob Bell, whom I know will love it as much as I did.

Jacobs, while an esteemed professor of literature, decries that highly structured reading lists are the way to produce lifetime readers. He insists that from childhood, we read certain books on a whim, “not to teach, not to criticize, but just to love.” Consider your favorite books, so many chosen at a whimsical moment.

Once a book is chosen, Jacobs believes we can actually enter the book. Quoting Irish-Anglo novelist Elizabeth Bowen (d.1973), he describes the great joy of “crossing over” into a book, and he adds that is why numerous readers return to books they have loved. For example, I have read Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë any number of times, and I know the plot down to every chapter; nevertheless, I relish returning to the desolate English moor with Catherine and Heathcliff and experiencing their absorbing love. I “cross over” to be with them.

Looking for a good book, Jacobs coaches that we should be on the lookout for “serendipity, for it can be cultivated. You can grow in serendipity. You can even become a disciple of serendipity. It may be possible, and desirable, to actively put yourself in the way of events beyond your control.”

Surrender to Love, by David Benner is a tiny book, having the appearance of a lengthy tract rather than a serious theological work.

The appearance is misleading. The 103 pages are as convicting and transformative as any work I have read while serving Christ Church. Mary Parker, discovering his brilliance well before I did, urged me to get Benner, a celebrated Canadian depth-

PAGE TURNERS – Continued psychologist and Christian author, to visit Christ Church. His website declares that he no longer travels.

Dr. Benner’s thesis is that actual transformation in Christ demands vulnerability, which can be terrifying to those of us who pride ourselves on our assumed abilities to control our lives. That’s because it is not merely that we are loved unconditionally by God, but that we risk ourselves to be loved unconditionally. On paper, the action appears easy. In actual fact, to surrender to so great a Love and be swept up in it is thoroughly terrifying in its demand of utter vulnerability. We don’t have to wonder why Adam and Eve so quickly exited Paradise. Personal control was more attractive to them than surrendering to God’s care and love.

Dramatically punctuating his thesis, Benner quotes Christian psychotherapist James Olthuis:

Way.” This is not a spirituality of selfimprovement or a ladder of increasing holiness. Not at all. To follow in the Jesus Way is a “journey of self-emptying, it is a path to dying to everything that is false.”

The way up in genuine Christian faith is actually – down.

Being grasped by so great a Love, we begin the critical Christian movement from “me to we.” Benner does not simply mean that when we surrender to God’s love, we more readily extend ourselves to others. As we become aware that we were not created as isolated beings, moving anonymously among others, we finally begin to recapture our deepest selves.

Jesus’ admonition strikes a chord with me here, ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul (Mark 8:36)? Until we surrender, we are rather spectral, hollow men and women, detached from the foundational part of our creation and from one another. We are living east of Eden.

All of my reading life, authors have dropped the name “Trollope,” as if everyone in the English reading public should know who he is. With the help of the San Antonio Library, I borrowed one of Anthony Trollope’s (1815-1882) early novels, The Warden, which is the first of his six popular Barsetshire novels.

I was not disappointed by the story or the lessons proceeding from the book.

In fact, I eagerly read it in four days’ time – too fast. The plot centers on a 50-year-old Anglian clergyman, Septimus Harding, who serves as the Precentor of Barchester Cathedral, where he oversees all worship and leads the Anglican chants of Morning Prayer and Evensong. He also serves as the “Warden” of a charitable nursing home for twelve aged men with increasing infirmities and no financial resources. Harding is a simple man, who likes nothing more than playing his cello and generously attending to his unmarried daughter Eleanor and the twelve men entrusted to his care. The plot takes a dark turn, when a progressive physician, John Bolt, brings a civil suit against Harding and the Diocese of Barchester, by accusing them of spending funds that rightfully belong to the twelve men in the home. This action is further complicated by the fact that Bolt is Eleanor’s suitor.

(My goodness, the story is downright Shakespearean!)

Benner ends his short volume with the reminder that Jesus described himself as “the Way” (John 14:6). His description carried over to the earliest Christians, who defined themselves as followers of “the

And like Shakespeare, there are lessons to be learned from the novel. First, John Bolt’s suit is fueled solely by his political principle, which he, at first, believes expunges his duty to Eleanor and her

Loving is not merely one thing among others that we are called to do – an extraordinary achievement, a heroic gesture that completes ordinary acts and raises them to a higher level.

Love is not an additive, a spiritual supplement reserved for saints... Loving is of the essence of being human, the connective tissue of reality, the oxygen of life.

father. The church hierarchy, for their part, are equally misguided by their trust in their temporal power. Both sides are motivated by hubris, not righteousness.

Harding and Eleanor will have no part in either side’s power plays. Harding resigns his post, with no assurance of a livable income, and Eleanor offers to sacrifice her betrothal and all other avenues to personal happiness in order to support her father.

The sacrificial nobility of the two captures the reader.

Two things I should add about this novel.

The first is that Trollope maintained his work at the post office and yet was able to write over 40 novels. He arose early each morning to write for an hour and took every opportunity to write during train rides and such. Second, I phoned my local library, Landa, and they searched for the book throughout their system until they found me a copy. I was duly impressed.

Reading gives us

someplace

to go when we have to stay where we are —Mason Cooley

13

10 Million and Counting

Great Commission Society

by Patrick Gahan

December 31 , we quietly crossed st

a threshold. The Christ Church Endowment increased to $10,051,801.

Five years ago, our endowment stood at 4 million dollars. The fact that we have more than doubled our assets in a mere handful of years and raised a record amount of support during a crushing pandemic, is nothing short of the miraculous.

Our miracle has a host of heroes. Scott and Eleanor Petty gave over 1 million dollars this year to our Buildings and Grounds Fund, which is our single largest endowment gift ever. Previously, Scott and Eleanor set up a challenge grant, which brought the Christ Church Endowment to the attention of our congregation.

Others, inspired by the Pettys, have given generously, and many have added Christ Church to their wills and other testamentary giving. These planned gifts, of varying amounts, are the tide that has lifted our endowment and will continue to do so in the future.

Due to the Vestry’s foresight and careful financial management, we will cross 14

another threshold in February. The Buildings and Grounds Fund will surpass the Ellison Scholarship Fund. The Christ Church Vestry, led by our scrupulous Treasurer, Herb Hill, added over $440,000 to the Buildings and Grounds Fund, which will edge just above the Ellison in 2021.

For the entire history of our endowment, the Ellison has been our leading fund.

Why is this news important? Let’s start with the Ellison. Because we have carefully managed and added to that gift over the years, we now award $100,000 in seminary and college scholarships annually. Christ Church has supported 80% of all the seminarians preparing for the priesthood in the Diocese of West Texas. At the same time, we have assisted a long line of young people in completing their university education, many have been the first in their family ever to attend college. Think of our young nursery attendants. We have supported each one of them in their quest for a university degree.

Now consider the Buildings and Grounds Fund. Our first buildings were erected in 1914 (the Carriage House well before that), and we cover the better part of a city block. Annually, we must complete $70-$100,000 in capital maintenance, e.g., roof, HVAC, flooring replacements. Since I arrived nine years ago, the treasurer has set aside $5,000 per month to meet these considerable demands. With the

Buildings and Grounds Fund surpassing the 3-million-dollar mark, we will be able to draw what we need from a portion of the interest of that account, while, at the same time, have the corpus grow to meet unexpected and even steeper demands in future years.

What’s next? We must endow our Outreach and Music Ministries. In 2020, we provided emergency food, clothing, and toiletries for 17,000 families locally and 3,600 internationally. Those numbers will not lessen in the foreseeable future.

In 2021, the Mays Family Foundation is generously helping us keep up with this increasing, pressing, and most important demand. As for music, we have learned during this pandemic that we need song more than ever before. The harmonies proceeding from the instruments and voices have lifted us above the isolation and fear. We must be assured that we can support these extraordinary artists as they week-by-week give us inspiration and hope.

This church was planted on this city block over 100 years ago to share the Good News of Jesus Christ to the procession of people drawn to this verdant campus during the past four generations. The stability of that witness must endure – come what may.

Patrick+

Photo Album

15

E P I S C O PA L Christ Episcopal Church 510 Belknap Place San Antonio, TX 78212 www.cecsa.org

The Message (USPS 471-710) is published bi-monthly by Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Periodical postage paid in San Antonio, TX. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Volume 23, Number 2.

Making Valentines the Sunday after the “Big Freeze”