The Message - May 2022 by Christ Episcopal Church

MAY 2022 • Volume 24, Number 3

A Final Gift for Mother’s Day: 3 Prayers: 8 Catch a Wave: 10 For Your Summer Reading List: 13

The Message this month: Contents:

Contributors:

Christ Church Staff:

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

The Rev. Patrick Gahan, Rector

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

The Rev. Scott Kitayama, Associate Rector

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

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

Family 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

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry

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

Lily Fenton, Nursery Director

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

Avery Moran, Youth Minister Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist

Front and Back Cover photos: Susanna Kitayama

JOSH BENNINGER

Front Cover - joyful fatherhood Back Cover - loving sisters

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

Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations

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

Donna Franco, Financial Manager

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

Darla Nelson, Office Manager HALLETA HEINRICH

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

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

Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager Joe Garcia, Sexton

Sunday School 10:00 a.m. Christian Education for Children, Youth, and Adults

BRIEN KOEHLER

2022 Vestry:

Wednesdays 11 a.m. - Morning Prayer with Bible

Andy Anderson, Senior Warden Margaret Pape, Junior Warden

Study and Communion

Doug Daniel

Visit us on-line at www.cecsa.org Follow us:

facebook.com/ChristChurchSATX @christchurchsatx @cecSATX

Lisa Miller

Catherine de Marigny Garry Schnelzer MARTHE CURRY

Rick Foster

Garnett Wietbrock

Spencer Hill

Julianne Reeves

David McArthur

Scott Rose

In the Meantime by Patrick Gahan

The last gift I gave my mother was to let her die.

An emergency room physician from three states away phoned me at 2 a.m. to say Mother had been brought to the hospital by ambulance and was “unresponsive.” Even in my somnolent stupor, I knew to say, “She has an advanced directive.” To which the physician directed, “Read me the pertinent paragraph.” I did so, and he added with unfeigned sympathy, “We will let her die.” I hung up, looked up at the ceiling, and silently announced, “I did it, Mom.” To die in this way, was of utmost importance to my mother. Two years

before, she summoned me to Birmingham “to get some things done.” The first stop was at the downtown offices of her longtime attorney and friend, Doug Corretti, on 7th Avenue North. Now deep into his seventies, the great man hunched over the desk could have passed for Nero Wolfe. “Doug, I do not want to live if I become incapacitated.” “Marie…?” “Just write it up, Doug. Ironclad. No contingencies.” “Anything else?” “I’ve made these revisions to my will. I don’t know how we divide up next to nothing, but I want Ginny and Julia to have some keepsakes. Pat only rolls his eyes when I ask him what he wants.” I

attempted to lighten the atmosphere by insisting her apartment resembled a flea market stall. Mr. Corretti instructed us to pick up the documents from his clerk later in the afternoon. We exited the office and made our way to 22nd Street South to have lunch at the Fish Market. Mother’s two sustaining food groups were fried fish and pork barbecue, with an occasional serving of fried chicken livers. She knew her diet would not kill her. Besides, Mother did not fear death. She knew she was dying. The muscles of her internal organs and skeletal joints were disintegrating. The beginning of her physical undoing had its origins in a routine, out-patient, carpal tunnel surgery through which she was infected with an antibiotic resistant bacterium – or 3

From Our Rector... MRSA as it is most often termed, short for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. No magic antibiotic cocktail mix could cure her. Mother hooked herself up to I.V.s at home via a Port-a-Cath placed just below her collar bone; and at other times, she took goblets full of potent tablets so caustic they could burrow a hole through her stomach to her ankles. She needed strong medicine because the infection raged within her like the summer firestorms in California. At one point, her physicians surgically removed both of her artificial knees, sanitized them in a sterilizing solution for twenty-four hours, and then replaced them. The theory was the MRSA was hiding out in the prosthetics that received no blood flow. After the surgery, Mother heroically learned to walk again, but the infection was not beaten back. She knew by then that she was merely fighting a retrograde action. The determined bacterial insurgency could be stalled but not defeated. The alien militia destroyed the muscles in her legs, which crippled her. The assault weakened the muscles of her heart, which sent her on her last ride to the hospital. That unconquerable mass of invaders streaming through her bloodstream reminded me of my father’s nightmarish remembrance of the Chinese Army swarming across the Yalu River to overrun his platoon’s position at the Chosin Reservoir. Seventeen-years-old, his cheek melded to his carbine in the sub-zero temperature, he reminisced, as if in a trance, “They just kept coming. We couldn’t count them, and because most of our weapons were frozen, we couldn’t stop them.” The horror harbored by my father hollowed him out and eventually killed him, but not until it threw him into full retreat from all those who loved him. The bacterial horde that crossed into my mother’s life had the opposite effect. She turned toward us and became love fiercer than any adversary. Mother’s valor in those last years of life was not so much that she fended off death, but that she refused to retreat from love. Her real test was not the onslaught 4

of the pitiless MRSA but the death of my stepfather. In Bill Walker, Mother found the perfect repository for her love. All but my youngest brother Gene were mostly raised by the time their romance was in full flourish. Through the power of her fierce love, this woman without a high school diploma, had sheltered, fed, educated, and bestowed her four children on the world. Kay and I had been contentedly married for two years when Bill and Mother were wed. Now it was her turn. What followed were the happiest twenty-five years of my mother’s life. Here was a man who survived the sinking of his battleship in the Pacific, not once but twice, and both times struggled back to the surface of the ocean determined to live. Unlike my father, Bill refused to skulk in the shadows of the horrors he had experienced.

Kay found our home while I was pushing troops at Advanced Infantry Training at Ft. Benning. With azaleas reaching all the way up to the eaves, an old tin roof, and a park stretching for six city blocks, the house was an idyllic refuge. Even with those paradisical descriptions, Mother crossed her arms and repeatedly refused my invitation. Finally, when I told her that Kay was pregnant, and I was about to enter months of training away from home, she uncrossed her arms and conceded, “Well, if I’m needed.” Within that beautiful old home in the tranquil neighborhood where it sat, Mother rested and healed. It was the first time she had not punched a time clock for minimum wage in a dozen years. Julia prepared for the university, and because Mother could now advocate for him, Gene was able to receive the academic help he needed. Kay and Mom grew to love and understand one another as Clay’s birth neared. Recently, Kay reminded me of that first Christmas we were all together in the Columbus house. The house was gaudy with Yuletide decorations and perfumed with the sweetness of baked goods. Kay and Mother were sitting around the effulgent, tinsel-laden tree, when, without warning, Mother started sobbing uncontrollably. Kay, twenty-two years-old at the time and still somewhat in awe of the senior woman, did not know what to say or do. So, she kept her peace and allowed Mother to bare her great reservoir of despair.

Mother, Julia, and Gene were living with Kay and me in Columbus, GA when she met Bill. Mother’s second husband, whom she had met after her hospitalization for a nervous breakdown, had left the three of them without a word of warning. Although Mother was working, she always worked, her husband had left them in desperate straits. Their rental house on 4th Avenue was literally crumbling around their shoulders. Julia had been accepted to nursing school in the fall, Johnny would soon enter the Coast Guard, while Gene was floundering in middle school due to an array of learning disabilities. Hearing of her husband’s disappearance, I begged Mother to move in with us in Columbus.

Things were about to change, for not long after that Christmas, Bill, the City Attorney for Birmingham, began driving the three hours to Columbus each weekend to woo Mother. His arrival on Friday nights was as persistent as the second hand on a Rolex. Once I received orders for Ft. Hood, and we had to leave our serene abode, the two were wed and moved into the sturdy brick home on Valley Drive in east Birmingham, where Bill had lived, loved, and cared for his wife of twenty years until she died of cancer. The Navy had assured Bill that he was sterile, and twenty years of a good marriage proved the diagnosis…but that was before he came together with the

From Our Rector... Fertility Queen. Mother was in her forties and Bill in his fifties when Virginia, 25 years my junior, was born. With her unexpected birth, love and contentment literally echoed off the walls of the brick home on Valley Drive. Kay and I were eventually able to share their joy, as my military commitment at Ft. Hood ended, and we moved home with our four-year-old son Clay. Soon our little family would number five. Kay was pregnant with Catherine Grace, who was born at St. Vincent’s Hospital in January of 1982. That same year, we became the guardians of Bill Harris, a troubled teen from the Texas Baptist Children’s Home in Round Rock, Texas. His story with us must wait for another essay. Many Saturday mornings, I would drive over to visit Mother, sometimes as early as 6 a.m., well before either of our houses were awake. On the way, I would stop by Krispy Kreme. We would sit at her dining room table, drinking her insipidly weak coffee, made tolerable only by the glazed donuts. Sitting next to her, serendipitously discussing the myriad subjects that come to us, I was overtaken by her happiness. Not since second grade had I seen her face so painted with joy. Her unimpeded contentment was shortlived. A late-night phone call informing her that my brother Johnny and his pregnant wife Jane had died in a car crash crushed her. Johnny, four years my junior and my sister Julia’s twin, was the gentle, generous, comedic anchor of our family. I could not comprehend the depths of my mother’s sorrow. After having finally escaped the daily struggle of survival for the five of us, she now experienced the loss of one of us, the best of us, whom she had so vigilantly protected. Her loss was compounded by the days we waited to receive Johnny’s and Jane’s bodies from the Coast Guard in Galveston. Their bodies were being escorted home by an honor guard because the two were killed as they were driving their one car through a torrential rainstorm to deliver Johnny to headquarters. He commanded

a search and rescue vessel and there was a stranded fishing boat taking on water in the gulf. During each of the intervening nights of waiting in Birmingham, Charlie Horn, the rector of Mother’s and Bill’s church, sat next to mom on the living room sofa for hours at a time, keeping his shoulder pressed against hers. Charlie Horn’s attentiveness to my mother during those interminably long nights for him colored the kind of priest I aspired to be one day. Charlie taught me that so much of being a Christian leader is “just showing up” and trusting God to do the rest.

Mother’s antidote for sorrow was to pour her reservoir of love into terribly wounded children.

What Mother did in the aftermath of Johnny’s and Jane’s death, took all of us by surprise. Unable to scale the steep mountain of her sorrow, Mother called in reinforcements. With a young child already toddling around the house, she decided that she and Bill would become foster parents. And so started the parade of wounded and abandoned little girls through that sturdy brick home on Valley Drive. Mother’s antidote for sorrow was to pour her reservoir of love into terribly wounded children. I recognized what she was doing because she had raised the four of us awash in that same love. The little girls would arrive without a change of clothes, school records, or medical history. No matter, Mother would load each one into her green Chevrolet and the wounded child would start afresh with new clothes, a new school, and a first visit to a pediatrician. Bill never objected. He financed each girl’s new beginning and delighted in a full household that was painfully empty only months before. On each occasion, the state official promised the girl’s stay would be no more than three months, yet not one left Mother’s and Bill’s care in less than three years. My half-sister Virginia, therefore, did not grow up as an indulged only child with two doting, older

parents. And Mother, for her part, found that love was the way to live with her pain. Waves of sorrow still crashed against her, but love was the vessel that kept her afloat. In the ensuing score of years, Mother not only loved but was loved by Bill in what was nothing less than a late-in-life storybook marriage. Their shared devotion created a net that caught those abused little girls, wounded family members, and a steady stream of people who wanted to share the enchantment of that house. Once Mother even loaned out her automobile to a homeless family so that they could interview for jobs around Birmingham. Bill’s predictable response upon seeing the driveway was empty, “I sure hope they bring it back.” They did; although, delivery was days later than expected. My half-sister Virginia, “Ginny”, was the recipient of the richest portion of Bill’s and Mother’s devotion, and their love bequeathed her freedom to pursue her copious artistic and intellectual gifts. Every storybook has its ending, and when Bill died during the twenty-fifth year of their marriage, their Valley Drive house lost its enchantment. I came to learn that Bill’s, Mother’s, and Ginny’s trinity of love was its stability, not its sturdy wooden studs and masonry. Ginny, for her part, continued to delight my mother with her string of accomplishments. Unfortunately, Virginia’s rise in the academy mirrored her father’s physical demise. Bill did not live to see her receive her master’s degree from Vanderbilt or her Ph.D. from the University of Texas. Even then, pain was not done with Mother. Kay and I were serving in Maryland when I was awakened by another late-night phone call from her. She was screaming into the receiver, just as she had done twenty years before, “Gene is dead!” My youngest brother, Gene, who was nine years my junior, had died after mowing the lawn of his north Florida home. Although Gene was happily in recovery after a lifetime of alcoholism, his long addiction damaged his heart beyond repair. Barely a month before, Gene had contacted me to say he was determined 5

From Our Rector... to move his business to Birmingham to be closer to Mother. With Bill’s death and Ginny’s academic adventures, the home on Valley Drive became unbearably silent. Ginny would soon brave the Central American jungles to complete her doctoral research, the long procession of foster children ended, Julia’s mental illness was escalating, and Kay and I were serving a parish in central Texas. Mother repeatedly insisted that she preferred to live alone, but the brick home minus the man who worshipped her made the emptiness unbearable. Magnifying the loneliness was the belligerent strain of bacteria that encamped in her bloodstream during a routine wrist surgery that defiantly refused to leave no matter the size or number of antibiotic bombs hurled at it. As the infection grew in strength, it mercilessly assaulted her joints. She was crippled, quite unable to climb the steps of the home she had shared with Bill for those best years of her life. Faced with her growing infirmity, she forged a plan with her youngest sister Kathy. Mother would sell her home and use the proceeds to build a modest efficiency apartment adjacent to her sister’s house in south Alabama. The two had been very close throughout their lives, and both had recently experienced the death of their spouses. A divinely inspired move, I concluded. I shudder to think how wrong I was. Mother had not finished arranging the furniture in her newly constructed apartment when she began phoning me at odd hours. “I’ve got to get out of here. I’m suffocating here in Mayberry.” Trying to pry from her the reasons for her unhappiness, she repeated the words “provincial,” “anti-intellectual,” and “boring.” I responded with an enthusiastic litany of suggestions, “Mom, have you tried to make friends…?” “What about the Episcopal Church in town…?” “Maybe the library has a reading group…” She always promised to try, yet two nights later, she’d call sounding the identical refrain. “I’ve got to get out of here!” To which sometimes I countered, “But, Mom, 6

you’ve spent most of your savings building that apartment.” “I don’t care,” she’d snap. Then, in full-fledged retreat, I would offer, “Why don’t you come live with Kay and me?” She’d blast back, “You’re too type-A,” which always left me wondering what “type” she thought she was.

I should have been suspicious when the calls stopped. Somehow, I had convinced

myself that she had settled in.

Instead, Mother was plotting her escape...

I should have been suspicious when the calls stopped. Somehow, I had convinced myself that she had settled in. Instead, Mother was plotting her escape from South Alabama. Conspiring with the neighbor across my aunt’s back fence, she convinced the lady to drive her to Birmingham so that Mother could, as she told her sister, “Tie up some loose ends.” Once there, Mother stealthily leased an apartment in one of the roughest parts of town, which was all she could afford. She returned to my aunt’s home and packed her belongings. The two shared a teary goodbye, and Mother moved into the war zone. The next day she phoned me from her new digs sounding like her old self. I should pause here to insist that my Aunt Kathy is anything but shallow. In fact, she paddled some of the same currents of poverty and single parenting as my mother. Kathy, too, had found her heart’s desire later in life, a career Army officer and flight instructor at Ft. Rucker. His death was in the proximity of Bill’s, leaving both noble women struggling with inordinate grief. The living arrangement, therefore, was doomed from the beginning. Mother came to realize the folly of her failed escape south and forfeited every cent of the investment she had made in the apartment adjoining her sister’s house. My sister Julia ran through the remaining savings she and Bill had carefully put away for mother as fast as a racehorse at

Churchill Downs. The Social Security payments she received were no bonanza, but it put her on a par with her wageearning neighbors in the apartments, and she liked that. Those were her people, the ones living paycheck to paycheck, whose lives were defined by simply getting back and forth from work to home, making lunches for the kids, washing a load of clothes at the laundromat, putting something together for supper, clearing a corner of the kitchen table for children to do homework, and falling mercifully into bed for six hours before climbing the same mountain of tasks the next day. Dentist’s appointments and ski vacations never cross their minds when four tires for the family car can set them back six months. No one was surprised, least of all me, that, once back in the city, mother spent her weekdays serving at an inner-city soup kitchen hosted by her Episcopal church. She saw herself in the vacant faces lining up for a sandwich, a bowl of chili, and a cookie. The fact she had kept the five of us out of that line during our childhood years was a measure of grace she never forgot. She did not want to forget. Thus, until the muscles in her legs finally surrendered to the blitzkrieg of bacteria and she could no longer stand, she took her place in the serving line. Mother was no hero of the underclasses. No permanent change was brought about by the steady procession of unraveled girls she and Bill lovingly knit back together in their brick home on Valley Drive. Birmingham society did not suddenly see through the fog they had conveniently conjured to see the yawning canyon separating those who have-way-too much from those who have-not-nearly-enough because Mother faithfully stood on her walker ladling chili into paper bowls. True, she did protest and join marches a time or two. Once she even chained herself to the Governor of Alabama’s office door, but that, too, is a story for another day. We can, however, look at the end of her life to learn why she was not afraid of death. Mother did not fear death because she insisted on living in the meantime. For

From Our Rector... individuals, the word “meantime” denotes In this digital, consumeristic age, Peter is the time between two occurrences. We live giving us permission to step away from between birth and death. Once we face the our anaesthetizing obsession with media, fact that our lifespan is finitely measured, which has malformed us into passive we strive to live out the small sum of our receptors instead of the active co-creators days wisely. For Christians, living in the whom God fashioned. At the same time, meantime takes on another meaning of Peter is inducing us to break out of the even greater import. We live between self-imposed prisons of our homes, where Christ’s first coming and his second. Each lavishly provisioned by Instacart and Amazon day of our life brings us closer to God’s deliveries, we have barricaded ourselves. consummation of history. I always find To lose touch with others is to eventually it sobering when we offer the Eucharistic lose touch with ourselves. Surveying prayer with these our neighborhoods and words, ‘For in families, we confront the Mother did not fear death these last days you terrifying truth of this because she insisted on living in sent him (Christ) to fact, for the extended the meantime. be incarnate from isolation initially levied by the Virgin Mary, Covid-19 has left many on to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world’ the verge of mental illness and some have (BCP,368). According to the Prayer Book, plummeted headlong into it. We were Christmas begins the ultimate countdown. fashioned by God to share our lives with So much for jolly Santa with the season others quite literally. When we do not, we of overeating and overbuying, Christmas become diluted parodies of persons. acutely marks God’s reclamation of the world and His people. ‘Christ has died. Mother feared being whittled away into Christ is risen. Christ will come again.’ we littleness more than anything – even vigorously thunder on Sunday mornings more than enduring abject poverty again. without pausing to consider the gravity “Little” was a term she used repeatedly of what we just said (BCP, 363). Living in to thwack me back onto the high road the meantime is to do so with unabated of existence. “Pat, there is nothing worse anticipation. Toward the end of the New than a little man,” by which she meant Testament, Peter captures the intensity of a man consumed with his own good to this expectation: the exclusion of others. I shuddered to imagine becoming “little” in my mother’s The end of all things is near. Therefore, be alert eyes, because I had heard her use the word and of sober mind so that you may pray. Above like a sword. Once in 1959, when I was all, love each other deeply, because love covers five years old, Mother and I took the city over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one bus downtown to do some shopping. By another without grumbling. Each of you should the time we finished, the day had turned use whatever gift you have received to serve others, hot and the streets threw up a sickly steam as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various of sweat and diesel. We clamored back forms. 1 Peter 4:7-10 onto the bus behind a black woman and her boy who was about my age. Every While Peter urges us to live in this inseat was filled with exhausted workers between time with a sense of expectation, – the front half of the cabin was filled he also insists we live with joy unfettered with white people and the back half by caution. The apostle is giving us with black individuals. People knew their permission to live the life we always place. So, it was quite unnecessary for wanted, a life characterized by intentional, the burly bus driver to bark at the black intimate communion with God and in lady once she deposited her 35-cent fare, genial, generous relationships with others. “Back of the bus.” Mother and I paid our The former will be realized through fare, and she was immediately offered a prioritizing times to pray both privately seat by a man on the aisle. I was about and communally, and the latter by sharing to climb into her lap, when she got up, our personal gifts for the good of others. strode up to the driver, lowered her face

to his and announced with a ferocity quite unexpected from a twenty-threeyear-old, “You little man.” From that day, I understood that “littleness” was to be avoided at all costs. Mother feared that her world would have shrunken to the confines of that comfortable cottage in South Alabama, living out her days in manufactured ease. Our lives expand with every gift we make. To live large is to live generously. To play it safe is to constrict until there is less and less, and we become little. Recall Jesus’ Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:1430), where a master was departing on a journey, and he left “five talents” of gold with one servant – about 375 pounds; “two talents” with another – 150 pounds; and “one talent” with a third – 75 pounds. Upon returning the master discovered that the servants with whom he left the most gold had invested his money and doubled its worth. The third servant, however, who received the one talent, dug a hole and buried it. Upon learning of this, the master becomes irate and commands, “Take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten. For all those who have, more will be given, and they will have in abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 25:28-29). How we invest our lives in the meantime makes all the difference. We can bury ourselves in self-preservation or give of ourselves in selfless abandon. One path leads to more. The other to nothing at all.

Hymns to Guide Your Daily Prayers

Music Ministry by Josh Benninger

restrained to keep us from causing others pain so that we may see and serve your Son and grow in love for everyone. – Hymn 4, “Now that the daylight fills the sky,” verses 1–2, 5

you precede the dawn, the Herald of the morning to come. Guard us while we sleep and give us rest and a quiet night. Although our eyes will be closed in sleep, let our hearts be watchful; you will protect those who believe and trust you.

Noonday

– Hymn 40, “O Christ, you are both light and day,” verses 1–3

O Holy Spirit, ever One with God the Father and the Son, pour forth into our hearts, we pray, the fullness of your grace. Let our mouth, tongue, mind, sense, and strength tell of God’s mighty actions. Let love in flames of living fire inspire the hearts of everyone. Almighty Father, hear our cry through Jesus Christ, our Lord Most High, whom with the Spirit we adore forever.

When I write the Sunday morning

opening prayers, I rely heavily on scripture. As of late, I’ve been favoring hymn texts, and for a good reason. The 1982 Hymnal is replete with lovely music married to poetic writing. Boasting more than 700 hymns, it covers all liturgical seasons, praises God, Son, and Holy Spirit, and reminds us of the Church’s mission and our responsibility as Christians. There’s even a section devoted to specific times of the day, and below are five prayers using a sampling of these texts. I took some liberties with the words and, in some cases, reordered the verses. Morning To God the Father, heavenly Light, to Christ, revealed in the earthly night, to God the Holy Ghost, we raise our equal and unceasing praise. Now that daylight fills the sky, we lift our hearts to you, God on high, that you would keep us free from harm this day. May our hearts and lips be 8

– Hymn 20, “How Holy Spirit, ever One with God” Evening Lord God, the day you gave us has ended, the darkness falls at your behest; our morning hymns ascended to you, and your praise shall sanctify our rest. We give thanks to your unsleeping Church while the earth rolls onward into light, through all the world her watch is keeping and rests not now by day or night. Unlike earth’s proud empires, your throne shall never pass away; your kingdom stands and grows forever until all your creatures fall under your sway. – Hymn 24, “The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended,” verses 1–2, 4 Compline O Christ, you are both light and day; you drive away the shadows. O Daystar,

Sunday O day of radiant gladness, O day of joy and light, O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright; this day the high and lowly, through ages join in tune, sing, “Holy, holy, holy,” to the great God Triune. The light was born on this day of creation. For our salvation, Christ rose from the depths of the earth victorious. On this day, God’s people meet to hear Holy Scripture and greet his living presence through Bread and Wine made near. We journey on, believing, renewed with heavenly might, receiving grace on this blest day of light. – Hymn 48, “O day of radiant gladness,” verses 1–3

Spring 2022 Confirmands Youth Ministry On Sunday, May 1, five of our Christ

Church youth received the sacrament of Confirmation. Our Youth Confirmation class included Ivory Hanzel, Belle Losack, Ansley McLaughlin, Faith Sideman and Michael Sideman. These dedicated students spent many hours in study and prayer and participated in a retreat the weekend before. Our confirmation class, along with other members of the youth group, listened to inspiring testimonies from their older peers, sang, laughed, ate, and served. Following a late night in the Carriage House, they were up early to help share God’s love at Sidewalk Saturday. Remember your vow to support these students in their life in Christ.

Let’s Make Waves:

Choosing God’s Way Over the Ways of the World CEC Family Ministry by Halleta Heinrich

We will be trying out a new curriculum

this summer for Vacation Bible School and Summer Sunday School – Orange. You will hear more about Orange soon! The theme for both Summer Sunday School and VBS is “Make Waves – What You Do Today Can Change the World Around You,” meaning that we as Christians are called to follow God’s ways over the ways of the world. We are called to be different or to “make waves” through the power of Christ in us to change the world for good. This is our purpose – conveying God’s Love and Hope to a world in need.

Various Bible stories that tell of God’s people who courageously stood up for God’s ways through the power of His Holy Spirit will be central to teachings in Sunday School and VBS. A prayer that came to my mind when I learned of this theme is one of my favorites found in our Episcopal Book of Common Prayer found on page 829. This prayer seems particularly relevant in our current time: Prayer for Young Persons God, our Father, you see your children growing up in an unsteady and confusing world:

Show them that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, And that following you is better than chasing after selfish goals. Help them to take failure, not as a measure of their worth, But as a chance for a new start, Give them strength to hold their faith in you, and to keep alive their joy in your creation; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen Please pray this prayer for the children and youth of our church. Your prayers are much appreciated and needed! Love in Christ, Halleta

Thank You & Congratulations Thank you to this year’s Children’s

Sunday School teachers. You have been faithful! Preschool: Leita Carter, Tobin Hays, and Neel Scott First and Second Grade: Carmen Lewenthal, Monica Elliott, and Anne Aderhold Third and Fourth Grade: Stephen Archer and Ashlee Biechlin Fifth Grade: Jeanne and Kelvin Tatum and Carla Solis

Our Children’s

Communion Class of 2022 and their parents were honored on Communion Celebration Day – Sunday, April 24.

Harper Aderhold Maggie Allison Toby Alvarez Max Biechlin Paisley Eccles Holden Griffin Luca Juarez Isabel Koehler

Webb Lewis Louisa Mc Laughlin Winn Mc Laughlin Tee O’Brien Lillian Richardson Hudson Rogers Barrett Sharples

Olivia Valenzuela Parker Christy Georgeann Christy Beau Ware Rob Welch Helper – Jackson Miller

CEC World Missions at Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota CEC World Missions by Brien Koehler

A new Christ Episcopal Church

mission opportunity in partnership with the Diocese of West Texas and the Diocese of South Dakota will begin with a preliminary visit by Christ Church Missions leaders in early June. The June Mission Trip will journey to the Cheyenne River Reservation (South Dakota) where the team will work with local Episcopal church clergy and church members to build a relationship and to explore future ministry opportunities.

The congregation at Immanuel Episcopal Church, White Horse, S.D.

The Mission Trip Team will include LaRhesa Moon, Elaine Dagen, Avery Moran, Karen Van Der Bruegge, Gretchen & Molly Duggan, Terry & Brien Koehler, and Donna Jones; Marthe Curry and Catherine Markette (representing the

Diocese of West Texas World Missions Department and CECSA) will also be part of the team. Mission work will include presenting a three-day Vacation Bible School program, participating in an Equine Facilitated Wellness Ministry, Horsemanship training, and learning some important aspects of Lakota tribal culture and history. A survey of construction and repair projects in the many buildings that are part of the Episcopal Church ministry in the reservation will also be undertaken. This preliminary visit is expected to open further opportunities for long-term relationships with the Episcopal Church in the Cheyenne River Reservation. Immediate opportunities may include a late summer youth trip to the same venue this year as well as youth, family, and adult trips in coming months and years. The Cheyenne River Reservation (home of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation) was created in 1889 and covers more than 4,000 square miles in north central South Dakota. The population of the reservation is approximately 9000 persons. The Episcopal Church mission churches (eleven congregations) are headquartered in the town of Eagle Butte, under the leadership of the Rev. Ellen and the Rev. Kurt Huber. The bishop of the Diocese of South Dakota is the Rt. Rev. Jonathan Foltz, the son of retired bishop of West Texas the Rt. Rev. James Foltz. Every mission team has three components,

with overlap. There are the “Go-ers” who make the journey into the field. There are the “Pray-ers” who commit to intercession for the mission day by day. There are the “Givers” who make sacrificial gifts to support the journey and its work. Even if you are not a “Go-er,” you can join the team the other vital ways. First, you can be a “Pray-er” by praying daily starting now for God’s blessing on the team, the work, the church in Eagle Butte, and the Lakota of Cheyenne River Reservation. If God leads you to be a “Giver” you can send a special offering by check through Christ Church marked “Missions-Cheyenne River.” The mission journey will be June 5-10, 2022.

Ellen & Kurt Huber, the clergy leaders of Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission, with one of their daughters. The Hubers have charge of 11 congregations.

We can do SO MUCH MORE Great Commission Society by Marthe Curry and Brien Koehler

You helped the Navajo replace a

leaky roof in their Community Center. You hosted Sunday Dhugira when she came to share her work with Ugandan women. You made certain Honduran and Ugandan women learned to sew to supplement their meagre incomes. You ensured a nurturing home for orphans in Russia. You funded scholarships and instruments for young people in bands in Uganda. You provided food for hungry brothers and sisters during the pandemic. You have taught Hondurans from ages 6 to 60 to read. Your kept refugee children warm by sending winter clothes. You’re sending a team to conduct VBS and repair church buildings on the Cheyenne River Reservation in June. You’re establishing a safe house for former sex trafficking victims in Kurdistan. We could go on… For decades, Christ Church has been a missions church and has touched lives around the world. But we can do SO MUCH MORE. Imagine the dignity and hope that we will bring when our team teaches construction skills this summer to jobless Lakota. Imagine the healing and renewal we will share as we reconnect youngsters with their land and animals

at the Equine Healing Center, the site of our summer VBS ministry. Imagine the changed lives in Kurdistan as wounded women realize Jesus loves them. Your generosity makes all this possible, but we can do SO MUCH MORE. A Missions Endowment at Christ Church will perpetuate the transforming work of our World Missions ministries. Missions Committee Members and a “seed money” donor from Christ Church have raised more than $50,000 to plant the Missions Endowment Fund, but we need a partner (or partners) to push the total by another $100,000. Your gifts will grow our “seed plant” to the funding level needed to be a permanent part of our Great Commission Society. Jesus teaches us to “give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” (Luke 6:38). Testamentary giving (or other options through estate planning) is an excellent way to support this part of Christ Church’s ministry, but the Missions Endowment project needs immediate giving as well to help it launch fully. Please pray and consider making a generous gift that will empower us to do SO MUCH MORE. Contact Patrick, or either of us for more information on how to make a gift. Email to mcurry09@sbcglobal.net or brienk@ cecsa.org.

Honduran children in VBS with Pentecost “Fire Crowns”

Kurdish Refugee girl in winter coat provided by CEC (above) Honduran and Kurdish Embroidery Project participants (below)

PAGE TURNERS – From the Rector’s Book Stack Alan Jacobs

knows the decisions we must make, time and again, when we read classic literature. His book, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a Tranquil Mind, acknowledges Homer’s Iliad is sexist, Stevenson’s Robinson Crusoe – racist, Wharton’s House of Mirth – anti-Semitic, and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House – hedonistic. Jacobs contends the value of reading these texts is not to cleverly compare them with our own supposed enlightened age but to sift them for the wisdom these books can speak into our lives. Reading the classics, he and Thomas Pynchon (author of Gravity’s Rainbow) agree, “will increase our personal density,” make us sturdier and more discerning as we deal with the daily torrent of news, misinformation, and veiled advertisements. Reading the classics will ground us. They will slow us down to collect our thoughts, because we cannot read the old books without eliminating the onslaught of distractions and centering down to concentrate for an hour. An old book will make much more of us than a string of Twitter feeds. This is the second of Jacob’s trilogy on the gift of reading. The first, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, I reviewed in 2020. The third, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds, is calling to me from my office bookshelf. I went back and forth from hilarity to horror while reading Deacon King Kong, by James McBride. Deacon Cuffy Lambkin, known to everyone in the Brooklyn projects as Sportcoat, stretches out his

days by doing odd jobs for a liquor store, gardening for a mobster’s mother, and cleaning for the housing authority, all the while fortified with a particularly potent moonshine known as King Kong – or just Kong. In his alcoholic malaise, he carries on a continuous, combative dialogue with his dead wife Hettie. The novel stumbles along behind Sportcoat’s delirious gait until he, without announcement or explanation, shoots the ear off the nineteen-year-old drug lord in the projects. Expecting quick and immediate gangland retribution, the reader, instead, is treated to a succession of foiled, comedic attempts to kill Sportcoat. “Earl the hitman” comes off like a vaudeville act instead of the monster who once terrorized Brooklyn. The mob boss, Thomas Elefante, known as the notorious “Elephant,” constantly crosses paths with Sportcoat, but, as if caught in an urban rendition of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, is blinded to the deacon’s true identity. In fact, the novel unfolds like a stage play, with the Five Ends Baptist Church, where Sportcoat is a deacon, serving as the production’s backdrop. McBride’s message is clear: even amidst the squalor, crime, addiction, rusted out cars, feral cats, and stray dogs – grace reigns. At first, I could not figure out why longtime Christ Church members Betty and Mike Venson gave me the book. But at the end of the novel the fierce Elefante confesses, “I wish somebody would love me.” Betty and Mike know grace, not hate, wins! In 1954, while I was busy being born, Wally Moon was much busier earning Major League Baseball’s Rookie of the Year, an honor he was awarded over the great Hammering Hank Aaron. Born into an indomitable, hardworking family in Bay, Arkansas in the Mississippi Delta, the town records 1,800 residents, but they boast of only one notable son – Wally Moon. I knew next to nothing about the

man until Bud Beyer ran up to me after worship to breathlessly report, “Do you know Wally Moon’s daughter goes to church here!” I did not have the heart to tell Bud I did not know the name. I do now. Moon’s daughter, LaRhesa, gave me her father’s autobiography, Moon Shots, so called for those towering homeruns a player delivers in the crunch. Wally Moon admits that he was not a formidable homerun hitter, having amassed only 142 during his entire twelve-year MLB career, but in high school, at Texas A&M, and in the pros, he seemed to have a knack for hitting the moon shot at just the right time in a tight contest. Reading Moon’s account of his long career that began with him hitting pinecones with a broomstick, to American Legion high school ball, to playing both basketball and baseball at A&M, to five years with the Cardinals and seven with the Dodgers – where he helped them win three World Series Championships – I couldn’t help but be awed by Moon’s humility. This hero is a far cry from some of the incessantly crowing, bad-actor athletes we coddle today. This man never forgot his history was forged in the Arkansas lumberyards. Consequently, Moon’s fans never forget him. The twentysix chapters in the book are followed by letters from admirers, expressing deep devotion to Moon and the noble stature he engendered. Read the book. Better still, get to know LaRhesa. She reflects her father’s virtue. In 1988, Kay, our three young children, and I moved to Tyler and ran smack into the Texas oil bust. We did not know it at the time, but we were caught up in the great circle of life in the Lone Star State. Several members of the congregation I served had lost businesses, planes, vacation homes, boats, pensions – most everything but the roof over their heads and the two cars in the driveway.

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PAGE TURNERS – Continued What fascinated us was the resilient optimism of everyone we met. “It will come back,” was their mantra and they just drove their Cadillacs and Lincolns a little longer. I did not understand that world I entered 34 years ago until I opened Bryan Mealer’s The Kings of Big Spring. Carefully and colorfully tracing his own family’s migration from the mountains of Georgia to West Texas in 1892, Mealer records the precipitous ups and downs of their lives in service to the fickle oilfields. The family goes from desperate straits in un-airconditioned shotgun houses to flying around the world in private jets and then back again to destitution. The history of the Mealer clan resembles the steep peaks and valleys of an electrocardiogram. Only the fierce-preaching, glory-singing, faithhealing Pentecostal church keeps them somewhat astride their anarchic lives. Talking to my book buddy, Colonel Bob Bell (or Bob #2, as he is known at Sidewalk Saturday), I confessed that I listened to this book on the free Libby App, and I was so captivated by the story, which is read by the author, that I played it through my phone between pastoral visits, trips to the store, and my daily commute. If you want to know Texas, The Kings of Big Spring is essential reading or listening. Sitting on the sofa, snuggled next to my mother, she would pull out the red and white volume of Childcraft, and then ask me what I wanted her to read. She knew my answer before the words left my mouth. “The Highwayman,” I would exclaim and sit there with rapt attention as the lines of Alfred Noyes’s (1880-1958) poem galloped across the room and into my memory. The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the 14

purple moor, And the highwayman came riding— Riding—riding— The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door. The year was 1958, and I wanted to be the Highwayman. I wanted to be courageous, dashing, and faithful to the point of death like my poetic hero. Most of all, hearing the cadence of Mother’s recitation, I wanted to read. Like Prometheus’s longing for fire, I craved to read. I coveted the magic of books. What’s more, a stronger magic came over me during those hours on the sofa with Mother reading. Such a simple act forged an ineradicable union between parent and child. Fostering love of reading, developing a broad vocabulary, inciting the imagination, and drawing parent and child together are the foundational tenets of Meghan Cox Gurdon’s The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. Gurdon’s research leaves no doubt that smartphone and iPad software, no matter how interactive, renders nowhere near the advantages of reading aloud person-to-person. Children who have been regularly read to begin school with measurable advantages, and in most cases have developed vocabularies far beyond the reach of other students. I was so convicted by the book that I have started reading the Scripture aloud each morning to experience the resonant power of the written word. Kay and I have read to one another for years. At the same time, I am reading to a friend in a nursing home in an attempt to enrich his life with beauty. Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan émigré author, who now makes his home in Toronto, writes with such understanding about growing up that I feel as if he sits at a corner table in my memory. Warlight is the second of Ondaatje’s

novels that I have read, and it is even more absorbing than the first, The Cat’s Table. The novel opens in 1945 London, just as the war ends. Nathaniel, the narrator is fourteen and his sister Rachel a year older, when they are suddenly abandoned by their parents. Taking over the two’s care as well as inhabiting their suburban home are a host of mysterious characters known to the children by such names as The Moth and The Darter and Olive the Ethnographer. The siblings conclude that those three and their associates are all involved in clandestine criminal activity. Nathaniel, while at first troubled by his parents’ nearly overnight disappearance, begins to revel in his newfound freedom and involvement with their so-called caregivers. He is especially drawn to The Darter, who, like Dickens, Fagan, educates him as a modern Oliver Twist. Much like The Cat’s Table, the novel garners its depth through the eyes of the adult Nathaniel, who discovers that his parents and the cadre sent to care for them were all working for British Intelligence and bequeathing him an inimitable childhood. I was so moved by Michael Ondaatje’s prose, that I listened to his most celebrated work, The English Patient, on my Libby app. The story revolves around a terribly burned “English patient,” a young Canadian nurse who is devoted to him, an Italian con man and expert thief, and an Indian combat engineer. The absorbing characterization and romance of this novel reveal why it ran away with the Booker Prize. Without question, Ondaatje is one of the greatest living novelists.

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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 3.