FROM THE RECTOR: LEADERSHIP IN MINISTRY

Twice a year since 1997 I have attended a conference for members of the clergy and other organizational leaders called “Leadership in Ministry.”  I’m just back from the fall meeting.  The conference’s theoretical framework is family systems theory.  I’ve been working with that theory for more than two decades.  I want to tell you about the conference.

FROM THE RECTOR: REDEVELOPMENT

Chicago was the first great city I ever lived in.  I still remember the date I arrived, September 19, 1976.  I was 22 and entering graduate school.  Chicago was a very different city then in many ways than it is now.  The first Mayor Daley was still in office.  The economic growth of the 1980s and 1990s that brought about a renaissance of urban America was in the future.  As part of the orientation for students at the University of Chicago, we learned about the dangers of the city and about the campus security phones located at the intersection of all the streets near the university.  It was a different time.  But I loved it.

FROM THE MUSIC DIRECTOR: “THEIR SOUND HAS GONE OUT INTO ALL LANDS”

I remember attending my first service at Saint Mary’s as a visitor just under four years ago.  I settled towards the back of the building, seeking refuge in an unoccupied pew during the recitation of the Angelus, just before a thrilling organ improvisation introduced Solemn Evensong and Benediction.  The service was excellent in so many ways—musically, liturgically, spiritually—and so, I expect, was the sermon, although despite my best efforts I distinctly remember how difficult it was to hear the preacher!

FROM DEACON REBECCA WEINER TOMPKINS: PREPARING THE ENVIRONMENT

Anyone who's been around Saint Mary’s will have witnessed the Rector’s enthusiasm for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS), the educational method for the spiritual formation of children developed by Sofia Cavalletti.  Saint Marians have recently been informed about our own CGS atrium, which will soon be open for children who are between the ages of three and six in what was formerly office space above St. Joseph’s Hall.  I use the words “our own” with special emphasis, since the words pertain to CGS becoming part of our identity as a parish.

FROM THE RECTOR: APPROACHING HOLY WOMEN AND MEN

We’re getting a new Lectionary beginning with Advent 2010.  This summer, our seminarian Rem Slone has been working to re-format all of the texts and files we will use for the first year of this new three-year Sunday cycle.  At Saint Mary’s, that’s a really big job.  It not only includes producing the readings we will use at the lectern, but amending what we call in the office “The Complete Information File” for every Sunday and Principal Feast of the year.  I’ve also asked Rem to replace the Sunday lessons on our web page with the new ones – another big job.

FROM THE RECTOR: CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF PRIESTHOOD

When I was invited to New York by the board of trustees to interview for this job I asked to meet with Father Edgar Wells.  I did so for many reasons, but one in particular.  I had learned very quickly in the parish I was serving in Indiana of the unique bond I had with my predecessor there.  There were things I could ask him and find out from him that no one else could know.  I knew that if I were to come to Saint Mary’s, like Father Wells, I would retire from Saint Mary’s.  That’s the pattern here and in many other great parishes.

FROM FATHER SMITH: A CHANGE OF PLANS

The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is always a wonderful day at Saint Mary's.  No matter how hot or humid the day, a large congregation always comes to Times Square to celebrate the feast.  Those of you who read the Angelus regularly know that this year's celebration is going to be a special one.  Our rector emeritus, Father Edgar F. Wells, celebrates his fiftieth anniversary of ordination to the priesthood on Monday, August 9; and some months ago he agreed to celebrate Solemn Mass with us on August 15 as a way of marking that anniversary.  Many of you have been looking forward to the day with great anticipation.

FROM THE RECTOR: Transfiguration

William Reed Huntington (1838-1909) was rector of Grace Church, New York City, from 1883 until his death.  He was among the most influential leaders of the Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century.  His life and witness is commemorated in the calendar of the Church on July 27.  He was a leader in the revival of the order of deaconesses.  His writings on church unity formed the basis of what became the “Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral” (Prayer Book, 876-888).

FROM THE RECTOR: THE CATECHESIS OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD

This fall Saint Mary’s will begin a new formation program for young children.  In June, Deacon Rebecca Weiner Tompkins began training to be a catechist in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.  It is simply the very best thing I have ever known for Christian formation for children.  My own work with the program in Indiana continues to shape my fundamental understanding of God’s work in this world.  The Catechesis began in Rome over fifty years ago.  It starts with the conviction that God is present and active in the life of every child.  Our task as adult Christian leaders is to prepare an environment where the children can work on their relationship with God.

FROM THE RECTOR: SUPPORTING THIS TRADITION

I don’t know when I bought Company of Voices: Daily Prayer and the People of God (New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1988) by George Guiver, but I remember when I read it.  It was January 2001.  December had ended with a blizzard – people were cross-country skiing in Times Square – and I had the flu, the real thing, for the first and, I hope, the last time.  Guiver is a member of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield, and a priest of the Church of England.

FROM THE RECTOR: WORLD CUP HOPES

As a resident of the Times Square neighborhood, I am used to certain kinds of loud crowd noises.  When the World Cup began this year, I was surprised by the cheering I heard on and off whenever a match was being played.  Soccer is a game I don’t know.  The pace of cheering that goes on is just different than that of our big American sports.  For the World Cup, restaurants and bars opened early in the city.

FROM THE RECTOR: KNOWING MORE

I recently came across a book by Oliver Wendell Evans, New Orleans (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1959).  It’s what I would call a travel book, an appreciation of the history and culture of the city before integration.  Sadly, it is the product of a very narrow view of the world, even, I daresay for its time.

FROM THE RECTOR: Bows and Genuflections

At an ordinary weekday celebration of the Eucharist, there will be a reader, a server and a priest.  During the course of the Mass, the celebrant will genuflect when he or she enters and leaves, at the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer, and three times during the Communion rite.  That’s six genuflections; but there are many more bows.  These are made mostly by the celebrant to the assembly, as a sign to the priest and to the congregation of whose servant she or he is.

From Father Smith: Breaking the Cycle

I don’t know a lot about opera and I know even less about medieval German literature; and so, when I picked up a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement and read the following headline, “Before Wagner: The Song of the Nibelungs deserves a wider readership than students of German and lovers of opera,” I surrendered.  I’m not sure if I was surrendering to curiosity or to some kind of guilt about my ignorance, but surrender I did.  I read the review of a new English translation of the Song and discovered that the text of the Nibelungenlied had a long and complicated history “before Wagner.”  It turns out that this “greatest medieval German heroic poem” or “revenge saga” existed as oral poetry before it was written down around the year 1200 by an anonymous poet. 

From the Rector: Eucharistic Connections

This spring a lot of my reading has been focused on the history of the Eucharist.  It’s an enormous subject, and one that I will never master, but I am a person who went to seminary in large part because I thought I was called to preside at the Eucharist.  It’s still the foundation of my journey as a Christian person and my work as a Christian pastor.

FROM THE RECTOR: AMAZING GRACE

Growing up as a Southern Baptist whose father’s family was Roman Catholic made me aware in early childhood of differences among Christian denominations.  What shaped family religious observance I could observe further on the streets of the places we lived.  There were lots of different churches for different denominations.  In the South, there were churches for blacks and whites.  In later years I found out that because I’d grown up in the South, I’d never experienced things like rivalries among Italian, Irish, and Polish Roman Catholic parishes in adjoining neighborhoods.  Living with differences seemed fundamental to my childhood experience of being a Christian.

FROM THE RECTOR: TRINITY INVITATION

Parishioner Thomas Jayne writes a weekly online post for the magazine Interior Design.  This week his article was called, “Discovering Color in Historic Metalwork.”  It turns out that much metalwork we are used to seeing painted black was originally painted with a broader palette.  The last time I was in Colonial Williamsburg, the gates on the Governor’s Mansion were black; they are now off-white.

FROM THE RECTOR: INEFFABLE EASTER

I have been wrestling this Eastertide with what for me is a new realization of how little we know about the disciples and the resurrection.  This has struck me pretty forcefully this year.  Why wouldn’t we know more than we do about the most important thing, the resurrection?  I’m not thinking here about Jesus and the tomb.  I’m thinking about the encounter of the disciples with the risen Lord.

FROM THE RECTOR: Maintaining the Fabric

Last Friday I met with architects Michael Devonshire and Richard Pieper of Jan Hird Pokorny Associates.  I was put in touch with them during Easter Week by parishioner and architect Peter Pennoyer after small pieces of our façade had fallen to the street.  (Most thankfully, of course, no one was hurt.)  As you may know, a protective “sidewalk shield” went up that week across the 46th Street frontage of our complex.  Michael and Richard have made a very preliminary survey of the building.  I’ve asked them to outline a proposal for addressing our needs.

FROM THE RECTOR: Easter Thanksgiving

Last Saturday the terrorist parked his weapon by what is now the West 45th Street entrance of the Minskoff Theatre.  From December 8, 1870, until December 8, 1895, that address was the first home of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin.  If we were still at that location, we might not have been able to hold services last Sunday.  But since 1895 we have been on the other side of Times Square.  Our doors were open on Sunday morning at the usual hour.  All of the regular Sunday services were celebrated.  At different points in the morning I found myself thinking about Dom Gregory Dix’s famous meditation on the Eucharist.