A Deep and Dark December

It was a cold and gloomy Advent for the most part, with two solemn requiems in the second week, for Alan McClare and Don McCall. Fr. Hitchcock came back for both and preached at Alan's. He and Alan were friends since grade school in Bronxville so it was a very emotional farewell for him especially. I was subdeacon and managed to save my tears for later. It was a white mass of the resurrection, as was Don's, although Don had a real solemn requiem with the Missa pro Defunctis of Victoria. We laid Don to rest in the columbarium right under Murray Kempton and the large crucifix, only about 10 feet from where he used to sit right behind the organ.

Alan's family apparently have a horror of high church and insisted on a streamlined, rather low service, no choir and very minimal music and incense, and no reception afterward so it felt rather unsatisfactory to many of us who knew Alan. His ashes were taken away for a resting place unknown.

I was hobbling during Alan's requiem with a pulled left thigh muscle and it got worse after that. I had to be MC for Don's requiem a few days later and managed to get by with a lot of help and mastering the art of the faux genuflection. It has gradually gotten better and I am relieved it doesn't seem to be permanent arthritis or something quite yet. I must get back to the gym next year and also lose the 10 pounds I've gained.

Christmas Eve I was thurifer and managed to provide some really good smoke but apparently I put a little too much myrrh in the blend as the rector was coughing and said it smelt too much like Lent. Well you have to take the bitter with the sweet I guess. I slept in Christmas morning for the first time in many years, as I wasn't scheduled to serve, then headed out to Forest Hills for a wonderful Christmas with my brother Gene, in from Denver, and Laurie's gang. It was great to see my old Gibson bass restored, courtesy of Gene's friend in Denver, and Evan promising to learn it.

I resigned as chair of Building and Grounds during Advent, after 8 years on the case. It seemed like a good time to move on at the end of this old decade of leaks, floods, infestations, upgrades and restorations. We got alot done but much remains to be done and very little money to do anything at the moment. I look forward to going back on the vestry next month and trying to move some things along and help out in other ways, but someone else needs to have some fun now trying to keep up with this old house. I'm sure I will still be prone to noticing every lightbulb that needs changing but I hope to depend on someone else to go get the ladder.

Autumn Leaves

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Cor. 15:51)

November always makes me shiver and the autumn leaves this year around St. Ignatius seemed to remind me more than usual of things past and things gone forever. We commemorated All Souls on November 2 with a solemn requiem (Victoria's Missa pro Defunctis) and absolution at the catafalque (the so-called absolution at the catafalque, as Fr Weatherby always added). I was subdeacon, a role I had seldom played in requiems, and I got to sing the wonderful epistle from Corinthians about death and resurrection, which always makes me feel better in spite of how illogical it all seems.

After Alan McClare's tragic death (his solemn requiem will finally be on December 12) we had hoped that would be enough death for a season, but sadly we only had a couple of more weeks until Don McCall fell and cracked his head and died 10 days later. Somehow Don's death hit me very hard even though I could see it was perhaps the only rest the poor man would ever know in his ill-fated life. He had been around the church for over 20 years, having been baptised one Easter Vigil, an event that he always mentioned whenever he spoke to me, and I sensed that it was truly the most wonderful event of his life. He had so many physical and mental problems, but he was always cheerful, always had something funny to tell, and always forgave my temper tantrums that he sometimes evoked, such as the times when he felt the need to take home the bathroom soap, not realizing it left other people stranded. After I found out it was him and explained it to him, it never happened again. He had a bit of a drinking problem also, which made it often necessary to ask him to leave the soup kitchen, where he always helped out as best he could on Saturday afternoons, in spite of only having one semi-workable hand. He would sometimes get unruly in concerts, which he loved to attend, and last year had to be taken away in an ambulance after he fell over on his pew and couldn't be roused. But he always came back and we always welcomed him and several of us tried our best to help him. St. Ignatius was a stable environment that he felt safe in and the past year he had also been attending the City's outreach program run in our undercroft, The Other Place. He had been making a lot of progress in recent months and the last time I saw him he seemed like alot of healing had taken place. But sometime around Nov. 19 he fell and cracked open his head. He never regained consciousness and died on Nov. 29. Fr Blume and a few others from church went and last rites were given. He will be buried in the columbarium in a niche donated by the church. May his soul and those of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.

Strangers and Pilgrims

These stones that have echoed their praises are holy,
And dear is the ground where their feet have once trod;
Yet here they confessed they were strangers and pilgrims,
And still they were seeking the city of God.

Remembering George Blackshire, who died October 5 at the age of 85. He had been a trustee of St. Mary the Virgin for many years and was in his latter prime when I was there. He was also the head of the Brother Lawrence Guild and for many years was in charge of the hospitality after services. Although he disapproved heartily when St. Mary's went to Rite II, he remained loyal when others fled to more traditional parishes. As expected, he had requested a solemn requiem with black vestments and the Faure Requiem. I'm sure he would have been happier with a true solemn requiem with subdeacon instead of the missing man formation now in effect at St. Mary's, but the Faure was divine and the reception afterward adequate, although I missed the sherry and jalapeno jack that were regular staples of George's receptions.

We were also notified of a sudden farewell by Alan McClare yesterday, of as yet unknown causes. Alan was a longtime vestryman and warden of St. Ignatius who had in recent years been absent from our midst. In keeping with recent history of male wardens, he had disappeared soon after being relieved of warden duty, for reasons still unclear. I wish now I had made more of an effort to keep in touch, as he was such a constant figure in our parish life for so many years and did so much for so long. I was just thinking of him rather vividly the day before and wondering what had caused him to suddenly disappear. Now I guess we'll never know.

After the Deluge

We celebrated the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels last night with a procession and solemn pontifical mass, Bishop Roskam celebrating and preaching. We had a pretty good crowd of mostly visitors and the music was offered by our new ensemble in residence, Tenet, a quartet of singers who did a fine job on the anonymous 14th century French Messe de Tournai and the motet “Factum est silentium” by Alessandro Grandi (ca. 1575–1630). I was subdeacon and got to sing the wonderful passage from Revelation about Michael and the dragon. I was thankful that we have inherited the notated epistle chants from St. Paul's K Street after they decided to switch to the new common lectionary, so I didn't have to write it out myself.

The organ is operating at about one-quarter of its capacity after the organ chamber was soaked a couple of weeks ago by a failed water heater which had inexplicably been installed above it about 20 years ago. It was an accident waiting to happen and in spite of my best efforts to get it removed in recent months, it finally could hold out no longer and burst at the top and bottom, sending about 50 gallons of water down the floorboards and flooding three-quarters of the pipes. Our organist gave me a tour of the damage that evening and it was a sight I had always dreaded to see. I had been aware of the danger for about 8 years since I took over as Building & Grounds chair, and the removal of the water heater had always been on the to-do list, but there was always some more pressing emergency that demanded our attention and money. This spring we finally got the money to do the work but the summer went by with one thing and another stalling the work until finally time ran out. Perhaps it will work to our benefit, making lemonade out of the lemons as the rector put it, and we will actually get enough insurance money to do all of the work on the organ that has been needed for a long time. Let us pray.

At the Shrine of the Muse Divine

O Sound the call to dear old Interlochen
Land of the stately pine
Where stalwart hands and loyal ever greet you
Faithful to Auld Lang Syne
Old friends you'll greet, new ones you'll meet
A welcome you'll ever find
So sound the call to dear old Interlochen
Shrine of the Muse Divine!

It was like Woodstock on Grand Traverse Bay for 4 glorious days of music, peace and love at the unofficial 1969-72 Interlochen Arts Academy reunion held August 5-9. A week later would be the 40th anniversary of Woodstock and also the 40th anniversary of the end of my first summer at Interlochen. I was just out of 9th grade and played bass clarinet that summer on a scholarship from the Texas Music Teachers. I was a stranger in paradise there amidst all those gifted youth from all over the world and often felt like I would never keep up with all that talent. I couldn't wait to return the following summer, however, this time playing bassoon on another scholarship from the Texas Music Teachers. I had a lot to learn about the bassoon but made a quantum leap that summer and the next, finally getting into the World Youth Symphony the summer of 1971 and then aspiring to get a scholarship to the Arts Academy for my senior year. I didn't quite believe I would actually get to go to the Academy since I needed virtually a full scholarship. These days the tuition is $42,000 and I don't know how anyone can afford it. Back then it was about $5,000 but that was way more than we could afford. My only hope was that they needed another bassoon badly enough to finance me for the year. I went back to my senior year in Belton the Monday after camp was over and started marching band practice, waiting without much expectation for a couple of weeks before getting the call that I had a scholarship.

I had not been back to Interlochen since the summer of 1974 when I was on staff, working in the library and music library. I was glad to see things have changed only for the better, with several new buildings, including a new concert hall, theater, recital hall/chapel with pipe organ, art building and creative writing building. The Bowl has nice new seating and the old gym which doubled as a concert hall was reborn as a fantastic new library and music library. The only thing I could find to criticize was the women's dorm which seemed rather in need of a facelift.

The week we were there was the week after the Music Camp, which only lasts 6 weeks now (it was 8 weeks in my day), so we had pretty much the run of the place. The marching band camp seemed to stay mostly on the boys side and the adult band camp was always practicing somewhere, so I had a lot of quiet time to wander through all the various sites, some of which I had never seen since they were off limits in camp and academy days. The high school girls camp brought back so many great memories, as did the high school boys. Somehow everywhere I went I ran into inspiration and encouragement, from the words carved into a picnic table ("I can do all things through Him who gives me strength"), to the Linus cartoons with Lucy's laments about falling in love with a musician, which were present also in my day, to the pictures and mementos in Giddings Concourse, which has that same smell it had 37 years ago. There is a timeless feeling about Interlochen that I had almost forgotten, the pure clean pine air (no smoking allowed on campus), the almost deafening quiet save for the wind in the pines and gentle lapping of the lake.

There were about 45 people there from that era who had all reconnected through Facebook and decided to get together unofficially. We rented a recording studio in Traverse City for two nights and about half of us played, sang or otherwise entertained in what was truly a transcendental experience. I never expected to hear so many great tunes done so awesomely. What a lot of gifted geezers we have among us! Truly amazing talent which was streamed in a live webcast and is now being made into a DVD.

The last night we got back from the concert about midnight and decided to make s'mores on the beach behind Kresge. We had a few bottles of alcohol also, but were busted by the security guy for drinking on campus shortly after we got there. We had to pour some of it out on the sand, but a couple of bottles survived and we continued the party after he left until 5:00 when the same security guy came back and advised us that a storm was fast approaching. By this time the last bottle had been drained and we were all getting very silly and would have probably sat there and gotten drenched if he hadn't insisted we leave. We had been watching the lightning get closer and closer from over Lake Michigan and made it out just in time before the heavens opened.

The next morning was Sunday and after only a couple of hours of sleep we got up and had a spirit circle at Cindi's beautiful cabin, where the heavens opened again as we shared our thoughts and experiences from the reunion and what Interlochen and the people we have met there have meant to our lives. I struggled through my own unexpected tears of joy to express my gratitude for the gift of Interlochen in my life, and thoughts of all my newfound friendships sustained me in a very long and agonizing trip back to reality.

Moonrise over Lake Wahbekaness

St. Joseph of Arimathea

Almighty, everlasting God, Who didst entrust Thy most blessed servant, Joseph, to take down the lifeless body of Thine Only-Begotten Son from the Cross, and to perform the due offices of humanity, hasten, we pray Thee, that we, who devotedly recall His memory, may feel the help of Thine accustomed pity, through the same, Our Lord. Amen.

The Glastonbury Hymn

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon her clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded there
Among those dark Satanic mills?

- William Blake

Lauda Sion

Doth it pass thy comprehending?

Faith, the law of sight transcending

Leaps to things not understood.

Here beneath these signs are hidden

Priceless things, to sense forbidden,

Signs, not things, are all we see.

We celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi on June 11 in grand High Church style. We were a little bit light on altar servers but we had a great crowd for once. We were treated to a wealth of wonderful music in our choir's last appearance for the season, starting with the Mass in g-minor of Ralph Vaughan Williams and the motet O sacrum convivium by Thomas Tallis. Canon Osgood gave a very entertaining and edifying sermon, and we also had the Rev. Woodward from London in quire as well as Deacon Paul, so it was a lively event that went pretty well considering we didn't have a rehearsal. It was Craig's last appearance as MC and by the time it was over he seemed to be glad that the mantle had been lifted from his shoulders and I even felt a little envious of his newfound freedom, I must say. Our other retiring MC Frank was not able to attend, sadly, and it was the end of 22 years of altar service for him and about 10 for Craig at St. Ignatius and close to ten at SMV before that. In spite of all the arguments we have had over the years, I will miss their wisdom and grace under fire.

The procession and Benediction after Solemn Mass was the usual near chaos but we managed to wing our way through it even with the mixed signals and sotto voce stage directions from several quarters. The immortal words of Fr Wells again echoed in my mind a few times, wondering "will we ever learn how to do Benediction?" We had no torches but we did have two thurifers, I being one of them, and we had pretty good smoke up until we got back to the altar for the Tantum ergo (Elgar). There was just too much music, as beautiful as it was, having started out with Elgar's O salutaris hostia, then processing around slowly and by the start of the Tantum Ergo my coals were dead and we still had to get through the Te Deum (Vaughan Williams). The second thurifer had better luck with the bigger thurible, so we had a respectable amount of smoke, but not nearly as much as you should have for a Te Deum. It was really too much to add that on after Benediction and it made the service 2 hours and 20 minutes long, which is almost as long as the Easter Vigil. It was glorious but I think Te Deums should be done either on Trinity or at the Feast of Dedication. A hymn to end Corpus Christi is a lot more reasonable even for someone who generally says too much ain't enough.

Now we are into summer and everything is much simpler, with just one sung mass on Sundays. There are no urgent building projects at the moment so I have finally found some time to get back to my candle recycling project and have been spending one night a week in the kitchen making bottle candles and votives from melting down old candle stubs and paschal candles. We have amassed quite a bit of wax the past few years and it's a shame to let it go to waste. It's actually rather fun now that I've gotten the hang of it. Keeps me off the streets anyway.

25 Years On

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful;
Enkindle in us the fire of your love

I guess this painting gives a precedent for standing, sitting and lying on the altar, but I'm sure on the first day of Pentecost it was probably inevitable. That first rush of the Holy Spirit must have been awesome and gave original meaning to slain in the Spirit. These days it is all very formal and one who gets as carried away as those in this painting is most likely to be seen as mentally ill. We have our own extremist who comes around when the Spirit moves I suppose, caressing the statues and lighting candles, usually during the sermon or some very noticeable point in the service. She used to light her candle right from the altar before they were extinguished but was finally persuaded that was not kosher, so now she just likes to prostrate herself in the sanctuary after Mass and gets very irate if she is told that this is not done at St. Ignatius. Perhaps she is filled with the Spirit, but cursing me when I asked her politely (at coffee hour) to just kneel on the cushion at the rail and not enter the sanctuary and telling me I am going to incur the wrath of God for interfering with her prayers, somehow that doesn't sound like the Holy Spirit. We have this scene about once a year and I have gotten used to it, but it had to happen on the one Sunday in a long time that I got to sit in the Zabriskie pew and enjoy the service. Such is life at the shrine church.

This Holy Week was the last for two of our most senior MCs who are retiring, and the sacristy will not be the same without their wisdom and experience. Next year someone else will have to learn the Good Friday and Easter Vigil services and maybe Maundy Thursday also, who knows, but life goes on and we are training one new server and a new MC and welcoming back a former MC who will add some depth.

I was MC for Maundy Thursday, as I have been for the past 10 years, and it went very well until the Procession to the Altar of Repose. You'd think after 10 years I would remember that it is not like Corpus Christi, as I was waiting for the choir to start the O Salutaris. As Fr Wells famously shouted at Benediction once at St. Mary's, I was about to say "Will the choir please start the O Salutaris!" Luckily I restrained myself and we simply got going and the choir started the processional hymn.

Good Friday marked the 25th anniversary of my first service at St. Ignatius and I was able to "enjoy" (if one can possibly enjoy Good Friday) the liturgy from the Zabriskie pew in what was the first blessedly child-free Good Friday in recent memory. It was an appropriately cold and dark day and I was suffering from a terrible boil in a very inconvenient place. I was able to get through the service sitting very still, but had to go walking all over the West Side afterward looking for ichthamol ointment, which is rather hard to find these days. All in all, it made me feel very close to Job as I had been for several weeks during Lent after having a tooth pulled and suffering a splitting headache for 10 days straight, then getting this boil which felt like a volcano erupting. They say suffering is good for the soul, but I think it is overrated!

We had good crowds for all the services and quite a few visitors.The Great Vigil went well with some ceremonial adjustments, and we had a beautiful new fire from our new, fireman approved hibachi. We did the blessing of the water and paschal candle at the font this year, a first as far as I know. We had always done it in the sanctuary because we thought it couldn't be done at the font due to the height between font and covering, but Fr Blume got just the right angle to avoid dripping wax or having the follower fall off and it did work much better there as it was intended. We also started the practice of lighting everything from Easter through Pentecost from the original new fire, keeping the flame going in the sacristy until just a few days before Pentecost when we finally slipped and let it go out, but at least it was after Ascension.

I was subdeacon for Easter Day and that would have been fun if I hadn't been so tired, in spite of the earlier hour for the Vigil and actually getting a few hours sleep. It was a cold and windy Easter, Gilberto was in Philadelphia, Laurie and the gang had other plans, and I was in no mood for any kind of company this year, so I walked around Central Park for awhile. I found no solace there with the boisterous mobs and relentless wind, however, and I ended up in a movie, as usual, and a scary one at that (Knowing), but at least it put my little boil in perspective!

Procession, Easter Day Solemn Mass

Old Time Religion

I found this picture of the old St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Belton, Texas, as it appeared in the latter days of its life as a functioning church. It was abandoned to the Bell Fine Arts Assn. when the new St. Luke's was built in 1970 and for many years was an art gallery and museum. I found this article about how it now sits in dire repair, although with some hope of restoration funding.

I came into St. Luke's in the fall of 1970 when they had just moved into the new church. I needed money to finance the next summer at Interlochen so I was desperately seeking employment and just by chance happened upon an ad outside the music department of Mary Hardin Baylor College seeking an organist for St. Luke's.  I had studied piano for 5 years and organ for a couple of years so I decided to try out for the job. I had some experience in church music having played piano for Sunday School and various other church activities in the First Baptist Church, so I had access to their wonderful grand piano and organ and could come in and play whenever I wanted, living just a block away. It became my second home in many ways, so when I was actually offered the job at St. Luke's, I was very torn about leaving the Baptists. I had many fond memories of years of choir practices and competitions, wonderful revivals and fellowship, and memorable services which included my cousin and me singing a duet and my voice cracking, whereupon we both fell apart in giggles. The choir director played to the end of the verse as we stood there and giggled. Then we had to slink down under our seats for the rest of the service. The pastor was not amused.

St. Luke's turned out to be a great turning point in my spiritual life. I loved the order of service and the music, so simple and sweet. They had a little Hammond organ and I did the best I could with it, but it suited the space, which was modern and clean but didn't have the quaint character of the old St. Luke's. I had rarely seen the inside of it in my 10 years in Belton, but it was always a fascinating and spiritual site to me and I often passed by wishing it was open. I do remember getting in to see it finally and it really did feel like a very holy place to me.

1970 was the first crest of the charismatic movement in the Episcopal church and our vicar was just out of Southwest Seminary, filled with the Spirit, quite genuinely. He was rather high church leaning and introduced a bit of incense, which was my first experience of frankincense. He also decided to introduce charismatic gifts to St. Luke's and we had several very interesting and probably Spirit filled gatherings where people spake in tongues and interpreted and may have been healed or delivered. I was only 16 and may or may not have really been speaking in tongues, but I definitely felt the Spirit there for the first time.  It was all too much for most of the church, however, and a parting of the ways was soon to come. I only spent one year there as organist and then got into Interlochen Arts Academy for my senior year and had to move on, but it was a year filled with much spiritual as well as musical growth and my mother and I went through confirmation class and got confirmed in the spring of 1971. Before I left for the summer at Interlochen (playing bassoon) I also went to some real Pentecostal churches with some friends and witnessed the real Holy Rollers. That was something to behold, but as much as I wanted to be a part of that, I didn't really feel the Spirit like I had at St. Luke's.  Which reminds me of the usher at St. Mary's who was heard to say to the woman who was slain in the Spirit and claimed that she had religion, "well you may have religion but you didn't get it here!"

Remembrance of Things Past

Grace Church, Traverse City, MI

This Lent has been a time of reconnecting with my roots through the miracle of Facebook and some of the most poignant memories have been of the time I spent at Interlochen, a magical place in northern Michigan dedicated to the fine arts. I spent 5 summers there and one academic year (my senior year in high school).  I have recently been immersed in remembering the people and events of that blessed time and more than once been astounded at what grace led me there. It was probably the happiest time of my life although I didn't realize it at the time. There were many terrifying moments amid all the wonder and it was truly a rite of passage for my spiritual as well as musical education.

I spent many Sunday mornings at Grace Episcopal Church in Traverse City, trying to keep up my recent entrance into the Episcopal Church just the year before. I remember being one of the very few who actually got on the bus to go to a Sunday service, most of my fellow students rather smirking at my spiritual leanings, although my then boyfriend often accompanied me and being an organist took the opportunity to play a little on the organ there. He has since become the music director at the British Embassy in Tokyo, so perhaps that early experience also guided his career, if not his spirituality, somewhat.

The summer before, I had my first encounter with a satanist at Interlochen and remember taking his satanic bible and hurling it into the trash in a fit of righteous rage. It did little but cause a howl of laughter from him and his friends, but I felt like I had stood up for the true path regardless of how little it seemed to accomplish.  During the year I was also subjected to quite a bit of ridicule but I stood my ground even though it did little to enhance my popularity. The following year in Boston when I entered the conservatory I gradually succumbed to fitting in and only occasionally made it out on a Sunday to attend Church of the Advent, and by the time I hit New York I had ceased going to church all together. It would be seven years before I finally looked up St. Ignatius, which I had heard of at the Advent and was advised to attend when I got to New York. And the rest, as they say, is history.

"What is life but a series of preludes to that unknown song whose initial solemn note is tolled by Death? The enchanted dawn of every life is love; but where is the destiny on whose first delicious joys some storm does not break?"  (from Les Preludes by Alphonse Lamartine)

Les Preludes, final concert at Interlochen, summer 1969

The Cornerstone

How dreadful is this place: this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven: and it shall be called the house of God.

For the Feast of Dedication, which fell on a Sunday this year, February 8, we processed from the altar out the West End door and around the block to the cornerstone, accompanied by the choir and the Sarum plainchant Urbs beata Jerusalem, where we gave thanks to God and our benefactors, past and present, for this sacred place that we call our spiritual home.  It was an unusually warm  and pleasant day as we marveled at the bright and shining cornerstone and the rest of the wondrously clean stonework.

We had some wonderful English music for the Solemn Mass, Leighton's Missa Brevis, and Bairstow's Blessed City, heavenly Salem for the motet, which was quite long but glorious. I was MC so I didn't catch much of the prelude, Messiaen's Vision of the Eternal Church, but I hear it was marvelously ethereal.

 

The Monday before the Dedication was Candlemas and that was also wonderful.  One of our  ensembles in residence, Amor Artis, provided the music and did a fine job on Viadana's Missa "L'hora Passa" and Palestrina's Alma Redemptoris Mater. We had invited Bishop Taylor but had not heard whether he was able to attend until he suddenly appeared in the sacristy a half hour before the service. I'm glad I was only crucifer since we suddenly had to switch into Solemn Mass in the presence of a Bishop mode. We didn't have time to put up a throne and he insisted on sitting in the back clergy stall which is neither very comfortable for sitting nor very accessible for blessing incense and Gospel books, but we managed with a minimum of fuss. This was Bishop Taylor's last visit before he retires in May back to his home in Kingston, Jamaica, so it was a rather poignant occasion. He gave one of his long and captivating sermons and most of us were in tears by the end.

On February 12 the episode of 30 Rock that was filmed at St. Ignatius aired and it was really quite funny.  They made our statues appear rather scary and they used several of their prop statues that were pretty horrible, but the church looked great. You can view the episode here:  http://www.nbc.com/30_Rock/video/episodes/?vid=1014041

 

Ash Wednesday came much too soon and we did it without a rehearsal so things were a bit chaotic. I was subdeacon and spent most of the first part wondering where I was supposed to be. As usual the ashes weren't wet enough and they ended up flaking all over my alb. The deacon and subdeacon are down to amice and alb for Lent which will really make us feel penitent, but this too shall pass. 

Death Don't Have No Mercy

January was a cruel month. It started with the Feast of the Holy Name which was very cold. I was thurifer and a bit grumpy (even without much of a real hangover) and managed to spill the precious Omani frankincense all over the carpet during the first censing of the altar at the Sung Mass when I tried to get the MC to hold the boat closer to the bowl and we collided in midair. We had a rather small crowd but God was glorified and afterward I had a nice brunch at Carmine's with my old pals from SMV, Walter Morton and his newly baptized wife, Miyoko. They are both at St. Paul's Carroll Street now and enjoying that quaint conservative haven.

The Feast of the Epiphany was especially wonderful, with Lionheart providing the music. They sang the Obrecht Missa “De tou bien plaine” in exquisite style. I was able to enjoy the service from the Zabriskie pew for once and it was most refreshing. We had a good crowd and a lot of visitors. Spirits were high and Fr Blume was looking forward to a nice week or so in Paris.

Who could have guessed that four days later we would be mourning the sudden tragic death of Nicholas Kau, 18 years old, who somehow fell from a 9th floor window early on January 10th. I had seen Nicholas grow up at St. Ignatius and was sad to remember having thrown away one of his Sunday School drawings of a Station of the Cross a few years ago during one of the cleanup days. Nicholas was born on Easter Sunday 1990, the third son of Randall and Elizabeth, two of our long-time members. I remember him as such a sweet boy, always with a big smile. In recent years he had been quite a star in the theater as well as on the athletic field at Trinity and apparently had quite a fan club there, where he had graduated last Spring.

There were about 300 people there for the Friday night Vigil and 518 people there for his Solemn Mass of the Resurrection on January 17, many of them young people. Even Murray Kempton did not have so many people at his funeral. We spent several days getting ready for it. It was imperative that we get the library cleaned up so that we could have people up there during the Vigil, so I spent two evenings in there getting things straightened up and tossed out, with the help of our sexton. We got rid of some dilapidated chairs, several old computers, quite a bit of accumulated paper and debris, and by Friday morning it actually looked like a nice room, although still in need of major floor work.

On Thursday I had to spend a bit of time negotiating for a couple of porta-potties for outside since we only have 3 johns in the whole place and were expecting at least 500 people for the funeral. Fr Harding was in charge of preparations since Fr Blume was on vacation and not getting back until Thursday night. In the midst of deciding which johns we wanted and when and where we were going to put them, Fr Harding's beeper went off and he had to rush down to the famous Miracle on the Hudson plane splash to be a fire chaplain. Luckily his services were not much needed that day.

Friday I took the day off and we spent most of the day getting ready for the Vigil that night. We had a lot of work to do to get the place ready. There were several people arranging flowers (since it was white Mass of the Resurrection flowers are allowed) and I spent about an hour getting the bier lights looking nice since they had orangish beeswax all over them from All Souls, and I had to melt it off with the heatgun. Friends from the Tribeca Film Festival donated their services of a professional AV crew that set up a whole system to pipe the service down to the undercroft with two big flat screens. Another friend had a catering service and sent over 150 decent folding chairs to set up down there for the funeral and they were all used. That was a first for us, to have the need for an overflow capacity, but it worked pretty well I hear. They also brought some things to make the undercroft look a little more pleasant and another friend had some beautiful and heartbreaking pictures of Nicholas enlarged and put up around the room.

It was great to see Fr Stowe again and he preached a wonderful and very appropriate homily, although he fell victim to the sacristy ghost who made off with his vintage Wippell surplice sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. We look forward to its reappearance someday but in the meantime Fr Stowe is quite bereft since he had been ordained in it in 1970. It was good to see Fr Parsons also and we three strolled down memory lane a bit before the Vigil. It was great to see several other old friends that had been away for awhile, although it is very sad that it takes someone dying for us to come together again.

The day of the funeral was the coldest day we had in quite awhile and I felt sorry for those who had to venture outside to the john. I was thurifer for the Mass of the Resurrection and it was quite amazing to come down the aisle looking at such a full house. I don't think any of us had ever seen it that full. We even had about 25 people seating in the Lady Chapel. It got so crowded down by the bier during communion that two of the glass votive lights got knocked off and smashed, spilling wax and shards of glass all around. Just when we had the first one cleaned up, the second one went down. Somehow it only seemed an appropriate background to the many sobbing teenagers who mourned poor Nicholas and gathered around his family with condolences. It was surely the saddest funeral I had ever attended at St. Ignatius, and there have been some sad ones. But the Mass was just ethereal, with the choir (mostly not our regular choir but some splendid hired voices) doing the Victoria Missa Pro Defunctis after opening with Morley's Burial Anthems. After the Commendation someone sang Loch Lomond and then a firefighter played the bagpipes at the procession. Nicholas was a great lover of all things Scottish and also all things Hawaiian. He had just had a wonderful vacation in Hawaii over the Christmas holidays with his grandmother where he basked in the warm sun that he loved so much. She sent three beautiful leis made of hundreds of petals of different flowers which were placed on his bier. The altar flowers were birds of paradise and other tropical plants. It was all so heartbreakingly beautiful, I was glad I had a lot of smoke to hide behind.

We learned of the death of former parishioner and semi-famous editor Tom Congdon in early January also. He and Connie had retired to Nantucket in the early 1990s and I was glad I had been to see them a few years ago in their quaint Nantucket house on Pine Street, near St. Paul's Church. We remembered fondly their Easter Even parties at their 87th Street townhouse in the late 1980s. We would get out of the Vigil around 1:30 am and head over to a royal feast with endless champagne that often lasted until around 4:00 am. Getting up for Easter Sunday was not so easy, and once the MC of the day never made it, so Fr Stowe suggested we start having the festivities in the Undercroft and it was never again so much fun as it was at the Congdons.

Another Auld Lang Syne

drawing by Lelia Ryan
based on High Altar window of St. Ignatius

We had a gift of some wonderful Omani frankincense from a parishioner who was over there recently and I made a Christmastide blend adding some myrrh and the rest of last year's blend. It was somehow a much purer essence than the Somali frankincense we have in stock but we will have to save it for the highest feasts since it is only a pound. I wish we could get a consistent supply of it for it truly is a much superior product, huge teardrops that release a heavenly scent when broken up and burned. Our thurifer for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve really made some wonderful smoke and only a handful of the 166 people who came did not stay for the whole service. I saw a group heading for the exit after the opening procession, and thought that the smoke must have been too much for them, but apparently they were there just for the carol service for some odd reason. It was great to have a nice crowd for once and the service went well in spite of not having quite enough servers, a few of us being ill (myself included but I managed to get through it as an acolyte). The MC doubled as crucifer (in the festive tunicle) and the Subdeacon rang the tower bell at the elevations from underneath the humeral veil. The next morning I had to get up early to be MC, and most of us came back and did it again for a much smaller crowd at 11am after not enough sleep. Then I went out to Forest Hills to celebrate with Laurie and the gang, which was fun even in my exhausted and sickly state.

Last night the choir gave a wonderful concert of three Christmas oratorios by Bach with a small orchestra that was just superb. The church was almost full and it was a good mix of parishioners, neighborhood people and music lovers. For once the church was warm enough for comfort after we had the whole heating system cleaned out and a new motor installed on one of the blowers a couple of weeks ago. That combined with all the cracks and crevices we sealed up on the north wall have made the place comfortably warm, and the Omani frankincense still lingering in the air and the aisle candlesticks glowing gave the place a very nice atmosphere. Perhaps some of our visitors will even come back for a service.

And so another calendar year draws to a close tonight. Let us pray that '09 is a good and joyous one in spite of all the uncertainty that abounds.

Don't look so sad,
It's not so bad you know.
It's just another night,
That's all it is, it's not the first,
It's not the worst you know,
We've come through all the rest,
We'll get through this.
- B. Manilow

A Windy New Year

Church of the Incarnation
Dallas, TX

I went to the Choral Eucharist at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas on Advent I, accompanied by Gilberto. Fleeing the Diocese of Ft. Worth, we drove 75 miles from my brother's house in Granbury and his Baptist relations from Garland met us there. They had never been to an Episcopal service but were game participants, following along with all the ups and downs, although no crossing or bowing, and even received Communion. Afterward they said they had enjoyed it but could not see making a habit of it, their own service was much livelier.

It was a "bells but no smells" Rite I Choral Eucharist, and for some reason there were 8 candles on the altar. We were impressed to see a mitre coming down the aisle at the procession and Bp. Burton (a young Canadian Bishop who has lately come down to this gig) had a nice presence and gave a decent sermon on the meaning of Advent. They had a very fine choir, although the mass settings were out of the hymnal, and they did a nice motet at the Offertory but the leaflet gave no details on the music or the readings. Afterward our Baptist friends remarked that they had already been singing Christmas carols that morning in their early service and were amused that we were so joyously singing Lo He Comes with Clouds Descending as the hymn called for deeply wailing. But they were impressed that there was an Advent wreath although I never did see it get lit.

The Sunday before, we celebrated Christ the King in grand High Church style with Bp. Sisk celebrating and confirming 2 and receiving 1 into our fold. We had a great crowd, with both 9:00 and 11:00 congos combined and several visitors from GTS and elsewhere. I was thurifer and did better this time with kneeling on my left knee since I had learned to use it when my right knee was injured for several weeks last Spring. But I managed to get branded by the hot chain when I knelt down and then had to hold up the thurible for incense. I was just on the verge of dropping it when Our Grace finally got through sprinkling and blessing and I could move my hand. At least he didn't say the whole Latin prayer like the Rector does. It was also the anniversary of Fr. Blume's institution on Christ the King 2007 by Bp. Sisk and we gave thanks for that. Bp. Sisk loves playing high church for the day and goes along gamely with all the MC throws at him. We put up a full throne for him and he gets a kick out of that. He even donned the pontifical dalmatic under our Christ the King chasuble.

After a festive reception and brunch we came back for Solemn Evensong, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction. I had to jump in as MC and we got by with just a thurifer and two acolytes, and no canopy. It was not our most glorious Procession of the Sacrament, with only a handful of people in the congo, but perhaps we have passed into a new era where the monstrance need not fear the open air and Our Lord might even deign to be jostled a bit at the porch when the doors have not been opened for Him. We do Benediction a little different every time and this time was no different. But God was glorified and it was a lovely way to end the Church Year and start Thanksgiving week.

The next day I flew down to Dallas with Gilberto and we spent the next week driving 1100 miles around Texas seeing various friends and family, dropping by Lake Belton for lunch with some friends, spending one night in San Antonio and taking a stroll along the Riverwalk on a perfect night, then ending up in Spring for a warm 3 day Thanksgiving family reunion of 25 people. It was the first time my three brothers and I had all been together in a few years and it was wonderful to meet two new members of the next generation and a new Iranian nephew-in-law and to see nephews and nieces I hadn't seen in awhile. And it was nice to see Texas and once again remember all I love and hate about it. It was wonderfully warm in San Antonio and Spring but I had forgotten how cold and windy Dallas can be and that Saturday as we traveled northward into a blue norther, it felt more like Boston than Dallas.

After church we went over to the West End to Sonny Bryan's for barbecue sandwiches and then our Baptist friends gave us a tour of downtown Dallas (it has changed a bit in the 30 years since I worked at the Dallas Public Library for a year). Then we made our way back to Granbury in the blinding sunset to my brother's new house by the lake. Granbury is rather like the town in The Last Picture Show, a very long way from downtown Dallas. But there's not even a movie house in town, so we watched Run Silent Run Deep at home and had rum drinks till we passed out. We left the next day for New York after walking around the quaint old town square and having a wonderful Texas cheeseburger at Grump's. It was still windy as Hell and about 10 degrees colder than New York. Just in case I might ever feel nostalgic about the place.

Proclaiming the Gospel,
Christ the King

The End of an Era

October 26, 2008

At long last the scaffolding came down and a bright shining church was revealed last Friday, the octave of the Feast of St. Ignatius, which we had celebrated in grand High Church style the Sunday previous. When I got there it was already twilight, then Saturday we had a near hurricane all day so I had to wait until Sunday morning to really see how wonderful it looks. It feels like a new era has begun and tomorrow we will put up a new flag and then it's on to less glamorous projects like nailing down the loose shingles and patching up the bell tower and apartment roofs. I'm so glad our new leaf screens on the gutters will mean we only have to have them cleaned every 2 or 3 years rather than twice a year. With the new roof over the narthex and holes in the party wall sealed up we should finally have a dry porch and dungeon. And it already feels warmer with all the other gaps that were filled up. The windows look much brighter also and now we must pray for funds to finally clean the inside.

October 4 we said goodbye to the Cursillo Kid, Kevin Farley, with a "Burial of the Dead" service at St. Mary's. I'm pretty sure Kevin would have preferred a black requiem, but they apparently don't do black anymore there, so it was white and a Mass of the Resurrection, with Fr. Wells celebrating and Fr. Gerth assisting and preaching. It was good to see and hear Fr. Wells at the altar and he was in very fine form 10 years after retirement. It was a lovely service with readings and music that Kevin had chosen. The choir did a splendid job with the beautiful Durufle Requiem and also gave us Bruckner's Ave Maria and Mozart's Ave Verum before the service. It was great to see many old time St. Marians and Cursillistas there and hear a rousing Alleluia, Sing to Jesus at the Offertory. Kevin's cortege down to the Holy Sepulchre in Trenton was too far a trip for most of us, but afterward 12 of us toasted Kevin in grand Irish style at the Playwright Tavern and proposed creating a new Cursillo wristband with WWKD (What Would Kevin Do) on it. October 4 was also the 29th anniversary of his (and the NY Diocese's) first Cursillo weekend. I dare say there will never be anyone more devoted to Cursillo than Kevin. Well done, good and faithful servant.

Kevin Farley
1/30/22--9/25/08

War in Heaven

"But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath,
because he knows that his time is short!"

I got to read that great passage from Revelation 12 last night as subdeacon at the High Mass on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. We had a small but worshipful congo and our 4 voice evensong choir. No acolytes either, but we managed okay. There was no procession since our St. Michael shrine is at the high altar. We just smoked him really well a couple of times and had a nice bright votive light for him. He needs a good dusting off as do all the statuary after the summer's exterior cleaning project. The outside is really looking wonderful and who knew we had pink granite at the base. I can't wait until the scaffolding is taken down after they finish replacing the roof over the narthex and installing leaf screens for all the leaders. Then we must focus on fixing the other roof problems at least temporarily to get us through the winter. Recent storms have manifested a number of problem areas where water is getting in, over the organ chamber, around the skylight and the apartment skylight. Insurance companies are looking for every reason not to help us, and who can blame them in this economic climate. But hopefully we will be qualified for some kind of grant for at least part of the expense.

In other news, I got to hear the High Priest of Honky Tonk, the great Ray Price, a couple of weeks ago up in Monticello. My cousin, Laura Hazelbaker, plays fiddle with his band and she flew in from Cincinnati the day before and we drove up. I got to hang out with Ray and the band on his bus and that was a trip. Not quite as wild as Willie's bus, but close, with a great pre-show ritual of whiskey shots and orange soda chasers with a Mexican toast. It was a great show, even though the venue (a racetrack!) was not quite the acoustic delight that Radio City was, but Ray's voice, even at 82, is still so wonderful. He sang all his great songs and the band was just classic authentic honky tonk.

I'm sad to report the death of the Cursillo Kid, Kevin Farley, last Thursday. Kevin was one of the first people I met at St. Mary's back in 1996 and I believe the one that persuaded me to jump ship and join SMV for a 3-year term. He also persuaded me to go on Cursillo (something I could never have imagined on my own) and we served on several teams together. I'll never forget his Father Farley in the sacraments skit on one team. He was in seminary to become a Roman priest when his spiritual adviser had told him that he took his religion much too seriously to be a priest. He dropped out soon after that and became a public servant but also a devoted member of St. Mary's, having converted soon after Fr. Wells became the rector, and was thereafter a spiritual presence there serving at the altar and in many other capacities. Kevin's love of Cursillo was profound since he had been on the very first weekend in New York back in 1979, along with Fr. Wells. He was diocesan lay director for many years and a constant fixture at clausura and ultreyas until just a few years ago when his and his partner's health began to fail. He will be buried in Trenton after a High Requiem at St. Mary's on Saturday, mostly likely with Fr. Wells celebrating. Kevin left very explicit instructions and if I know him, it will be a lovely and very old fashioned requiem with a Cursillo tune or two thrown in, no doubt.

Almighty God, we give you thanks for all the benefits you have given us, you who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.

A Grand Assumption

Mystical rose, Tower of David, House of god, Tower of ivory,
Ark of the covenant, Gate of heaven, Morning star, Pray for us.

We had a grand feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15. Our choir was back for a command performance and did a fine rendition of that first polyphonic mass by Machaut. It was a dark and stormy night but we had a good crowd with many visitors. We processed to the Shrine of St. Mary and Our Lord, which was nicely adorned with roses and some devotee had scattered a small sea of rose petals, which was a nice touch. It was the debut of our new deacon, Rev. Paul Kahn, and he did a fine job with an excellent singing voice for the Gospel. We only sang one Marian hymn, however, which rather disappointed a few of us, and I would much rather have heard Charpentier's Missa Assumpta est Maria. I went home and listened to it on CD but it wasn't quite the same. It was the tenth anniversary of the St. Mary's diaspora and I was reminiscing on that glorious Assumption at SMV on a hot Friday 10 years ago. I had gone by the Shrine Church of St. Mary at lunch hour to pay my annual respects. They were in the midst of the sung mass as I arrived, so I enjoyed Kenny's latest blend as I said a prayer at the shrine and asked her forgiveness for saying for many years that she didn't live there anymore. For years it really felt that way after the great debacle that was the end of the Wells era there, for which I was witness three years before returning to the Ignatian fold. I thought about that day ten years ago that I had so enjoyed being subdeacon for the Solemn Mass. It was probably the grandest High Mass I'd ever been subdeacon for and it was a wonderful if blazing hot night complete with the now-discontinued procession of the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, although by then without those mythical twinkling lights. Three days later the infamous train wreck occurred which sent 10 faithful MCs and acolytes fleeing the premises and rang down the curtain on an era of the SMV sacristy although it was the beginning of a new one at St. Ignatius.

I Cover the Waterfront

St. Joseph of Arimathea and Our Lord landing in Britain

I always think of today, July 31, as the Feast of St. Joseph of Arimathea, although most calendars now have him tomorrow and the Romans I think have August 31. I've always loved the legend of him taking young Jesus over to Glastonbury with him on a tin trading mission and letting him stay there a few years among the Druids as part of his "lost years". Then, all those years later, after being thrown in prison when Our Lord disappeared from his tomb, Joseph was visited by Jesus and given the mission of taking the Holy Grail to Glastonbury and starting the first church there. I think it would make a great opera and hope to get down to work on that one day soon.

Meantime, work goes on at the shrine church of St. Ignatius, and the outside of the north wall is almost done being repointed, waterproofed and cleaned. I went up on the scaffolding with our architect to survey some of the roof problems and that was interesting if more than a bit scary (not to mention illegal). We discovered the source of our narthex and dungeon waterfalls to be some missing bricks in the party wall with The Boulevard so that alone was worth the trip. Now if we can just get them to help with the repairs we can perhaps even start using that corner of the dungeon again.

There were so many logistical problems with the interior cleaning phase that we decided to just continue working on the exterior instead, so the west wall will be done next along with some critical roof repairs, including leaks in the apartment roof and the copper flashing above the organ pipe chamber. Hopefully when we are through all the current waterproofing problems will be cured. Then we can start planning for the interior cleaning, which I hope will be done in my lifetime.

I've been rereading some of Barbara Pym's novels this summer and many days feeling like a character out of one of them. Some day I may write a book about all the characters I've known at St. Ignatius, perhaps a roman a clef to protect the innocent. We've said goodbye to several good parishioners this year and a few have just disappeared. One died, one got married, a few are still mad about something or other, one went back over to Rome, one moved to North Carolina, one moved to Ohio, one is moving to DC, one lost his mind and another just sank into a very deep slough of despond. I miss them all, believe it or not, but hope we start getting some new faces this Fall. We're getting a Deacon (a real one) in September, the Rev. Paul Kahn, lately at Good Shepherd, so that should liven things up.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

A Cheeseburger In Paradise

Mayan Observatory at Chichen Itza

I had a great time on the cruise to the Yucatan aboard the Carnival Ecstasy. We ran into a little rough weather from Arthur, the first tropical storm of the season, but were very grateful that he kept things mostly cloudy while we were in Cozumel and Chichen Itza, else we would truly have roasted. The beautiful turquoise Caribbean sea was a bit muddy for our subocean trip but we did see some beautiful fish and coral reefs even with cloudy skies.

We were a group of 14, 10 of us schoolmates back in Belton, Texas, class of '72. We were the Cruisin' Chicks and t-shirts to match, with one rooster, everybody's favorite boyfriend Billy and his wife Linda, who kept him well in hand. We were a scenic surprise wherever we went, especially when Henrietta, a fine looking old bird who had a most fetching cackle in all the wrong places, got to talking.

We started out in Galveston, spending the night before the cruise at the Holiday Inn Resort on the seawall, closing down Gaido's and causing a scene with Henrietta's cottonectomy. Jerri had stuffed cotton down her throat to try and keep her quiet, but we decided she needed her voice so it took a couple of coat hangers and several margaritas before she got her voice back, poor old thing. No wonder she was so talkative the rest of the trip.

The next day we set sail for Cozumel and it took us all of Sunday to get down there. It was the first Sunday in a few years that I did not go to church. Surprisingly there was no form of religious observance aboard the Ecstasy. I went to the gym instead and was treated to a wonderful view of the oncoming storm which was quite dramatic and made 20 minutes on the treadmill seem like fun. By the time we got to Cozumel on Monday morning Arthur was just a steady drizzle, which kept things cool, mercifully. After the subocean view we had lunch at Margaritaville and had a great time singing Jimmy Buffet songs and drinking strong margaritas, along with pretty good cheeseburgers. Afterward we stumbled around in the rain looking for souvenirs amid the constant sales pitches from the endless vendors, assuring us their stuff was "almost free". I did get a nice fishbone Last Supper and a wonderful Mayan tablecloth. That night after dinner Billy, Carleen and I smoked a fine Cuban cigar on deck with the captain accompanied by blue margaritas. Henrietta also took a few puffs and coughed her head off.

Tuesday we landed in Progresso, a small port from which we took a 2 hour bus trip to Chichen Itza and saw the Mayan pyramid, observatory and sports stadium. I didn't have time to see the well where the virgins were sacrified or the other ruins because we only had 2 hours. Their gods demanded a lot of sacrifices, with someone having to lose a heart, a head or some other body part at most every event. They were brilliant people for their time, if a bit extreme in their theology, and were very advanced astronomers and mathematicians. Some say they were space aliens or maybe a lost tribe of Israel. Our tour guide informed us that people think the current Mayan calendar has the world ending on December 20, 2012, but really that is just the day the space aliens will bring the new digital calendar and a new era of Mayan ascendancy will begin. We'll see.

Leaving Progresso we ran into some rough tides and many people were really lurching around and getting sick. My seabands kept me just borderline queasy and the rest of us good sailors managed to close down the Starlight karaoke doing "Friends in Low Places". Then after another blue margarita and the midnight Mexican buffet, we called it a day.

The last day I slept late and then went up to the top deck to get some fresh air and sun alone in my favorite spot under the front window with a great view ahead. Then I ran into some of the Chicks and we spent the rest of the day hopping from one watering hole to the next, drinking Ultimate Suntans, laughing our asses off, singing "Baby Got Back" at Kamikaze Karaoke and then ending up totally exhausted about 10pm and actually ready to get back to America. I don't think I could have stood any more fun.

Donna, Lisa, Carleen and me at Margaritaville, Cozumel

Those changes in latitude, changes in attitude
nothing remains quite the same
With all of our running and all of our cunning
If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.
If we weren't all crazy we would go insane.
(apologies to J. Buffett)

Let the Good Times Roll

It has been a rather somber and chilly Spring here in Gotham, so I am very much looking forward to my trip down to Galveston and the Yucatan tomorrow. I'm going on a cruise with a group of high school friends to Cozumel and Progreso to see some Mayan ruins and perhaps swim with the dolphins or go snorkeling, all of which I have never done before. I will be in Galveston only one night but I hope to get to the cathedral there and see the wonderful shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I hope to find her down in the Yucatan also but time is short. I ask her protection for the journey.

I'll miss the beginning of the restoration work, delayed a few weeks by details about how we are going to protect the Ralph Adams Cram Lady Chapel artwork and statutes of St. Ignatius and Our Lady. They're just putting up the sidewalk bridge and scaffolding to start on the outside on Monday so we have a few weeks to figure it out with the help of a few expert consultants. We will have a free-standing altar down by the statue of Our Lord since there will be scaffolding in the sanctury for about 8 weeks. It's going to be a long dusty summer in the shrine church, but the results will be glorious. I never thought I would live to see the Lady Chapel and the north wall including the wonderful St. Ignatius window cleaned. We may need to rethink having the thurifer parking in the Lady Chapel before the consecration in order to keep it clean.

We also must figure out how to pay for some necessary roof work, including a leak over the organ pipes which has already damaged several pipes due to corroded flashing along the outside wall. The roof over the apartment is leaking and must be replaced soon. The Lady Chapel also needs a new roof since it was done in a similar substance that only had a 15 year warranty 12 years ago. The shingles on the main roof also are showing signs of deterioration, well ahead of the 30 year warranty they purport to have. I'll be busy when I get back dealing with shingle manufacturers, roofing contractors and insurance claims so I will do my best to have a good time for a week.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death. Amen.

Great is thy Faithfulness

Gordon-Hurst Barrow+
January 5, 1915 - April 15, 2008

Fr. Barrow died a couple of weeks ago in Indianapolis, where he had spent the last several years near his son, also a priest,who lives there and helped him through his final years. He was 93 years old and had been a robust old man until a few years ago when he started falling and had to leave his Chelsea apartment for assisted living. He didn't say goodbye and I was left wondering where he went after that last dinner at the Oyster Bar a few years ago. He had called me one last time at work a few months later, wanting to go out for lunch one day, but I was busy and couldn't go, and he hung up in his usual fashion and didn't call again until one Saturday morning last fall when he had finally gotten a phone in his apartment in Indianapolis at the insistence of his children and he explained what had happened. He sounded very frail and had trouble putting things into words, but he seemed his old cranky indefatigible self, although grudgingly reconciled to life on a fast downhill tread. His daughter, Amanda, called me the Saturday after he died and we had a long talk about him. From all I had heard about her life and her art, I felt like I knew her although we have never met. She is organizing a memorial for him at St. Thomas', where he said a couple of weekday masses every week, so I look forward to that.

During our final talk I am thankful that I managed to express that I loved him and was grateful for all he had taught me and for all the wonderful masses and other meals we had shared over the years. I had served Saturday morning mass with him for several years back in the late 1980s/early 90s. After Mass in the Lady Chapel we said a decade of the Rosary sitting in the pews outside the Lady Chapel and then went and had coffee and pastries up in the Common Room or went somewhere for brunch. He loved to tell stories of his life, which were always interesting, and he loved to talk about his four children who all had interesting lives as well. His wife had died several years ago and he had moved to New York after retiring. He was also a good carpenter and one summer very generously built me a wonderful chickenwire and wood cage for my pet iguana, Iggy. Poor Iggy died a few years later after outgrowing the cage and getting way too big, tangling with the cats and eventually dying from eating their food, which I should have known was bad for a vegetarian like him.

Fr. Barrow was also very old fashioned and we eventually stopped speaking to each other for a few years over the women and gay clergy issues. I can't remember how we made up, but eventually we were back going out to dinner, his favorite activity along with going to the gym, which he did religiously almost every day, rising at 4:00am and getting to the gym right when it opened at 6:00. For several years we went to the same gym, at the Worldwide Plaza, and I would often see him there intrepidly working out.

Fr. Barrow was a very frugal man and lived in a bare-bones studio apartment furnished mostly with furniture and shelves he had made himself. I was only invited there once, when he decided to give me his vintage Raleigh bicycle, which was way too big for me but I took it anyway and made some use of it for many years. He kept books in his oven and only made coffee there, which he was passionate about, always taking great care in the brewing. He had trouble sleeping so he slept on the floor, but he refused to have a television or even a telephone for the last 20 years in New York. He woke up on September 12, 2001 and went down to the big post office near Penn Station where he would always get his mail as soon as it was put in the box. Finding the eerie dawn streets and the unimaginably closed post office he couldn't figure out what had happened until he asked a man wandering dazed and confused what was going on and he told him in an incredulous tone that New York had been attacked the day before and described having seen the first airplane going down Eighth Avenue.

For a few years Fr. Barrow slept on the floor of the Common Room at St. Ignatius on Friday night so he would be up early for Saturday mass. He loved to sit near the back of the north wall and meditate/doze, and when I arrived for mass I often found him sitting near the Centurion window where there was a tiny bit of heat seeping out of the radiator on the wall. It was freezing in the winter and blazing in the summer and there was no solution, he used to say. After he left, in the early 1990s when he cottoned on to the fact that we had gay and women clergy in our midst, the heating got better, thanks to Ted and Maurice, the rain gutter system was redone, and these days he would probably find it quite toasty, but back then it was very cold for a very long time and there were often cascades of water in that area. I think of him often when I sit back there myself on a sunny Saturday afternoon enjoying our newfound warmth after sealing up many holes in the south wall. And blessedly, tomorrow begins the restoration of the north wall which will undoubtedly seal up even more cracks. It will be a few months before we can enjoy that area again, but it will be wonderful to have the whole north wall, inside and outside, repointed and the windows recaulked and cleaned, as well as the Lady Chapel. Then we must find some more money to secure the roof over the Lady Chapel as well as over the apartment. It will be a busy summer.

Iggy in 1987

Back to the Valley

It was supposed to be "Back to the Mountain". I had been looking forward to this weekend retreat, the second one of its kind, a reunion for Cursillistas hoping to recapture that mountaintop experience that Cursillo often provides. I had made my Cursillo almost 12 years ago, which was a great experience at that time in my life and yielded several close friends and a resurrection of my keyboard playing skills (such as they are) in nine subsequent Cursillo weekends over the next 10 years as a member of the music team. I had been a bit disillusioned with Cursillo the past few years after some truly awful liturgical and musical moments and had put my volume of praise music on the back shelf until I was asked to play keyboard for this weekend. I hesitated and then said why not and had been actually enjoying playing those tunes again, and it even inspired me to finally get a decent full digital keyboard so I could really start practicing again. We had one rehearsal which went pretty well, the guitars and singers were well above the norm for these weekends, so I went up to Graymoor on Friday hoping for the best. Barbara Crafton is always wonderful and her "Fireside Chat" would be worth the trip even if all else was a drudge.

It had been a wonderful Holy Week at St. Ignatius, no blowups and all the liturgies went very smoothly, with heavenly music and good attendance, and I hoped to continue the Easter spirit through Low Sunday before descending to the inevitable valley. But it was not to be. The music team leader (a rock and roll guitarist who confessed to not being able to read music, nor understanding how the music for a eucharist worked, himself not going to church very often) was on my case for playing too many extra notes in the songs (I play from arrangements, not the one note in the songbook) and was always telling me not to play so loud while I couldn't even hear myself the whole weekend for his loud banging away on his 3 power chords. Then he decided I wasn't to play for the highlight of the weekend, the Fireside Chat, supposedly because he couldn't find the cord for the electronic keyboard in the chapel, meanwhile there was a perfectly good piano in the corner, on wheels even. The Chat and eucharist were okay, but sort of ruined for me by someone telling a stupid joke spontaneously right after Communion. It had been a very informal consecration, with Deacon DePue doing a silly running ad lib against Barbara's attempt to be instructional, but the joke was taking it way too far.

However, the real moment furthest from Christ came during the last service on Sunday morning, which was Morning Prayer because all the priests had either had to return home to their parishes or were ill or their dog was ill. So we were left with Deacon DePue, who was just delighted that her moment to shine had finally come. This woman had driven me over the edge a couple of times before on other weekends with her antics, but today she not only hijacked the final music session with one of her "tunes" but she offered to give a "homily" for Morning Prayer and that my dear readers was the fabled straw that broke my back. She got up, hiked the altar cloth up and planted her fat butt right on the altar to give her homily. It was supposed to be on the subject of placing your heart and soul on the altar (and yes, even your ass) rather than obsessing about objects like candles and flowers. That could have been a worthy topic, but I really don't think God (not to mention the dear friars of the St. Francis Chapel) appreciated her butt sitting on His altar. I know I didn't and this is just one reason why Cursillo gets such bad press. No one seemed to bat an eye at this and several people were just thrilled at such innovative preaching. As for me, I'll just stay down in the valley next time.

The Art of Dying

Jacques Crosby
12-25-31-
2-22-08

There'll come a time when all of us must leave here
Then nothing Sister Mary can do
Will keep me here with you.*

This is the way I remember Jacques best, on a silent Ignatian retreat at St. John Baptist convent in Mendham on an early Spring Sunday, taking a stroll around the grounds, observing the wildlife. We would often pass on that long winding road going up to the old cemetery and nod to each other, keeping silent comraderie. Once he fell asleep under a tree and missed dinner, having us worried that he had fallen somewhere deep in the woods. But he finally got home in time for a few morsels I seem to remember, quite mortified to have been so late.

Those were wonderful retreats and I was blessed to have been on quite a few arranged by Jacques in the early years of this decade. It was his mission to keep up the tradition of the silent retreat, which is rather a dying practice I believe. It seemed odd for Jacques, who loved to talk and laugh, to be so into silence for a whole weekend, but I loved it, tactiturn soul that I am. Fr. Stowe had started the tradition and we went for about a decade with him, then Fr. Hitchcock continued them for a few more years, with Jacques insisting on the silence and himself making all the arrangements for several years. Finally we stopped going when the good Sisters insisted on filling the house with all and sundry other retreatants and it was very hard to keep silence when all around were Zen groups chanting and carrying on, or a vestry retreat from Paramus yakking their heads off. We tried going up to Vails Gate one year after that, but it wasn't quite the same, although Dr. Norris led some wonderful talks on his just released Songs of Solomon book. That was only a few weeks before Dr. Norris' sudden death so it was very special that we had that time with him.

Dr. Norris and Jacques both left us quite unexpectedly. Jacques had just found out that what he thought was just an ulcer was in fact galloping lymphoma and was facing a very grim future of endless treatments and procedures. It was not the kind of existence I could imagine Jacques dealing with very well, so it was a very bittersweet blessing that he just decided to check out early last Friday morning. When I called there around 11am a policeman answered and said that he had been found dead on the bathroom floor, of natural causes apparently. His neighbor had insisted on opening his door when he hadn't answered.

We will send him off in High Church style with a Solemn Requiem this Saturday at 10:30am, and then he will be interred later next to the transept door, which he had charge of opening and closing for the entrance and exit of the ministers of the altar the past several years. I think I helped create that position of doorkeeper and it really does help to have someone holding the doors rather than us juggling thuribles and candlesticks, struggling to keep it open as we pass through. It was a perfect job for Jacques, who always deigned to serve in whatever useful role he could: staying behind to take communion last in order to watch over the congo's possessions until they were back in their seats. He saw a job that needed to be done and he did it. I will miss him very much on Saturday afternoons, when he would always come by and tend to the flowers and we'd catch up on the latest gossip.

I didn't get to say goodbye to Jacques and the last time I talked to him, only two days before he died, we did not discuss the exact state of his condition, nor even talk about anything important. I think I joked about envying him his weight loss. We were both tired and he sounded very low so I didn't want to keep him long. I could not imagine there would not be another time to thank him for his friendship and all the good times we had. We had not been as close in the recent past as we once were. The last time we really sat down to dinner together was last Easter Even and then the storm clouds were brewing over the Palm Sunday incident which would leave many of us with divided loyalties. I didn't get a chance to tell him how much I really loved him, so I guess this silly blog, which he heartily disapproved of, will have to hear it.

I'll see you in the sky above,
In the tall grass, in the ones I love,
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.**

* G. Harrison

** B. Dylan

Where is my Valentine?

I had the nicest valentine I've had in years this morning when Dr. Goofoff's office called and said they were writing off the balance ($618) of my root canal after receiving my letter. I almost felt bad about revealing all that about her, but then I remembered the hours I spent in that chair and I was still glad I sent it.

It was a blessedly quiet day at work and I was able to get a lot of work done on the new Triduum Sacrum books, last published in 1980 by Fr. Stowe. The new rector has updated and corrected several things, with RSV readings replacing the King James except for Good Friday. The old books had a lot of typos and had gotten very shabby so it's high time they were redone.

I always recall on this day all the wretched Valentine's Days I've had and wonder if there will ever be another good one in this lifetime. I couldn't help remembering the Valentine's Day dinner I had with Fr. Hitchcock after Stations and Benediction on the first Friday of Lent 1997. I was thurifer and while we were at the last station I heard the sacristy door rattling. I figured it was someone having trouble with their key, but then when I went back in the sacristy to get the thurible for Benediction, I saw someone rushing out the other door. I still didn't realize anything was wrong until after Benediction. I went to get my bag and realized my wallet was gone. Luckily he had left my keys but I had $200 plus several credit cards in there plus my bank card, which meant I had no money and couldn't get anymore until I got a new bank card. Fr. Hitchcock got his nice silver pyx stolen also. We discovered that the sacristy door had been jimmied open with a credit card apparently and the West End door had a cigarette butt keeping it open. We had to call the cops and make out a report, then Fr. Hitchcock insisted on taking me to dinner and also giving me $200 so I could go on living until I got a new card. We were an odd couple at The Boulevard with all the romantic couples around us. That was also the night JV and I called it a day after he failed to show up due to a drunken Records Dept. party. So I was grateful to Fr. H for taking me out, although it wasn't quite the valentine I was hoping for.

That was not even the worst Valentine's Day I've ever had. My father was buried on 2-14-76 and I guess I've always been a little sad on this day even when I have had a real valentine. I remember we all went out after the funeral and flew a kite with the young nieces and nephews and then it suddenly just took off in the strong Texas wind and we chased it for a long time before we gave up and came back to a delicious Mexican dinner cooked for us by my father's attendant Jose. I couldn't help remembering the box of chocolates he had given me one year when I didn't get a valentine from anyone. I think I made a remark about it not being exactly the valentine I was hoping for and then left it unopened. I did not like my father very much back then and I guess it has taken all this time to appreciate his good points, of which there were a few. I find myself acting more like him every day, which is scary!

Tonight I spent with the Catalines at the Park Place Diner in Brooklyn Heights, a very salt of the earth kind of place, although tonight the gyro, usually wonderful, was cold and tasteless. We had a good time anyway, with a newly married couple in attendance and I heard all about W's departure from SMV, which was worth the trip.

I had to break the news which I had just gotten before leaving work about our dear Jacques, for whom it must have been truly a Valentine's Day from hell. How his doctor could have missed his very serious condition is beyond me, but it was our dear Dr. O, himself miraculously still alive, who diagnosed him at the annual meeting and sent him to one of his colleagues at Mt. Sinai. He had exploratory surgery today and the outlook is very dire. He's in good hands but the next few days are critical. Let us pray.

Sad Eyed Lady of the Root Canal

I just want to know what you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice? Apologies to Bob, just got home from I'm Not There and am seeing Dylan lines everywhere. I was singing that in the dentist's chair this afternoon during a second and totally unprepared for root canal on no. 14. I had the first one last Tuesday afternoon, as poor old Heath lay dying, and fortunately had the rest of the day off to recover. Little did I know I was only half way through. This is exactly why I never go to women dentists. The three I have had in my life have all been the same sadistic type. This one I had to see as a referral since my dentist doesn't do root canals. This lady took my insurance, which is not the greatest, so I hadn't much choice with the rather urgent nature of the case. I had postponed looking into the constant dull ache until after the holidays so by last week it had gotten rather unpleasant. Two hours of drilling through the crown, reaming around and yanking out three calcified canals I guess was not enough, so I went back today and had to go through the whole process again. She did not say last week that there would be further surgery required. I thought today was just a checkup so I didn't ask for more than an hour off work and didn't eat lunch first. During the surgery she was talking on her cell phone every 10 minutes, lining up creative writing work, chatting to her assistant and asking her what she thought of her writing. I finally yanked the suction thing out of my mouth and announced that I had to get back to work and why wasn't I told that I would need 2 more hours of root canal? It was almost 3 hours before I got back to my desk and then had to format a complicated financial document. But my super called me in later to say I had gotten a good raise for this year, so I guess that helped ease the pain. At least they gave me a decent painkiller this time after last week's script failed to kill the pain for very long and made me ill.

I don't know what this has to do with High Church but I feel like in a way we are going through a bit of a root canal at the moment, both locally and nationally. Some roots are dying, some have calcified and must be removed, all with great pain but ultimately to save the teeth themselves from being pulled. San Joaquin has extracted themselves and others will likely follow before it's over. We had a good annual meeting last Sunday, but at the end that painful extraction we endured last Spring resulted in a diatribe from one that made us all realize that for some those wounds are still fresh. All in all there was a lot of positive news such as a good pledging base and the coming north wall restoration, and plans to renovate the Undercroft are also brewing, so it should be a lively and early Spring.

ETA: Update on that white-coated idiot dentist: I got a bill for $618 with a note that Dr. Goofoff does not accept my insurance so I am liable for the full amount, this after she had assured me that I would only have to pay $250 and the insurance would cover the rest. I wrote her and the other dentists in that group a letter today detailing the whole debacle and asking that the charges be dropped in light of the negligence on her part and the incredibly unprofessional manner in which she treated me. We'll see what she has to say about that.

The Feast of St. Stephen

Just found out that St. Stephen is the patron saint of stone masons (makes sense since he so fervently prayed for forgiveness for those who stoned him to death) so I am saying a special prayer to him for our upcoming work on the north wall. I served at low mass tonight since the regular acolyte was away on vacation. It is always wonderful to serve in the Lady Chapel when the Gloria in Excelsis lace superfrontal is on, which I just had time to get on before Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. We also got the little silver cruets out of the safe so we used those and luckily had just enough wine for those present (7). It was a wonderful way to spend the night after Christmas which otherwise was quite dark, damp and cold.

I was thurifer on Christmas Eve and managed to smoke the place up perhaps too well since half the congregation disappeared before Communion. We started out with 111 and ended up with only 46 communions, which seemed rather odd. It was glorious nonetheless, although I was in a bit of a bad mood beforehand being tired and a bit exasperated with the small number of people who showed up to do an enormous amount of work. A very few of us labored many hours on Sunday and Monday polishing, cleaning and decorating while others were content to sit back and enjoy the show. The Good Ship Ignatius was indeed very short on crew this year but the crew that showed up got the job done somehow. The place looked fabulous in spite of what visiting critics may opine about the slightly changed ceremony.

After a small reception with eggnog and goodies and then very little sleep after too much caffeine, I got up on Christmas Day and helped with the Solemn Mass which we accomplished with just an MC, who also functioned as thurifer and acolyte, and myself as Subdeacon. I also rang the tower bell with my right hand while holding the paten under the humeral veil with my left. I had not been subdeacon for over a year and many things have changed recently, but I got through it with just one stumble going up the altar steps (my alb was too long and I stepped on the hem, dropping my maniple in the process). I had never worn a maniple before so it was a new experience trying to keep that thing on. I know now why Dr Norris hated them.

After a long nap I went back over on Christmas night to a delicious feast in the undercroft cooked by St. James Marshall for all those who had no other place to go. Laurie and the gang went to Denver so I missed being with them for that wonderful white Christmas they had there, but it was a special night of fellowship with my fellow Ignatians.

Holy Stephen, pray for St. Ignatius as we prepare for the final phase of our capital campaign, the cleaning and repointing of the masonry of the north wall. Amen.

Ecce sacerdos Magnum

On Sunday, November 25, after a full morning of celebrating Christ the King with Solemn Mass and Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, at 4:00 pm we instituted our ninth rector, the Rev'd Dr Andrew Charles Blume. Bp Mark Sisk presided and celebrated at the Solemn Pontifical Mass. I was thurifer by special invitation from the MC, who felt sorry for me that I had been, I'm quite sure, accidentally left off the rota for the event. The thurifer that was scheduled graciously allowed me to take the job and he became verger, taking into account the perilous left-knee genuflections that are called for when incense is put on by the Bishop. Better I should fall on my face than he. Luckily I managed to get through it without any major disaster, although I had to put out a fire for the initial censing with the Bishop at the door. A strong wind whipped the coals into flame but I was able to blow them out before it got out of hand. At the Offertory I somehow could not genuflect on my left knee, so I went down on both and then thought I would never get up while attempting to close the thurible, but the Lord lifted me and I somehow arose. Then at the final procession the chain was caught and I had to struggle to untangle it to get the lid up for the Bishop to put on incense all the while kneeling on my right knee (I rationalized that it was actually kneeling before the Sacrament more than the Bishop). But I had blessedly great coals all night and did a good job of smoking up the place with my Glastonbury blend. I almost felt sorry for the choir, who had complained about the procession of the Sacrament that morning when we had two thurifers (I was second) and they were almost gassed out when we passed them. But in spite of that they did a splendid job with the wonderful Howells Office of Holy Communion, which most likely had never been heard before in this church. The Elgar anthem The Spirit of the Lord during Communion was likewise most heavenly so it seems the smoke did not hinder. It sure cleared up my cold congestion by the end of the day.

We had a great crowd of religious and lay people alike, and the service went very smoothly with Frank as MC. The Rev Dr Thomas Pike gave an entertaining sermon with several good stories about Fr Blume and Bp Sisk gave a wonderful greeting to the new rector as the right priest at the right time in the history of St. Ignatius. We had a wonderful reception afterward with lots of good food and champagne. And nary a roach in sight!

Hail Bright Cecilia

St. Cecilia window in the Gallery

Lots to give thanks for today as I head over to Forest Hills for dinner with Laurie and the gang. It's a beautiful, balmy day here in Gotham and things are shaping up for this Sunday's Feast of Christ the King and then at 4pm the Institution of our new Rector, with Bishop Sisk presiding and celebrating. I do hope we manage to get through the weekend without another pipe bursting (thankfully that pipe behind the altar was a replaceable link) or another geyser erupting as it did a couple of weeks ago on Sunday morning in the downstairs bathroom. We were having coffee hour in the Sunday School room because of the massive Saturday night knockdown of vermin that had left the air in the undercroft quite unpleasant. Someone noticed a stream of water issuing from under the bathroom door and I went in to see what looked like a scene from a horror movie, with the water gushing out of the sink but no taps turned on. Luckily it was just a clogged drain which the Sunday sacristy washing finally overloaded, but I had to deal with cleaning that up, finding a plumber and also making sure everything that had been taken out of the cabinets was put back before AA arrived in the evening. Gilberto and I spent the afternoon after brunch at Dean's putting away as much as we could before we got rather ill from breathing the sickeningly sweet minty roach spray that lingered in the air.

As fate would have it, the Health Department showed up to inspect the soup kitchen that Saturday afternoon before the extermination and were quite appalled at the number of roaches openly cavorting in the kitchen while food was being prepared. There were even roaches in the refrigerator, not to mention mouse droppings by the stove. We were given two weeks to improve ourselves so we have to deal with that this weekend also along with putting up the throne and trying to repair the canopy enough to use on Sunday.

More later...