A Sunny Advent I With Flowers

Gilberto and I shrugged off our Sunday morning hangovers and hit the road for Austin early with a fairly clear road, a beautful sunny sky and Jesus Take the Wheel coming on every time we switched the dial. We sailed onto 7th Street and into the St. David parking garage (which is free!) in time for the 11:15 am Rite I Holy Eucharist in their Historic Sanctuary. St. David's, completed in 1854, is believed to be the oldest Episcopal Church building in constant use west of the Mississippi. It has grown from a small parish that was split for 3 years during the Civil War to a thriving urban ministry center with $1.5 million in pledges this year.

We were spotted as visitors when we came in and given a notebook filled with information about St. David's and all its ministries and activities. We were hoping for a higher service since it was Rite I but alas, no smells or bells, and there were flowers on the freestanding altar, which sported a purple superfrontal. I've never been a fan of those shorty frontals. They just look like you couldn't afford a full one. The Rev. Mary Vano greeted everyone before the entrance hymn Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending and insisted that we greet our neighbors. We did so in the simple New York style. I was just thankful she didn't insist that all the visitors introduce themselves. Then the procession began with the rector, the Rev. David Boyd, gladhanding his way down the aisle. The service then continued with the Word of God. They have a decent choir, which is mostly amateur, and a serviceable organist. The Rev. Vano gave a pretty good sermon on how she's given up on complaining about how commercial the season has become. She's going with the flow this year and has actually been finding that Christ is with us even when all we want to do is shop till we drop. Go figure.

After the service we made our way over to the Paradise Cafe on 6th Street since there was no coffee or anything else on offer and no one except one of the choir members stopped to talk to us as we made our way around taking pictures. St. David's has a Cafe Divine that serves breakfast on Sunday until 10:45 am and then nothing afterward, which we found odd. We walked by there on the way in to the Sanctuary and there were lots of people. Apparently they have breakfast together and then go to Mass. So much for fasting communion. At any rate we enjoyed walking around their spacious plant, which includes a labyrinth in a courtyard, on our way out and over to 6th Street for lunch which was bustling with the Pecan Festival and baking in the midday Texas sun.

We headed on back north on I-35, stopping by the family plot in Wilson Valley to pay our respects. It took quite a while to get back to Arlington with all the holiday traffic but we finally made it and then headed over to Ft. Worth with Charles and Marisa for our last supper at Joe T. Garcia's. No trip to Texas would be complete without a trip to Joe T.'s (http://www.joets.com/)
for an enchilda dinner. A perfect end to a wonderful trip.