The Hopes (Jr. and Sr.) lost their father a week or so ago. St. Michael's is just getting word of it now since the family relocated to Arizona nearly ten years ago. You may remember the older brother as part of that remarkable team of Sunday School juniors and seniors, "Hope and Crosby" who caught my attention every time they appeared at the late ( Read more... )

Spent in Middletown where, for only the fourth time all year, I attended the local Episcopalian church on Main Street. The arched red doors in front were locked and, at first, I thought they had cancelled Mass due to the cold. But, the lack of signage to that effect, led me to believe there was an alternate way of getting in. There was, around the ( Read more... )

Huggy Bear is turning out to be a real linchpin in my connection to the rest of St. Michael's. He's one of a handful of uncloseted, single, gay men in the congregation. At thirty, he is at the higher end of the twenties-thirties group age range and perhaps a little more aware of life passing swiftly by. He's also Crosby's best friend ( Read more... )

Went to Saturday Kitchen this morning, mainly to speak with Crosby. It was rainy and I was late. Marilyn put me behinnd the food line for the first time in years. It could have been worse. She might have put me in charge of the desserts. But, a resourceful young woman whose name I did not learn, drafted me into serving the sweet potatos which were ( Read more... )

Lent officially ends today and probably not a moment too soon. I woke up with a scratchy throat and was popping zinc lozenges all the way to Sunday School. John had prepared an elaborate lesson plan for the pre-schoolers which entailed an Easter egg hunt in the classroom. Each egg had a toy and little bit of the Crucifixion verse written on ( Read more... )

I should have known this would happen. The moment I stepped outside of 1965, the real world rushed in. One by one, over the space of the past two weeks I have said, "Yes" to serving on the search committe for the new Rector; "Yes" to returning to my EFM class in January, another "Yes" to running for Vestry and I will probably agree to teaching ( Read more... )

Actually, there were two letters passed around the Gray Lounge. One was the Bishop's original letter. That one seemed to base his reluctance to fully embrace same-sex church weddings not on his personal views but on the fact that he made a vow to abide by the decisions of the wider Anglican communion. The second basically said the same thing as ( Read more... )

Miss Honey is teaching the 11-12th graders in Sunday School this year. This should be put on film.

I've been so busy in the real world lately that it's all I can do to simply drag myself to meals, shower and get ready for bed. Even Sunday School seems to have sprung its own set of tensions as one teacher in my team drops out for not attending the "Safe Church" initiative and another seems to exhibit increasingly annoying behavior while taking ( Read more... )

I wound up arriving late as usual to the 9:am Mass; Fr. Bolle was just finishing up his homily; near as I could tell it had something to do with St. Peter's spreading the Gospel to Gentiles and what a neat thing it was that the teachings of Christ which incorporated a lot of the Jewish religion were no longer restricted to just Jewish people. I ( Read more... )