The Eagle - January 2006

As always, on this second day after Christmas, there is so much to say…and so little to say. Effusive thanks could be offered to so many who did so much to make the activities of the four weeks of Advent and the services of Christmas as wonderful as they were…or, perhaps better, a more simple thank you! Thank you to every man and woman and child who did so very much to allow the life of this Parish, and the Holy Spirit’s presence within it, to manifest itself in so many vibrant and vital manners.

Yes, to everyone, sincere thanks…and to each of you who read this, my warmest best wishes for a glorious Christmastide and a blessed 2006.

Stewardship for the year 2006 ~ In mid-December you should have received the request of the Vestry for your support of Saint John’s Operating Budget during fiscal year 2006. If you have not yet done so, we ask that you take time to review this request with care and prayerfully make the decision regarding how you will respond. Your support of Saint John’s is essential to our continued strength, and we pray that your response will be generous. If you have questions and/or comments, please call Mary Schinke, Stewardship Chair, at 355-8609. If you did not receive the Stewardship letter and wish to receive one, please call the Office (868-2527) and let us know. We will send it right along.

Stewardship Address ~ The following very fine reflection on our approach to stewardship was given by Mary Schinke, our Stewardship Chair, at the wonderful Parish Celebration hosted by the Vestry on December 18^th. It is reprinted here in hopes that you will find it helpful and edifying.

Sunday School, Youth Group, Choir, Choristers, Outreach, Altar Guild, Acolytes, Bazaar, Lay Readers, Chalice Bearers, Loaves & Fishes, Flower, Planned Giving, the Vestry and the Finance Committees are the many ministries of Saint John’s Parish. All these ministries are possible because of stewardship. Our many ministries are opportunities for us to engage in two of the three prongs of Christian stewardship, time and talent. The third prong of Christian stewardship is treasure.

Last year our Treasurer, Winston Fowlkes, projected that to balance our budget for 2005 we would need everyone in the parish to increase their pledge by 20%. After Winston’s talk, I spoke about spiritual dimensions of Christian stewardship and urged us all to take the opportunity stewardship provides to explore God’s love for us by giving meaningful gifts back to God and examining the impact of that giving on our lives.

I am happy to report that we made and indeed surpassed the goal. The average increase over the whole parish was 21.4%. The numerical analysis is tremendously satisfying to see, but even more exciting are the stories of spiritual exploration and discovery behind the increases and that have unfolded over the course of the year in fulfilling those pledges.

At the December meeting, the Vestry resolved to demonstrate leadership by pledging before an appeal was made to the parish. Within one week, every member of the Vestry submitted a pledge for 2006. Each family in the parish has now received a letter asking for a pledge. We ask again that you pray, discuss the blessings God has given you and respond with a gift to your church.

If you want tools to help you explore the spiritual dimensions of Christian stewardship, please speak with the Rector or any member of the Stewardship Committee. We have resources to help anyone who is interested in learning more about stewardship. If you feel that you have something to say about stewardship or your experiences in giving, we would love to hear from you and include your thoughts in this column.

Those who attended the Christmas Pageant and the celebration of our parish ministries that followed the pageant experienced some of the spiritual benefits of Christian stewardship. When we give back to God something magical happens to our gift. Consider John’s version of the gospel story of the loaves and fishes. Jesus preached to a crowd of 5000 in the countryside, and the people needed food. The disciples found a small boy who had 5 loaves and 2 fish. Jesus fed 5000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish; Jesus made a miracle. But focus on the role of the little boy. The boy gave what he had, a modest amount of food that wasn’t nearly enough. But when he gave that offering, inadequate for feeding a crowd yet all he had, Jesus blessed it, broke it, fed 5000 people with it and the disciples gathered 12 baskets of leftovers. Jesus didn’t just make bread and fish appear; he took what a person provided and made it exceed sufficiency.

If the story of the loaves and fishes is too miraculous an example, consider the land you live on. Perhaps it is a natural woodland, perhaps you have a cultivated garden, maybe a bit of both. Each is beautiful in its own way. Both use God’s elements of soil, sunlight and rainwater. But in a garden, God and man join forces to create something special that won’t occur in the wild. It is magical and yet ordinary that when we work on land, plant seeds and pull weeds, partnering with God using the soil, sun, and water he provides we can produce remarkable results.

When we give gifts to God, he will bless them, they will result in good beyond their initial value, and we will be blessed as well. When we work with God and the resources he has given us for good, our harvest will be bountiful. Our parish already reflects this dynamic and with all of our support and thanksgiving we can do even more.

Vestry News ~ At its meeting of December 11, 2005, the following received attention.

Stewardship planning was reviewed and final approval was given to the 2006 Operating Budget.

The Parish Celebration planned for December 18^th was given its final review and eagerly anticipated.

The next meeting of the Vestry is scheduled for January 15^th, 2006 at 11.20am in the Library.

Coat Collection and Delivery ~ There follows a most wonderful recounting of the delivery of a staggering number of Winter coats and mittens contributed by members of Saint John’s during December at the urging of the Sunday School students…a number of whom delivered them to Saint John’s Parish, Bridgeport on December 20^th with the help of adult drivers. While at Saint John’s Family Center, they helped serve the evening meal to the hungry and the destitute from the Family Center’s Kitchen. As was read a number of times in Scripture during Advent and Christmas and commented upon from the pulpit, it is, indeed, more often than not, very small lights shining in the darkness that keep the darkness at bay. Rejoice in the witness of these children…it is a light to each of us.

The coat experience

By: Bella Miller, Bertie Miller,
and Hannah-Claire Brimelow!

On Tuesday December 20^th 2005 we went to Bridgeport to distribute coats at our sister Church. Our group contained mostly kids and 3 adults. The kids were Jack Sorell, Gregory Anrig, Charlotte Anrig, Sydney O’Connor, Gillian O’Connor, Bella Miller, Bertie Miller, and Hannah-Claire Brimelow. The adults were Ms. Reid, Mr. Miller, and Ms. Connolly. No one at Bridgeport was expecting the number of coats we brought.

They only expected 12 coats, but we gave them about 120! We brought long coats, fuzzy coats, long fuzzy coats, all kinds of coats. We even brought booties and 1 pair of boots! We got money for baby clothes by selling hot cocoa. We gave the baby stuff to a lady who gave them to mothers who are going to have a baby. The coats went to many different people.

All the people were unique. More adults came than children. One of the kids we called Kyle was too shy to even come get a coat. Mrs Reid gave him a green vest. Three girls came and got coats. The oldest was 10 or 11 and we called her Zoey. Her younger sisters were there too. We called them Tammy and Jenny. We found a small toy in Bertie’s old coat and gave it to them. It was a simple fish in a plastic bottle with water in it but the little girls loved them. The last kid that came up to us was about 3 or 4 years old. He came up with his dad. We couldn’t find a coat that would fit him so we gave him a blue vest and a shell. Also, we gave him a pair of red gloves. His smile made us feel good about ourselves and what we were doing.

Every person in the room was so grateful for the coats. Making these people happy made us feel good about ourselves. Christmas is not all about a fat guy in a red suit. It’s about giving, not just receiving. And that is what we did on Tuesday December 20^th 2005 at Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Loaves & Fishes ~ Our day for Loaves & Fishes is January 20^th. Please note: we are in need of volunteers to help with serving on that day (we have an adequate amount of food prepared for this month). You may sign up for delivering food or serving it at Loaves & Fishes on the sign-up sheet in the Parish House. It will not take a great deal of your time, but it will be a tremendous help at the Soup Kitchen. Please give the Office a call (868-2527) to find out more about how you can help in this way.

Music Notes ~ A few years ago there was a cooking series on television, alas! all too briefly, featuring those two redoubtable British women, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson, otherwise known as The Two Fat Ladies. I loved the show as much for the wonderful banter of these two women as for their sound ideas about food and its preparation. In one episode they were at a fishmonger’s shop in Yorkshire requesting herring that had been kippered in a certain way (I forget what way exactly). They were told that due to European Economic Community (EEC) regulations, that particular method of processing was no longer allowed. Clarissa, never one to leave her thoughts unexpressed, roundly cursed the EEC, commenting, ‘Do you know, there are fifty-six words in The Lord’s Prayer, and over two-thousand six-hundred in the EEC regulations governing the export of duck eggs.’

I use this rather trivial anecdote to introduce a far from trivial point. As the Christmas ‘season’ has grown during my lifetime into a monster, the size of which would not have been dreamed of when I was a child, my personal experience of Christmas has become ever more circumscribed. Even by the mid 1970s it had already begun to seem to me that the essence of Christmas existed only during the ninety or so minutes between the beginning and the end of the midnight service on Christmas Eve. It was only then that I could say to myself that now, at last, the champions of Mercantile Christmastide had done their worst; had said anything, shown anything, done anything they could think of just as long as they felt it might induce people to shell out huge quantities of money for the articles on display, even if those articles were destined, justifiably, for the rubbish heap. Now, at last, I felt, we were devoting our thoughts exclusively to the actual event we were meant to be commemorating - the birth of a man who had taught the world that humility, kindness, moderation, and being nice to one another were all extremely good ideas.

Recently I’ve begun to feel an even further distillation of the Essential Christmas. (Admittedly this is all extremely subjective) Nowadays, the true revelation of Christmas really happens for me during the few minutes it takes to sing the thirty-six artless, miraculous measures of music known as ‘Silent Night’. (Mark the connection with the aforetold ‘Fat Ladies’ anecdote.) I don’t mean to suggest that we might all just as well simply gather in the church for three minutes, sing that particular carol, and then go home. Not at all. I believe one needs the entire liturgical process that leads up to those rarefied minutes for the miracle to happen. One wants to have joined in the exclamations of ‘Gloria in excelsis’. One wants to have been inspired by the magnificent cadence of the spoken word: ‘And the light shineth in the darkness’, ‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’, ‘for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour’. Many threads have to be gathered together before we can find ourselves a collection of joyous, fragile, even sometimes frightened human beings kneeling in the golden glow of a candlelit church singing the words and music written nearly two-hundred years ago by a provincial German pastor and his equally provincial choirmaster which describe the Nativity in a manner beyond praise or censure. At such times I feel nothing less than that the Truth is being told. That way lies paradise.

Very few works of art achieve that. And I suppose one must call ‘Silent Night’ a work of art, even though it seems a rather highfalutin way of describing so modest a carol. Yet, at the moment I’m writing this, I can think of only two or three other works that manage to dispel - or at least sidestep - criticism and stand before us simply as The Truth. And those pieces I would definitely call works of art.

By way of ending I wish I could bring this article to a point, but unfortunately I can’t. Thinking about such things is an ongoing process for me, as I expect it is for most people. With any luck, the point will be found lurking somewhere up ahead.

Rector Away ~ The Rector will be away from January 8^th through 13^th. In his absence, the Revd RB White will be available for emergency pastoral call (927.3486) and will celebrate the 9.30am Eucharist on Wednesday the 11^th. The Revd Susan McCone will celebrate the 10.00am Eucharist on Sunday the 8^th.