The Amazing, Unseen, Yet Totally Fabulous ... All Saints Choir!

They pass through the congregation like a host of angels in the opening procession, then disappear into the vaulted ceiling, to the choir loft. Yes, it's the All Saints Choir, the often heard, but rarely seen, group of 30 fabulously talented singers and musicians who enhance our worship with music from the simple and austere to the intense and complex.

In the past few weeks, the choir has prepared and participated in a special musical Sunday, featuring Henry Purcell's "Bell Anthem", with a string quartet of MSU grad students. But who knows that the strings and accompanying handbell parts were scored by our own Don Hoopingarner? Don also brings the string bass up into the loft from time to time to add a bit of "woof" to things. Steve Findley and Ray Kinzel played trumpet descants. And Tamara Hicks-Syron adds violin accompaniment almost every Sunday.

Last night, the choir provided transcendent music and stellar liturgical leadership in a service of Advent choral evensong. Music to die for! In the weeks ahead, they are tackling challenging anthems for the Advent season. When they finally make it to Christmas Eve, with a full half-hour of caroling and solos and special choral music as a prelude to the 9:30 p.m. service, they will peak in a glorious moment of choral bliss and then sink back exhausted for a week until the New Year.

I am so blessed to hear this choir, week in and week out, under the faithful guidance of Michael Crouch and Sandy Consiglio (who also pitches in with oboe!). I frequently brag on them to my fellow clergy, because they sound as good as a paid choir, and they work WAY harder!

If you see any of them flying by on a Sunday morning on the way up to the loft and warm-ups, say hi. Say thank you. They totally rock!

+ Kit

Online Advent Calendar

Episcopal Cafe has posted an online Advent Calendar that will help celebrate and support the Bokamoso Youth Program in South Africa. The project was once funded by the Anglican Church in South Africa, but economic strains in that country have ended that stream of support. Donations raised through the calendar will help pay for students to attend community college or technical school in South Africa.

Visit the calendar daily in Advent and learn more about this program and the struggles faced by youth in South Africa today.

+ Kit

Don't Just Give Thanks ... Say Thank You

I sent an email yesterday to a former mentor of mine. I wanted to say "thank you" to him for teaching me something very important about how to be a Christian and a priest. Today, I'm going to email an old friend from high school to thank her for her presence in my life these many years.

During this week of Thanksgiving, why not try this practice of saying thanks? Think of someone who has taught you something, shared an experience with you, stood by you, given you good advice, or made you laugh. Let that person know that you are grateful for their wisdom, friendship, and support.

It is easy, going around the table at Thanksgiving, to think of something we are thankful for. But how often do we say directly to another person ... "I am thankful for YOU"? God grants us many blessings, but surely the greatest blessings of all are those who travel the way with us.

Be swift to love. Make haste to be kind.

Say "thank you".

+Kit

The Advent Conspiracy

This video tells us how to begin. The website tells us more.

As we begin Advent next Sunday, I support the core message of the Advent Conspiracy ... Worship fully, spend less, give more, love all. Let their suggestion to spend less money, enjoy our relationships more fully, and give more money to those who really need it inspire us all.

+ Kit

Saint of the Week -- C.S. Lewis

Today we celebrate Clive Staples Lewis, author and apologist for the Christian faith. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1898, Lewis had a lonely childhood. His father was emotionally distant, and his mother died when he was ten. A series of boarding schools, some nightmarish, some merely horrid, formed him, until he left for Oxford. A rich fantasy life, especially focused on the Norse myths, sustained him.

After serving in World War I, he kept a promise made to a fellow soldier, that if anything happened to one of them, the other would care for the family left behind. After his friend Paddy Moore died, Lewis took Paddy's mother, Jane, as his adopted mother. Eventually, in 1930, Lewis, his brother Warnie, Jane and her daughter Maureen moved into "The Kilns", the famous house outside Oxford where Lewis wrote the bulk of his work.

Lewis lapsed into atheism in his teens, and was reluctantly converted -- first to a sort of theism, then eventually to Christianity. He remained a loyal Anglican, to the dismay of his friend J.R.R. Tolkein, who had hoped Lewis would become a Catholic.

In Lewis's later life, he met Joy Davidman Gresham, an American divorcee who had corresponded with him. He entered into a civil marriage with her, but after she developed bone cancer, he realized the depth of his love for her, and a Christian marriage was performed at her hospital bedside in 1956. Gresham's cancer went into remission and she and Lewis lived together for four more years. His grief at her eventual death fueled the writing of A Grief Observed, a raw and painfully honest look at the loss of a beloved.

I treasure Lewis most for the Narnia books ... a series of children's stories set in the imaginary land of Narnia. While they lack the intellectual heft and subtlety of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings series, Narnia melds Lewis's imaginative and painful childhood with the beauty and confidence of his faith. As a middle aged man, "Jack" Lewis managed to awaken his own inner child to write classics that children and adults alike return to, over and over again.

Lewis died on November 22, 1963. News of his death was completely overshadowed by the news of President Kennedy's assassination.

+ Kit

Reading Ahead -- Feast of Christ the King

In this week's gospel reading, we end the church year with the last parable Jesus tells before his passion and death (in Matthew's gospel, anyway. This parable only appears in Matthew.)

The parable of the sheep and goats makes it very clear that it is not "believing" in Jesus that wins one eternal fellowship with the Lord. It is ministering to Jesus in his least obvious and most prevalent form ... those who are hungry, sick, thirsty, a prisoner, a stranger, naked. It is not what we THINK about religion that matters. It is what we do with it.

I visited an elderly gentleman once who was near death. "I've been thinking a lot about my life," he said. "I am really sorry that I didn't spend more time with people and less time trying to get ahead.

"I am most sorry that I spent all this time thinking about my religion, and not enough time living it," he sighed.

I was struck to the quick by that statement. It sounds like something you'd read in a book of sermon illustrations, and here was a real person saying this sad thing, with no time left in his life to do any differently than he had done.

Life is short, and we do not have too much time ...


+ Kit

Get Ready for Advent

Advent starts in less than two weeks. Are you ready to get ready? We'll have several ways to help you embark on this season of waiting as if on tiptoe for the coming Messiah.

One, the ever-whimsical Advent calendar poster by Jay Sidebotham. Each day has an idea, a prayer, a thought for you as you move through this busy season, a way for you to keep the focus on the Incarnation in the midst of all the craziness. Pick one up Sunday at church.

Also on November 30, the first Sunday of Advent, we'll have Advent wreaths to assemble for your family during coffee hour after the 10 a.m. service. Call the office 351-7160 to reserve a wreath-making kit.

+ Kit