Nativity Episcopal Church

Peter Gomes, Harvard minister and author, dies at 68

2011-03-02T12:48:00.004-05:00

"I am a Christian who happens as well to be gay ... Those realities, which are unreconcilable to some, are reconciled in me by a loving God."

"[My mother] always told me that I must invent my own reality. Reality will not conform to you. You must invent your own and then conform to it. So I did. I am an authentic and an original. ... I will not allow myself to be known simply as an African American, no more than I would allow myself to be known as gay or conservative. They are all bits and pieces of a work in progress. I am a child of God."

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/cambridge/2011/03/peter_gomes_harvard_minister_a_2.html

Deanery Meeting to discuss the Proposed Covenant

2011-02-22T11:49:00.002-05:00

Meeting, 2.13.2011, Deanery Re Proposed Covenant

The first part of the meeting covered some church history, beginning with a review of The Anglican Communion and our differences from the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

The Lambeth Conference was then reviewed, in particular Resolution 1.10, of which the relevant subsections are:

c. recognises that there are among us persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation. Many of these are members of the Church and are seeking the pastoral care, moral direction of the Church, and God's transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of relationships. We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ;

d. while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialisation of sex;

e. cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions;

http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1998/1998-1-10.cfm

A timeline of events followed the explanation of Resolution 1.10.
6.2003 Election of Gene Robinson as Bishop
7.2003 General Convention consent to Gene Robinson’s election
10.2003 Primates requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint a commission to meet regarding Gene Robinson’s election as well as Canada’s blessings of same sex unions.
11.2003 Gene Robinson consecrated as Bishop
2004 Windsor Report – this was a moratorium on Bishops Crossing Borders (Bishops staying in their own territory), no more gay-lesbian bishops, and no more same sex unions.
2.2005 Primates asked The Episcopal Church to withdraw representation from the Anglican Council
3.2005 House of Bishops agreed to the moratoriam on consenting to any Bishops until General Convention in 2006.
2006 General Convention had no overt language regarding the role of women – as bishops or priests. The Convention had no resolution on same sex unions but called upon the Standing Committee to develop the Anglican Covenant, which should include wording on exercising restraint in consenting to consecrate anyone whose lifestyle presented a challenge to the way of life in the Church.
Late 2007 Nassau draft of The Covenant
Early 2008 St. Andrews Draft
Summer 2008 – Lambert Conference held
Spring 2009 Ridley Cambridge draft of Anglican Covenant issued which is the one that we have currently
Late 2009 Commission Chair, Most Reverend Eames (Bishop of all Ireland) reported that the draft was not a judgment but that it is a process.
Sept 8, 2010 The Episcopal Church will review and present comments and ideas to the revision, particularly number 4 which contains the language concerning behavior, unlike numbers 1, 2 and 3 which are faith based.

The moratorium ended and we (The Episcopal Church) continued as before which seems to be how we seem to behave.

A small group decided that the whole Anglican Communion should subscribe to this Covenant. Despite this, Churches may decide to withdraw from the Covenant. All congregations are to meet, develop suggestions, reports, etc. so that a resolution may be developed. The goal is to have this all ready for the General Convention of 2012. Who knows what will happen at that time.

Purpose of The Anglican Covenant:
1. Strengthen corporate life of Anglican Communion
2. Strengthen common life of Anglican Communion.

What happens if one of the Churches doesn’t approve it (could be the US or CA)?
Could that Church become a second tier Church? What does that mean? Would this have financial consequences for the (C of E) Church of England?

The Standing Committee, a small group appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury) would review and make decisions regarding “challenging” behavior mentioned in part 4 of the Covenant.

Do we really need the Covenant? We’ve never had one.
Opinions:
1. It might provide “common rules” for people who immigrate or move within the larger Church areas/countries, making it easier for those in this situation.
2. The Covenant might reduce input by laity in favor of Bishops.
3. Could help with global missionary work.
4. The first three parts which are faith based seem fine, only the fourth is punitive.
5. What is the importance of being part of a world wide congregation? (The U.S. has historically been independent with its own ideas).
6. Effect on congregations. Who are the leaders? How do we decide who they are? (re: the election of Gene Robinson)
7. Who decides who is fit to be our leader? Could it be a Bishop from another country (some Church Bishops outside the U.S. rule with an iron fist, we don’t)?

Submitted by Sue Joslyn

The Anglican Covenant

2011-02-16T15:14:00.005-05:00

The idea for an Anglican Covenant was first mooted in the Windsor Report (paragraphs 113-120). The Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and of the Anglican Consultative Council commissioned a study paper on the idea in March 2005, Towards an Anglican Covenant.

At its meeting in May 2006, the Joint Standing Committee asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to establish a Covenant Design Group to further the project. This group gave a preliminary report to the Primates Meeting at Dar es Salaam in February 2007. The report included the Nassau Draft - a draft for the covenant on which initial consultation was taken in the course of 2007.

The draft is accompanied by a number of supporting documents, including the introduction, a commentary and a draft appendix.

The Covenant Design Group met again at the end of January 2008, and produced a second report and draft - the St. Andrew's Draft - taking into account many of the submissions to the group. This draft was offered for further reflection to the Provinces, but extensive reflection and discussion were undertaken by the bishops at this year's Lambeth Conference.

The comments and discussion of the bishops were received by the Covenant Design Group at their meeting in Singapore in September 2008 - and a Lambeth Commentary has now been issued which picks up on the many points of the bishops thinking, as well as offering the further reflection of the Covenant Design Group.

In March 2009 the Covenant Design Group considered all of the submissions from Provinces received to that point, along with the bishops’ reflections, and produced a third text, the Ridley-Cambridge Draft, which was presented to the 14th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica in May 2009.

ACC-14 discussed the text in depth and welcomed its development, but expressed concern that the text of Section 4 had not received the same depth of consultation with Provinces which the first three sections had, and consequently requested that a small working group be set up to ‘consider and consult with the Provinces on Section 4 and its possible revision’, for approval by the Standing Committee.

That group met in November 2009, considered 18 responses received from the Provinces, and revised Section 4 in light of these responses (3 further responses were received after this work was completed). This text was presented to the Standing Committee, which has now approved it for distribution.

It is now with the Provinces of the Anglican Communion for formal consideration for adoption by each Province through appropriate processes. The link to the text can also be found by clicking on the title to this post

Tahrir Square- Cairo

2011-02-10T13:18:00.004-05:00

DADT

2011-02-08T15:06:00.002-05:00

In keeping with the theme of Rev. Diane's post below.. a timely piece by Adam Serwer in the Washington Post

Yesterday in Iowa, Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) told the Center for American Progress's Igor Volsky that he is so opposed to the repeal of don't ask don't tell that he would be willing to defund it:

PAWLENTY: We have to pay great deference, I think, to those combat units, their sentiments and their leaders. That's one of the reasons why I said we shouldn't have repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell and I would support reinstatement.

TP: And rescinding the funds for implementation, implementation of repeal?

PAWLENTY: That would be a reasonable step as well.

Either Pawlenty sincerely believes, against all available empirical and real world evidence, that DADT repeal will harm military effectiveness and that it must urgently be reinstated, or he's just trying to signal disdain for gays and lesbians, including those willing to give their lives in service to their country, to homophobes in the Republican base. Possibly both.

Pawlenty seems to have mistaken DADT for the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately for Pawlenty, most Republicans actually supported repeal, so unlike the ACA, DADT isn't a gaping emotional wound that needs to be treated. Pawlenty first voiced support for reinstating DADT on the radio show of the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer, who believes sex between gays and lesbians is a form of "domestic terrorism" and wants to ban Muslims from serving in the U.S. military.

A Pawlenty spokesperson tried to hide behind the military leadership in a statement to Politico's Ben Smith, clarifying that Pawlenty does not "support using resources to implement a policy" the "commanding generals" oppose. But with the exception of Marine Commandant General James Amos, the opinions of the service chiefs were mixed, and absolutely none of them have endorsed reinstating DADT, which is what Pawlenty is proposing. Repealing repeal would be a logistical nightmare for the military, and it's unlikely the service chiefs want to spend the next few years refighting DADT repeal.

Pawlenty also seems to have gotten the whole "civilian control of the military" thing backwards. Given that servicemembers and military leadership were far more opposed to racial integration in the 1940s than they are to repealing DADT today someone should ask Pawlenty whether he thought Harry Truman was wrong to order integration of the military in 1948.

More disturbing than Pawlenty's unworkable proposal for reinstating DADT or defunding repeal is that even in 2012, a Republican primary candidate might feel it necessary offer disdain for gays and lesbians as a selling point. Ultimately, though, it feels a little desperate, a way for a relatively bland candidate to distinguish himself from his more colorful rivals. The message was presumably received by Iowa's heavily evangelical Republican caucus voters; we'll find out soon enough how impressed they were.

DID YOU KNOW….?

2011-02-08T14:51:00.002-05:00

The following was retrieved from an Associated Press report dated February 3, 2011, based on data from the recent Injustice at Every Turn: National Transgender Discrimination Survey about Transgender people:

• 77 percent experience harassment in high school
• 57 percent experience family rejection
• 41 percent attempt suicide at least once
• 26 percent lost a job when their employer discovered they were transgender
• 19 percent have been denied house or apartment rental
• 20 percent have experienced homelessness at least once
• 19% have been refused medical care
• Transgender people are four times more likely to have an income below $10,000 than any other group of people.
• Discrimination is particularly pronounced among the Black Community.

Have you ever thought what it must feel like to have the essence of your very being trapped in a wrong-gender body? And being rejected, harassed and abused physically, emotionally and verbally for being born that way? Just some food for thought… and prayer.

Pastor Diane

A Canterbury Tale

2010-04-22T16:14:00.003-04:00

An excellent article by Jane Kramer in the New Yorker on the battle within the Church of England to allow women to be Bishops.

She concludes by writing: "It may be that Williams’s ideas have changed, but in all likelihood it is simply that his job has changed. The women urging him on now are really trying to remind him that, however broad his concern and compassion necessarily are, he is also the Primate of a Western country where women priests—as well as a good number of openly gay priests—have played an impressive role in revitalizing Christian practice and, one would have to say, the Christian imagination. When he talks to them about restraint and patience—about the fullness of time and the “positive side to Anglican diffuseness and slowness of decision-making” and his own anguish “trying to counsel patience to people who are suffering more than you are”—they say, as many of them did to me: The fullness of time is fine, but it’s God’s time. We are living now."

Please click on the title of this post to link to the original article. Comments and discussion are welcome.

Triumph of a Dreamer

2009-11-16T13:45:00.002-05:00

Any time anyone tells you that a dream is impossible, any time you’re discouraged by impossible challenges, just mutter this mantra: Tererai Trent.

By Nicholas Kristof
New York Times, Nov 16, 2009

Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways

2009-10-26T15:38:00.002-04:00

Running in the Shadows
Children on Their Own

This is the first of two articles on the growing number of young runaways in the United States, exploring how they survive and efforts by the authorities to help them.

Please click on the title for the link

New York Times; The Lede: Ian Urbina

Catholic Beliefs Might Give Anglicans Pause

2009-10-26T15:32:00.007-04:00

October 22, 2009, 7:46 pm
Catholic Beliefs Might Give Anglicans Pause
By Robert Mackey

When the Catholic Church announced this week that the Vatican would make it easier for Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, much was made of the many similarities between the two faiths. And there are a few Catholic beliefs that might strike Anglicans as foreign, and one or two that could be deal-breakers for potential defectors.

From The LEDE, the New York Times news blog ( click on text to link to the original post)

Just to Be is a Blessing, Just to Live is Holy

2009-10-26T15:27:00.000-04:00

“Just to Be is a Blessing, Just To Live is Holy.” These are the words my Spiritual Director spoke to me this morning. I am in a place where Deepak Chopra’s words (from a meditation CD) echo in my head; “slow down, slow down, slow down.” Those of you, who know me, know that while I talk about the importance of simply “being” and slowing down, I personally, have difficulty taking my own advice. I have always been one who is busy, fluttering around, trying to complete my checklist, 7 days a week; or, more succinctly put, “doing”. Adding the job of Senior Warden to my plate offered even more opportunity to “do” and this past year offered a challenge greater than I had imagined.
As Americans we are schooled, from an early age, to “do” and as adults, we are judged by how much we get done and by how much we don’t “do.” Common knowledge holds that just sitting and “being” are not productive. The part we forget is that “being” invites God to connect with our heart to mold and shape us into the gift we can become for the world. Somehow we think that, as an adult, God is finished with us (I mean isn’t it too late once we’re beyond a certain age?) I guess if we look at the age of some of those characters in the Old Testament, who had encounters with God (Elijah and Job for example) we get a clear picture that God works on us well into our old age and beyond.
It has been a rough time for me over the last few years, financial issues, challenges and harsh words at Nativity, a family situation, and now, a wearying illness, which was probably brought on by stress from these problems. It has been very easy for me to cry to God, “Why me?” I, like Job, have uttered those exact words. I guess that’s why you gotta love Job. He’s so easy to identify with. Eugene Peterson, in his commentary on Job (The Message, page 631) says “Job gives voice to his sufferings so well, so accurately and honestly, that anyone who has ever suffered…can recognize his or her personal pain in the voice of Job.”
I marvel at Job’s ability to remain humble and reject his wife’s encouragement to curse God by saying, “We take the good days from God – why not also the bad days?” (The Message, page 636) So, that is what I am doing, accepting what God is giving me at any given moment. I am also realizing the opportunity I have to commune with God, to rest in the Holy Spirit, and to know the peace of Jesus.
It is my time to “be” to allow God to work on me from the inside out; to enter into the mystery of “being-ness” and trust that I can put one foot in front of the other, moving forward, without knowing the answer to where the path may lead; confident that I’ll know when I am ready for the next era in my life-story. For now, I’ll just wait and “be;” comforted in the repetition of my knitting and projects that allow me to rest while God does her work on me.
When is the last time you gave yourself an extended period of time to allow yourself to rest in the Mystery that is God? When is the last time you allowed the silence to wrap you in God’s love? Perhaps you might want to repeat the words, ‘Just to Be is Enough, Just to Live is Holy” during those times when you’re going too fast through your life. It might help you to stop and smell the flowers and truly live.

Mary Lou Johnstone

Photo's from Graham Bai's Baptism on Oct 4th, 2009

2009-10-09T12:26:00.004-04:00

Encouraged to talk about it

2009-09-24T15:49:00.001-04:00

Troubled youths unused to being asked to share their feelings find an outlet in a local priest's group therapy sessions.

To read the full story click here

By Scott Gold Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 16, 2009
http://www.latimes.com

My Life as a Dog

2009-09-23T15:28:00.003-04:00

Soon it will be time for all the joyous noise and activity that is part of the annual "Blessing of the Pets" and so here is a posting from Dana Jennings' blog about his experience with prostate cancer on nytimes.com, as well as some hard-to-resist photos.

No cats I'm afraid- looking for volunteers to contribute feline postings..

September 15, 2009, 10:40 am
My Life as a Dog
By Dana Jennings

Our creaky miniature poodle, Bijou, and I spend a lot of time together. We both like to curl up in the den at the end of the day, and we both have the uncanny ability to take a nap anytime and anywhere.

I realize now as I take care of Bijou that I even became a kind of a dog myself as I went through surgery, radiation and hormone therapy for advanced prostate cancer. We don’t look anything alike, though. She’s black, snarly and curly. I have a buzz cut.

But after surgery, you’re reduced to a helpless animal state. I needed to be fed and watered. And, when you’re walking the hospital, your I.V. pole is effectively a leash. Bijou and I have both wrestled with issues of incontinence – though I never peed on anyone’s foot.

When I got home from the hospital my wife, Deb, and my sons took me for walks, just as they did Bijou. I managed, however, not to bark and growl at the other dogs in the neighborhood or scarf up dessicated worms off the sidewalk.

During hormone therapy I literally was as hungry as a dog, which gave the two of us plenty of culinary common ground. We both shared an unhealthy affection for Cool Ranch Doritos, and Bijou taught me that if someone is eating something you like – an Italian sub, say – it never hurts to ask: “Are you going to finish that?”

I also learned that cancer time and dog time aren’t so different. We know that our dogs’ lives are compressed into 10 to 15 years, that their brilliant flames burn even more quickly than our own. Time is compressed, too, when you have cancer, and even after. You can’t take 10 years from now for granted, or next year for that matter.

During all of this, Bijou has been a kind of accidental canine Zen master. The more I watch her, the more I learn. And the more I learn, the more I understand my inner dog.

I have learned from her to nap in the sun whenever possible. And if you need to bark and howl, bark and howl. Dogs don’t keep their feelings buried inside. Thus, they rarely take Zoloft.

Another lesson from Bijou: sigh when the spirit moves you, because a sigh is sometimes better than a prayer.

Bijou sleeps later than she used to these days. Instead of waking me up, I’m the one who rouses her. But she’s always ready to go, always happy to see me, when she hears me come downstairs.

We ease outside and troll the sidewalk. She likes to poke along because there are trees and bushes to sniff for new messages, dew to lick off the grass, and Loki, our neighbor’s Halloween of a black cat, with whom to share inscrutable stares. As Bijou does her business, I sniff the air and ponder the weather, fetch my neighbor’s newspaper and toss it onto her porch, and also share inscrutable stares with Loki. Afterward, Bijou takes her pills (snugged in mini-pepperoni), then I take my pills (gulped with orange juice).

As I said, we spend a lot of time in the den. I like it at night, as I’m reading, when Bijou wakes from a nap, stands up, shakes off the sleep, then hobbles over to me. She brushes against me a couple times, as if to make sure that I’m awake, then rests her chin on the cushion of my chair, asking to be scratched on the head.

So often, we — dogs and humans — just need to be near each other. We need the presence of another heartbeat, the inhale and exhale of another soul. Dogs understand the healing power of having your skull kneaded, and constantly raise their heads toward our hands, the way plants turn toward the sun.

We humans like it, too. I never say no when Deb or the boys want to rub my fresh buzz cut — good dog that I am.

The Scene at Nativity on Sunday, September 13

2009-09-18T11:25:00.001-04:00

The Scene at Nativity on Sunday, September 13 was one of joy, celebration and welcoming. It was Nativity Homecoming Sunday. The music was provided by Reavis Graham, Al Jacquez and Phil Spradlin, and provide it they did! Tunes included, Early in the Morning, Just a Closer Walk with Thee, Peace in the Valley, and the concluding song, This Little Light of Mine had all singing their hearts out to the Lord. The choir provided backup voices for Rev, Phil and Al. Let’s just say all were very moved by the Spirit during the service. Thanks to all the wonderful musicians!!
Vicar Diane Morgan provided us much food for thought from lessons for the day regarding the idea of the tongue and our need to check our words before we speak lest we allow it to be used as, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison… and with it we curse.” (James 31-12)
Following the service all gathered outside for a family style picnic with hotdogs and tea provided by Rick Smith and dishes to pass provided by the members. Steve Bai was chief grill master. Rick Smith ran around doing so many things I couldn’t keep count! Thanks for all your hard work, Rick.
The children played, the adults sat and talked and all went home well fed and content.

Mary Lou Johnstone

"The aim of receiving God is to become more human"

2009-09-15T11:48:00.001-04:00

The aim of receiving God is to become more human, not to arrive at some transcendent state in which the difficulties if being human are not present.
The Instruction Manual for Receiving God, by Jason Shulman

“The aim of receiving God is to become more human.” I wonder if you’ve ever thought the aim of receiving God is to become perfect. I did. Actually, I still fight that demon from time to time, O. K., maybe more than I’d like to admit and much less than I used to engage in the conflict. The good news is that I’m more conscious of those thoughts of the need for perfection so I can now stare those thoughts in the face and accept them. I can admit I’m human. Somewhere in me is this ego that has a goal of keeping me from really accepting me warts and all and one way to do that is to keep me thinking God won’t accept me unless I’m perfect.

Shulman is saying, and I believe, God wants you to accept yourself, accept your humanness, stare your fears straight in the face and accept them as well as what you see as your positive attributes. I’ve been reading a book about introverts. I never really got into the whole introvert/extrovert readings. I had a general understanding of what they were and had always labeled myself an extrovert, I realize now mainly because that was what I heard from everyone. I mean really who is always taking charge heading up various projects both at church and other groups I’ve belonged to over the years…me. This in spite of the evidence on The Myers Briggs that I was an introvert; talk about the ego taking charge and hanging on for dear life. I took the Myers Briggs a couple times and one time the results came out I was an extrovert but very close to being an introvert and the next time I took it was the exact opposite and both times I measured very close to the middle line so that techniquely I figured I was in the middle. I know I know it’s hard to believe. The thing is it’s a perfect example of how the ego can get hold and have you thinking you’re perfect or in this case balanced; I was both, how much better can you get! I also couldn’t get more human. Where was my brain during all this? I would guess controlled by my ego and not my heart.

The fact is I never really took the test seriously, I think because it ruined my ego’s need to be thought of as an extrovert, I mean in society they are the ones who are thought of as the winners. I also know it got mixed up with my need to take care of everyone. O. K., enough confessions for the day, I can only batter my ego so much. Suffice it to say I’m learning and accepting a lot about myself in this round of “wake-up, Mary Lou, and smell the coffee!”

So, what is here for us in this story? For me, I became more human. I faced my fear of not being perfect with this experience. Shulman says, “How my ego longs for ease...My real Self longs for ease too…It knows I cannot always be composed and clear…it only wants my humanness.” God does not want perfection God, wants us to be who we are.

How does one go about being human? My first response is taking a deep breath. I’ve learned that whenever fear is starting to grip me the most important thing I can do is take a deep breath and allow the spirit of God to fill me. It clears my head and allows my heart to take control. With my heart in control I can remember that in God’s eyes I am already perfect and loved. William A. Barry, SJ sees God as hopelessly in love with us. So, whenever that shadow side, the side of me that I don’t want people to see because, of course, they will think less of me, shows up in my thoughts I need to remember that is part of my humanness and God loves all of my humanness. We are who we are. We are the parts of ourselves we are comfortable with, proud of, in love with and the parts of ourselves that we want hide and see as not nice, negative, or evil. God doesn’t just love us; God is hopelessly in love with us.

So, another thing we need to do is cut ourselves some slack, realize our responses to life are human. It’s O. K. to lose our temper on occasion or make a mistake or not be so perfect. God loves us anyway; in fact, God is hopelessly in love with us.

Finally, accept the difficulties of being human. I find one of the easiest ways to get beyond what I consider a mistake is to laugh at my humanness. So, I spilled the water on the counter and it soaks my favorite recipe and drips on the floor and causes all manner of chaos in my day. I take a deep breath see the folly of rushing, laugh at my humanness and clean up the mess secure in the knowledge that I am loved just the way I am.

What a joy to be loved for who we are warts and all!

Mary Lou Johnstone

Prayer Group on Thursdays at 2 pm.

2009-08-17T15:12:00.001-04:00

Nativity now has a prayer group. Every Thursday at 2 pm a group gathers at Nativity to pray for the church as well as other requests that are made during the gathering time. All are welcome to attend!

Here is our process. We have a volunteer scribe who writes down the requests at the beginning of the time. We spend a few minutes in silence and a volunteer reads the requests out loud as we pray. It’s very simple and it is not necessary to volunteer. If you cannot attend on Thursdays we ask that you think of us during that time and attend with us in spirit if not in the flesh.

Matthew 18:20. Jesus said, “When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.” The Message.

The Lord be with you. And also with you. Let us pray.

Mary Lou Johnstone

In Praise of Activism

2009-08-12T10:30:00.003-04:00

About Dot Earth(nytimes.com)

By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth,(New York Times) reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Supported in part by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Mr. Revkin tracks relevant news from suburbia to Siberia, and conducts an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.

Here is a link to his latest posting;

In Praise of Activism

Faith groups fight for health insurance reform

2009-08-11T13:51:00.002-04:00

Faith groups, including the Episcopal Church, are fighting back against those who would keep health care options in the hands of those who have given us the current system of being a country with the most money spent on health care and one that leaves out large numbers of those who cannot afford good health.

Click on the link to read the full article, which appears at episcopalcafe.com

Picnic !!!!

2009-08-06T16:33:00.003-04:00

We had a lovely picnic on Wednesday. The weather was just perfect, and lots of people came. We were in a perfect spot - on the side by the playground so the children kept busy. Hopefully we can do this more often! Diane did a lovely service for us, and we shared communion.

A of couple people asked me for the recipe of the Asian salad I brought. The list of ingredients is longish, but the directions are easy. I doubled it for the picnic. To give credit where it's due, the recipe comes from Guy Fieri of the Food Network.

Ingredients

1 package soba noodles
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon hot chili oil
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 carrot, thinly sliced or julienned
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced or julienned
5 green onions, bottom 4 inches, thinly sliced
1/2 cup thinly sliced napa cabbage
1/2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced or julienned
1/2 cup julienned bok choy
1 cup bean sprouts, optional
3 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro leaves
3 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted, for garnish
4 tablespoons unsalted peanuts, for garnish

Directions

In a medium stock pot, boil water, add salt and cook noodles. When finished, place noodles in an ice water bath to cool. Drain and set aside.

In a medium bowl combine, sesame oil, vinegar, soy sauce, hot chili oil, hoisin and extra-virgin olive oil. Mix thoroughly and then combine prepared vegetables and noodles.

Garnish with sesame seeds and peanuts.

Suzy Bai

Martha Cormie

2009-08-04T13:19:00.001-04:00

If you would like to send a card to Martha, the address is :

Martha Cormie

Woodward Hills Nursing Facility

39312 Woodward Avenue

Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304

Direct line to Martha's room: 248-593-7583

Episcopal Vote

2009-07-15T12:28:00.003-04:00

ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Episcopal Church voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to open the door to consecrate more bishops who are openly gay, a move that is likely to send shock waves throughout the Anglican Communion, the global network of churches to which the Episcopal Church belongs.

From the New York Times (click on title in orange font to link to the article)

Our Garden

2009-06-29T20:56:00.009-04:00

Once again, Gail Davison (aka the miracle worker) has transformed the grounds into a lush green paradise. We hope that these pictures will encourage you to volunteer your talents,both in the garden and in the building.

Our newest member!

2009-06-29T14:01:00.003-04:00

Please join us in welcoming Nativity's newest ( and cutest) member- Graham Bai, who was born on June 11th.

Congratulations to Suzy and Steve

Meet Our Vicar - Article from the Scene

2009-05-20T10:05:00.001-04:00

Introducing Diane Morgan

by Susan Bai

Looking at our history, December has brought Nativity many new beginnings. December 1964 saw the first service at our newly built church on Christmas Eve. In December 1991, we completed the addition of our parish hall and kitchen. Recently, December turns out to have ushered in another kind of beginning: Diane Morgan, now our vicar, led us in worship as supply clergy for the first time in December 2008.

I thought it would be nice to conduct a short interview with our new vicar to introduce her to our extended community through The Scene. Diane is incredibly busy! Although she is supposed to be with us part time, it feels more like she is working for Nativity full time. I wanted to discuss her background with her, both for this article and also because John Alexander and I are putting together a new website for Nativity. Diane is a modest person; when I originally approached her about the website, she demurred, stating that our site ought to focus on the community and not on her personally. But there is room for both! We hope to launch the new website by summer.

I thank Diane for finding time to help me put together this article. You will notice a recurring theme of healing in her ministry. It seems her vocation is to aid those in crises physical, personal, and spiritual.

Diane was born and raised in the Detroit area. She was received into the Episcopal church in her late 30’s. She realized she was called to the priesthood because her congregation raised her up. Having grown up Roman Catholic, the idea of women as priests was a foreign concept, but people kept approaching her about it. It took Diane five years of conversation and prayer to accept her call. She took graduate level religious classes at the University of Detroit, then attended Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary in Rochester, New York.

In 1990, Diane returned to Michigan, where she was ordained as a Deacon and assigned to Grace Church in Southgate. Well, their priest immediately took a sabbatical, so Diane found herself working on her own right away. Simultaneously, she served a one year residency in clinical pastoral education at Children’s Hospital in Detroit. In 1991, she was ordained as a priest at Grace Church.

Her residency complete, Diane was called by St. Martin in Detroit to serve as rector. It was a part time position. She came to bring healing to that congregation following conflict; she worked there for 6.5 years. During that time, she also worked part time as a chaplain at Beaumont Hospital and in 1997 was made department head there. She also did occasional supply work. Then the Bishop asked her again to tend to a parish community: Grace Church, where she had served as a deacon, was a community in grief. They were hurt when their Priest didn’t stay long with them. So, in addition to her full time position at Beaumont, Diane spent 26 months serving as long term supply for Grace.

Diane’s Beaumont ministry was her longest held ordained position. She handled crisis ministry well; Beaumont is a tertiary care hospital, and no day was ever slow. In June 2006, Diane retired from Beaumont and took a one year sabbatical. She travelled to northern Michigan, Mexico, Florida, and the Smokey Mountains. 2007 was dedicated to the care of two beloved people: Diane’s aunt and her partner Karen’s mother. Then she travelled to Arizona for three months, taking time to grieve.

Since then, Diane has done supply work, notably spending 4 months at Trinity in Belleville while their priest was on sabbatical. And here we arrive at the present; Nativity is the next step of Diane’s journey. Diane came here as supply in December, and now the Bishop has appointed her to serve as our vicar. We are blessed that she brings her vast talents and experience to our community. We are in a transformative time in our parish history. I look with excitement and anticipation to see in what direction our community moves under the leadership of both Diane and our fine Bishop’s Committee.

Work Zone

2009-05-19T15:15:00.004-04:00

As you approach Nativity on 14 Mile road, you will see a sign that says " Work Zone Begins". No street signage could be more appropriate- as a Parish we have our work cut out for us; rebuilding Nativity as a vibrant, caring and progressive community.

At the same time, this is not something that Rev Diane and a few parishioners can achieve by themselves. We need your ideas and labor! Whatever your talents- we will find a use for it. Get in touch with Rick Smith to help with maintenance projects, Gail Davison for the garden, Tim Wittlinger to be a counter or any of the Bishop's Committee members.

John Alexander

"Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary." Galatians 6

America, Religious Values, and the Death Penalty; Or, If it Was Good Enough for Jesus and Socrates

2009-05-19T15:09:00.002-04:00

Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. is William M. Suttles Chair of Religious Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. The author of six books, his two most recent are: God Gardened East: A Gardener’s Meditation on the Dynamics of Genesis (Wipf and Stock, 2008) and This Tragic Gospel: How John Corrupted the Heart of Christianity (Jossey-Bass, 2008).

The Well Meaning Bad Parent

2009-04-24T17:08:00.003-04:00

Psychologist Richard Weissbourd contends that parents who are obsessed with their children's happiness are ignoring other important values — like goodness, empathy, appreciation and caring — that are necessary to a well-rounded personality. Weissbourd is the author of The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development.

A lecturer in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Kennedy School of Government, Weissbourd has founded several interventions for at-risk children, including ReadBoston, WriteBoston and Project ASPIRE.

-------------------------------------------------

But for anyone who is willing to enter children's worlds and look hard at what shapes their development, there is much about these explanations that is mystifying, if not deeply unsettling. At best they miss the point; at worst they are a kind of massive cover-up and cop-out. Blaming peers and popular culture lets adults off the hook— and dangerously so. It dodges a fundamental truth that is supported by a mountain of research. Children's moral development is decided by many factors, including not only media and peer influences but their genetic endowment, birth order, gender, and how these different factors interact. Yet we are the primary influence on children's moral lives. The parent-child relationship is at the center of the development of all the most important moral qualities, including honesty, kindness, loyalty, generosity, a commitment to justice, the capacity to think through moral dilemmas, and the ability to sacrifice for important principles.

While there's nothing wrong with exhorting adults to be better role models and to teach values, this by itself does nothing to help people actually be and do these things. I don't know any adult who became a better role model simply by being told to be one. Nor do these exhortations reach the heart of what it is to be a person who is an effective parent, a true moral mentor.

What I am acutely aware matters most as a parent is not whether my wife and I are "perfect" role models or how much we talk about values, but the hundreds of ways — as living, breathing, imperfect human beings— we influence our children in the complex, messy relationships we have with them day to day.

This knowledge came to me gradually in the first years of my children's lives, but there was one specific afternoon when it struck me most sharply. Sunday afternoons were sacrosanct, reserved for family outings. My three kids are three years apart, and it was often hard to find something that was fun for every one.

One blustery, sunny Sunday, we went to a park near the ocean. My oldest son, then about seven years old, was withdrawn and seemed listless. The park was not his favorite place. My week had been stressful, and I'd been looking forward to this outing. I lashed out at him for sulking. We had done what he'd wanted to do the Sunday before, I reminded him, and I expected him to rally, to cheerfully participate. It also seemed to me that this was an opportunity to reinforce a basic notion of reciprocity.

My wife certainly agreed with me that our son should be expected to engage in activities for the sake of the family. But, she pointed out, he seemed more tired than unhappy, and she reminded me that I, too, could seem less than enthusiastic during family activities I didn't enjoy. She added, gently, that perhaps I should rethink whether the real issue in this case was teaching my son a moral standard. Instead, maybe I'd gotten angry because I'd been expecting this family event to pull me out of my own bad mood.

After some grumbling, I came to see that my wife was right. I apologized to my son and explained to him that I had had a rough week. But what dawned on me suddenly was that under the guise of teaching my son a principle, I had made it harder for him to care about how I thought or felt, more self-protective, and perhaps a little less willing to pitch in for the family. What also hit me was that while this single event wouldn't do lasting damage, many times a week we had interactions with our kids in which my wife and I succeeded— or failed— in disentangling and balancing our needs and theirs and in enabling them to take other perspectives, and that these interactions, cumulatively, defined their notion of what a relationship is and powerfully shaped their capacity for caring, respectful relationships. Our children's moral qualities were also shaped day to day by what we registered, or failed to acknowledge, in the world around us, and what we asked them to register— whether we let them treat a store clerk as invisible, or commented when a child in a playground had been treated unfairly, or pointed out to them a neighbor's good deed. We were, too, constantly affecting their moral abilities by how we de fined their responsibilities for others, and by whether we insisted that those responsibilities be met. Our effectiveness as moral mentors has hinged, most basically, on whether we have earned our children's respect and trust by, among many things, admitting our errors and explaining our decisions to them in ways that they see as fair. It was these day- to- day details of our relationship with our children— far more than our talk about values— that formed their moral core.

What has clearly been hardest for my wife and me— and for every parent we know— is being vigilant about these things when we have been stressed or depleted or outright depressed. There are "strategies" that can help us with our children during these critical moments, to be sure. But what is fundamentally being challenged at these times are our moral qualities and maturity— including our ability to manage our flaws— qualities that can't be feigned. The reason many children in this country continually lack vital moral qualities is that we have failed to come to grips with the fundamental reality that we bring our selves to the project of raising a moral child. That makes being a parent or mentor a profound moral test, and learning to raise children well a profound moral achievement.

From; NPR.org

An issue that concerns us all

2009-04-24T17:03:00.002-04:00

GORE APPEALS TO HOUSE COMMITTEE ON CLIMATE BILL.

After a marathon week of panels and testimonies on the discussion draft of the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act, former Vice President Al Gore spoke this morning in hopes of summarizing all that was debated concerning the climate bill. Speaking before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Gore said the proposed legislation has "the moral significance equivalent to that of the civil rights legislation of the 1960's and the Marshall Plan of the late 1940's."

It seems people have lost all shyness about defining their representative issues as "the civil rights" of our generation. Gore's wording -- "moral significance equivalent to" -- seemed, though, a more genuine and accurate phrasing, compared to defining the issue as such. But, what Gore proceeded to describe, in explaining why the challenge of fighting global warming is no longer something for partisan trifling about, illustrated something much bigger than a staging for civil rights. Among the examples of evidence of climate change catastrophe, Gore cited:

"New research, which draws upon recently declassified data collected by U.S. nuclear submarines traveling under the Arctic ice cap for the last 50 years ... has told us that the entire Arctic ice cap may totally disappear in summer in as little as five years."

"A recent study in the journal Science has now confirmed that the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet is warming. Scientists have told us that if it were to collapse and slide into the sea, we would experience global sea level rise of another 20 feet worldwide."

"The American West and the Southeast have been experiencing prolonged severe drought and historic water shortages. A study ... from the Scripps Institute estimated that 60 percent of the changes in the West's water cycle are due to increased atmospheric man-made greenhouse gases."

"A number of new studies continue to show that climate change is increasing the intensity of hurricanes. Although we cannot attribute any particular storm to global warming, we can certainly look at the trend. Dr. Greg Holland from the National Center for Atmospheric Research says that we have experienced a 300 to 400 percent increase in category five storms in the past 10 years."

Such catastrophes, if left unchecked, will result in challenges much larger than presented in a civil rights context. And since the climate bill won't be moving with any speed on economic principles -- if rebuttal from Republicans on the committee are any indication -- then moral appeal may have to figure stronger in the bill's advocacy.

From Tapped; the group blog of the American Prospect (www.prospect.org)

Thought for the Day

2009-04-21T16:09:00.001-04:00

Two essays by the Rev John Bell from the BBC Radio program-Thought for the Day. We hope the first one encourages you to join the Choir!

It may not belong before the tabloids sport headlines such as 'Mendelssohn on the Mersey' or 'Rachmaninov in Raploch'â€¦and all because there are 'More than Maracas in Caracas.'

Last week, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra from Venezuela performed in Britain. Its first concert earned a rare five star rating in the Guardian. All the instrumentalists in this ensemble are under 24. And many come from backgrounds where classical music would not have been a life choice were it not for a project called El Sistema which, in 30 years, has tutored 400,000 children and set up 150 orchestras in what is still regarded as a 'developing nation.'

The scheme is now being introduced in Britain. It has already started in Scotland, in the Raploch, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Stirling. The project there is called 'the Big Noise' And last week the project's chair commented, 'It costs about £2,000 per year for a child to be taught in the Big Noise. If the child ends up in the criminal justice system, it costs £18,500 per year.

Does this mean that classical music is the antidote to criminality? No, that would be a naïve assertion. But I'm reminded of a comment made by the head teacher of a primary school I once visited in Yorkshire. Its 190 strong choir included every child who did not go home for lunch. The head had prioritised class singing as an essential feature of the curriculum and commented that one result was a noticeable decrease in behavioural problems.

'Why so?' I asked her and she said, 'You can pay a fortune for sports equipment and instructors and one of the by-products is to make children competitive. You hire a part time singing teacher and you make children cooperative.

Maybe this is why within Christian churches, music has had such a high priorityâ€¦ not just the practised music of performers, but the sound of untutored voices doing something magnificent together.

For, of all the arts, music is the most participative. We can't all paint or perform a play together. But we can all sing; and the Bible sees this cooperative activity not as an option, but as a response to a divine command: "Sing me a new songâ€¦" says God.

In a highly competitive society, there's something to be treasured in a pursuit which costs little apart from time.

Maybe this is what differentiates us from the beastsâ€¦ that we make music not to attract suitors or display skill, but because cooperation is what we need to learn in order to prevent our race from dying.

copyright 2009 BBC

Thought for the Day

2009-04-21T16:02:00.002-04:00

There's a phrase I heard twice on this programme on Friday and read several times in the newspapers over the weekend. It has become almost a ritual saying when something has gone wrong in the economy, in politics, or in welfare, educational and health services. It isâ€¦. 'Lessons will be learned'.

I would gladly censure that convenient aphorism. It is convenient news-speak, diplomatic flannel, a multipurpose euphemism. In nearly every case what the speaker means to say is: I can't believe our failsafe system has failed; or I don't know who's to blame yet, but heads will roll

It inevitably leads to a committee of enquiry being set up to scrutinise and make recommendations. It is always post factum...after the event. And it nearly always happens in situations where the prophetic voice has been ignored.

In the season of Advent, we are encouraged to listen for such voices. They are not the meanderings of fortune tellers whose palms have been greased to flatter the client. The prophet is someone who reads into the present state of society and discerns two thingsâ€¦.the consequence of present actions in advance of a crisis...and an alternative reality which is worth striving for.

I suspect that if Isaiah were around today he wouldn't be surprised at the disquiet surrounding Social Work departments.

10 years ago he would have said to unsympathetic ears:

If you burden social workers with case-loads they can't manage,
and require them to spend as much time on paper work as on client contact,
and then use them and teachers as whipping boys when things go wrong,
they will never give of their best.

I suspect that if Amos were around today he wouldn't be surprised by the global financial crisis.

Ten years ago he would have said...
If you encourage a culture of debt, put few restrictions on what people can borrow;
if you allow unbridled consumerism to run wild, the economy will crash.

If Jeremiah were around today, he wouldn't be surprised by the fragility of the ecosystem caused by a cavalier approach to conservation. He would point to what he said two and a half millennia ago...

Your wrongdoing will upset nature's order,
and your sins will terminate her generosity.

Sometimes for good and honourable reasons, sometimes for reasons of political expediency, the prophetic voices are not given the hearing that they deserve as necessary correctives to the prevailing norms in politics as in faith. But it's at our peril that we ignore them. For they remind us not just that prevention is better than cure, but also that insight is better than hindsight.

copyright 2008 BBC

Counting Pages

2008-10-03T16:00:00.004-04:00

From the Faith and Doubt series in the New Yorker

Counting Pages
by Allegra Goodman June 9, 2008
As a young girl, I spent more time outside synagogues than in them. Services were long, and I always found some excuse to get away. I remember the Quonset hut where my family went to services when we first moved to Honolulu. The building looked like a white cylinder half buried in the ground. I remember borrowed space in a Unitarian church, an elegant old house with woven mats covering hardwood floors. A weathered tree house sat in the branches of a large tree in the garden. I’d leave my sandals on the grass and climb the ladder to read Wizard of Oz books.
My parents did expect me to participate at least some of the time. During the High Holidays, I amused myself by hanging upside down on my chair. I’d pretend I was a bat and stare at the appropriately named Mrs. Batkin’s feet. Then my mother would whisper, “Doesn’t this day mean anything to you?”
I was a daydreamer and a page counter. On Yom Kippur, I kept my finger on the last page of the evening service. Only seventy pages to go. Fifty! Maybe now I could get up and make a trip to the water fountain. I was expert at every diversion. For some years, our traditional minyan prayed on Saturday mornings at Honolulu’s Temple Emanu-El. The Temple had a library with a slot in the door for returning books. I’d thread my long, thin arm through the opening and unlock the door from the inside. Once in, I’d sit at the dark conference table and read. Mr. Fischel, the volunteer librarian, had ordered a set of children’s biographies—beautifully written lives of Jewish luminaries, including Sholem Aleichem, Rebecca Gratz, Henrietta Szold, Emma Lazarus, Albert Einstein, and Lillian Wald.
Was I becoming a little Unitarian myself? A secular humanist? I heard singing in the distance—“Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, Adonai tseva’ot, melo khol ha’arets kevodo. Holy, holy, holy, the Lord of Hosts; His presence fills all the earth”—as I was curled up in a library chair discovering when Lillian Wald had founded the visiting-nurses’ movement. Sometimes on Rosh Hashanah I’d come down with terrible allergy attacks. Apparently, I was allergic to mold spores in the Temple’s air-conditioning system. More than once, my mother whisked me home, and I would spend the rest of the day convalescing on the couch with “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,”instead of praying to be inscribed in the book of life.
In the summers, we vacationed in Tannersville, New York, where my mother’s family still had a house. The summer people in Tannersville were devout Jews. An undulating sea of black suits filled the men’s section of the synagogue. Behind lace curtains in the women’s section, the married ladies covered their hair with hats or wigs. I played outside in the sun and through the open windows watched the men bobbing and swaying.

I did believe in God. I always had, ever since I could remember. In my own brief experience, I had known the crashing waves of the Pacific and the long summer evenings of the Catskills. The world, so complex and beautiful, must have a creator. The sky, the stars, and all the trees must come from something. They could not generate themselves. But my belief in God did not translate into action. At school, my younger sister refused to sing Christmas carols because she was Jewish. She was six. I, on the other hand, looked forward to the Christmas pageant every year. I was always a villager, because after some discussion my parents had concluded that the villagers in the Christmas story were Jews. They drew the line at angels, which they deemed problematic theologically, and so I never wore a tinsel halo or white wings.
I enjoyed singing carols. I sat through Shabbat services making up my own stories about Laura Ingalls Wilder to add to the adventures in her books. And yet, inexorably, some of my own religion rubbed off on me. Might that be the way belief works for some people? Not a sudden epiphany but a long, slow accumulation of Sabbaths. No road-to-Damascus conversion but a kind of coin rubbing, in which ritual and repetition begin to reveal the credo underneath. As I grew older, I was drawn to poetry, and I began to study the haftarah—the weekly selection from the prophets. As I grew busier, I began to appreciate time away from the world. Services became a refuge. I did not need to rest when I was a child, because I did not work. I did not want to come inside, because the outside world was still entirely beautiful to me.

Daily Readings

2008-10-03T15:51:00.003-04:00

Here are some sites that offer daily readings;
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/thesoul/ ( part of an interesting website)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/ ( part of a comprehensive site on world religions)

Tales from a Chelsea Soup Kitchen

2008-10-01T15:28:00.000-04:00

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_frazier

Here's a great piece that was pubilshed in the New Yorker in May. Makes one proud to be an Episcopalian

Emailing: Our Local Correspondents Hungry Minds Reporting & Essays The New Yorker.htm

2008-10-01T15:27:00.001-04:00

Hungry Minds

Tales from a Chelsea soup kitchen.

by Ian Frazier May 26, 2008

If you take any twelve hundred New Yorkers, you'll naturally come up with a small percentage who can really write.

The Church of the Holy Apostles, at the corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, is a church only two-sevenths of the time. The other five-sevenths—every weekday including holidays, no exception made for weather, fire, or terrorist attack—it is the largest soup kitchen in New York City. It serves an average of about twelve hundred meals a day, though the number often spikes higher; on a recent Columbus Day, the number of meals served was fourteen hundred and ninety-two. As a church, Holy Apostles is a not large and not wealthy parish in the Episcopal Church's Diocese of New York. As a soup kitchen, it has lasted for more than twenty-five years, since back in the first Reagan Administration, and has served more than six million meals.

I know about the soup kitchen because I am one of the teachers of a writers' workshop that meets there after lunch on Wednesdays in the spring. I started the workshop fourteen years ago, with the help of a grant. I wanted to do something with the soup kitchen because I admired the people there and the way it is run and the whole idea of it. There are so many hungers out there; the soup kitchen deals, efficiently and satisfyingly, with the most basic kind. I consider it, in its own fashion, a work of art.

To walk into the church while lunch is going on is to enter one of the city's defining public spaces. The building, which turned a hundred and sixty this year, was declared a New York City Landmark in 1966. It has a high, arched cathedral ceiling supported by cylindrical pillars that rise to Tuscan-style groined arches. Natural light comes into the nave through tall and narrow stained-glass windows whose age and artistry make them rarities in themselves. But as for traditional church fanciness that's about it. Most strikingly, the church has no pews. From the baptismal font, at the back of the church, to the steps of the altar, ninety feet away, no pews or carpet or other fixtures interrupt an open expanse of stone tiles, whose foot-polished smoothness suggests a dance studio or the floor of Grand Central.

People who work for the soup kitchen set up round dining tables and metal folding chairs in the main part of the church every lunchtime. The soup-kitchen guests wait in line on the sidewalk outside, receive meal tickets, file through the serving stations in the Mission House adjoining the church, fill their trays, come into the church, sit down, and eat. The meal, which lasts from ten-thirty to twelve-thirty, takes place in a murmur of dining noises sometimes accompanied by music on the church's piano or organ beneath (if the day is sunny) shafts of stained-glass light. Most guests finish eating in twenty minutes or half an hour and are on their way. Formerly, when the church was not used for dining, you ate in a smaller room in the Mission House and had to be finished in seven and a half minutes. Now you can take your time.

To let all the soup-kitchen guests know that our writers' workshop exists, I sometimes sit during lunch at a little table with a hand-lettered sign and a stack of flyers right by the exit door. Often, I have to clip a pen to the flyers and tape the sign to the table so they won't blow away in the cold drafts from the door. For the two hours I'm there, the stream of people does not stop. Preceding me in the exit line might be tables for representatives of housing advocacy groups, drug- and alcohol-counselling services, domestic-abuse shelters, or (a few years back) Charles, the Condom Man, who passed out free condoms for AIDS prevention with a carny barker's spiel. Because I'm nearest the door, many people wait a moment at my table before heading out into the cold, where some of them will be continuously until they return for lunch the following day.

Some ask about the workshop; most do not. They set their paper cups of hot coffee or tea next to the flyers, along with the orange or the piece of bread they were given on the way out, and they button up, pull their caps over their ears, put on gloves if they have them, re-tie the bags or parcels they brought, and kind of hunch down into themselves, getting ready for the city again.

On really chilly days, they might spend a long time on these details before they go. And then sometimes, after half an hour or so, the same person is again at my table, again buttoning up for outdoors. That means that the person waited in line, filled his tray, ate, and then went through the process over again. There's no rule against going back for seconds; the soup kitchen never turns anybody away. On occasion, I've noticed people who have passed by three or even four times—have eaten that many lunches, in other words. The soup kitchen portions are generous, and the menu for each lunch has been designed to provide a person with enough calories to last twenty-four hours. Most people who eat at the soup kitchen look like anybody. If you sat across from them on the subway, you would never guess how hungry they were.

But there are a lot of hungry people in New York City. Talking about hunger and being hungry are two different things; talk can wait for a convenient moment, but when you're hungry you're hungry right now. Many people on the streets of New York are hungry right now. Every year, the city has been getting hungrier. The New York City Coalition Against Hunger estimates that 1.3 million New Yorkers can't afford to buy enough food for themselves and their families all the time. That works out to about one person of every six in the city.

Once when I was sitting at my table by the door, a tall, thin, long-faced black man with deep-set eyes made deeper-looking by the hood of his dark sweatshirt stopped at my table. As he was adjusting his clothing for outside, he looked at my sign. "Writers' work-shop!" he said, in a tone indicating that he was not impressed by the idea.

"Yes, we meet every Wednesday at twelve-thirty in the narthex, that little room in the front of the church. Would you like to join?" I asked.

"Uh-uh, no," he said. "I ain't doin' no writers' workshop. I done that shit before."

"Really? You were in a writers' workshop before?"

"Hell yes I was. And my teacher was a better writer than you."

"Oh? What writer was that?"

"John Cheever."

Apparently, the guy had been in a workshop that Cheever taught at the prison in Ossining, back in the seventies. I had met Cheever once, and the guy and I talked about him for a while. I asked the guy what he had learned from the workshop with Cheever, and he said, "Cheever, you understan', he was a brilliant writer. When he wrote something, he always had two things going on at a time. He told us, when you writin', you got this surface thing, you understan', goin' on up here"—he moved his left hand in a circle with his fingers spread apart, as if rubbing a flat surface—"an' then once you get that goin' on, now you got to come under it"—he brought his right hand under his left, as if throwing an uppercut—"come under this thing here that's goin' on up here, you understan'. That was how John Cheever said you write.

"John Cheever had that writers' workshop at Ossining," he continued, "and later he wrote a book about the prison, 'Falconer,' and it was a No. 1 best-seller. I ain't in that book. He got a best-seller from the workshop, and I didn't get shit. I ain't doin' writers' workshops no more."

Most of the people I met were less skeptical. When they saw my sign, they stopped to talk, their lunch having put them in a narrative mood. Almost everybody who talked to me said they had some amazing stories to tell if they could only write them down. Many said that if their lives were made into books the books would be best-sellers. Some few had written books about their lives already, and they produced the manuscripts from among their belongings to show me. If you take any twelve hundred New Yorkers, naturally you'll find a certain number of good musicians, skilled carpenters, gifted athletes, and so on; you'll also come up with a small percentage who can really write. Lots of people I talked to said they were interested in the workshop; a much smaller number actually showed up. Some attended only one session, some came back year after year. In all, over fourteen years, maybe four hundred soup-kitchen guests have participated.

When I think of them, who stands out? There was Sundance, a hobo, who wrote about etiquette in hobo camps and told me where to go in the Newark train yards if I wanted to hop long-distance freight trains; and David, a bicycle messenger, who wrote a fast-paced poem about his job, titled "In Flight"; and a guy whose name I've forgotten who tried to sell stolen watches in class; and Wendy-Anne, who always wore a white bonnet and who was trying to regain ownership, she said, of her ancestral property in France; and Jay, a soup-kitchen volunteer, who wrote interestingly about the history of this neighborhood, Chelsea, and about a dollar store accessible to wheelchairs; and Roger, a former M.T.A. employee, who came to a class, slept for a while with his head on the table, then sat bolt upright and shouted, "I need some guidance!"; and Ted, who had been a merchant seaman and wrote about being in a bar fight while the song "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail" played on the jukebox; and Donald, a regular in the early years, who penned a book-length memoir about being homeless entirely in blue ballpoint using large block capitals, because of his poor eyesight, and who had an article about the workfare program published on the Op-Ed page of the Times; and Charles, a bearded, wild-haired fellow, who said he preferred sleeping outside and resented being picked up in the protective sweeps the cops conducted on cold nights, and who, when I asked where he was sleeping now, replied, "The Italian Embassy," meaning the warm-air grates near the Italian Consulate, uptown.

And William, who wrote about an intergalactic battle among God, various superheroes, and the Alcoholics Anonymous Higher Power; and Tory, whose hilarious piece about her brief stint as a contest-winning backup dancer for Lionel Richie and the Commodores always brought down the house at our public readings; and Carol, who wore a different hat every day, and wrote a great piece about a memorial service at St. Mark's in-the-Bowery when Allen Ginsberg died; and Ron, who after a few years in the workshop began to write his own column for a men's magazine; and John, who after many years of faithful attendance called the church in 2007 to say he couldn't come to the workshop that spring because he was in Antarctica; and Joe, whose stories about his heart attack encapsulated fear in the night; and Norm, a dedicated poet, who wrote a poem entitled "On Achieving Section 8 Housing"; and Jeff, who disappeared one year and returned the next saying that he had been travelling internationally as a player on a homeless men's soccer team (a claim that turned out to be true); and Nelson, who wrote tantalizingly short pieces and then came back, years later, all smiles, having found a job and his own apartment, and brought a camera and took photographs of everybody.

Listing all the writers I remember would take pages. We welcome everybody who wants to attend, with a very few exceptions. Once, I was sitting at the table by the exit with Bob Blaisdell, a teacher and writer who has taught in the workshop since the beginning, when a nattily dressed man with a West Indian accent approached us and asked if we would like him to come to the workshop and write about the nine people he had killed in Jamaica. The man posed the question with a big smile, made more striking by his gold inlays, which had been set in a line rising diagonally across his upper front teeth. I admired Bob for replying that, no, we did not want him to come and write about the nine people he had killed in Jamaica.

Every class, we met in the narthex at twelve-thirty, passed out pens and notebooks, and gave optional topics for that session's writing. Proven topics have been "How I Came to New York," "If I Hadn't Seen It, I Wouldn't Have Believed It," "Shoes," "The Other Me," and "My Best Mistake." A few topics we've had to retire because they're too fraught; "My First Love," for example, was producing too many wrenching tales of first encounters with drugs and alcohol. In each session, people would write for about forty-five minutes. Then we would read the pieces out loud. All the writers were usually kind in listening to and criticizing one another; the common decorum of group-therapy sessions seemed to apply here, and, besides, we were in a church.

Once in a while, classes could be pretty tense nonetheless. Flareups occurred over things as simple as one guy picking up another guy's pen by mistake. The jumpiest times in the class were in 2002 and 2003, after the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq. I recall a day when Charles, the guy who slept at the Italian Embassy, brought in a copy of the Post with the headline "KABULLSEYE!" above a target circle superimposed on a photo of a recently bombed building in Kabul. The headline got us all so jangled we could hardly sit still to write. For people like those in the workshop group, many of whom have pulled their lives together only by means of routine and self-restraint and talking things through, the sight of their own government glorying in chaos shook the ground under their feet.

In the workshop's fourteen years, several participants have died. Pierce, a tall, white-haired man with bushy black eyebrows, was a volunteer at the soup kitchen. Almost every piece he wrote centered on the most important moment in his life—when he attempted suicide by jumping into the East River. After police pulled him out, he quit drinking; many of his pieces ended, "One day at a time." A few years ago when the workshop reconvened, we learned that Pierce had died of a heart attack not long before. Janice, a stylish, gentle woman in her mid-fifties, also died of heart trouble. At one of our public readings, Janice wore a copper-colored fuzzy sweater and an off-green head scarf and held the whole church silent with a story about the death of her young son. Now Janice's daughter, Thyatira, sometimes attends the workshop, and brings her four-year-old daughter, Janyah. They are the only multigenerational participants we've had so far.

Clarence, a middle-aged Jamaican, always spoke slowly and precisely and wore a jacket and tie. He used to write mini-sermons on quotations from the Bible. When he had written a lot of these pieces, I asked if he wouldn't like to branch out, try some memoir or just describe what he did that day. He politely ignored me. After a few years, he stopped coming and we heard no more about him. Then, in the fall of '02, city employees got in touch with one of the workshop teachers, Susan Shapiro, to say that Clarence had died (another heart attack); searching his belongings for information about next of kin, they had found her business card in his wallet. Evidently no kin were ever located; Clarence was buried in the potter's field.

Susan often handed out her business cards in the workshop, worked with writers outside of class, and helped them get published in newspapers and magazines. Susan knows hundreds of people in the city and throughout publishing and talks so fast she says ten words for every one of mine. In 2004, she co-edited (with the Reverend Elizabeth Maxwell, the associate rector of Holy Apostles) an anthology of writing from the workshop. The book, called "Food for the Soul," is dedicated to Pierce, Janice, and Clarence. The money it earned—some thousands of dollars—mostly went to the contributors, who got a hundred dollars each. A few of the contributors also appeared on the "Today" show and National Public Radio.

I have been part of the workshop almost every year, with a couple of interruptions when my family and I lived in Montana. After four years out there, we moved back east, to New Jersey. One Sunday soon after we returned, I took my daughter into Manhattan to go to museums and reacquaint her with the city generally. She was in fifth grade and curious about everything. At the end of the day, as we were standing in line at the Port Authority waiting for our bus back to the suburbs, a man who had been in the writers' workshop came walking down the line. At each person he stopped and tried to sell a copy of Street News. He was wearing layers of semi-disintegrating clothes and he had his hair in short, multidirectional corkscrew dreadlocks. Most of the people he went up to did the usual thing of recoiling slightly and looking away. When he got to us, he recognized me, and we began to talk. I asked how he was doing and he said pretty well—he had written a piece for Street News and it had been published recently. He asked if the workshop would be starting again soon, and I said it would, and he said he'd be there. I bought a copy of Street News for myself and another for my daughter and said I'd see him in the spring, and we got on our bus. When we arrived home, my wife asked my daughter how she had liked the city. "It was pretty good," she said. "Not much happened. At the bus station, we ran into a friend of Daddy's."

Suddenly, the clouds begin to fly backward very fast, like the view out the window in that movie "The Time Machine," and then they come to a stop and slowly move forward again. It is 1836. Chelsea—the future neighborhood of the Church of the Holy Apostles—is mostly fields. Squatters who have recently emigrated from England and Ireland live along the marshy shoreline of the Hudson River. Some young people who perhaps attend St. Peter's Episcopal on Twentieth Street visit this district and are appalled by the condition of the immigrants and especially by that of their "neglected and isolated" children. To help them, these young people start a Sunday school. With seven hundred and fifty dollars of their own and their friends' money, they erect a schoolhouse on Thirty-sixth Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Many people start to attend informal services there on Sundays. Soon the Episcopal Diocese of New York decides that the Sunday school has enough congregants to become an official parish of the church.

A local landowner gives four lots for construction of a church across from his estate on Ninth Avenue. The church's founders decide what it will be called. An architect named Minard LeFever, who has designed other churches in the city, is hired. His usual style, the Gothic Revival, he forgoes in this instance, opting instead for a pared-down, "chaste" version of Tuscan design combined with disparate Italianate elements and incorporating a steeple more than twice the height of the church itself. The building is finished early in 1848. The first service in the building is held in February, 1848.North and south transepts, added 1858, enlarge the structure to its final size. In its stylistic eclecticism combined with simplicity, Holy Apostles is a typical church of the American frontier.

The neighborhood swirls around the church like a slow-moving tornado. In 1850, a "pestilence"—probably cholera—hits the area, and the church cares for the sufferers and holds seventy funerals. Rich people begin to move to Chelsea from downtown, and the church's finances improve. In 1871, the Ninth Avenue elevated train brings its cinders, smoke, and noise to right above the church's front yard. The church sues the El for damages and eventually wins a few thousand dollars. Upper Fifth Avenue becomes fashionable, rich people move out of Chelsea, and the church's finances decline. Waves of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe come to New York City. By and large, they don't join Protestant churches, and those churches begin to close. Holy Apostles hangs on. For years at a time, the church gets by only with the help of contributions from Trinity Episcopal, on Wall Street.

Reformers like Jacob Riis speak at Holy Apostles. In the early nineteen-hundreds, the church inclines to the leftist, progressivist beliefs of the Social Gospel, an affinity that will go on. Still, its congregation is never large. Money remains a problem. Somehow, the church stays open through mixed fortunes during war, depression, and war. Its steeple keeps wanting to fall over and must be shored up expensively. In the twenties, there is a fire. In 1940-41, the Ninth Avenue El is torn down, to the church's relief. After the Second World War, congregants to whom the pastor had sent long letters while they were away in the service drift from the church. High-rise apartment buildings erected by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union for moderate-income people rise above the steeple on several sides. The church looks to the neighborhood for new members and finds some, mostly West Indian and American black people.

Rectors at Holy Apostles come and go. Its first rector, Foster Thayer, quits over the issue of rented pews. In many of the city's churches, families pay rent for their private pews. Thayer thinks that's unchristian and that all pews should be free. The vestry, or church's officers, appreciate his point, but they also have construction loans to pay off. After quitting, Thayer moves to Vermont and soon leaves the ministry entirely. Other Holy Apostles ministers work themselves to exhaustion, take leaves of absence for their health, never return. One or two hold up fairly well. Lucius A. Edelblute, the wartime letter writer, serves from 1918 to 1950. In 1949, he writes the church's centennial history.

In the sixties, the church becomes a center for left-wing causes, especially opposition to the war in Vietnam. A minister in the seventies welcomes gays and lesbians to Holy Apostles, then decides they must allow Jesus to cure them of their sexual feelings. Turmoil follows. The congregation goes into a decline. The church has no full-time rector from 1975 to 1978.

By 1980, the church is one of the oldest buildings on Ninth Avenue. Its membership has dwindled to about a hundred and twenty-five. Basically, it's dying. Its roof, still the original slate, needs replacing. Leaks have damaged the ceiling, now in danger of falling in. Repairs to the roof would cost half a million dollars. The Right Reverend Paul Moore, Episcopal Bishop of New York, wants to close the church and consolidate its congregation with St. Peter's. Ronald Reagan is elected President. Government money to help the poor is cut, fewer people have public housing, Chelsea's single-room-occupancy hotels close. Homelessness becomes a visible New York City problem. Often, people knock on the church's doors asking for help.

Father Rand Frew, the church's new, young minister, suggests to the congregation that the church should start a soup kitchen. Father Frew thinks big and has a gift for starting programs. His previous church was in Las Vegas; perhaps a bit of gambling instinct is involved in this idea. The congregation wonders where it will come up with the huge amount of money a daily soup kitchen requires, but it gives the O.K. The consensus is that if Holy Apostles is going out of business anyway it might as well do some good before it does.

Father Frew finds fifty thousand dollars and donors of surplus food. He rounds up a head chef, cooking supplies, volunteers. On the soup kitchen's first day, October 22, 1982, it serves about thirty-five meals. Starting then, it establishes its policy of being open every weekday. Its numbers of guests—from the beginning, the people it serves are referred to as guests—increase. Now the problem of repairing the church's roof and ceiling has been simplified: donors who would never contribute to save a dilapidated church with a shrinking congregation are more willing to give to a historic church with a well-run and rapidly growing soup kitchen. More money comes in and the church borrows half a million for the roof repair.

By the mid-eighties, nine hundred or more guests are having lunch at the church's Mission House every day. By 1990, the repairs to the roof are almost done. On April 9th, workmen up in the roof beams accidentally start a small fire with an acetylene torch. They put the fire out, they think. In the afternoon at quitting time, the workmen leave. A few hours later, the church is holding evening services in the narthex when someone sticks his head in the door and says, "Your church is on fire." In minutes, the roof goes up in flames. The Fire Department comes and puts out the fire. Inside and out, the destruction is immense. Many of the irreplaceable stained-glass windows had to be broken to vent the gases from the fire. That night, the church is blackened, dripping, open to the sky. Nonetheless, the soup kitchen serves lunch in the undamaged Mission House the next day: a cold meal, owing to circumstances—macaroni-and-tuna salad, fruit, and juice. It feeds about nine hundred and fifty.

The church has fire insurance. Repairs of the damage, including installing another new slate roof, fixing the ceiling, and assembling the fragments of the stained-glass windows, will cost about eight million dollars. By now, Father Frew has left, and the rector of the church and executive director of the soup kitchen is William Greenlaw, a manager whose skill with money has acquired him the nickname Father Greenbacks. He consults with Elizabeth Maxwell and the vestry, and they decide to plan the reconstruction so that the soup kitchen can expand into the church itself. What to do about the pews? Take them out—the church stopped renting them a century ago, no money will be lost—and keep the space open for dining. During services, the congregation can just as easily use folding chairs. Everybody agrees about this immediately.

Reconstruction takes four years. When all is finished and the first meal is served in the main church, the guests come in quietly with their trays, unsure about the protocol for eating in a church. Wendy Shepherd, the church's long-time administrative supervisor, watches them and worries that people won't be comfortable eating here, but in a few days the strangeness goes away. The Times reports that mid-nineteenth-century pews saved from the fire at Holy Apostles are for sale for four hundred and fifty dollars apiece at a public architectural salvage yard in Brooklyn. Somewhere, the shade of Foster Thayer smiles.

Today, the church, fully restored, remains the one unchanging landmark in Chelsea. To judge from a photograph of church and churchyard taken in 1880, the fire hydrant next to it on Twenty-eighth Street has also stayed the same.

At night, people sleep on the E train as it makes its long run out into Queens and then back again to Manhattan. They sleep on the stairs of the Twenty-fifth Street entry to the E and C subway station at Eighth Avenue, or in the top stairwell of the building on Nineteenth Street where they once had an apartment, or under the hoardings at the back of the main Post Office building, or on the front steps of a church on Sixteenth, or under sections of the old elevated tracks near Tenth Avenue, or in the vestibule of a twenty-four-hour copy shop on Seventh, or somewhere else in Chelsea or farther away. People used to be able to sleep in Chelsea Park, across the street from the church, but now it and most other neighborhood parks are off-limits at night.

If you find a more official place to stay temporarily, it might be the Rescue Mission, on Lafayette Street, downtown (men only; cots), or the Bellevue Shelter, on Thirtieth (men only; couples assigned elsewhere), or one of the outer-borough shelters. Stays at drop-in centers, like the Oliveri Center, on Thirtieth (women only), or Open Door, on Forty-first, or Peter's Place, on Twenty-third (men and women fifty-five and over only), are intended to be shorter-term. In most drop-in centers, you have to sleep sitting up in a chair, which can cause your legs to swell.

People planning to have lunch at the soup kitchen show up sometimes hours before the church is open in the morning. A few bring all they own loaded on shopping carts, wheeled garment racks, hand trucks, or in the side baskets of bicycles. Their bundles are tied together with yellow nylon rope, cinched with bungee cords, taped with silver duct tape, or packed loose in double or triple plastic shopping bags. One older woman with a weathered face and long brown hair sometimes carries, close at hand among her bags, a big tube of sunblock. Now and then, the loads of belongings include those woven-nylon suitcases, white with broad plaid stripes, which are the people's luggage all over the world. During lunch, the shopping carts and other conveyances are parked in the churchyard, where someone from the soup kitchen keeps an eye on them.

Volunteers are asked to show up by 10 A.M. The soup kitchen needs at least forty volunteers to serve every meal. All kinds of people help out, but Manhattan retirees are usually the bulk of the volunteers. Some have been doing this almost since the soup kitchen began; Ilona Seltzer, a Chelsea resident, has been volunteering since 1985. School groups volunteer, and Sunday-school classes and Scout troops and the rabbis and members of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (which holds its own services in the church on Friday evenings). Kim, a software designer from Orange County, California, volunteers when she's in the city visiting her aunt and uncle. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, longtime Chelsea-ites, have volunteered. Senator Jeff Sessions (Republican of Alabama) and others of the Alabama delegation spent a morning working at the soup kitchen during the Republican National Convention in 2004. Senator Sessions used the photo opportunity that resulted to praise the soup kitchen as the sort of private initiative that naturally takes up the tasks our government should not do and should not have to do—an opinion with which everybody at the soup kitchen disagreed.

Clyde Kuemmerle, the soup kitchen's associate program director, signs in the volunteers and tells them what their jobs will be. Clyde, a bearded man in his early sixties, has a Ph.D. in theatre from the University of Minnesota, and in the past he worked on Broadway plays as a producer, which resembles his present occupation. He carries a walkie-talkie and runs the whole soup kitchen day to day. People sometimes yell at Clyde, but he has great equanimity. Plenty of soup-kitchen guests carry a world of troubles with them, and they may fluctuate in their medications, and for these and other reasons some can be quick to get mad. During almost every lunch, somebody takes offense at somebody else, voices are raised, and people stand up and confront each other. Then Clyde and the employees who work on the floor—Harold McKnight and his brother Prince, Rodney Williams, Olimpo Tlatelpa, among others—come over and intervene. They step between the arguers, they remonstrate with them quietly, and soon the shouting dies down. The way they are completely firm and at the same time completely kind should be studied by the U.N.

The soup kitchen's counselling trailer, which is in the churchyard by the gate where the guests come in, is open five days a week before and after lunch. Jacqueline McKnight, the soup kitchen's assistant counsellor, whom everybody calls Jackie and who is married to Harold, handles the guests' problems with food stamps, disability payments, housing applications, medical referrals, etc. Now and then a person comes to the trailer who is in a crisis at that very moment. One December afternoon, a woman walked into Jackie's office while in the middle of labor. With no time to take her anywhere, Jackie sat her on a chair and called Linda Adams, who works in the church offices, and Clyde. Jackie and Linda comforted the woman and helped her with her breathing while Clyde put some coats on the floor and waited there for the baby. He was shaking because this experience was a first for him. Fortunately, E.M.S. soon showed up, and the E.M.S. guys performed the actual delivery.

The woman, a skinny white lady who had barely even looked pregnant, kept hollering that she didn't want the baby, that she had hoped to leave it in the soup-kitchen bathroom, and that Jackie and Linda could have it. On the spot, they told the woman they would take it. When the baby—a pink and healthy-looking girl—came out, the E.M.S. guys said it was fine with them if Jackie and Linda took her; in fact, in their opinion, that would be a very good idea. First, however, the E.M.S. guys had to follow procedure and take baby and mother to St. Vincent's Hospital. They did, and Jackie and Linda followed in a cab.

But at St. Vincent's the women were not allowed to see the baby, and though they persisted in trying to find out about her, neither Jackie nor Linda ever saw her again. Later, they heard that the baby had been adopted by the family where she had been sent for foster care. Jackie and Linda both think of the little girl often and wonder how she's doing.

To keep going, the soup kitchen needs two million seven hundred thousand dollars a year. It spends more than ten thousand dollars every operating day. For this church, whose congregation still has fewer than two hundred members, that's a lot. About thirty-five per cent of the money needed comes from individual donors who send checks in response to direct-mail solicitations. That income rises and falls, but is generally dependable. Most of the rest comes from foundations and from the city, state, and federal governments, which tend to be less predictable.

Government money for the hungry is a small and ever-shifting stream, moved by political change. City funding disappears under sudden budget pressure, federal poverty funds administered by FEMA are cut nineteen per cent, and a farm bill gets stuck in Congress, with the result that government surplus food suddenly becomes less available. Keeping up with the veerings of government support is a scramble. As for foundations, they are well intentioned and generous, but subject to moods. "Donor burnout" is one of those. Fashions in charitable giving also come and go. Recently, foundation charity has been more focussed on "making a difference," an idea that works against the soup kitchen, which changes people from hungry to not, but invisibly. Also, foundation donors now like to talk about "measurable outcomes"—they expect recipients like the soup kitchen to single out the people who are helped, and measure the improvement in those people's situations over time. Again, that's not something the soup kitchen, with the off-the-street population it serves, can easily do. In the past eighteen months, several major foundation donors have dropped out, and no replacements have been found. There's enough money for now, and for a while, but the future is unclear. The soup kitchen has been in this spot before.

Father Greenlaw, who has overseen the raising of all this money for twenty-five years, will retire at the end of July. He has served longer than any Holy Apostles rector except Lucius Edelblute and Brady Electus Backus (1876-1901), and now he would like not to think about money so much. The twenty-five years have left him remarkably unworn; he has bright green eyes, a full head of hair, and a broad smile that alternates between seraphic and pained. In his quiet office on the third floor of the Mission House, he explains how much the soup kitchen depends on New York's Jewish community ("If the Jews of New York City stopped giving, we'd go out of business"), and how he's had no success raising money among red-state evangelical Christians, and how urban secular mailing lists like the list of subscribers to The New York Review of Books or of Channel Thirteen supporters or of members of the North Shore Animal League are much better places to find donors.

In talking about the soup kitchen, Father Greenlaw generally does not mention Jesus. That's only natural, given the ecumenical nature of the enterprise. Instead, he describes the work of feeding the hungry in terms that people are likely to agree on regardless of religious belief or unbelief. He talks about the joy of being alive in this sacred space, of sharing a meal with other people in a beautiful landmarked building, of seeing in the people who come to the soup kitchen "a window into what makes humanity human, into the deepest levels of being."

The soup kitchen never proselytizes or hands out religious literature. But in the church offices upstairs in the Mission House the serene and genteel and somewhat fraught atmosphere of modern Episcopalianism prevails. There is, of course, the pervading aroma of coffee, the denomination's secular wine. Elizabeth Maxwell, whose fresh-faced good looks add emphasis to her strong preaching, has been with the church and the soup kitchen for nineteen years. Liz, as she's called, has done every job from big-dollar fund-raising and counselling to serving and cleanup; usually, every fourth Sunday she also delivers a sermon. In her work, she expects surprises and is undismayed by them. Once, she told me, she was in the trailer counselling a man who said he had been rejected by every homeless shelter he had gone to. She couldn't figure out why this should be, and, as she was puzzling it out, she saw a rustling in the guy's shirt, and then a large snake stuck its head from between two of his shirt buttons and looked at her. The snake was his pet, and shelters don't allow pets. She persuaded the man to return the snake to the exotic-pet store where he got it.

When I pressed Liz about the specifically religious inspiration that applies here, she said, "Well, we do this because Jesus said to feed the hungry. There's no more to it than that. Jesus told us to take care of the poor and the hungry and those in prison. In Matthew 25 he says, 'As you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.' In all the intricacies of scriptural interpretation, that message—feed the hungry—couldn't be more clear. Those of us who worship at Holy Apostles feel we have a Sunday-Monday connection. The bread and wine of the Eucharist that we share with one another on Sunday become the food we share with our neighbors during the week. We believe that our job as Christians is to meet Jesus in the world. We meet him, unnamed and unrecognized, in the guests who come to the soup kitchen every day."

After the last session of the writers' workshop every year, there's a public reading at the church. We put together an anthology of the best of or all of that year's work (typed into final form by our poet/typist, Alice Phillips), and then we get the anthology copied and spiral-bound at the same nearby copy shop in whose lobby one or two soup-kitchen guests sometimes spend the night. Participants read from a lectern up front, and the audience, which usually numbers about seventy-five or a hundred, listens on folding chairs.

Sometimes as many as eighteen or twenty people read their pieces. With that many, we try to keep each reading short, but things happen as they happen. The pieces range from poetry to personal history to novel excerpts to science fiction to exercises in Hegelian philosophy. We have an informal rule that the reader must only read, and not digress into impromptu explanations of what he or she is reading, but that rule is sometimes overlooked. On occasion, people have brought tape recorders to play music accompanying or introducing what they read. Sometimes people sing. Tory, the writer who did the piece about being a backup dancer for the Commodores, has a song she wrote about the soup kitchen. The sound of a single voice, singing or reading, as it rises to the vaulted beams of the church can lift you almost off the ground.

When the reading is over, everybody gets something to eat—there's a spread of sandwiches and soft drinks provided by the soup kitchen—and the writers and the audience mingle. The people who attend the reading may be Holy Apostles parishioners, soup-kitchen donors, editors, arts administrators, students from other writing programs, clergy of various kinds, curious passersby. Soup-kitchen alumni from workshops in past years sometimes show up and fill us in on where they are and what they're doing now. Sometimes we talk about people from past workshops whom we haven't seen for a while, or about the ones who came only a few times and then were never seen again—names like Lisa, Wayman, Smokey, White Mike, Coleman, Rashid, Blue, Luis, Rosa . . . The alchemy of writing gives everybody who's been in the workshop an extra dimension: along with possessing a name and a face, each is also the particular person who wrote whatever. Somehow, writing even a few lines makes the person who does it more substantial and real. In geometric terms, it's like the difference between being a point and being a plane.

Usually, the reading is on a Wednesday evening in late May. With luck, the weather is mild, and the church's front doors are open. People arrive dressed up, and some of the soup-kitchen staff are in white shirts and black bow ties. The ambient New York City air comes in; you can imagine that the floor of the church, the pavement of Ninth Avenue, the asphalt in Chelsea Park, and the shiny surface of the Hudson River a few blocks away are all connected, one continuous terrestrial floor. As the evening advances and the sunset fades, the lights inside the church brighten. It's a benign time of day to be in a church, or any public space open to the evening. For a moment, the whole city seems to flow in with the air. ♦

ILLUSTRATION: MARK ULRIKSEN

Introduction

2008-04-25T15:53:00.000-04:00

Here we go ..on a new adventure into the world of blogging