Greetings from London. The curate and the sacristan and I have just had lunch cooked by me (prawns in filo pastry; boeuf bouguignon; millefeuille from the shop). Our vigil Mass last night was a case of serried ranks of altar servers, clouds of swirling incense, visiting bishop with mitre, choir in soaring harmonies, all I hope to the glory of God. Today the 8.30 was fairly full; the 10 am Family Mass bursting at the seams; the sung 11.30 am Mass almost full (music from Handel’s Little organ Mass – a little fussy, I thought). Our Arabic language Mass (1pm) has just finished. We are so very, very lucky to have the resources that we have. I pray that we may be close to the Risen Christ, and that we may live in the grace and power and love of his resurrection.
We (Myself, my wife, 21 yr old daughter, 14 yo son) went to the first Easter Vigil Service at St. Peter’s Anglican. It was a JOYFUL service, and went just under two hours. At the end, my daughter turned to us and said “Wow, that was fun. It didn’t feel like it lasted two hours!”
We started with a wood fire outside, from which the Pascal Candle was lit, then we processed into the church. The service music was from David Haas’ “Mass of Light”, and the communion music started with one of my favorites, “Agnus Dei” by Michael W. Smith. The sequence hymn was the Celtic Alleluia, which I like, but can’t seem to find much of a Celtic flavor to it. Fr. Wallace quoted from St. John Chrysostom in the sermon and over all, a fantastic service.
There were six baptisms yesterday! What a wonderful way to usher in Easter — with baptisms.
Today is a leisurely day, I’m going to grill lamb on the Weber, and my wife is already preparing the side dishes.
For the 29th year, my wife and I celebrated a Passover meal with our children on the night before Easter Sunday (yes, I know it’s wrong by the calendar. It has become a significant family tradition.
In 1981, we had one child. Last night we had 10 or our 11 children around the table, along with 2 daughters-in-law, a son-in-law, and a grandson (and a girlfriend!).
This morning, we are all up early preparing for church – a small, very non-liturgical (unfortuntately) service that we will nonetheless find very moving. With our proximity to Nashville, we have a group of very gifted musicians who lead in worship. Almost all of them work as studio musicians or songwriters, and they don’t need another gig – they come and lead us in worship because they want to worship with their music as well. It will be very, very richly rewarding to be in church with our grown-up children, who have driven in for the weekend from Knxoville, Cookeville, and Dayton.
Reality smacked me in the face this morning: 4″ of snow and more of it falling…and expected to continue through tomorrow. I’ve chosen to live at the end of the road. I would not choose to live anywhere else at present. But, there is this inconvenience of not being able to get to church; I’ve missed both Christmas and Easter. In all my growing up years, with my church only two blocks away, if the doors were open, I was there.
Last evening five of us gathered at a neighbor’s home for our “Easter dinner” and a time of Christian fellowship. We have another invitation for this evening: our new granddaughter and two new great-granddaughters are living in our guest house up through the woods until our grandson get his orders (Air Force); if the rest of my son’s family can get here through the snow from his house at the end of another dirt road, and his daughters & families can get here from Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek, we will gather for a family Easter dinner as guests of our new granddaughter. Reality! One must accept it. I love it!
Christ is risen anyway! Hallelujah! His resurrection is true reality!
Spent Easter morning in church, heard a wonderful sermon by non other than Dr. Harmon. We will spend the rest of the day surrounded by family and friends [some 30-40 people] at a huge dinner at our house. Proclaiming the true meaning of Easter all day and all year.
Went to a traditional Easter service at 11am, but before that something different: Set the alarm last night for 4:30 this morning. Went to bed at 1:30am. Alarm went off; I said, This is not what I want to do. Then: No, I really want to do this. After some more back and forth, I did get up–very dark.
Drove west over two mountain ridges to Antietam National Battlefield for their Easter Sunrise Service. I don’t think I’ve ever even been to an Easter Sunrise Service before, let alone one in the middle of a famous battlefield. I probably regarded such services as slightly pagan, or as ambiguous as to what exactly was being revered or what we were being moved by.
Didn’t matter: great service. Glad I went. Excellent participation by a very ecumenical group: both presenters (readings, music, preaching) and the rest of us. The sunrise over the battlefield, just as John’s Gospel was being read, was stunning. The juxtaposition of death and life was moving in ways I won’t attempt to describe.
Btw, among the churches represented: Episcopal, Brethren, Lutheran, others, mainly from Sharpsburg. The people gathered–mainly strangers to one another, with only their desire to be there in common–were actually friendlier than many congregations I’ve worshiped with. I guess that in the latter case, everyone tends to feel that others are looked after and comfortable. But when strangers gather around a common, strong, central theme, the strangers feel a centripetal tug, which was nice. A low-keyed service that was a great experience.
Last night, I had the honor of chanting the Exsultet. Last year, we had a transitional deacon on staff and I let her chant it since it would be her only Easter as a deacon and not as a presbyter. We had three baptisms last night and the school kids and Sunday School kids acted out the creation, deliverance at the Red Sea and the Valley of Dry Bones during the vigil – even when the neighborhood lost power! We used flashlights as spot lights so the congregation could see the kids.
Today started with getting the kids up and ready for Easter services. We got home from Church about 12:15 and we cooked breakfast and I went and took a nap.
Yesterday, I started the boneless leg of lamb marinating in a red-wine vinegarette with about 6 cloves of garlic (chopped) and 4 sprigs of rosemary from the plant outside (also chopped), salt, and pepper. I put the lamb on my Weber kettle grill rotisserie for about 1 hour and we had lamb, grilled asparagus and baked potatoes (also cooked on the grill). It was delicious and we have enough left over for tomorrow.
At the Vigil at All Souls, Asheville, last night I baptized our granddaughter Kathryn Amalia Rightmyer Repoley. Bishop Porter Taylor anointed her. All Souls is broad church fancy but the dean chanted the sursum corda and the deacon the Exultet, and there was lots of good music. The vigil readings were the Creation, the nonsacifice of Isaac, the Exodus, and the Dry Bones. The offertory anthem was a Te Deum and we sang the Pascha Nostrum metrical version to Sine Nomine. I wore a white linen stole I inherited from my father; it was part of a white linen set from the mid 1930’s. The chasuble is long gone, but the stole and maniple remain.
Greetings from Washington State. I’m part of an intentional Christian community (a.k.a. house church) in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. We began the morning with breakfast together–sopaipillas and fruit salad and lots of joyful conversation—in the course of which we celebrated Communion together. Someone read a good chunk of John 6, and Luke’s account of the Last Supper, and we spent a long time giving thanks round the table, first one and then another, for the various forms His grace has taken in our lives of late—primarily, of course, for His suffering and death and Life, which He has shared with us. Then each of us served the bread and wine to the person beside us.
Then we cleared the table, moved into the living room, grabbed Bibles and hymnals, and sang till we lost our voices, interspersing the Evangelists’ accounts of the Resurrection, and St. Paul’s explication to the Corinthian church of its significance, with our singing, and ending up with a reading of John Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter.
Eventually, we concluded breakfast with cobblers—choice of huckleberries from the Indian Heaven Wilderness or blackberries from out his back door—that one of the brothers had baked. And Easter egg hunts with the very little children, who had been sitting pretty quietly for a very long time by now, and were excited to play with the adults and teens and older children. And more conversation, and mugs of hot tea.
Silence Dogood, you must be from around my neck of the woods. I grew up in Battle Ground and have enjoyed many an Indian Heaven huckleberry.
I spent my Easter at Christ Church in Highland, California and then went to a great Easter supper with my priest and his wife and son, a number of other congregants from our church and some people who are still in the Episcopal church that some came out of to form our Anglican church plant. It was a blessed day and made me very thankful for the church family I’ve found.
Are you by any chance the Northwest Anglican? If so, I ran across (and enjoyed) your blog the other day. And yes, actually, I think you showed at Harvest Days and Fair (4H cats) with/against one of my kids about a million years ago. [Strains of It’s a Small World After All heard in background.]
Wow, Tom, what a great heritage! Your granddaughter has a lot to live up to!
If I’m ever in Asheville, I will be sure to look up your church for services. I’ve got an application in for a librarian position at University of the South, Sewannee, so there is a chance I may be up your way for an interview (I hope and pray!).
Greetings from London. The curate and the sacristan and I have just had lunch cooked by me (prawns in filo pastry; boeuf bouguignon; millefeuille from the shop). Our vigil Mass last night was a case of serried ranks of altar servers, clouds of swirling incense, visiting bishop with mitre, choir in soaring harmonies, all I hope to the glory of God. Today the 8.30 was fairly full; the 10 am Family Mass bursting at the seams; the sung 11.30 am Mass almost full (music from Handel’s Little organ Mass – a little fussy, I thought). Our Arabic language Mass (1pm) has just finished. We are so very, very lucky to have the resources that we have. I pray that we may be close to the Risen Christ, and that we may live in the grace and power and love of his resurrection.
We (Myself, my wife, 21 yr old daughter, 14 yo son) went to the first Easter Vigil Service at St. Peter’s Anglican. It was a JOYFUL service, and went just under two hours. At the end, my daughter turned to us and said “Wow, that was fun. It didn’t feel like it lasted two hours!”
We started with a wood fire outside, from which the Pascal Candle was lit, then we processed into the church. The service music was from David Haas’ “Mass of Light”, and the communion music started with one of my favorites, “Agnus Dei” by Michael W. Smith. The sequence hymn was the Celtic Alleluia, which I like, but can’t seem to find much of a Celtic flavor to it. Fr. Wallace quoted from St. John Chrysostom in the sermon and over all, a fantastic service.
There were six baptisms yesterday! What a wonderful way to usher in Easter — with baptisms.
Today is a leisurely day, I’m going to grill lamb on the Weber, and my wife is already preparing the side dishes.
Allelulia! The Lord is Risen!
Jim Elliott <>< North Florida
For the 29th year, my wife and I celebrated a Passover meal with our children on the night before Easter Sunday (yes, I know it’s wrong by the calendar. It has become a significant family tradition.
In 1981, we had one child. Last night we had 10 or our 11 children around the table, along with 2 daughters-in-law, a son-in-law, and a grandson (and a girlfriend!).
This morning, we are all up early preparing for church – a small, very non-liturgical (unfortuntately) service that we will nonetheless find very moving. With our proximity to Nashville, we have a group of very gifted musicians who lead in worship. Almost all of them work as studio musicians or songwriters, and they don’t need another gig – they come and lead us in worship because they want to worship with their music as well. It will be very, very richly rewarding to be in church with our grown-up children, who have driven in for the weekend from Knxoville, Cookeville, and Dayton.
Reality smacked me in the face this morning: 4″ of snow and more of it falling…and expected to continue through tomorrow. I’ve chosen to live at the end of the road. I would not choose to live anywhere else at present. But, there is this inconvenience of not being able to get to church; I’ve missed both Christmas and Easter. In all my growing up years, with my church only two blocks away, if the doors were open, I was there.
Last evening five of us gathered at a neighbor’s home for our “Easter dinner” and a time of Christian fellowship. We have another invitation for this evening: our new granddaughter and two new great-granddaughters are living in our guest house up through the woods until our grandson get his orders (Air Force); if the rest of my son’s family can get here through the snow from his house at the end of another dirt road, and his daughters & families can get here from Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek, we will gather for a family Easter dinner as guests of our new granddaughter. Reality! One must accept it. I love it!
Christ is risen anyway! Hallelujah! His resurrection is true reality!
Spent Easter morning in church, heard a wonderful sermon by non other than Dr. Harmon. We will spend the rest of the day surrounded by family and friends [some 30-40 people] at a huge dinner at our house. Proclaiming the true meaning of Easter all day and all year.
Went to a traditional Easter service at 11am, but before that something different: Set the alarm last night for 4:30 this morning. Went to bed at 1:30am. Alarm went off; I said, This is not what I want to do. Then: No, I really want to do this. After some more back and forth, I did get up–very dark.
Drove west over two mountain ridges to Antietam National Battlefield for their Easter Sunrise Service. I don’t think I’ve ever even been to an Easter Sunrise Service before, let alone one in the middle of a famous battlefield. I probably regarded such services as slightly pagan, or as ambiguous as to what exactly was being revered or what we were being moved by.
Didn’t matter: great service. Glad I went. Excellent participation by a very ecumenical group: both presenters (readings, music, preaching) and the rest of us. The sunrise over the battlefield, just as John’s Gospel was being read, was stunning. The juxtaposition of death and life was moving in ways I won’t attempt to describe.
Btw, among the churches represented: Episcopal, Brethren, Lutheran, others, mainly from Sharpsburg. The people gathered–mainly strangers to one another, with only their desire to be there in common–were actually friendlier than many congregations I’ve worshiped with. I guess that in the latter case, everyone tends to feel that others are looked after and comfortable. But when strangers gather around a common, strong, central theme, the strangers feel a centripetal tug, which was nice. A low-keyed service that was a great experience.
Last night, I had the honor of chanting the Exsultet. Last year, we had a transitional deacon on staff and I let her chant it since it would be her only Easter as a deacon and not as a presbyter. We had three baptisms last night and the school kids and Sunday School kids acted out the creation, deliverance at the Red Sea and the Valley of Dry Bones during the vigil – even when the neighborhood lost power! We used flashlights as spot lights so the congregation could see the kids.
Today started with getting the kids up and ready for Easter services. We got home from Church about 12:15 and we cooked breakfast and I went and took a nap.
Yesterday, I started the boneless leg of lamb marinating in a red-wine vinegarette with about 6 cloves of garlic (chopped) and 4 sprigs of rosemary from the plant outside (also chopped), salt, and pepper. I put the lamb on my Weber kettle grill rotisserie for about 1 hour and we had lamb, grilled asparagus and baked potatoes (also cooked on the grill). It was delicious and we have enough left over for tomorrow.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is Risen indeed! Alleluia!
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
At the Vigil at All Souls, Asheville, last night I baptized our granddaughter Kathryn Amalia Rightmyer Repoley. Bishop Porter Taylor anointed her. All Souls is broad church fancy but the dean chanted the sursum corda and the deacon the Exultet, and there was lots of good music. The vigil readings were the Creation, the nonsacifice of Isaac, the Exodus, and the Dry Bones. The offertory anthem was a Te Deum and we sang the Pascha Nostrum metrical version to Sine Nomine. I wore a white linen stole I inherited from my father; it was part of a white linen set from the mid 1930’s. The chasuble is long gone, but the stole and maniple remain.
Tom Rightmyer, Asheville, NC
Greetings from Washington State. I’m part of an intentional Christian community (a.k.a. house church) in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. We began the morning with breakfast together–sopaipillas and fruit salad and lots of joyful conversation—in the course of which we celebrated Communion together. Someone read a good chunk of John 6, and Luke’s account of the Last Supper, and we spent a long time giving thanks round the table, first one and then another, for the various forms His grace has taken in our lives of late—primarily, of course, for His suffering and death and Life, which He has shared with us. Then each of us served the bread and wine to the person beside us.
Then we cleared the table, moved into the living room, grabbed Bibles and hymnals, and sang till we lost our voices, interspersing the Evangelists’ accounts of the Resurrection, and St. Paul’s explication to the Corinthian church of its significance, with our singing, and ending up with a reading of John Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter.
Eventually, we concluded breakfast with cobblers—choice of huckleberries from the Indian Heaven Wilderness or blackberries from out his back door—that one of the brothers had baked. And Easter egg hunts with the very little children, who had been sitting pretty quietly for a very long time by now, and were excited to play with the adults and teens and older children. And more conversation, and mugs of hot tea.
He is risen!
Silence Dogood, you must be from around my neck of the woods. I grew up in Battle Ground and have enjoyed many an Indian Heaven huckleberry.
I spent my Easter at Christ Church in Highland, California and then went to a great Easter supper with my priest and his wife and son, a number of other congregants from our church and some people who are still in the Episcopal church that some came out of to form our Anglican church plant. It was a blessed day and made me very thankful for the church family I’ve found.
Hi, MattJP–
Are you by any chance the Northwest Anglican? If so, I ran across (and enjoyed) your blog the other day. And yes, actually, I think you showed at Harvest Days and Fair (4H cats) with/against one of my kids about a million years ago. [Strains of It’s a Small World After All heard in background.]
sd
Wow, Tom, what a great heritage! Your granddaughter has a lot to live up to!
If I’m ever in Asheville, I will be sure to look up your church for services. I’ve got an application in for a librarian position at University of the South, Sewannee, so there is a chance I may be up your way for an interview (I hope and pray!).
Jim Elliott
North Florida
Hey sd,
Yup, that’s me. Wow, that was a long time ago at harvest days. Hope you and your family are doing well.