Exciting Trinity Sunday at All Saints

It was such an exciting day. Dramatic, or as Nadia says, "amatic," to say the least.

First, somehow they didn't get all the bulletins I printed. We were short of bulletins, even though I printed the ususal number. I think there was a bulletin thief around. I gave up my bulletin and had to fake it when everyone was reciting the psalm.

DH was losing his voice. He wasn't wearing a mic either. It's so interesting when you are unsure whether or not the preacher is going to be able to continue.

Next, several new songs in the mix. And the musicians were standing up instead of sitting down. Very nice.

Fourth, SteVB and Nick the Cool sang a "ska" type song during offertory that had me thinking. And "I was thinking Bob Marley, yeah!" If only they had dreds, it would have been even more effective. But somehow SteVB is adamantly against growing dredlocks, even as much as we heckle him about it.

Fifth, DH was cracking during some of his sung liturgy during communion. Several of the people in church were giving each other covert looks and trying not to react. But if he had cracked one more time I think we would have been all giggly.

Sixth, during the time of ministry, POP! the power went out. Yikes! And it was 108 degrees today at church.

• The musicians went unplugged. Jess had to strum like the dickens, and the singers had to shout it out. SteVB, who was using an electric guitar, had to take Jessica's acoustic guitar and play it mighty loud during St. Michael's.
• The alarms starting going off, until Mae somehow figured out how to reset them.
• The kids started screaming in the nursery. We brought them into the sanctuary and opened the curtains so there would be some light.
• I started to wonder if KFC would also have a power outage, thereby keeping us from fried chicken lunch, and also if our home would be out of power, rendering our refrigerator full of food from Costco bad and us with no air conditioning. Luckily, the power outage was confined to the neighborhood of the church.
• We had to sing all of the praise songs from memory because we could not see the overhead projector. And we suddenly all came down with Alzheimers' so the music team had to carry it.

Seventh, SteVB took out the trash after church and the trash can fell down, and tons of poo poo diapers fell on the sidewalk and he had to pick him up with his young man hands, which are not used to poo poo diapers and were totally grossed out. It was pretty funny.
Eighth, Nadia told the kids in the nursery that our house burned to the ground and we were moving to South America. So those kids spent time after they returned to the service convincing their mothers "really, Nadia said so! they are moving to South America!" And their mothers thought "hmm, I think we would have heard if their house burned to the ground..."
Ninth, we got home and Nadia was playing catch with one of the Brothers' House guys and fell and got a bloody nose.
Tenth, Jessica found that one of the dogs had gotten into the pool and chewed her brand new pool floatie. We used it for the first time yesterday. Anger all around.
Yep. A very exciting Sunday. It was so exciting, that now I am going to take a nap. Such a day.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Pentecost

It was hard to have Mother's Day and Pentecost fall on the same day. This has been a weird year, calendar-wise, what with Easter coming so early and all. Well, now Mother's Day and Pentecost were the same day.

And interestingly enough, as noted by Joel at CEC Worship ( http://cecworship.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/pentecost-happy-birthday-church/ ) not so many people are mentioning Pentecost.

I do think it is strange that the church somehow has made Mother's Day a high holiday, but not so much worried about Pentecost.

Maybe it's because a lot of people come to church with their mothers on Mother's Day. Outreach opportunity.

Maybe it's because they are guilty for ignoring Jesus' Mother, Mary. Romophobic guilt.

Maybe it's because the church is largely run and populated by women and they would storm the pulpit if not recognized.

Maybe it's because in today's mobile society, the family is often separated by distance and the church feels like they need to fill the emotional void grown children are not.

I don't know. I'm sure it's really just all innocent and not anything malicious.

But anyway, I pray that all of us, and our mothers, have a fresh visit of the Holy Spirit!

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

We are planning our annual pancake supper for shrove Tuesday.

Why do we do it?

Well, it's a tradition that sort of comes from the idea to get rid of all the eggs, dairy, and fatty meats - "Fat Tuesday" aka "Mardi Gras." So that on Ash Wednesday, you can start the proper Lenten fast where you abstain from eggs, dairy, and meat. We call this the "Daniel Fast" now, but it's been a traditional fast in the eastern and western churches since... well, since.

We are as merry as possible, because the next day, we enter into a time of repentance and we don't celebrate so much, for 40 days, until Easter.

If you have been celebrating Lent without the pancakes beforehand, you are missing a good time.

If you are never celebrated Lent, well, it's something to be tried. There is really something to entering into the church calendar, and the period of repentance, making some sort of effort to actively draw you closer to God - it makes Easter so much brighter, such a celebration, and an eagerly anticipated highlight of the year.

You can see a full list of the traditions at wikipedia. But let me say a few things at this moment:

There will be no shrove Tuesday pancake race. Apparently ladies in the UK have had pancake races since 1445, the genesis being that someone was late to church and running out of the house with her frying pan and pancakes. I am busy enough making all the sausage and bacon without having to run around with a pan of pancakes.

Now, let me just say that though I love the Filipinos and the Polish, there are traditions of theirs I do not want to follow:

from Wikipedia:

"In the Philippines a popular treat is bibingka, a pancake made from rice flour and topped with white cheese, butter, sugar, salted duck's egg, and coconut. Bibingka is baked on hot coals in a clay pot lined with a banana leaf. It is traditionally served with salabat or ginger tea.

In Poland, Pączki and Faworki are traditionally eaten on Fat Thursday (Polish: Tłusty czwartek), i.e. the one before Shrove Tuesday. However, in areas of Michigan with large Polish communities, they are eaten on "Fat Tuesday" due to French influence. Shrove Tuesday itself is sometimes referred to as "śledzik" ("little herring") and it is customary to have some pickled herring with vodka (Polish: wódka) that day."

Here is our plan:

6:30 pm: we eat pancakes, egg casserole, sausage, bacon, orange juice, milk, coffee, and maybe some fruit if anyone brought some.

7:30 or 8pm: we burn the palms from last year outside, in order to make ashes for Ash Wednesday the next day.

Simple, but a really nice time. You can come! It's next Tuesday, February 5.

The Ball, 2008

You may recall my post describing this year's 12th night of Christmas ball. I got some pictures of it today!

Everybody dance now:








Our King and his Queen:



Our talented organizers:



Artfully DJ'd by SteVB:



A skit:



Let's give them a hand:



Hey, why do I always blink at the inopportune time?

Pastoral Car Chase

We made a dinner last night for another pastor in town, whose wife just had a baby. He is home with three kids, so we thought we'd help a brother out and send over some food.

Since he is a nice hapa boy originally from Hawaii, and she is a nice Japanese American girl from near our old hometown, I thought that in addition to the chicken and broccoli and rice that we sent over that I'd make some mochi. So I got the stuff, and made a nice mochi, cut it all up, put it in little fancy muffin papers, put it in a nice tin and all.

Then, stupidly, I forgot to pack it in the basket when DH went to go deliver the dinner.

Now, I should stop here to mention that this pastor is really Fr. Hubby's friend and not that well known to me. I have seen him twice or so, but we would not recognize each other at the supermarket. Well, unless he was wearing his collar. Or I was standing next to Fr. Hubby.

So anyway, after church today me and the kids headed over to Pastor Hapa's house to deliver the mochi that we had forgotten. (Of course, Fr. Hubby has to get to church earlier and we never drive to church together, so he was not with us). We pulled up in front of the Hapa house, and we could see they were in their van, pulling out of the driveway and all packed up and ready to go somewhere. I turned around and another minivan got in between us. I honked, trying to make him stop. No one listened to me. They all started to pull away.

The kids started to yell to stop him. Tough to achieve, since our windows were rolled up. I honked and gave chase. We were going to have to run him down. Kids were cheering, I was on a mission to catch him. We headed to the stoplight, unfortunately it was green. We tailgated minivan #2, kept speeding along, and luckily Pastor Hapa's minivan went into the next turn signal lane. And there was space next to them.

We pulled next to Pastor Hapa, and rolled down Naomi's passenger side window. He rolled down his window, looked at us like we were nuts. "Can I help you?" he said.

At this point maybe I should have said:

1. Um, yes, can I have a cheeseburger and fries?

2. Your minivan or your life

or

3. Hey Homie, let's go see what these vans can do and race for pinks.

Momentarily stunned, I realized he didn't know who we were. I mumbled "We...are..."

"Oh yeah!! Hi?" he responded. I guess he figured it out. Naomi handed him the box of mochi through the window, and he took it. (You never want to turn down a nice box of mochi, no matter what crazy people who stop you in the intersection and give it to you.)

Then we all happily drove away.

It was the most exciting dinner delivery we've ever had.

Two Cuties

Clearly, there is a lot of determination on the part of Nadia, and expression on the part of Noah. How would you caption this picture that Jessica took at Christmas time?

"Nadia uses Noah as a ventriloquist dummy, moving his head and mouth?"

"Noah shrieking in terror before Nadia smooches him?"

"Girls!! Ewwww!!"

The Ball

It was a lovely ball on Friday.

It rained like cats and dogs. That was a bummer. There were some accidents on the freeway that slowed things down, and all the vents at the restaurant were leaking rain. In some cases, this meant that the dance floor had water on it. In other cases, it meant that the nice wool suits were getting wet. It also meant that people came late, and had to leave early worrying about the rain.

People looked all snazzy. I did spot one mink coat in the crowd. There were lots of sparkly dresses, ties on some of the men, open shirts on some, some more casual in jeans and things as well, but mostly people looking a little nicer than their Sunday best. I wore a dress that had a sort of 60s look to it, and it was suggested that I should be wearing some boots, but I just can't get my feet into them comfortably. PTTD problems, I suppose (meaning my arches are falling and they can't get up - and they hurt in lots of types of shoes).

The food was great. Delicious appetizers: hummus, lavash, cold cuts, cheese, eggplant, etc. Chicken kabobs and beef kabobs. Cheesecake and various cookies and fruits, yum.
Diane baked a King's Cake, which is traditional at 12th night balls throughout the years. You hide a baby Jesus in there, and the winner is crowned the king or queen of the ball. Dick was crowned the king, and he chose his wife of 50+ years, May, as his queen.

DJ SteVB and DJ Jess did a great job with the music. Nomi and Colton sold ball raffle tickets. We had tons of door prizes and raffles. The karaoke machine did not work, unfortunately. But that was OK, because we still danced all the fun line dances and YMCA, etc. And a lot of people danced slow dances.

We presented the slide shows, which I had been making. Four of them. I know, a little excessive. But only 15 minutes in total, and they do highlight some of our ministries for the people who were not regular church members. The first slideshow was on generally things in the Spring with Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, Easter, Womens' Tea, and a glimpse of Doug on the road, to Randy Stonehill's "Celebrate This Heartbeat." Next, was a bit on the Brothers' House guys and generally men from our church, to Randy Stonehill's "Angry Young Men." (Yes, we were all Randy Stonehill, all the time.) (And yes, we will do a womens' tribute at a future event). Then, we had the pictures from fall, with confirmations, picnic, a baby shower, and various activities, set to "Welcome Home" by Brian Littrell. That was the only song I used that was recorded this century. We ended the slideshow presentation with Advent, Christmas, and last year's ball, set to "Joy" by Whitney Houston, from the Preacher's Wife soundtrack.

Our Deacon Michael and Deacon Joshua presented a very nice thank you to Fr. Hubby, me, and Alena. Fr. Hubby presented thank yous to his Deacon team, as well as the servers and general church helper outers.

The laudate youth did a skit mocking us, as they do so well each year. Here are some of the words I sort of remember from the song, sung to the tune of "Yesterday," regarding their complaints about Lent...
Yesterday
Lent was just a little time to pray
You gave up chocolate and you were OK
Oh I believe in yesterday...
Why we had to go on the Daniel fast, I couldn't say
I ate something wrong now I long for yesterday...

All in all, it was quite a nice time. Diane and Jim did a great job with organizing the thing. Our Bishop Kessler and his lovely wife came, as well as Deacon Dave and Jody Anderson, Fr. Aaron and Lily Appleby with Lily's mother, and Fr. Ted and Edith Sayo.

Our dear friends Don and Angie came and it was great to have them. As I was working on various computery things, I looked up and we were having raffle ticket drawings. I thought "geez, I should be looking at my 20 raffle ticket numbers." I looked at our table, and Angie was checking them for me. And that was really comforting. It's so great to have a old friend around who naturally steps in and does what you need.

Don broke his neck at Thanksgiving in a diving accident, and he was there with his brace. He said it only hurt when he turned his neck. I immediately answered "Don, look down there, a dollar!" but could not get him to quickly look to the side. :-)

I am waiting on pictures, and will post them when I get them. But until then, here are some from the slide show:

New Patriarch Elected

ICCEC members, please check http://www.cechome.com/ for the results of the election of the new Patriarch.

Mission Impossible: A Clean Playlist

We are all a flutter here trying to get things ready for the All Saints 12th Night Ball on Friday.

Things are actually pretty well under control. But we are working on the songs for the playlist to give the DJ.

I found a pretty handy internet resource for music - http://www.cleandance.com/. They've got the top songs and a longer list of songs to be able to choose from. And chances are, those songs will not have things that will make you go "hmm" at your church dance.

You can use the lists for free, and donate if you want to.

I highly recommend it as a great place to start for your clean playlist!

St. Michael's Mskis

Dear friends, it's good to be back. It was good to be away, and it is good to be back. I can't wait to spend some quality time catching up on what everyone's written about. Tonight I am trying to spend some quality time with the babies, so they remember who I am. But, couldn't resist posting a quick blog entry.

These retreats always make me realize how good it is to be in the CEC, and to have the greater CEC family around us. I can't wait until you all experience that more and more. The St. Michael's crowd, and San Clemente Diocese, is very cool. There were a lot of blessings that you'll hear about in the coming sermons. I'll tell you a little sidenote.

This retreat was different from others in that we stayed with friends. We stayed with Mean Deacon David, to be exact. He's not mean, but years ago when we worked on the Convocation (he organized the entire thing) he used to put the fear of something in me. Anyway, Mean Deacon David is very kind, and a lot of fun. He and Fr. Husband have become great friends, hunting buddies, etc. MDD invited us to stay at his house instead of the traditional Holiday Inn, and we took him up on the kind offer.

MDD has a family like ours - except MDD and Mrs. Mean have three boys and one girl. They have a lovely home in San Juan Capistrano and redid their guest room right before we came, so we had the most lovely room with freshly laid Pergo, moulding, mocha paint, and lovely bedding.

MDD and Mrs. Mean are a hoot. We had a great time. We ate appetizers with water crackers, my favorite thing. The only thing we didn't get to do was play cards, because we got too tired. It turns out they like to play Spades too, our favorite couples card game.

We were at the clergy dinner on Friday night, a sumptuous affair at the home of Canon Jim. Canon cooks steaks, serves wine no one could afford at their own homes, and really treats all the clergy like kings in a soiree at their home, fully funded by the Canon. We were having a fine time at the dinner when MDD got a phone call from home.

At 10pm, a very loud knock occurred at the door of MDD's home. Their oldest daughter Ashley, age 16, was watching the younger kids. She was afraid. MDD told her to bring in their two hunting dogs, and lock the doors. He also had her bring over the neighbors, two girls who were also clergy kids staying at home alone, so they would be protected by the Gus and Annie, the Wiemeraner (sp?) hunting dogs too.

Ashley called back again, 10 minutes later, to say that people were outside with flashlights and a helicopter was circling overhead. We packed up, said our goodbyes to everyone, and high tailed it out of there. MDD talked to Ashley on the way, reassuring her that he and Fr. Husband would patrol the place with MDD's bows and arrows when they got home, and we'd be there quickly. Apparently Fr. Husband was going to have to whip out Robin-Hood style Fr. Kickass.

Ashley called again, while we were close to Mean Deacon David's house. Annie, one of the hunting dogs, had bitten the two neighbor clergy kids. One on the elbow, and one on the butt. Now MDD was feeling not just anxious to protect his kids, but guilty over harming the neighbors.

We pulled up the driveway, ready to spring out and capture the potential intruders. Then, we saw the culprit. Ashley's car had been tee-peed, and it was the teenagers who had done the knocking and flashlighting. Ashley must have interpreted a random helicopter overhead as a police copter circling. We went inside the house, and tended to the hysterical bunch. Two of MDD's younger boys had been crying, Ashley had been crying, and the neighbor clergy kids had been crying after the dog bites. Both of them had broken the skin.

We laughed. It's so good to know that other people have our kind of chaotic domestic bliss. This family is the St. Michael's version of us. We have never had such a fun time at retreat.

Right to Love

I listened to an old Bishop's Best sermon CD on the way to work today. This CD was from Pro Life Sunday in 2003. This particular sermon had a very interesting conclusion. Bishop Adler read the sermon of Bishop Fiske (Ficke?) in Michigan, and it gave examples of three women who had abortion/baby issues. One of those examples turned out to be Bishop Fiske's daughter, who had been date raped at the age of 25, and went on with her family and church support to continue the pregnancy.

Essentially, Bishop Adler prepped the congregation of St. Michael's to love mothers who may be in difficult circumstances. He said he would be the first one in line to accept and comfort unwed teenagers. In a church with as many youth as St. Michael's, there are bound to be tough situations happening. And knowing that, and preparing the congregation to do the same, will save babies. That's one of the things I love about the CEC - acceptance and love of the whole person, and showing and extending God's grace. Hoping for the best, but accepting the fallen.

Our hands-on love and support to mothers in distress will be more effective than picketing, walking, or other "right to life" activities. Telling teens that if they've made a mistake it's OK, we will still love them and will help them to keep or to launch their babies into another loving family will make a local change and have real results.

This is a pretty hard attitude to promote when trying to keep teenage girls from getting pregnant (especially those in your own household :-)). It's so the right thing to do, however. I will love and accept, and help, whatever person ends up in this situation. It's God's merciful way. Those babies have a right to life, and it is right to love their mothers.