It’s still About Summer; it’s still about Life!

Today is June 1st, so technically it's not quite summer.

rock-strewn roads

In the shadows my former self watches this current person, every so often wondering if my assumption God would use me to transform people and society arrogant! Was it arrogant? Not in the least! That’s exactly why people do authorized ministry, credentialed teaching, (sometimes) law and related jobs. Recently on my theology blog I wrote, the desert’s precariousness, life-giving and transformative austerity; I’ve been living in a series of phenomenological deserts as well as metaphorical ones, and the true devastation has been the wasted gifts and education and my resulting sense of worthlessness, loss and betrayal.

these days as I’m in discernment...

It’s not about the what of my call but rather about the how. Sometimes I visually recite a series of images of locales where I’ve lived and served; here’s part of my places list, which also is a partial list of my qualifications for multicultural ministry:

• Inner-city Boston during the years of school desegregation, racial strife and violence, block-busting, white flight, redlining, residential and commercial conflagrations.
  
  
• Boston’s North End; though the neighborhood had a few students and working yuppies, culturally it was mostly Italian and Italian-American.


• San Diego North County, which for me was like anthropology field work as well as being the time of the greatest professional, spiritual and personal growth imaginable.


• Back to Massachusetts, to Dorchester (and admittedly the only time I’ve spent in exactly the setting I’d been preparing for); it was multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, multi-economic and multigenerational.


• Massachusetts also meant Cambridge and Harvard Divinity School!


• High Desert City; post-Semi-Affluent Suburban UCC, I got close to an insider look at the Latter-day Saints church and also had awesome experiences playing the piano, eating and partying with the Tongan United Methodists.


• Back to the East Coast, I spent some unclear time with the ELCA, where I began learning Caribbean culture and food. Part of my excitement about possibly returning to Boston from San Diego and getting involved there as worship specialist was about drawing on the knowledge, experience and expertise I already had and exploring a new culture.

how did I envision my life and work if I wasn’t doing professional ministry? To support myself, most likely I’d do something that didn’t take an immense emotional investment, since in my non-paid employment time I expected to:

1. Possibly write some grant proposals and do some correlated recreational or educational program development for friends’ or colleagues’ churches;
2. Probably be a frequent guest organist;
3. Play a dozen or so solo organ or piano recitals each year; regularly accompany vocal recitals;
4. Other things I haven’t even imagined.

what has helped sustain me? My constant awareness coupled with frequent unexpected and definitely unanticipated evidence of my being tethered to the Spirit...of the Holy Spirit keeping me tethered! My increasingly sacramental theology recently Most of my life - but particularly since Salt Lake City - I've done everything imaginable always to put the best construction on everything everyone does, to consider where they might be coming from, to give them more than the benefit of any doubts. In one sense I haven’t taken any incident personally, though in another sense I’ve taken almost everything very, very personally. Yes, yes so true everything says far more about the speaker than the spoken about, but more-recent interactions and events have been highly incongruous with my previous life, and I’ve only been able to begin wondering how on earth I ever ended up in such a situation. Almost whereverI am, I feel a profound sense of loss of self and I feel plain lost in space! How I ever ended up? I’m not that powerful or remotely that much in control! sense of call and history of call From day one, it was about doing parish ministry in tandem with doing theology; from the beginning I did everything in order to get “more skills for ministry” including a degree in social work and a 2nd bachelors degree. Never, ever would I have done that if professional ministry would be the only place for me to use those skills. The first day I walked into the plasma center in Salt Lake City in yet another attempt to get just a few $$$ I’d entered a parallel universe that didn’t often touch the worlds in which I’d previously lived. But of course I said, “Wow!!!!! Yet another awesome qualification for inner-city ministry.” The Community Economic Development program at San Diego State University had seemed like a culmination to my previous experiences and aspirations--I’d be doing a radically justice-oriented ministry! more skills! Earlier on, way prior to Salt Lake City, I’d intended to take some time away from professional ministry in order to do some activist stuff and to gain more skills in areas in which I felt lacking. Besides, I’d been spending far too much time in and in the near vicinity of the church building, too much time formally “in and on behalf of the United Church of Christ!” But for me, church was my family, my creative, intellectual, social and professional life—it was all I knew! Parish ministry was my heartbeat, and my greatest joy had been using my gifts for the community, particularly the community of faith. When the months and then the years started whizzing by I knew I needed to begin talking about my perplexity, but I discovered most people either were judgmental or didn’t at all get what I was trying to say. earlier

• A pastor colleague from a different denom: “You’re not going to be popular: you’re too passionate, you see too clearly; you need to stay in the inner city, where people have no time for anything but the truth.”
• The same guy again: “A person can live with only so much irresolution and you’re really pushing the limits.”
• However, it’s almost like a human hierarchy: bright, accomplished people seem to think I’ve cool and accomplished, while others don’t exactly think so at all.

A surprising validation On one of The Apprentice episodes I watched, The Donald fired an extremely bright and independent woman. The next day Stacie was on the Today Show and essentially commented, “The usual ploy of the weak getting rid of the strong.” In many ways she reminded me of myself... from previous shows, it’s true Stacie had done a bunch of non-team things, but it’s also true the other women (at first I’d written girls--interesting!) were, as she described them, “Sorority Types,” and though definitely bright and coming-uppers, their style was far tamer and less...well, less whatever. here’s my theology site: Desert Spirit’s Fire!

Image! Image, image, image...

As Judas tried explaining to Jesus, that Precious Ointment could've been sold to feed the poor, and as Jesus explained to Judas, the poor is one reality, Jesus is another reality, there are many realities out there and in here, and you gotta attend to the real right-at-hand reality. That sounds like a version of carpe diem! Right now my reality is feeling lost, shattered and powerless.

Probably many or most of you remember Steve Winwood's Higher Love (in Back in the High Life, 1986)? From his 1980 Arc of a Diver, I love this Steve Winwood song, and sometimes recall frequently anticipating its opening French horn (I think that's the instrument) riff on the car radio.

While You See a Chance | Winwood and Jennings

Steve Winwood dot com

Stand up in a clear blue morning until you see what can be
Alone in a cold day dawning, are you still free? Can you be?
When some cold tomorrow finds you, when some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you

While you see a chance take it, find romance fake it
Because it's all on you

Don't you know by now no one gives you anything
Don't you wonder how you keep on moving one more day your way

When there's no one left to leave you, even you don't quite believe you
That's when nothing can deceive you

Stand up in a clear blue morning until you see what can be
Alone in a cold day dawning, are you still free? Can you be?
And that old gray wind is blowing and there's nothing left worth knowing
And it's time you should be going

© 1980 F.S. Music Ltd., Irving Music, Inc. & Blue Sky Rider Songs

Call and Response: Waiting for Dawn

Derived from the revival meetings of the Second Great Awakening, in African-American homiletics and hymnody there’s a common practice of call and response: the preacher, choir or soloist issues the call and waits...to give the response space and time to happen. Right now I’m finding myself unglued by the almost unforeseen realization of my tremendous un-wholeness regarding the church music scene and – not exactly peripherally – music in general. I am so hauntingly aware of the fact I wasn’t able to say in obedience, "God, the strength and purpose in your call far outweigh my reluctance, so I’ll go there and I’ll do that!" The title of this reflection is Call and Response; the call is God’s and some would insist we’re supposed to respond in obedience, whatever our misgivings or reservations, but in this case I believe God called me and then – in characteristic call-and-response fashion – waited for my response of seeing and acknowledging my own brokenness in an area of endeavor in which I’ve become exceptionally accomplished. Rather than to incessant dissection and analysis, God calls us to obedient action and service and I keep remembering my identity as a member of the excessively-self-interested Me Generation and then later on of the achievement- (and $$$)-driven Yuppie Generation; although I spent those particular years doing ministry in a local church setting and not chasing worldly riches at all, how I used to recognize myself in the media descriptions, nonetheless! Membership? Of course, my baptism defines and describes my primary identity as a member of the Body of Christ...

(However, as a literal parenthesis regarding critical thinking and analysis, I suspect my propensity for trying to keep figuring out what’s going on has expressed itself more productively and to a greater extent for the community in my gifts and passion for doing theology, so maybe it’s okay, after all!)

As Christians we live in the sway of Resurrection life, and a couple Sundays ago on the Day of Pentecost again we celebrated the revelatory visions, fire, wind and words of the Spirit’s sovereignty, yet still we spend much of our lives between the earthbound incarnational vulnerability of Christmas and Good Friday’s deathbound brokenness. And we need to keep recalling and retelling that throughout the witness of Scripture and throughout the reality of our lives, it’s not about signs and wonders but about unexpected, unmediated Presence and paradoxical Sacrament...

Looking way back, it was close to bizarre that I was getting a degree in musical performance yet too ashamed to admit the fact to anyone outside the musical community in the university’s School for the Arts. During subsequent years I’d continued hiding--only a couple months ago as a Faith, Order and Witness colleague and I were talking before the meeting formally began, I told him I hoped to be able to attend an annual ecumenical event in Europe during summer 2006 and in passing mentioned I’d like to return to the International SummerAcademy for Organists at Haarlem. Knowing my story about not finishing seminary plus my currently not having a formal call to serve a parish, he expressed surprise I (clearly) was an accomplished organist and then asked why I wasn’t playing somewhere, especially with the current shortage of organists!? Instead of replying directly, I said I’d hoped to get far more guest organist gigs than had been forthcoming--once again, not disclosing that on some level I could not serve formally or officially as a church musician (though playing an occasional service or performing any music anywhere in public always has been and remains sheer joy for me)! Despite ecumenism and ecclesiology being unusual interests, they count as normal ones, and since my behavior and participation in Faith, Order, Witness does seem to be well within the norm, I decided to hide in order to save my image. Again.

Recently I read somewhere:

When I surrendered to the crush of the waves and allowed it to naturally bring me back to the surface and ultimately back to the safety of the shore line I was able to survive it. I went with the flow and the flow delivered me. Simply divine.

• Psalm 22:3--God still is enthroned upon the praises of His people!
  
  
• Extravagant thanks to and trust in the God of Heaven and Earth Who, in the Spirit’s freedom, mystery and power, always answers with resurrection, and so I wait for another dawn in the wake of darkness.

Both the call and the response belong to God, Amen!

Southern Arizona Travelogue

Ramsey Canyon Preserve

Tuesday we made the most wonderful visit to The Nature Conservancy’s Ramsey Canyon Preserve! From the pamphlet I picked up, here’s a description of the incredibility of the exceptionally diverse environment:

Ramsey Canyon, located within the Upper San Pedro River Basin – one of the Last Great Places! – in southeastern Arizona, is renowned for its outstanding scenic beauty and the diversity of its plant and animal life. This diversity—including such highlights as 15 species of hummingbirds—is the result of a unique interplay of geology, biogeography, topography, and climate.

Southeastern Arizona is an ecological crossroads, where habitats and species from the Sierra Madre of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, and the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts all can be found. The abrupt rise of mountains like the Huachuca from the surrounding arid grasslands creates "sky islands" harboring rare species and communities of plants and animals. This combination of factors gives Ramsey Canyon Preserve its tremendous variety of plant and animal life, including such southwestern specialties as the lemon lily, ridge-nosed rattlesnake, desert long-nosed bat, elegant trogon, and beryline and white-eared hummingbirds.

A spring-fed stream, northeast orientation, and high canyon walls provide Ramsey Canyon with a moist, cool environment unusual in the desert Southwest. Water-loving plants such as sycamores, maples, and columbines line the banks of Ramsey Creek, often growing within a few feet of cacti, yucca, and agave. Communities ranging from semi-desert grassland to pine-fir forest are found within the vicinity of Ramsey Canyon Preserve.

The Town of Patagonia

On our way to the Patagonia-Sonoíta Creek Preserve, we drove through and stopped to visit the historic tourist town of Patagonia, with some of Patagonia’s colorfully-storefronted shops vending antiques, others retailing Mexican artifacts, clothing and decorative items, the stores all laid down amidst the obligatory town offices and a delightful flurry of multihued old frame houses. On the way back to Tucson from Sonoíta Creek Preserve, we drove past the site of the now-former Empire Ranch, where they filmed most of the old-time television Westerns.


Patagonia-Sonoíta Creek Preserve

Wednesday we took another trip, this one to Sonoíta Creek Preserve, another Nature Conservancy site. Here’s a description from the brochure:

In a verdant floodplain valley between the Patagonia and Sierra-Rita Mountains of southeastern Arizona, within the watershed of Sonoíta Creek, lie some of the richest of the remaining riparian (streamside) habitat in the region. One of a few remaining permanent streams, it provides for a wide array of diverse species from endangered fishes to butterflies and birds. Joseph Wood Krutch, the distinguished American naturalist, once noted that “no other area in Arizona is more deserving of preservation” than Sonoíta Creek. This site contains the first two miles of permanent flow of Sonoíta Creek and the floodplains adjacent to the stream. This site contains very high biodiversity values that are primarily focused on the riparian habitat along Sonoíta Creek very high headwaters that are primarily found in the riparian habitats along Sonoíta Creek. As the first project for The Nature Conservancy in Arizona, it captured much of the biological diversity associated with these habitat types. The watershed is mostly undeveloped and its natural processes of flooding are mostly intact and functioning.

Saturday in Holy Week Sunrise 2005

Gila Bend, Arizona

Southwestern sunsets long have been legendary, but today’s Southwestern sunrise, 24 hours before Easter’s break o’ day, finds me wondering about promise, hope and shattered dreams. As I’m writing this, new day has broken over Gila Bend, Arizona, U.S.A.. These days I wonder if my heart has been ripped out or if my heart still remains with me, broken into about a zillion pieces. Right now at this moment we’re parked alongside Love’s Quality Fuel and the C-store attached to it; Love’s logo is a solitary heart, though also articulated as a trio of overlapping hearts lined up in a row!

How irresistible I find the desolate beauty of the palm trees (still haven’t learned how to distinguish one variety from another) all along the left and the very characteristically Southwestern mesquite to the right, graphically delineated against morning’s pale light. Mountains not too-far distant begin making inroads into this new day...

On Sun Tree River, my Poetry and other Passions blog, I posted a poem I wrote based on words I’d written on Desert Spirit’s Fire, my theology blog; today I’ll begin to complete a full circle and post dawnwashed blues here on this far by faith; here's the text:

On Desert Spirit's Fire, my theology blog, in a post called morning watch, I wrote:

Patterned after ancient practice but now in remembrance and anticipation of Easter dawn, there's a Christian tradition of Morning Watch. The fourth and last segment of the night watch, the morning watch of antiquity and of the New Testament epoch (that's us!) is from 3-6 AM; during this final watch of the night, darkness gently eases into the quiet early light of Easter dawn and God's Glory softly splashes over all creation.

Here's a poem I wrote about that hour of...

dawnwashed blues

during each night's final watch,
darkness gently eases into
quiet early light of daybreak's dawn
God's Glory softly splashes
over drowsing creation

yesterday's final light of day
followed by a slender slice of moonglow
held no starshimmer
during middle night's intensely indigo blues
today's hushed daybreak
whispered itself over creation’s
night's end watch anticipating dawn's first light
the sunup-washed sky shined with light-washed sheen
dawnwashed new morning blues made
fresh-sprung break of pale day blues

dawnwashed blues

love after love

From my fall 2001 management class, this poem - by the 1992 Nobel Laureate in Literature - says it all!

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Restaurant Review: Urban Coastal Cuisine

Since the title of this blog is "this far by faith," here’s a semi-spoof takeoff on what I did during my probably all-time favorite job—a volunteer job writing restaurant reviews for the local radical newsrag.

Codman Square’s Newest Temptation

Lunches to Savor and Remember

by Leah Chang

With all the yuppies, graduate students, young families and assorted others who’ve been moving into Dorchester, it’s high time for the arrival of an establishment like Urban Coastal Cuisine!

Since we’d been wondering if the restaurant's name was overstated, too trendy or aptly descriptive, last Tuesday a pair of us ventured into Urban Coastal’s luncheon buffet. UCC occupies a storefront on Washington Street in Codman Square vacated several months ago by a retail outlet of a recently defunct small grocery chain; current tenants on the surrounding blocks include several national retail outlets. In reviving and redesigning the site, Abigail Janssen and Rich Krone, the restaurant’s owners/managers, both recent graduates of Johnson & Wales, retained the original plate glass windows and two of the original entryways, blocking the 3rd door with a subtle, freeform graphic done in dense, textured acrylic with metallic accents by local artist and teacher Maya Gutierrez. The banner signage announces “local seafood and ethnic cuisine”; a quartet of Seats of Consciousness benches, commissioned from Nancy Jamison of Dorchester Fair Food’s associates and co-workers, offer inviting spots to rest, wait, or meet people. Inside the windows and peering out to greet passersby and potential diners, window boxes filled with floral plantings add a spot of bright color to an otherwise subtly sophisticated presentation mostly done in natural hues.

Once inside UCC, we discovered the atmosphere attempts to mimic what I’ve experienced in Cambridge’s Harvard and Central Squares but in a less in-your-face “this is the way to be ‘in’ these days” manner. Clearly there is “a way to be” if you’re well-educated and you’ve opted for inner-city rather than suburban living, and one of the requisite lifestyle accoutrements includes at least occasional dining at places that serve other than the more classic and traditional “Americana” fare.

Perusing the bill of fare, we noticed the prices were high for lunch in Codman Square. But sometimes the image is costly, right? So going for the expected splurge, one of us ordered grilled (unspecified) seafood fajitas with Caribbean chutney-style salsa and “Thai style” fruit compote. Yes. The other decided on non-coastal, choosing slightly blackened (that’s still current?) chicken breast au poivre, wild rice medley, (local!) and a garden-fresh tomato and mixed green salad with the obligatory house vinaigrette. Since the wine selection was too pricey for us, we decided to drink bottled water. Then on to dessert: this time a different ethnicity with Tiramisu and an American favorite: strawberry-rhubarb tart crowned with homemade vanilla ice cream. With dessert one of us had an herbal and black tea blend created by one of our J&W graduate hosts and served with honey from New Hampshire; the other chose a double latté from a plethora of specialty coffees. On a side note, while we were lunching folks at two nearby tables had come in for coffee and pastry, so that less-expensive option may help restaurant revenue.

The food? Yes, the food! Presentation of everything that came to our table was clean, fresh and appealing, served on natural-colored stoneware. All the flavors of everything were nicely married, with no particular accent overwhelming another one. However, none of the food we ordered had a particularly distinct or novel taste, either: it was more in keeping with the expected standard of this kind of cuisine, but that works well!

Ambience definitely is a big part of this restaurant’s draw (at least for Leah, who’s writing this review). With the interior walls painted a light sandy beige, pale wood tables and chairs, and newly-refinished wide-plank floors coupled with the natural stoneware dishes, silk flowers on the table and hanging on the walls a diversity of silk-screened city scenes, beach scenes and city beach scenes, including one of my local favorites, Dorchester’s Malibu, the calming effect of it all took me back to a more tranquil era and will draw me back to Urban Coastal Cuisine. Recorded music definitely would enhance the entire mise-en-scéne or – ideally – live music, such as guitar or mandolin. But I can dream! Rich Krone, who together with Abigail Janssen is UCC’s owner/manager, told me a live music series s part of his vision, and acquiring an arts grant to provide the live music is another hope for the future.

Song of Church Unity

Here's a favorite from long ago:

1. All living creatures with the same bread you sustain
        And to your Spirit's well nobody comes in vain.
   Give that we understand the language of your call,
        Uphold us by your hand; write your name on us all!



2. To You, Word in the flesh, we shall allegiance give:
        Because you suffered death, we will forever live.
   Show all who long for life the way to where you dwell,
        Oh Son, whose sacrifice broke down the gates of hell!



3. O Spirit, pioneer, keeper of humankind,
        We are a scattered rear, rebelliously behind.
   Abide with us and slay the powers that disunite,
        Oh Truth and Life and Way, Oh everlasting Light!

C. Michael De Vries

All Who Love and Serve Your City

1. All who love and serve your city,
all who bear its daily stress,
all who cry for peace and justice,
all who curse and all who bless,

2. In your day of loss and sorrow,
in your day of helpless strife,
honor, peace, and love retreating,
seek the Lord, who is your life.

3. In your day of wrath and plenty,
wasted work and wasted play,
call to mind the word of Jesus,
“I must work while it is day.”

4. For all days are days of judgment,
and the Lord is waiting still,
drawing near a world that spurns him,
offering peace from Calvary’s hill.

5. Risen Lord! shall yet the city
be the city of despair?
Come today, our Judge, our Glory;
be its name, “The Lord is there!”


* Words: Erik Routley
* © 1969 by Stainer & Bell Ltd. (admin. by Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188).
* All rights reserved.

* Music: Birabus by Peter Cutts
* © 1969 by Stainer & Bell Ltd. (admin. by Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188).
* All rights reserved.

* Other tunes: Charlestown, Dominion-Chalmers, Marching, Omni die
* Meter: 87 87

morning watch

Patterned after ancient practice but now in remembrance and anticipation of Easter dawn, there's a Christian tradition of Morning Watch. The fourth and last segment of the night watch, the morning watch of antiquity and of the New Testament epoch (that's us!) is from 3-6 AM; during this final watch of the night, darkness gently eases into the quiet early light of Easter dawn and God's Glory softly splashes over all creation. Recently I've started compiling a series of Morning Watch devotionals; here's the first one.

Praise

O God, Thou art my God, and I will seek Thee all day long
O God, Thou are my God, and I will praise Thee with all my heart
I will seek Thee in the morning, at noon and in the dark of night
And walk with Thee in safety
Throughout the rage of time

Promise

Jeremiah 29

11 'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. 12 'Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
13 'You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
14 'I will be found by you,' declares the LORD, 'and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,' declares the LORD, 'and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.' NASB

11 "I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out--plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.
12 "When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I'll listen.
13 "When you come looking for me, you'll find me.
"Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, 14 "I'll make sure you won't be disappointed." GOD's Decree.
"I'll turn things around for you. I'll bring you back from all the countries into which I drove you"--GOD's Decree--"bring you home to the place from which I sent you off into exile. You can count on it. MSG

Hope

John 20:1

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. NASB

Realized Hope: Resurrection!

John 20:1

Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. MSG

A Mandate:

Jeremiah 29

5 'Build houses and dwell in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce.
6 'Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease.
7 'Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.' NASB

Trust

Psalm 73:25, MSG

You're all I want in heaven!
You're all I want on earth!

Contentment

Psalm 23, MSG

A David psalm

1 GOD, my shepherd! I don't need a thing.
2 You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
3 True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.

4 Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I'm not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd's crook
makes me feel secure.

5 You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.

6 Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I'm back home in the house of GOD
for the rest of my life.

The Message, © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson


times of the traditional watches:

Ancient Night Watch

First watch | until midnight
Middle watch | until 3 a.m.
Morning watch | until 6 a.m.

Ancient Day Watch

Morning | until about 10 a.m.
Heat of day | until about 2 p.m.
Cool of day | until about 6 p.m.

New Testament Night Watch

First watch, evening | 6-9 p.m.
Second watch, midnight | 9-12 p.m.
Third watch, cock-crow | 12-3 a.m.
Fourth watch, morning | 3-6 a.m.

New Testament Day Watch

Third hour | 6-9 a.m.
Sixth hour | 9-12 midday
Ninth hour | 12-3 p.m.
Twelfth hour | 3-6 p.m.

Reformation Day 2004

this afternoon at the Ecumenical Council's Reformation Day celebration the choir sang this song:

Make Our Church One Joyful Choir

Make our church one joyful choir on this glad and festive day
and by song invoke the fire that invites our hearts to pray:
Shape us, Christ, to live and claim all it means to bear your name.

Bend us low by song and prayer, low enough to lift the cross
and to take the weight and bear love's uncounted final cost:
Shape us, Christ, to live and claim all it means to bear your name.

and our acts and words of care trace the pattern of your cross:
Shape us, Christ, to bear your name.

Bend us, lift us, make us strong, send us out with wind and fire,
so the world may hear the song that we offer as your choir:
Shape us, Christ, to live and claim all it means to bear your name.
Amen, amen, amen!

Thomas H. Troeger
© 1994 Oxford University Press, Inc.

so worth the wait!!!!!

RED SOX NATION!!!!!

official site