[Magdalen] Please pray for Ascension, Chicago

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

My over - dramatic imagination:

Following the weekly service, the gentleman takes a sip of his drink,
pauses pensively, and puts the cup and saucer down.

He crosses the room to where He stands among His friends. He sees the
gentleman approach and one can see the defensive walls go up.

The gentleman stops in front of Him, looks him gently in the eye, and says,
"I miss our friendship, Amos."

He is speechless, for the words could as well have been his.

"So do I, Albert."

The healing begins. Small steps.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 11:48 AM, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 10:31 AM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen
> <magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> > This is really a well organized attack.  It used to be that  factions
> > like this in a church would cluck about it during coffee hour.
>
> My problem with institutionalizing a group like Save Ascension is that
> it takes on a life of its own, requiring more grievances every week to
> pile on: <gasp> No birettas! (Never mind that the use of birettas
> isn't a central activity of the parish, and their use has come and
> gone many times in the parish's history...meanwhile, some other
> liturgical traditions have actually come back recently.) <gasp> New
> version of the Divine Praises at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament!
> (Never mind that the Divine Praises are not essential to the
> Benediction rite, and the new version (from the revised St.
> Augustine's Prayer Book) is solid both in content and in being praise
> to God). And so on.
>
> I do have some concern about the reporting of parish finances, which
> is a very contentious item right now: I want the monthly financial
> reports to continue to be accurately and fully reported. But I trust
> the annual third-party audit, not to mention the bishop's annual
> review of parish records, to raise and correct any issues. And I know
> the vestry will continue pushing on this if it's actually not
> happening the way it should.
>
> Mainly, though, I grieve about this sharp division between groups of
> parishioners, as well as loss of friends I'm not seeing anymore at
> church. I pray for reconciliation, that we may be open to a "third
> way" that can bring us back together, and that we'll come through this
> conflict as we've come through others in the past, including a big
> exodus in the 1970s due to the rector at the time being anti-WO and
> aligned with an anti-WO group pressuring him to take the parish out of
> the Episcopal Church. So people have left for a variety of reasons
> over the years.
>
>
> --
> Scott R. Knitter
> Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA
>