[Magdalen] Catching up

[Lynn Ronkainen]

It sounded 'all good' to me Grace! Thanks for sharing.

Lynn

website: www.ichthysdesigns.com

When I stand before God at the end of my life I would hope that I have not a 
single bit of talent left and could say, "I used everything You gave me." 
attributed to Erma Bombeck
 "Either Freedom for all or stop talking about Freedom at all" from a talk 
by Richard Rohr

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From: "Grace Cangialosi" <gracecan at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 12:13 PM
To: "Magdalen" <magdalen at herberthouse.org>
Subject: [Magdalen] Catching up

> I'm sitting in the rather weak sun on my porch, trying to decide if it's 
> too cold to stay out here. It's supposed to turn bitterly cold tomorrow, 
> so I'm making the most of this respite.
>
> This past weekend was a whirlwind. I drove to Philly on Friday for the 
> ordination Saturday of a former directee at the Philadelphia Cathedral, 
> spent Saturday afternoon with Carol and Andre Trevathan for some birding 
> at a wildlife refuge, a driving tour of the city and the obligatory Philly 
> cheesesteak at Abner's.
> Sunday I attended the church where my directee celebrated his first Mass 
> and then drove to Tom's River, NJ, to see friends I hadn't seen in 37 
> years--since our kids were little.
> Drove home Monday  and got here just in time for the quarterly meeting of 
> our Master Naturalist chapter.
> Crashed on Tuesday...
>
> The ordination service at the Cathedral made me realize that I need to get 
> out of the Diocese of Virginia more often! It wasn't just the higher 
> liturgy--which I expected--but the whole tone of the occasion and some of 
> the nuts and bolts of it.
> The presentation of the ordinands and the initial questions put to them 
> took place at the baptismal font, which is on one side of the cathedral 
> and has a baptismal pool as well as the regular smaller font, from which 
> water flows into the pool.
> Then the entire party processed to the front, and the liturgy continued. 
> Somewhere in there we were all asperged (Is that a verb?) by the Bishop.
> The Cathedral itself is beautiful and arranged unlike any I've ever 
> seen--too complicated to describe here. You can probably find some 
> pictures on their website.
> There were two ordinands, both male, and during the singing of the 
> Veni...Spiritus they prostrated themselves in front of the bishop. I 
> understand the symbolism, but I'm REALLY glad I didn't have to do 
> that--especially on a concrete floor.
> The Nicene Creed and Eucharistic Prayer were from Enriching Our Worship.
> After the service the two new priests remained up front to offer blessings 
> to those who wanted to come forward. I've only seen that done once in our 
> diocese, and it didn't take place inside the church, but on the way out. 
> My directee's (Jordan,) congregation was there in force, all dressed in 
> red, and they all went forward for a blessing.
> The Sunday service at Jordan's church was equally moving--and as long! The 
> liturgy was straight BCP with Eucharistic Prayer B, and Jordan had eight 
> of us listed as con-celebrants, and we all joined him at the altar for the 
> Great Thanksgiving. Seven of us were Episcopal priests from a number of 
> places, and one was a UU minister from Atlanta! All were African-American 
> except me. In fact, the organist and one person in the congregation were 
> the only other white people in attendance. The parish has a mixture of 
> African-Americans and people from the Caribbean. Quite a few young people 
> and children, and Jordan has already revitalized a youth group. He went 
> there in July, was given the title of rector, even though he was just a 
> deacon, because the bishop felt that was important for the congregation, 
> which had basically been neglected by the diocese for years. They hadn't 
> had a bishop's visit for three years. (Bishop Gutierrez is also new.).
> All in all, it was a wonderful day, and it was touching to see how the 
> congregation has embraced Jordan and is enthusiastic about working with 
> him. They've already had a vestry retreat up at Pendle Hill, led by Lloyd 
> Casson, who used to head up the desk at 815 that had to do with ethnic 
> minorities. He was there on Sunday--what a delightful man!
> Enough--probably way more than you wanted to know!!=