I still remember those little boxes. One of the highlights of a childhood spent in Presbyterian Sunday School was the annual arrival of the One Great Hour of Sharing banks. One Sunday our teacher would give each of us a cardboard form. Carefully (or not) we'd punch along dotted lines and insert tabs into slots until we had something resembling a church with a hole in its roof.
That bank lived on my family's kitchen table for the next several weeks, collecting odd coins that came my way. I loved the way they plinked when I dropped them in and the way the box grew a bit heavier each day. On a designated Sunday, the bank - by now liberally scotch-taped and probably splattered with ketchup - traveled back to church to be placed on the Sunday School altar with the churches of my friends. We were told that our pennies would travel to other places to help people we didn't know, and in some cases could not imagine. We weren't sure exactly how , but we knew that the pennies were real.
As we grew up, One Great Hour, an offering begun over 50 years ago by the Presbyterian Church, became one of many ways we shared with others. Sometimes, the campaign may seem diffuse - not like pounding a Habitat nail or bringing spaghettios for the Food Pantry. Who are the people in the projects in the bulletin inserts each week? I've come to believe, though, that participating in the One Great Hour of Sharing is a signal act of faith. We are still putting resources into a church to share with people we will probably never meet face to face but whom we recognize as brothers and sisters nevertheless.
Preschool - Unit on The Lord's Prayer and then the Crucifixion and Resurrection; God's Creation - Communion ; 5th & 6th - Old Testament: David, Kings, and Psalms; Confirmation - Communion, Baptism, and getting ready to write their own statements of faith; Sr. High - Mission Trip planning, dealing with stress, and a class with Headmess (Henry Biggs) a rapper in our congregation.
Each spring the colors of forsythia and jonquils and tulips, the green foliage of shrubs and lawns, overpower the drab gray of winter. The annual arrival of this season recreates the Christian cycle of death and resurrection. On our local level within Trinity each year we are reminded through the Scholin-Weems Scholarship Fund that the loss of promising young lives gave birth to educational opportunity for other young persons.
Applications are now being accepted through May 4 for the 2003 awards. To be eligible one must be a member of Trinity and enrolling in an accredited college or junior college. Awards are based on financial need, academic record, and involvement in activities and programs at Trinity.
If you believe you are eligible, but did not receive a mailed application, call or stop by the office. Recipients will be announced publicly in June.
Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday, the day that Jesus made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. On that day, the excited crowds greeted Jesus with enthusiastic "Hosannas!" At Trinity, we reenact that great spectacle with a grand parade of our own. Led by bagpipes, we march out of the church basement with waving palms, out onto the sidewalk, around the church, and in through the front doors. We proclaim that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But Palm Sunday is not only pomp and circumstance; Palm Sunday has a shadow side as well. Looming in the distance is the cross on Calvary; the crowds that welcomed Jesus on that day will turn against him at the end of the week.
The One Great Hour of Sharing offering will be received on Palm Sunday. Instead of adult education, we will have a time for fellowship after worship.
On Maundy Thursday, we share a meal with each other and with our Lord. For many years, this has been a beloved event at Trinity - a time when we linger over a well-prepared dinner and celebrate the Lord's Supper together. The heart of this event is the new commandment that Jesus gives to his disciples: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (The Latin word for commandment is "maundatum" which gives us the word "Maundy.")
This is a time to share with each other the love that is ours in Jesus Christ. It is a great time to connect with old friends and new ones as well. Families with children are encouraged to attend. The evening is structured so that children can participate for as long as they like and then have a child-friendly activity when they get restless. We will also introduce a few alterations in this year's event - we will not have a Seder plate this year, and we will do something different with the candles (we can't run the air conditioning when the candles are lit) - but the overall flow of the evening will remain the same.
Good Friday is one of the central moments in our faith: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, obediently gives up his life so that we might live. The crucifixion is a painful event to witness; there is no place to hide. But if we allow ourselves to go through the gloom, to go through the forsakenness of Good Friday, the glory and victory of Easter will be that much sweeter. The Good Friday service is a service of shadows; as we recall the story, the Sanctuary becomes darker and darker, until we end in total darkness.
If Good Friday represents the depths of our faith, Easter is the crowning height. The brass chorus heralds Jesus' victory over death, the glorious flowers proclaim new life.
On Easter we have two opportunities to worship. An Easter breakfast will be served throughout the morning. This is a great time to invite friends and celebrate the reality of the resurrection.
"Here I am Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart." Some of us believe the Lord is calling us to build a home!
Trinity is a partner church in Interfaith Builders, and we are going to build a Habitat for Humanity house in Hillsdale (north of St. Charles Rock Road/Dr. Martin Luther King Drive, west of Kienlen Avenue, and east of Lucas and Hunt Road). We will start working on our one-floor house on Saturday, May 3. Workers from all four churches will be there every Saturday. We will install floor joists and the sub-floor on the first Saturday, build and erect exterior walls on the second, interior walls on the third, and so on.
We will have opportunities for volunteers to sign up to work soon.
Habitat has scheduled a meeting of Family Partners, House Leaders, Crew Leaders, and homeowners-to-be on April 10, so anyone interested in one of these roles should contact Pat Gibbons soon (727-1471 home, 935-6271 work, or pcg@wuphys.wustl.edu).
We have already sent a letter asking for contributions, which will be used to pay Trinity's share of the sponsor fee. Please consider supporting this project, and be sure to designate your contribution as being for "Habitat." We need to raise $7,500 of new money from our congregation and friends.
Interfaith Builders has scheduled an ecumenical service of readings, music, and prayer to be held Sunday afternoon, April 27, at Our Lady of the Pillar Catholic Church, probably at 3:00 PM, with time for refreshments and fellowship afterwards. This will be a great way to meet our partners in this project and prepare ourselves to begin the work. See you there!
On Saturday, April 12 at 7 p.m. you have the unique opportunity to hear Master Shashank, a renowned Indian flautist, perform in concert at Trinity. The event is sponsored by Sangeetha, a non-profit society that presents concerts of Indian classical music in the St. Louis area. Tickets are $15. For more information about Sangeetha or the featured artist, you can visit their website: www.sangeetha.org.
The invitation to host this concert came through an Indian musician who participated in our World Communion service last October. He was deeply impressed by Trinity's interest in cross-cultural and inter-faith dialogue and has encouraged Sangeetha to consider our Sanctuary for concerts and lectures in the future. I encourage you to come out for an event which will prove to be culturally and musically enriching, but also stands as a witness to our community that we are committed to grow in our understanding of other cultural and religious traditions. Your attendance on April 12 will help Trinity extend a warm welcome to Sangeetha and the Indian community of St. Louis!
In July 2002, my son Willy and I drove to New Mexico to attend a week-long seminar at Ghost Ranch, one of the three National Conference Centers of the Presbyterian Church (USA). It was an adventure we had looked forward to for over a year, as the previous summer, our application had gone in too late to be accepted. Dan had told us how beautiful and rejuvenating an environment it was, and had loaned us Belden Lane's book The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (Cambridge, 1998), which had been written in part at the Ranch. Indeed, just the drive out was a wonderful and relaxing time, as I showed my son the beautiful landscape of the southwest, an area where I grew up, but which I have not been able to visit for several years.
We drove via Santa Fe, where we visited the oldest church in America. We rambled north out of town, with a triple A map, and started looking for Aibiquu. My Dad was a geologist, so one of my great pleasures in life has always been looking out the window of a moving car, and examining the scenery. The ranch, two hours north of Santa Fe, is in an area so starkly beautiful, that it moved me to tears. The cliffs rise up, striped marshmallows of rock, around winding river valleys and arid fields. The sky is somehow bigger, and bluer, as it stretches out over those ochre, red and white rocks. I knew instantly that this was a place where we could, as a family, enjoy God's creation, and each other, in peace and in fellowship.
Dan had warned us not to get our hopes up about the facilities. Ghost Ranch may have once been a dude ranch, but that was in the 1940s, and most buildings have seen better days. But with that backdrop, I would have slept on the ground. We had a week ahead of us, and we settled into a modest room, with no air conditioning, and a dorm-style bath off the porch. But a friendly staff member loaned us a fan, and we felt we had all the creature comforts we needed. (Those with special physical needs can request handsome newer rooms. There were many guests with canes, and wheelchairs, and baby strollers. Many families were there three-, even four-generations strong!)
At the first meeting of the week's guests, we felt like we had walked in on a family reunion. Not necessarily our own immediate family, but that of a distant relative we were hoping to get to know better. Unlike any conventional vacation spot, you know you share the most important of values with the people you meet here. You know you have come to seek God, and to find some form of spiritual solace. You don't expect everyone to be going about this the same way, but you know you are all on the same general path - like the wonderful labyrinth they have built at the back of the property. You all move through it at different rates, noticing different things, toting along a different pebble to leave at the center, but you are all on your way to the same place.
We discovered the all-night library the first night. Books on religion, history, Indian culture. Mysteries, adventures, nature guides, kids' books. Take your pick, borrow the book, leave one of your own if you are done with it. It's like the family summer cottage, with your cousin's old book shelf waiting for you. Herb tea is available any time, in any room (my idea of earthly heaven). You can start the day with an outdoor prayer service. Meals are served family style. Food is simple, nourishing, and tastes very good after those active days. You share the meals, and optional prayers, with strangers who are old buddies by dessert. Kids run free over the property, the way we can't imagine letting them go in a city. Willy and his new friends caught bugs, chased lizards, climbed gullies, and swam in the pool. Best friends are made in a day.
You can sign up to participate in a class, or go on personal sabbatical, and just read in the shade. There are special classes for kids, if adults want to do something on their own. Classes ranged from Bible study to a survey of Islam to peace studies, to fabric collage, journal writing, or tai chi.
We signed up for an absolutely fabulous parent-child class on dinosaurs. It was led by the ranch's own paleontologist (he's there year round, at their small but first-class on-site museum), and by a visiting geologist who sang gospel songs at night. They led us, for five days and evenings, around this extraordinary place. We tracked celophysis, the New Mexico state dinosaur, 200 examples of which have been found on this property. We went to nearby Lake Abiquu one day to kayak and another day to search for scattered bone fragments. We brought home our own Triassic souvenir: a metoposaur tooth. We visited the site of a University of New Mexico dig in process, and learned how archaeologists unearth a site of fossils. We made time charts, rock collections, and plaster casts of bones. And best of all, on the Fourth of July, our class made the world's finest dinosaur float. The parents worked the hardest, laughed the most, and waved our flags wildly as we marched, with a kid-covered float, down the Ranch's service road in the annual parade.
Other perks included the best massage I have ever had, a sunrise horseback ride that finished at 7:30 a.m., the brightest star-lit sky I recall seeing for years, a live blue-grass concert, and a visit to nearby Anasazi Indian sites (Bandolier National Monument and Mesa Verde) when the session ended.
What do I remember best? The beauty, the peace, the healing power of such stunning landscape, and the incomparable gift of time shared with my son among a group of people who had come to seek and be with the Lord. My greatest regret? That for various work reasons, more of our family couldn't make it that summer. My fondest hope? That this place, or ones like it, will be part of our family's life together for many years to come. If you go, it will restore and inspire you.
A piece of advice: reserve early!
For information: Spring/Summer schedules are now available on-line at http://www.ghostranch.org. Or you can call the Abiqui center at 1-877-804-4678. Many elder hostel opportunities are offered as well.
What do you do when you are overwhelmed by loss? Or when a marriage becomes a battlefield? Or a teenager's struggles cry out for special help?
St. Louis is fortunate to have a professional resource available to help anyone in difficulty, regardless of the person's ability to pay market-rate fees. Care and Counseling, a not-for-profit, interfaith, pastoral counseling center, has been providing individual counseling, educational programs, and outreach efforts at eight sites for 35 years! In fact, one of its offices is located Trinity's library, since the sale of our apartment building, where it had been for many years.
I have served on the Board of Directors of Care and Counseling for about 20 years. I have enjoyed giving my time and effort to this agency because it offers such high quality, professional services. The counselors provide help that is confidential, effective, and based on a faith rooted in knowledge of God's love for God's children.
Care and Counseling is committed to community outreach. The city-based satellite counseling center at Oak Hill Presbyterian Church, for example, serves primarily low-income families and individuals who have not had access to professional quality care, due to lack of resources, or inaccessible service. Other programs address the needs of other "at risk" families, help congregations recognize and deal with depression, and support and educate caregivers of aging parents. Each week, several members of the professional staff are teaching in educational programs of local churches.
Care and Counseling, like all not-for-profit agencies, depends on the support of the community. One of the ways that we at Trinity can help is to support the annual fund-raising effort, the Benefit dinner for Care and Counseling. This year it will be held on Thursday, May 1, at the Sheldon Concert Hall. We invite anyone who is interested to attend, perhaps as part of a table partly funded by our local mission giving. It will be a delightful evening, with an excellent chance to learn more about Care and Counseling, while you share a fine dinner and listen to good music. Please call Dan, Ann Fischer, who is also on the Board, or me, if you can be part of this gala event.
We urge you also to spread the word about the availability of this resource to those who might need its high quality counseling services. You can call the main office at 314-878-4340 for more information, or to talk with someone about a particular need.
The Hawthorne Players will present The Jeweltones - a group which includes Trinity's own Jennifer Courtney and is accompanied by Trinity's own Paul Vasile - in a concert of Broadway, opera, and gospel music.
Performances will be on Saturday, March 29th at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 30th at 2:00 at Trinity. The event benefits Hawtonrne's Duckie DeMere scholarship fund for high school seniors who have contributed time to community theatre.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for seniors/students and may be purchased at the door or by calling (636) 379-1976 or (314) 518-8874.