Category Archives: Church

November 14, 2013 · 1:25 pm

Dunk the Bishop and Other Convention Activities

Last weekend, the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real on California’s central coast held its 2013 convention – and celebrated the start of our seventh year under the inspiring leadership of Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves. I have been honored to be elected to serve as a convention delegate (or alternate) for the last ten years. My home parish of St. Andrew’s hosted the convention this year in Saratoga.

ECR includes 13,000 people in 47 congregations:

The Diocese of El Camino Real stretches from south of San Francisco to north of Santa Barbara. The congregations of El Camino Real are found in the five counties of San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Monterey. Although the youngest diocese in California, ECR’s Trinity Cathedral, in San Jose, is the oldest cathedral structure in the State of California.

Conventions are for celebration of our ministry, updates, and managing the business of the church. However, this year we also enjoyed dunking Bishop Mary. She gamely “volunteered” to get wet as a fundraiser for our youth mission trip. Tickets were sold: $10 for 3 balls to try to dunk, or $20 not to dunk the Bishop. The youth raised $1,200 from ticket sales in one night! As always, the Rev. Stephenie Cooper and my husband John Plocher were the “Assistant Secretaries for Everything Else” – that is, running the computers and displays for the ECR convention.

Other more-conventional (ahem) activities included:

Celebrating the two month visit of The Rev. Fred Kalibwami to ECR from the Diocese of Western Tanganyika (DWT)
Bishop Mary’s annual address to the diocese, including announcing the purchase of Sargent House for the Bishop’s new offices in Salinas.
Honors to notable volunteers and lifetime contributors:
- Bishop’s Cross Recipients: The Rev. Roger Barney, and The Rev. Canon Linda Taylor
- Simple Servant Awards: Don and Diane Cooley, and Rosemary Tisch
Lunch gathering of the Education for Ministry mentors in ECR (including me!)
Reports on key ministries – outreach to the jails, campus ministry at four universities, and caring for the poor and homeless in our communities.
Election of delegates to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church (held every three years). I was elected as first Alternate for the 2015 General Convention.
Displays by diocesan and charity groups, plus sales of crafts and Bishop Mary’s newest book Unearthing My Religion

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October 20, 2013 · 8:38 pm

Honoring My Parents with Sacred Threads

Two of the twelve newly-embroidered chairs dedicated at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California) today were donated by my husband and me in honor of my parents: Wade and Eleanor Dickinson. The replacement chair seats were created as part of the Sacred Threads project. The new chair seat designs are inspired by the 1957-era stained glass church windows by Mark Adams. I think my mother was pleased to sit in a chair with her name on it!

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September 18, 2013 · 2:32 pm

30th Anniversary SMUM Community Ministry

On 15 September 2013, Santa Maria Urban Ministry (SMUM) celebrated its 30th anniversary with a “Fiesta for the Future” hosted by St.Jude’s Episcopal Church in Cupertino. SMUM was founded in 1983 as an outreach ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real, to provide emergency food to the residents of San José’s inner city. In addition to continuing to serve the needs of clients and promote their self-sufficiency, SMUM has developed transformative programs (pre-school, homework and computer lab, English as a Second Language, VITA tax services, backpack and Christmas present distribution…) to serve the needs of and promote self-sufficiency within the San José community.

The evening included a worship service lead by the Right Reverend Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves, a silent auction, folk dancing, music, and dinner with thanks to honor to the hundreds of donors and volunteers who have made this generous program a long-term success.

Honored Women’s Day

On 17 August 2013, the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real held the 8th annual event to celebrate its women. Honored Women’s Day was held at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salinas, California. The gathering was organized by the diocesan Episcopal Church Women. Sixteen awards were presented by Wanda Bryan for dedicated leadership and inspiring volunteerism. The day include a worship service lead by the Right Reverend Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves who blessed the women of the diocese. Some of the awards were for lifetime service but young women were also acknowledged for their remarkable contributions. One lady was represented by a cardboard cutout and another by her granddaughter as they were not well enough to attend.

Before the awards, there was a brief reading of “Yet We Persist”, a 2009 historical reflection on Episcopal Church Women by Katerina Katsarka Whitley that opens with

Voice 1: We are called old-fashioned;
Voice 2: We are called passe;
Voice 3: We are thought of as irrelevant;
Together: Yet, we persist. Why?
Narrator: Our history declares that we cannot be ignored, that we have relevance, and that the church could not have functioned without us.
Voice 1: Look at Mission in the past two centuries: Without us, who would have cared for the needs of missionary families?
Voice 2: Who would have raised the money?
Voice 4: Without us, who would have worried about young girls and children working in factories?
Voice 2: Who would have raised the money?
Voice 5: Without us, who would have taken action against the sickness of alcohol and its damage to families?
Voice 2: Who would have raised the money?
Voice 4: Who would have worked to claim the vote for women?

The “Yet We Persist” story starts in 1867 and tells of the hundred years of letter writing, lobbying, disappointments, but persistent efforts to have women deputies finally seated in the Episcopal General Convention in 1967, and the further work required for women to be ordained as priests in 1976. In 1989, the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris of the Diocese of Massachusetts became the first woman Bishop of the Episcopal Church – and of the worldwide Anglican Communion. “Yet We Persist” ends in 2006, when the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori became the Episcopal Presiding Bishop and the first woman elected as a primate in the Anglican Communion. It was an inspiring presentation and inspiring day.

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July 25, 2013 · 11:08 am

Local News, Distant News

For neighborhood news here in Willow Glen, California, we have email lists. I manage a list for the houses in our immediate area – where yesterday I announced finding a thrown-away kitten (and settled the cute little guy in a new home that night) – and there are other lists for our Northeast Quadrant, and for our whole section of the City of San Jose (Willow Glen takes up about 3 square miles).

For national news, I listen to National Public Radio on station KQED. I sometimes check in at the New York Times but their 10-story-a-month free-limit blocks my regular usage. I have been a KQED sustaining member for decades and don’t want to pay more than that for news.

For international updates, I read Al Jazeera (English) and the BBC – two services with similar web designs but different points of view and sources. My daughter Jessica recommended Al-Jazeera, a service started by the royal family of Qatar where she studied at CMU-Q. Maybe Qatar’s backing is why Al Jazeera has no advertisements? Current stories I found interesting on Al-Jazeera:

Is religion good or evil? – Mehdi Hasan challenges evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins at the Oxford Union
Monk by Blood – One young Japanese struggles with his destiny as the next in line to take over his family’s 800-year old temple
Church of England takes on money lenders – Archbishop of Canterbury wants to offer church loans in bid to put high interest lenders out of business.

Creekmore Family Reunion, Knoxville Tennessee

After our visit to Loon Lake, Wisconsin, with the Plocher family last week, John and I flew to Knoxville, Tennessee, for a reunion of my Creekmore relations. My mother, Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson, was born and raised at 1007 Circle Park in Knoxville, spending summers at our Elkmont family cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains. My brothers and I and our cousins and friends also spent many happy childhood weeks at the cabin and nearby swimming hole. My brother Mark is the oldest of our generation and I am next – we have a first cousin who is twenty years younger. More Elkmont history and photos are in my Elkmont, Tennesee 2011 blog entry.

It was delightful to get together with my mother and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nieces and nephews. My mother, Mark, Jessica and Matthew met us in Knoxville. Unfortunately, Paul could not come because of final exams at Foothill College. My brother Pete was able to bring his whole family.

We went as a group to see “Dear Lodge” – the Creekmore’s Elkmont Cabin #6, now part of the “Elkmont Emergency Stabilization Project” of the US National Park Service’s “Elkmont Historic District: Appalachian Club”. Despite the many “US Property – No Trespassing” signs, the cabin’s back door was flat on the kitchen floor, plus a window and the front door of the cabin were open. However, we were happy that the holes in the floor my daughter saw during her visit in 2008 have been repaired.

We had a big family dinner at Latitude 35 in Knoxville after visiting the mountains. Part of the fun of a reunion is telling funny stories on each other. Here is one I shared:

When my brothers and cousins and I were little, our mothers, aunts, and uncles would sometimes take us to a drive-in at night, usually to see a Godzilla monster movie. There would be two cars: the adults would put us kids in one and lock themselves in the other so that they could watch the movie and eat their popcorn in peace. They rolled the windows down just enough to let in the movie speaker and some air. Of course, we kids would quietly get out of our car to sit on the hood or catch frogs in the grass. One evening, we had an idea. We snuck up on the grown-ups’ car and pushed some of our frogs into the window opening. Unfortunately, one of the frogs dropped into my Aunt Mary’s soda and then immediately jumped down the front of her blouse. The resulting commotion in the adult car was spectacularly noisy. We got in big trouble (but it was worth it!).

Yesterday, John and my mother and I went to service at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral where my parents were married in 1952. Then, we visited the family graves at Highland Memorial Cemetery on the way to the airport.

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May 27, 2013 · 4:48 pm

Street of Many Names

In Willow Glen, there is a block with four street names. Two of the names are official – meaning that if you sent a letter by US Mail to an address on “Alma” or “Minnesota”, it would arrive. The other names are associated with the large campus of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Yosip Parish which takes up most of one side of the block. Their internal driveway is “Mar Dinkha IV Blvd” but one exit is marked “Assyrian Ave” and the other is “Mar Yosip Way” – along what would otherwise be Alma/Minnesota. The Alma/Minnesota street sign pictured above is between the exits. Fortunately, people sending mail to the parish send it to a San Jose address on Minnesota, so the many designations probably cause little confusion.

Street names in America are not-quite-random but sometimes seem so. According to the 1993 US Census, the most common US street name is “Second” – with “Third” a close second. The street names used over 5,000 times are:

Second (10,866)
Third (10,131)
First (9,898)
Fourth (9,190)
Park (8,926)
Fifth (8,186)
Main (7,644)
Sixth (7,283)
Oak (6,946)
Seventh (6,377)
Pine (6,170)
Maple (6,103)
Cedar (5,644)
Eighth (5,524)
Elm (5,233)
View (5,202)

Willow Glen has at least one more many-named street. About half a mile from the Alma/Minesota sign is another campus driveway which is either “Delmas” or “Wabesco” – both are clearly marked.