Tag Archives: Episcopal church

December 22, 2012 · 11:58 pm

Merry Christmas

Best wishes to you and your family for a happy holiday season, from all of us here in the Silicon Valley!

Between trying to get the construction workers finished enough to be out of our house by Christmas, and all of the usual holiday preparations and activities, December 2012 has been particularly busy. There has finally been sufficient progress on the new porch to allow us to have family and guests in the house. The roof and final plastering were finished just before dinner yesterday – barely in time for us to go Christmas caroling on the cable car in San Francisco. Jessica and Matthew were able to get off from work to join us for Christmas – for which we are very joyful!

I went shopping in Chinatown with Sally and Lorene (our tradition for over twenty years). We were sad to see the closed up Sam Wo restaurant where we used to eat raw fish salad for lunch during our annual walking tour of Grant Street stores.
John and I were delighted to hear our young friends Max and Beth perform as part of the Cantabile Youth Singers at the ornate St. Joseph Basilica in San Jose.
My son Paul and I picked out and walked home a Christmas tree – which sat in a bucket of water on the driveway for two weeks until the contractors left and we could move all of the furniture back. Jessica and Matthew and Paul brought the tree inside and decorated it tonight. The decorations are eclectic but cheerful. I still need to put out the nativity figures John bought in Bethlehem.
My EfM class went to see the Bethlehem Christmas story re-enactment, and then went out to dinner together and exchanged gifts.
Last Sunday was the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church children’s pageant.
We have very much enjoyed Willow Glen’s enthusiastic Christmas light displays – which give every street its own twinkly charm as we go about our holiday business.
Today we went to the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco to enjoy a Victorian Christmas, high tea, and last-minute shopping.
Tomorrow, John starts cooking for our Christmas feast on Tuesday!

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Tagged as Charles Dickens, Education for Ministry, Episcopal church, Jessica, John, Matthew, Paul, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Willow Glen

November 3, 2012 · 11:02 pm

El Camino Real Convention

This weekend was the annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real on the Central Coast of California. I was a delegate to convention from my home parish of St. Andrew’s in Saratoga. My husband John and our neighbor, the Reverend Stephenie Cooper, ran the computers and visual system for their fifth year. In front of the big screen were about 300 lay and clergy delegates and in back of it were Stephenie and John sitting amidst a dozen computers in a nest of cables keeping the business running.

My contribution was being a roadie (helping them move equipment in and out) and providing photographs to spice up the presentations. Our much-loved Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves has a good sense of humor and enjoys the funny pictures. She even brought her two Bishop Barbies to the convention. In 2010, the women of St. Andrew’s gave her the first doll (in red robes), who has now been joined by a second in white vestments.

One of the impressive presentations was by a youth group who brought a chain of 508 plastic bags, representing the number thrown away every second in California. The chain wrapped around the convention hall twice – making a powerful visual point about taking better care of our world.

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October 31, 2012 · 7:52 pm

Silicon Valley Halloween

Halloween is serious fun here in the Silicon Valley. Spooky house decorations go up weeks in advance, people come to church in funny hats and silly outfits (for “Boo Sunday”), companies have costume parties, waitresses work dressed as clowns, stores give out candy to kid parades, and tonight the sidewalks are full of children dressed as cats, bugs, princesses, super heros, and monsters walking from house to house trailed by their parents, greeting neighbors with “Trick or Treat!”.

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September 23, 2012 · 10:51 pm

Shakespeare Reading Group

The community at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church has just started a Shakespeare Reading group, with me as the official Shakespeare Mentor. Tonight, 13 of us met to read Midsummer Night’s Dream together. Melita Thorpe hosted the event and organized the pot luck supper. As the Shakespeare Mentor, I recommended MSND movies to watch in advance, sent out an email with background on the play and recommendations for how to read Shakespeare, brought texts to read from, and distributed roles for the evening. My favorite MSND films are those of 1935, 1968, 1996, and 1999 (see details on the Midsummer Night’s Dream wikipedia page section on films).

My advice on reading Shakespeare socially:

Shakespeare wrote play scripts – not literature – reading a Shakespeare play is entertainment and you should enjoy yourself!
Trust the punctuation – pause not at the end of a line or at a rhyme but only at the period ending the sentence.
Read as quickly as you can using a normal tone – no special accent is needed for most roles.
Keep going – do not pause between speeches or scenes – the characters should sound like they are responding to each other.
If there is a word you do not know, give it your best guess and go on (or you can ask for advice!).
The gender of the role and of the reader do not have to match – remember that Shakespeare had an all-male cast.
If the lines in your script do not match the lines in someone else’s, don’t worry about it – Shakespearean scholars don’t always agree on the text – just keep reading.

Everyone enjoyed the evening – several of the readers made us all laugh. I am looking forward to future meetings!

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Tagged as Episcopal church, Mentoring, Shakespeare, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

September 2, 2012 · 11:23 am

Play in a Garden

Last night, my husband John helped to run the light board for a community theater group presenting the short play “Christ in the Concrete City” by Philip W. Turner. The production was by the Saint Andrew’s Players, directed by Melita Thorpe, and was held at dusk in the garden of St. Andrew’s Episcopal School (Saratoga, California). It was an interesting play, at times disturbing, and a fun evening.

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August 26, 2012 · 5:24 pm

San Francisco Bay Area Labyrinths

California Pacific Medical Center – courtyard, Pacific Heights, Buchanan at Clay, San Francisco

Labyrinths are maze-like paths used for thousands of years in design and public structures. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have seen two types of public labyrinths: those inspired by the design on the floor of Chartres Cathedral (from around the year 1250) with 11 circuits and a distinct flower-like center, and the much-older classical Greek or Cretan patterns. Walking a labyrinth is a popular form of meditation, particularly in hospitals and Christian church buildings and gardens. Some groups think so highly of this calming exercise, that they have painted portable labyrinths on canvas for spiritual retreats in places where no permanent labyrinth exists. Some of the public labyrinths in the San Francisco Bay Area may be visited at:

Grace Cathedral – main floor inside, San Francisco – Nob Hill
California Pacific Medical Center – courtyard, Pacific Heights, Buchanan at Clay, San Francisco (pictured above)
All Saints Episcopal Church – courtyard, 555 Waverly Street at Hamilton, Palo Alto (pictured below)
El Camino Hospital – inside main lobby, 2500 Grant Road, Mountain View (pictured below)
Saint Thomas Episcopal Church – courtyard, 231 Sunset Avenue, Sunnyvale (pictured below)
Saint Francis Episcopal Church – courtyard, 1205 Pine Avenue, Willow Glen – San Jose
Lincoln Avenue downtown bench near Meredith Avenue, Willow Glen – San Jose (pictured below)

Other Labyrinths in the area are listed here:

You can even have your own home labyrinth by buying a rug of that pattern from the Signals catalogue (pictured below).

El Camino Hospital – inside main lobby, 2500 Grant Road, Mountain View:

Saint Thomas Episcopal Church – courtyard, 231 Sunset Avenue, Sunnyvale:

Lincoln Avenue downtown bench near Meredith Avenue, Willow Glen – San Jose:

All Saints’ Palo Alto CA – Added March 2013:

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July 26, 2012 · 10:41 am

Episcopal Town Hall by Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves

Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves was at St. Andrew’s in Saratoga, California, last night in a town hall style discussion about the recent General Convention. The Episcopal church’s General Convention meets every three years and is organized in two houses: the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies. Bishop Mary told us of her experiences in the House of Bishops and many of our lay and clergy delegates to the House of Deputies spoke as well. The 77th General Convention met July 5–12, 2012, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

We started yesterday with a BarBQ dinner in the courtyard under the huge oak and then moved into the church for a two hour discussion. The meeting of over a hundred was hosted by the Santa Clara Valley Deanery, an organization of the parishes in the upper third of the Diocese of El Camino Real on the central coast of California.

After opening with prayer, we heard about many of the topics discussed in the USA-wide convention, from many points of view. Some of the highlights for me:

Bishop Mary’s response to Jay Akasie’s dramatic and highly-critical article “What Ails the Episcopalians: Its numbers and coffers shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the traditional faithful” in the 12 July 2012 Wall Street Journal. (She said she ate no fancy steak dinners and heard of none, and did not see how they could happen on the travel budget allowed.)
Serious discussion of reorganizing the church as an institution so as to serve the people better and make more effective use of church money.
Consideration of the requirements for communion. See more on this: “Baptism before communion is still church’s norm: Convention debate shows practice doesn’t always follow canons”.
Approval for use of the rite “The Witnessing and Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant” to bless same-sex couples who are in lifelong, faithful monogamous, committed relationships. See more on this: “Blessing rite authorized for provisional use from First Advent: Liturgy still ‘work in progress,’ convention calls for continued comment”. Our ECR diocese’s 2010 “Report  of  the Diocese  of  El  Camino  Real  Task  Force  on  the  Theology  of  Marriage” was part of this discussion.
Consideration on how to reduce barriers to diverse participation in church leadership and governance. (I was reminded to look at current postings on the Chicks in Pointy Hats blog about women bishops.)
Discussion of the several resolutions on how to reduce poverty and to help the homeless.

Overall, it was a fascinating and instructive meeting.

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Tag Archives: Episcopal church

Merry Christmas

El Camino Real Convention

Silicon Valley Halloween

Shakespeare Reading Group

Play in a Garden

San Francisco Bay Area Labyrinths

Episcopal Town Hall by Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves

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