As we draw ever closer to the 2024 United States presidential election, this sermon from the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, seems more timely than ever.
Curry was preaching at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City, on Ascension Day this year. At this point in his sermon he is talking about the Latin motto of the United States: "E pluribus unum" ("Out of many, one"):
Labels: Ascension, food and drink, Michael Curry, St Thomas (New York)
The bizarre Sunday evensong service was defended by the cathedral's Precentor, who said the vegetable was "a sign of the abundant provision and generosity of God".
Rudgard, Olivia. "Worcester Cathedral blessing for asparagus crop criticised as 'absurd' by Anglicans". The Telegraph 25 April 2017.
Labels: Evensong, food and drink, Worcester
Please read this article closely. There are many puns and there are TWO (2) possible ways to earn a homemade fruitcake sent to you ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!!!
As it is our care and delight to await the coming of the PDF of the King's College service leaflet for this year's Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols, we must in heart and mind go to this webpage and refresh it endlessly until the document we seek is found.
OFFER OF FREE BAKED GOOD: If you find the 2014 service leaflet before I do I will send you a homemade fruitcake. You may email me at dsinden@gmail.com, tweet me @sinden, or even call me if you can figure out how. This offer is valid to the person who contacts me first, regardless of medium.
In the mean-time, I have some half-baked predictions (not like the fruitcake mentioned above, which will be fully-baked and delicious).
- The first carol will be "Once in Royal David's city" - this will not surprise anyone.
- Rutter's "What sweeter music" seems quite overdue - In fact, last year's service was noticeably
RudderlessRutterless. Look for it as the Invitatory Carol after the Bidding Prayer. Or look for something else by Rutter somewhere else. - We haven't heard the Warlock "Adam lay ybounden" in a long while - not since 2006. So I would put good money on this -- but! There was no "Adam lay" setting at all last year, which was quite unusual. The carol text had been a staple of the service since at least 1997 (probably well before that, but further research is required*) A robust rendition of the Ord may be in ORDer to restore the balance. Oh dear, here we go with the puns.
- The second carol after the Third Lesson will be "God rest ye merry, gentlemen". - You can count on it. Let nothing you dismay.
- Cleobury will put down his own "Joys Seven" after the Fifth Lesson - I mean, if I keep predicting this it has to happen, right?
- "While shepherds watched their flocks by night" will be the second carol sung after the Seventh Lesson. Money in the bank. The Old Bank of Winchester. (Hymn tune joke - har har har)
I have no clues about the commissioned carol this year, so I'm not going to hazard a guess.
A final note or two or three (so, a chord, really) about another fruitcake offer: If you can provide me with an order of service prior to 1997 so I can fill in more boxes on my nifty spreadsheet, I will also bake and send you a delicious fruitcake ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. One homemade fruitcake per person, please. Don't be greedy. They don't keep well you know.
That is all. Happy Advent. Happy refreshing. Happy baking.
*I am eagerly awaiting a fully funded sabbatical to visit King's College and really research these and other questions. My sabbatical year should be 2016/17ish. Ahem, vestry in the parish where I currently serve...
Labels: Christmas, Cleobury, food and drink, hymns, John Rutter, King's College (Cambridge), Ord, Warlock
. . . an immersive multi-sensory performance from Johnnie Walker, featuring flame-throwers, 10,000 year-old ice, and Jude Law -- not all at the same time.But the star attraction is a bespoke organ that reportedly employed around a quarter of the world's specialist craftsmen for the instrument during a building process that took three years and 10,000 man hours. This is the 'Flavour Conductor,' a landmark for synesthetic experiment that combines cutting edge science with a devotion to enhanced pleasure.
Monks, Kieron. "Magical organ gives 'musical taste' a new meaning". CNN. 19 September 2014.
Speaking of 10,000-year-old ice: we are big fans of the television programme Going Deep with David Rees, especially the first episode: How to Make an Ice Cube
Labels: flame-throwers, food and drink, ice, Jude Law, organ music, organs
There is nothing more beautiful than the musical heritage of the church on "Laetare" Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Lent. It is also known as "Refreshment" Sunday, coming as it does half-way through Lent. It is also, according to the Episcopal Musicians' Handbook known as "Mid-Lent", but I've never seen this name used outside of that handy spiral-bound reference.
But I want to focus on that initial name, "Laetare". Like it's counterpart in Advent, "Gaudete" Sunday, "Laetare" (Lay-TAH-ray) takes its name from the proper Introit chant of the day, "Laetare Jerusalem".
The Sundays "Gaudete" and "Laetare" both come just past the halfway point in their respective "purple" seasons. Both words mean rejoice. And the liturgical color for both days (if you can manage it) is pink, the liturgical color of joy.
Color tangent: Most churches, if they see any pink at all, only see it in Advent when the third candle on the wreath is pink. There is yet no mechanism to deploy a pink cue to the masses in Lent, but perhaps a type of Lenten wreath could be devised? Thorns would have to be involved. And we could use six or seven candles to lead us in to Holy Week? And perhaps it could take the shape of the Tenebrae hearse. No, this is a bad idea.
But enough with the semantics. On to the music.
At the parish where I serve, we have instituted the tradition of singing the Introit text itself to the traditional plainsong, though we sing it in English as adapted by Bruce Ford in The American Gradual [link to large PDF].
The words of the Introit come from Isaiah 66:10-11. Jerusalem is to be loved, praised. She is a woman. She provides nourishing milk. (In the parallelism in 66:11, omitted in the Introit, we get "that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom".) We are to rejoice, be glad, and "sing out in exultation".
It doesn't sound much like Lent so far, which is why this is such a wonderful tradition to keep.
The only thing that smacks of Lent here is the quick "all you who mourn for her" . But it's an interesting imperative that precedes: rejoice with her.
Even in our penitential season, we can be joyful.
Even though we have stripped out our "Alleluias" from the liturgy we can still have joy. Remember: we have only done this so they will perhaps sparkle a bit more at the Easter Vigil. Our Orthodox brothers and sisters actually say Alleluia more in Lent, a joyful approach. "Laetare" can give us Westerners a sense of this joy.
The Psalm verse here from 122 is also worth noting. It's not often in Lent that we hear "I was glad when they said to me * let us go to the house of the Lord".
Psalm 23 makes it's first appearance of the year on this day. It will quickly resurface on "Good Shepherd" Sunday (another great Sunday nickname!) in Eastertide. This beloved psalm of the church is worth singing twice, and we gladly receive this tradition of the church. To my ear, the word shepherd rings more prominently in Lent. It is, in this context, a psalm of guidance, of pilgrimage. We are refreshed at the stream even as we journey onward.
Church musicians can't get enough of this psalm, it seems. I suspect that I'm not the only one who also tends to put down a version of this at the Offertory. This year, the neo-pastoral setting by Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989) fit the bill.
The final bit of refreshment on this day comes in the form of the hymn "Jerusalem the golden", a beautiful hymn by Bernard of Cluny. It well-known to the tune EWING, and this is how it is printed in the Hymnal 1982.
Closing the service with this hymn bookends everything nicely. Here, as at the introit, we get images of nourishment "Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest...".
The hymn tune helps make the midpoint of the third phrase of every stanza stand out nicely.
joys
daylight
have conquered in the fight
to that dear land of rest
That particular pairing of text and tune always makes me tear up a bit in the final stanza.
One of the reasons I'm so particularly fond of this hymn is that my introduction to it at Christ Church, Indianapolis, was accompanied by great festivity.
The men of the parish adopted the tradition of "Mothering Sunday" and prepared a rather lavish breakfast for everyone to enjoy between services. It was refreshment indeed, and all sang EWING with that much more vigor, having enjoyed such splendid milk and honey beforehand.
Whatever our traditions on this day, they come from the Church, our Mother. We are encouraged and refreshed in the midst of Lent.
Two final thoughts about two innovations:
A further innovation this year at the parish where I serve, the opening hymn was "Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness". We should not squander any opportunity for joy on this day.
A further innovation for next year: I think the choir should sell Simnel Cake and sherry at coffee hour.
Labels: Advent, Bernard of Cluny, Christ Church Cathedral (Indianapolis), food and drink, Gaudete, hymns, Laetare, Lent
On the second Thursday in June for the past 48 years, the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of Indianapolis has held the Christ Church Cathedral Women’s Strawberry Festival.
Today, the newspaper of record in the Circle City had this look back, including some great photos of Pat Harding, who started the festival.
Labels: Christ Church Cathedral (Indianapolis), Christ Church Cathedral Women's Strawberry Festival, Episcopal Church, food and drink
The Lenten Preaching Series has been happening at St. Paul's, Richmond for a long time -- since 1897, I believe.
The Lenten Luncheon, however, dates from 1921, so today represents a 80th liturgical anniversary.
There's home-cooked food on a pretty big scale. Two seatings (before and after the service). Hot plates, cold plates, takeout, even frozen entrées.
Every Wednesday is Cheese Soufflé day. That includes today (Ash Wednesday, when many Christians choose to fast).
The desserts are a big draw. $2 each. $3 à la mode.
Better than lima beans, I guess.
Labels: food and drink, St Paul's (Richmond)
It's long been apparent that Starbucks observes a certain kind of secular liturgy with it's storefronts and beverage selection. They invite parishioners of earth into a syrupy celebration of fall with their Pumpkin Spice Latté. They frost their windows and offer Peppermint Mochas way ahead of Advent, heralding the arrival of the secular seasonal shopping melee. When the weather warms, blended iced beverages are promoted.
The "common cup" has been co-opted by the coffee shop, but it is cleverly customizable.
And now that we're familiar with their seasonal offerings, Starbucks wants to become a regular part of all of these seasons, and in fact has ways of naming them. Seasons are not identified by name, but by drinks.
The "common cup" has been co-opted by the coffee shop, but it is cleverly customizable.
This year the slogan for the fall beverages (the stalwart Pumpkin Spice Latté and the newly devised Rite II Toffee Mocha) is "take comfort in rituals". The message is clear: Starbucks has a liturgical option for you to mark the season; if you don't like Pumpkin Spice, try the new one.
The Toffee Mocha is their "seeker service". There's room for all in the holy huddle at the end of the barista counter.
Aidan Kavanagh wrote that the liturgy must be "festive, ordered, aesthetic, canonical, eschatological and, above all, normal." Other than the eschatological part, I think Starbucks has it down.
Online evidence: Take comfort in ritualsLabels: food and drink, liturgy, Starbucks
I wrote this about four years ago in an email to herself, and it seems as relevant now as ever.
In 1891 a scientist named "Nencki" who, like me [immediately after graduating college], had so very little to do that he convinced four guys to eat seven kilograms of asparagus (that's about three and a half pounds each). He collected the pertinent pee, worked some "medieval magic" on it, and concluded that the smell was due to a metabolite called methanethiol.
So, this is just a smelly byproduct of digesting the asparagus that your kidneys dump into your bladder.
What is methanethiol (AKA mercaptan?), exactly? Methanethiol is composed mostly of sulfur with a little of hydrogen, and carbon (think rotten eggs). Merck warns that methanethiol may be a narcotic in high concentrations.
So, that's what makes your pee smell funny, but there is more to it than that.
Babe Ruth may have been the first person to bring this into the popular consciousness when he declined a plate of asparagus saying "asparagus makes my urine smell funny."
If legend is to be believed, only half of the people at the party laughed, and the other half didn't know what he was talking about. The assumption here is that there is a segment of the population that either does not produce methanethiol in large enough quantities OR for some reason, cannot smell it.
This second theory is propagated in a study by Lison et al. (1980) which relegates this phenomenon to the realm of smell hypersensitivity.
BUT other studies point to the varying production of methanethiol in different demographics. A study published in the May 1989 British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology found that 46% of 115 people tested produced the odor in one group of British citizens, while 100% of 103 people produced it in a group of French citizens, but this is no surprise, because we all know the French are smelly pacifists.
Just so you know, asparagus -- a member of the lily family along with garlic, onions, and leeks -- is a powerhouse of nutrients. It's an excellent source of folic acid (a B vitamin that may help protect against birth defects, heart disease, and cancer), a significant source of vitamin C (an antioxidant that may protect tissues against damage), and a good source of vitamin A (an antioxidant).
sources for this article: http://www.discovery.com/area/skinnyon/skinnyon970115/skinny1.html, http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/gpryor/austin.pee.html, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=108390, and http://my.webmd.com/content/article/43/1671_51089.htm?lastselectedguid={5FE84E90-BC77-4056-A91C-9531713CA348}, all accessed June 2004.
Labels: food and drink, science and nature
The mere colour of a wine was enough to inspire him: he thought that the golden Frascati of Rome was like "an ode of Horace" and that the red wine sauce served with roast fowl was at its best only after the "joyful red C major colour" had slowly cooked and become "melancholy" (dark) enough.
Sibelius's choices in alcohol includes links to nifty charts
Labels: food and drink, Jean Sibelius
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