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Dear Grateful All Saints Families,
In my home, we have begun to settle into our “new normal.” The children are starting to accept that this is our life for the foreseeable future. Deron and I created a shared workspace in the study and like many of you, have blocked off work time and parenting, so that we feel like a tag team wrestlers when one tags in for parenting, as the other dashes into the study for either the blissful silence of the noise cancelling headphones or the omnipresent, chaotic Zoom meeting.
I can make fun of our new normal because our family is doing well. We are healthy. Deron and I still have jobs: jobs, which allow us to work from home. We have food in the kitchen and money in the bank. That is more than so many people in our community have right now. And even fewer people will have those things next month. Those people need our help.
Please consider helping as you can. All Saints Outreach Committee supports these organizations:
You may also donate to All Saints by-the-Sea and in the memo line write Outreach and the Outreach committee will distribute your funds. In this week’s Bell Tower you will see an invitation to give funds for All Saints to purchase gifts for mothers living with their children at Transition House. You can make donations to this or other Outreach ministries on the All Saints’ website.
Deron and I received our stimulus check last week. We are donating our stimulus money to organizations which help people who have been impacted by COVID-19. If you are in a position to do so, I invite your family to consider doing the same. If you have food on your table, money in the bank, and the comfort of your salary and health, rejoice and be thankful. And out of our gratitude, maybe give something to those who have lost some of those things in the last few weeks. By sharing with others, we become Christ’s heart and hands in the world. God is with us through sick and health and so is our faith community at All Saints.
Peace,
Allison
Learn MoreKathleen Bright
Bell Tower Reflection for 5/1/20
by Kathleen Bright
I remember in the early days of the Thomas Fire in December of 2017 that I got up, got ready for work, and started driving North on the 101 freeway as if it was any other work day. In several places the fire was already down the hillside to the asphalt and burning debris was in the road. No matter, I was getting to work! Then, not long after the Thomas Fire had passed, the Debris Flow happened. My mind raced trying to figure out how I could get to All Saints to help parishioners and staff. This, as we probably all remember, was not possible. It took me quite a while to resign myself to the fact that I had no control over the situation and would have to do as Teddy Roosevelt said “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” It was frustrating and deeply depressing for me, and the rest of the staff. Both the Thomas Fire and the Debris Flow were defining moments in my life, and I do believe that they prepared me, and the All Saints staff, for the current Covid-19 crisis.
Even before the Stay at Home order was announced the staff swung into action to try and figure out the best way to keep “church” going. We also needed to make sure parishioners were communicated with immediately and effectively, and to do what we could to keep parishioners feeling connected to one another. During this stressful and unusual time, a whole slew of new ways to worship together were created: pre-recorded Sunday services; weekly Lectio Divina, Centering Prayer, and Eventide; clergy led Compline three times a week; Book Group; and ACE (Adult Christian Education). And it isn’t just the staff and clergy who are making all of this happen, it is parishioners too: Marcy O’Hara leading Lectio Divina; Robert Brown spearheading Eventide (as well as EfM); Susan Evans leading the Outreach Committee to help those with immediate needs as well as revue the grant applications; the Budget & Finance Committee continuing to oversee our finances; and the Vestry, not only continuing to meet, but making weekly calls to parishioners to check on their well-being. The Sanctuary Preservation and Readiness Project continues due to the good work of the Facilities Committee and Owner Architect Committee. All of this done apart from one another, yet together.
The only reason that any of this is working is because the good people of All Saints have linked virtual arms with the staff & clergy to dive right in and learn how to worship and meet remotely. You have shown, once again, that you are an amazing, resilient, faith-filled people.
This Sunday is commonly referred to as Good Shepherd Sunday. This is the Sunday where we hear the story of the Good Shepherd whose “sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” Turns out that the people of All Saints continue to hear his voice even when it is proclaimed via the internet. Thank you for continuing to hear the call of Jesus and participate in the life of All Saints by doing what we can, with what we have, where we are.
Learn MoreAllison Grisham
Bell Tower Reflection for 4/24/20
By Allison Grisham
Kermit the Frog was wrong. It IS easy being green. We just have to understand what it means to be “green.” I’m not talking about recycling or solar energy, although we would be better off with more of those. I’m talking about being IN the color green.
Before COVID-19, doctors in the US were beginning to prescribe “Forest Bathing” for their patients. Forest Bathing is like taking a guided meditation through a nature space. It focuses the mind on the present through the five senses as a way of connecting deeply to nature. Practitioners show decreases in blood pressure and stress hormones. Forest Bathing sounds like something we could all use right now.
If you can, please get out into God’s creation this week. Find a socially isolated space. Listen to the birds singing; smell the oils from the trees; touch the earth beneath your feet, sand, dirt, rock, grass, or water. Stay there and be fully present and fully alive in that moment of grace.
All of us may not be able to get out to Rattlesnake Canyon or hike Cold Spring Trail, and those of us who can, may find the trailheads are too crowded for social distancing. In those cases, I have another idea.
I wonder if we could get the same relaxation benefits of Forest Bathing in our backyard or from a large houseplant. What if we were to lie down under a tree or bush in our backyard or to put our head under a houseplant, noticing it and our breath for ten minutes. How would we feel afterwards if we spent those ten minutes in awareness of the green that God has made?
Some of us in our congregation are housebound. For others, sticking your head under a bush is not an option. However, we have windows. From our windows, we can see beauty in God’s creation anywhere we look. Etty Hillesum had such a window.
Etty was a young Jewish woman in Nazi transit camp prior to being sent to her death in Auschwitz. While looking out her window, she wrote this entry to God: “The jasmine behind my house has been completely ruined by the rains and storms of the last few days, its white blossoms are gloating about in muddy black pools on the low garage roof. But somewhere inside me the jasmine continues to blossom undisturbed, just as profusely and delicately as it ever did. You can see, I look after You, I bring You not only my tears and my forebodings on the stormy, grey Sunday morning, but I even bring you scented jasmine. And I shall bring You all the flowers I shall meet on my way, and truly there are many of those. I shall try to make you at home always. Even if I should be locked up in a narrow cell and a cloud should drift past my small barred window, then I shall bring You that cloud, oh God, where is still the strength in me to do so. I cannot promise You anything for tomorrow but my intensions are good. You can see.”
When we are in the color green, we are calmer and less reactive and more responsive to God. Like Etty, our hearts and minds are filled with thanksgivings, and we can make an offering of our worries to God and feel them melt away. I hope that your week may be filled with God’s green.
Learn More
Benjamin Hanson
Bell Tower Reflection for 4/17/20
By Benjamin Hanson
Before the closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the All Saints Choir was preparing music for Easter Sunday. We were planning to present excerpts from Vivaldi’s musical setting of the ancient prayer, Gloria in excelsis Deo, or “Glory to God on high.” Now that Easter has come and gone, I find myself reflecting on this piece and how it can serve us even in isolation.
Vivaldi’s setting takes the text of the Gloria and “zooms in” to it, expanding the short prayer into a thirty-minute long song of praise by repeating lines of the text, ornamenting each word with different sounds and musical textures, and approaching each line from a different perspective. By “zooming in” to the text and working to find beauty beneath the surface of the prayer, the composer reveals hidden facets of praise in the text of the Gloria that range from joy and love, to awe and penitence. In a way, the composer has looked past the earthly prayer to search for the inspiration behind it. The composer looks past the Gloria to look for God.
The process of exploring a text in this way is a familiar one for choir singers. Choirs spend weeks or months rehearsing a piece of music before they perform it. This process allows time for each member of the ensemble to live with the words of the song, meditate on their many meanings, and explore every dimension of the poetry or scripture before finally presenting their interpretation of the lyrics through performance. The choir takes time to zoom in on every piece they perform, looking to understand it from every possible angle, and to find hidden beauty in doing so. By living with these texts for so long, the choir has the opportunity to sense the beauty of God’s creation and inspiration in every piece they sing.
In this time of isolation, I find exercising this practice in all areas of life to be more important than ever. While confined to our homes we have no choice but to linger in familiar places and patterns in our lives. In this time we have the opportunity to zoom in our daily routines and on the relationships we share with our loved ones, and to consider these everyday things from a new perspective. In doing so we can look for God in the mundane moments of our lives, knowing that God is always there. There is no greater comfort in times of crisis.
I’ll leave you with the text of the Gloria as it appears in the BCP. In reading it, perhaps you can zoom in to the text to look for beauty of God between the lines, as well. If you care to listen to Vivaldi’s setting of the text I discussed above, you can find a quality performance here.
Glory be to God on high,
and on earth peace, good will towards men.
We praise thee, we bless thee,
we worship thee,
we glorify thee,
we give thanks to thee for thy great glory,
O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.
O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ;
O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
that takest away the sins of the world,
have mercy upon us.
Thou that takest away the sins of the world,
receive our prayer.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father,
have mercy upon us.
For thou only art holy;
thou only art the Lord;
thou only, O Christ,
with the Holy Ghost,
art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
-David Boyd
Perhaps you have heard it said, “This is the Lentiest of Lents I’ve ever Lented.” That being the case, how much truer that this will be the Holiest of Holy Weeks we’ve ever Holied! The parades of palms have been cancelled. The plans we made months ago are undergoing changes of drastic proportions. Easter feasts with extended family are delayed. What does this mean for Holy Week and Easter, the holiest time of our Christian year?
This pandemic has called us to rethink church, not only how we do church, but what it means to be church. In this time of social distancing and stay-at-home orders, we recall that church is more than a building, but a body. Yet, what does it mean when that body is distanced?
This shift in perspective brings us back to how the church got started in the first place. In secret, behind closed doors, in family homes, Christians gathered for centuries in perilous places to proclaim the crucified and risen Christ. The risk of being discovered was death for these early Christians. In some corners of our world, it still is. We must remember that God’s church has survived much— much more than even this.
This Holy Week and Easter, I invite you to join our early Christian siblings, our present-day persecuted siblings, and Christians around the globe in observing the holiest Holy Week and Easter at home. We will provide you with a lovely Home Triduum Liturgy for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil. These services are set around your dinner table or hearth, as you remember the stories that save us. The Home Easter Vigil service even ends with an invitation to have a party, complete with Easter music playlists! We will provide links to these service bulletins and music playlists on Monday.
At Noon on Good Friday, I will offer a Zoom Stations of the Cross service. I invite you all to join and pray at the hour our Lord hung upon the cross for the sake of the world’s salvation. A link to Zoom Stations of the Cross will be provided in our Good Friday Invitation to Prayer email.
Easter Sunday we will worship together through our Virtual Sunday Service. We will sing Easter hymns, pray for ourselves and for the world, and proclaim the saving power of the Resurrected Christ! I invite you to have a bell on hand to ring whenever we say or sing the “A” word. While you eat your Easter meal, play one of the Easter playlists, pop some champagne or sparkling cider, and celebrate the Feast of Victory for our God!
Holy Week and Easter are still the holiest of days for us. At the core of our identity as Christians is Jesus— God with us— who lived, and died, and rose again. The Risen Christ comes among us even now, especially in our isolation at home. I invite you to experience Holy Week and Easter anew, from the safety of your home, gathered in Spirit with Christians praying at home around the world.
Proclaim the victory of Christ’s death and resurrection, for the sake of your salvation, and for the sake of our broken and suffering world.
In Resurrection hope,
Rev. Aimée
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
We want you to know that All Saints is navigating this challenging time very well, all things considered. We have systems in place to safely carry out bill paying, payroll, and other essential functions. The Vestry is involved in reaching out across the parish to see that we are all connected and well cared for, and we will be having our regular monthly meeting via a Zoom teleconference in a few days. The Facilities Committee remains in charge of the Sanctuary Preservation and Readiness Project (SPRP), with meetings by phone. Our financial reserves continue to be managed by West Coast Financial in an agreed to and recently reviewed mix of stocks and bonds, and the SPRP funds are all invested in money market accounts.
We are now meeting with Rev. Aimée once a week by phone, so that we three can support each other and also quickly deal with any issues that arise. Aimée has done a terrific job of providing worship and spiritual resources for us, including virtual worship each Sunday, several opportunities for online connection and prayer each week, and a host of other resources you can find on our website. Rev. Vicki is coordinating the match-up of folks that need some help with folks able to help, and Fr. Paul (along with Aimée and Vicki) continues to look after our pastoral needs. Our dedicated lay staff is working away as usual, mostly remotely.
There really is not much else for us to do, other than stay safe and centered, be kind to each other, and await the end of this trying time.
One thing that is important relates to those who support All Saints financially through weekly offerings (envelopes or other). Please do keep those offerings flowing. You can send us checks by mail, or you can make donations by credit card on the website (lower right-hand corner of the main page, “Donate Now” button). Even better, you can contact our staff accountant Cynthia Breen, to arrange a regular, automatic payment; this can be an automated debit to your bank account (ACH) or a regular credit card payment. She is working remotely, so please initiate contact by email and then set up a time to talk as needed.
Blessings,
George Ittner
Tom Mack
Rev. Vicki Mouradian
Bell Tower Reflection for 3/20/20
by Rev. Vicki
This morning, as usual, I awoke in the dark. As a morning person, I love to greet the day and experience the beauty of gradual daylight. As I took the dogs for a walk, I noticed a small golden light shining through tree branches, and I realized it was a crescent moon hanging low in the sky. It stirred in me a sense of well being and gratitude for the beauty of creation. It engaged me in a moment of Celtic spirituality, a type of Christian devotion. I’ve always likened this spirituality to time spent under a waterfall washing away that which is heavy on my heart and refreshing it with joy.
The natural world was the only world the ancient Celts knew. They lived with and prayed to and worshiped a God who surrounded them as truly as the fresh air of their green world did. Their intense and natural devotion suggests that the closer we are to nature, the more apt we are to pray and the more fervent our prayers will become. It seems that God so filled the pre-Christian Celtic spirit with the love of creation that when they met Christ, that love naturally spilled over into their Christian worship. Everywhere they looked, they saw the creative love and almighty nature of the holy Trinity. They believed that their prayers would endure forever. They would live in the air and they would move others like the breeze of Pentecost.
During this time of Coronavirus, a time of uncertainty when we are asked to go against the grain of our normal daily life, let us seek refreshing ways to draw closer to our Triune God so we can embrace a new normal. Let us find comfort in the small things, see beauty in what we once thought dull, realize our blessings to dispel our fears, and give compassion to our neighbor through prayer and other means. Let us be aware that the knowledge we gain during this time of trial may be a source of blessing in the future.
In the beginning, O God,
your Spirit swept over the chaotic deep like a wild wind
and creation was born.
In the turbulence of my own life
and the unsettled waters of the world today
let there be new birthings of your Spirit.
In the currents of my own heart
and the upheavals of the world today
let there be new birthings of your mighty Spirit.
–J. Philip Newell
Eventide Reflection – March 20, 2019
Good eventide.
Today’s reading is from Jeremiah 18:1-
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
Then the word of the LORD came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings. “
We have probably all heard the metaphor of being clay, sculpted and perfected and changed by God. When my daughter was a student at Westmont college, they had the mission called Potter’s Clay, where they partner with Ensenada…changing both the lives of the people they serve, as well as the students.
I have been thinking lately about the changes we still need to make in regards to the gender and power gaps, that the Me Too movement is shedding some light on today. From Harvey Weinstein to Les Moonves to the Catholic church to campus sexual assault, to politicians, accounts of sexual misconduct have made violence against primarily women and children one of the most pressing moral issues confronting us. Unfortunately, these are not just random cases in farflung media, but in our own community as well, including complicit bystanders who do not speak up. One privilege of patriarchy is that it is invisible to those who are privileged by it—invisible benefits, a priceless thing. It would never occur to most men to worry about walking down the street, for fear of comments that strangers might make about their bodies. A man on the street never, ever has to worry about being assaulted if he takes off his shirt. And the racial counterpart is, a white person doesn’t have to worry about police when they have done nothing wrong. The main problem is an abuse of power that leads someone to use another for human being for self gratification and silence them. In patriarchy, being female is considered deficient, which is why infanticide of girl babies continues in the 21st century on this planet. A considerable amount of men choose to use their power to abuse and exploit women. Lurking in this patriarchal framework, Misogyny goes even further, where women are hated, silenced and punished.
Do you think sexual harassment is a women’s issue? Funny how those who dominate the public discourse (men) have managed to erase themselves from this story. A real man is not the one with the most notches on his belt; but rather, the one who treats women as equals, who stands up for them with their dignity and humanity are under assault or disrespect. Men are often judged and portrayed in our media as a marketed machismo of ballfields, bedrooms and billfolds (athletic prowess, sexual conquest and financial success). It is our time to teach our boys as well as girls to defend anyone on the receiving end of power’s unholy play, so the next generation of boys/men will be proud of their ability to form honest and respectful relationships, and defend the bodily integrity of women, men, girls, and those of gender differences as well. We could just call them all children of God. Even in Christian tradition, we don’t have a lot of tales about the power of women; and many religions still put women as just support for the male positions of ministry. Compare that to the old testament, wherein Exodus and Numbers, we see that Moses’s sister and wife have more influence on Moses then Aasron does; they were respected consultants, not vocational appendages.
Much of this problem comes to an imbalance of power. The wife who knows her husband is abusing their daughters, but has no financial or emotional power to leave…the supervisor who cannot leave her job, even though her boss threatens her loss of position if she reports sexual blackmail. The patriarchy of our society is the main problem we need to address. Even conservative Christians who preach that the man runs the home and controls the wife as an unequal…seemingly forgetting both men and women were created in God’s own image.
Within our Christian tradition, the moral value of “no sex until marriage” is even a sexual ethic that I believe needs to be questioned; first of all because it has been proven to be ineffective; and primarily, it focuses on one sexual behavior, with no guidance on relationship or the power to make your own decisions; someone else’s rule is not empowering. Yes we ascribe to the values of the 10 commandments; but girls need to have the power to make their own rules about their bodies.
So what can we do? We can enable the conversations of those whose minds have not been fully shaped and imprisoned by 20th century notions of gender differences. We can demand respect for all. Going further, we need to honor diverse ways of being; and though we don’t need to amend every psalm to include all 31 genders recognized by the city of New York, we do need to honor diverse ways of gender identification and live the words of Marty Haugen’s hymn “All are welcome.” The inclusivity and elasticity of the “All” welcomes a transgender person, (one of the most bullied societal sectors today), an immigrant, a homeless person, someone transitioning gender and truly All. I think AS does a fabulous job of walking the talk of welcoming all; sadly, not all churches do this. We need to speak up as Christians, as this is not only a legal issue, it is a moral issue; it is not only a women’s issue, it is a human issue, and affects us all. And if the use of the voice in praise of God is one of the continuities that bind us all, then the practice of worship might actually be inclusive beyond gender, and beyond the imbalance of power many women live with. I believe this would form and sculpt us more into the clay God would be proud of…vessels of love… which would be good news indeed.
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