August “Spirit” is Up!

The August issue of the Spirit of St. Nicholas is online! Many thanks to our excellent editor, Drucye Price! Click here to see it!

In this issue

Worship News P. 1 , 3 & 4

Rector’s Message P. 2

Schedules P. 5

Calendar P. 6

Pine Mt. Valley Film P. 7

Church Picnic P. 8

Opportunities P. 8

Episcopal 101 Class P. 8

Christian Education P. 10

Meet our Acolytes P.10

Youth Group News P.11

Hospitality News P. 12

Parish Life Events P.14

Lobsterfest Ticket Info P. 15

Birthdays , Anniversaries

And Thank Yous P.16

Music Workshop P. 15

Outreach Ministries P.18

Web Site Information P. 19

The deadline for the September issue is August 15!

Your Week at St. Nick, 2 – 8 August

Sunday, August 2
10:30am Holy Eucharist
Blessing of the Backpacks
11:45am Youth Group Lunch/Trip to Infantry Museum (all welcome)
11:45am Sunday School Teachers’ Lunch/Meeting

Ushers
Sharon Cheatham
Graham Horne
Greeter
Tom Cheatham
LEM & 2nd Chalice
Halmrast/Nordin
Altar Guild
Dixon/Tomlin
Flower Guild
Sharon

Acolytes
Table Sean
Crucifer Sean
Gospel Abbey A.
Offer. Abbey A.
Torch not used

Wednesday, August 5
6:30pm
Holy Eucharist

Check Out Our Mission Projects

If you haven’t visited this part of the website in a while, it’s good to see what projects St. Nicholas is involved in. In the above menu bar, go to What We Do, Mission Work. There is a page for FOCUS and another page for all our other projects. We have recently added Episcopal Relief & Development as an organization we support. If you are interested in getting involved with any of these organizations, please contact Graham Horne at graham.horne@gmail.com.

Your Week at St. Nick, July 26 – 1 August

Sunday, July 26

10:30am Holy Eucharist

11:45am

LEM and Reader Training Session with Father Jeff

Ushers

Sue Halmrast

BoBo Morgan

Greeter

Dave Halmrast

LEM & 2^nd Chalice

Dixon/Moody

Altar Guild

Hinnant/Nordin

Flower Guild

Gina

Lemonade

Diane

Acolytes

Table Robin

Crucifer Cody

Gospel Sam

Offer. Sam

Torch Robin/Sam

Wednesday, July 29

6:30pm

Holy Eucharist

Planting A Seed

Below is an article from the Episcopal News Service. I thought considering our area and the number of farmers we have, perhaps this story would “plant a seed” (haha) to inspire anyone to discern if this is part of God’s mission in Harris County. There is already a successful CSA in Harris County through Jenny Jack Sun Farm in Pine Mountain of which many of us belong. Perhaps there are others in Harris County that would benefit from such a co-op, yet can’t afford to join. Something to think about…

Farmers put churches on the map

By Lynette Wilson, July 20, 2009

[Episcopal News Service] Drew and Joan Norman started growing vegetables on their farm in White Hall, Maryland, in 1985 and eventually One Straw Farm became the state’s largest organic vegetable farm, selling wholesale to up-market grocers including Whole Foods and Dean & Deluca.

“But it wasn’t really profitable,” Joan Norman said, in a telephone interview.

Then 10 years ago the Normans got involved in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which eventually led to collaborations with more 40 drop/pick-up location partners, including ten churches and a synagogue. One Straw Farm and Episcopal Church of the Messiah in northeast Baltimore are partnering for the fifth year.

“It’s like a triangle; the smallest structure that can support itself,” Norman said. “I need the church as much as I need people to buy shares, and the church needs me to get people across the threshold.”

It works like this: participants buy shares, providing the farmer with money up front — money that farmers traditionally borrowed from banks — in the spring. Then, beginning in late May, shareholders pick up eight items a week for 24 weeks, including fruits and vegetables, from drop/pick-up locations. A share in One Straw Farm costs $540 annually; the farm has about 2,000 shareholders, Norman said.

For every ten shares purchased by CSA members using a faith-based drop, Norman — herself an Episcopalian and member of St. James in Monkton — tithes one share, leaving it up to the church to decide how to use it – to donate to a food pantry, a family, a senior center, a soup kitchen.

Messiah holds the pick-up site on Monday evenings under a maple tree.

“We’d lost some members and were looking at new ways to do outreach … and in our conversations, food kept coming up,” said Sarah Miranda, coordinator for Messiah’s pick-up site, adding that there used to be a farmers’ market serving the area but that it closed in 2000. “The CSA has deepened our relationships in the community. People slow down to get to know each other, drink ice water and chat. It’s a wonderful little meeting place for a few hours every week.”

Alta Haywood, a Unitarian Universalist, drives 25 minutes one way every week to Messiah to pick up the share that she and her husband divide with another couple (it’s not uncommon for people to split shares).

“It’s good to encounter folks of other religions and see that we all share the same values,” said Haywood in a telephone interview, when asked how being a member of a CSA has helped her connect with the community.

For churches, it’s easy. “You don’t even need to change the acronym, ‘Congregational Supported Agriculture,’” said Michael Schut, associate program officer for economic and environmental affairs in the Episcopal Church’s Advocacy Center, adding that CSA participation “connotes a certain worldview,”

Danny Mydlack’s affiliation with One Straw Farm led him to Messiah and to co-found Arts and Ideas Sudbury School, an alternative school that rents space from the church.

“We found the church because of the CSA. We had been members of the One Straw Farm CSA, affiliated with a different pick-up spot. When we found that there was another pick-up spot closer to us, it put a spotlight on the church,” Mydlack said. “We [Mydlack and his wife] thought that if they are affiliated with a CSA they are bold, engaged in service, approachable; One Straw Farm put the church on the map with us, and we approached them about a different venture.”

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Cleveland is for the first time this year partnering with the neighboring YWCA and City Fresh, a nonprofit program of the New Agrarian Center (NAC) that seeks to build a more just and sustainable local food system in northeast Ohio, to operate Midtown FreshStop, with more than 50 members, half coming from outside Trinity’s congregation, said Ben Borns, one of the project’s coordinators.

“City Fresh offers half price to anyone on a limited income, discounts paid through grants and subsidized by the full-price payers. This is one of the areas we would like to grow,” Borns said. “That’s really the idea … it’s a great way to reach out the neighborhood; there are not a lot of options other than fast food.”

The benefits of participating in a CSA go beyond the economic benefits of supporting local agriculture, eating healthy foods at the time of harvest and building community; participating in a CSA potentially keeps nearby agricultural land out of development and reduces urban sprawl, Schut said.

Eating for the Future, a Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future program, which also includes the Baltimore Food and Faith initiative, studies and supports the connection between faith and food. In some instances it provides seed money for religious institutions looking to educate themselves about the connection and to get started, said Anne Palmer, Eating for the Future’s program director.

“A lot of this is the caring-for-creation angle: if you are a person of faith, how do you live and act on that?” Palmer asked. “That decision is made in the food you serve, what you give to a food pantry. We’re making people think about those things. This is the act; what are we saying with the act? Do you know who grew this food? Were they paid a fair wage? [Fair wage] can be a really big issue for some congregations. When people buy meat is it from the industrial complex? Can you make different choices?”

And ultimately, by supporting local farmers, buyers share in the risk.

“By participating in a CSA you share in the risk of agriculture and it can’t be taken for granted … it connects you to the farmer, to the land, to God. It creates a healthy relationship,” Schut said. “[Otherwise] we are disconnected from our food system; there’s an absence of relationship.”

Norman, of One Straw Farm, acknowledges that risk.

“Shareholders share the risk of the season, but after 26 years of farming [and 10 years of CSA], I’m not concerned about fulfilling my part,” she said.

– Lynette Wilson is staff writer, Episcopal Life Media.

Midnight Musings: Sounds

Our senses and our memories are inexorably linked.  Think about how when you taste a certain food, you tend to compare to something you have had before.  You see a certain sun-set and it reminds you of another.  My favorite is sound.  I can hear an old song and remember back to when and where I first heard it.  I heard a baby wailing recently and had to smile.  Smiling both because I remember my own children wailing, but also with the realization that the age of children wailing in my home is behind me!

When my daughter was small, I created a special game just for her.  We would curl up together in the hammock outside and play our game, “ I hear”.  The rules were pretty simple.  You had to close your eyes and report what you heard.  There was always, “I hear a bird, I hear an airplane, I hear a car, I hear you breathing” and on and on.  The one sound that I always saved for my daughter was the sound of the hammock swinging.  Our hammock was hung between two large pine trees, supported by galvanized link chain.  Those of you who have ever been on an old porch swing know the sound I’m talking about.  I let my daughter claim this sound because of the way she described it, “I hear the hammock singing!”.  You lose in translation to try and write sounds, but it was something like, ennnnnnnh, enh, ennnnnnnh, enh, ennnnnnnh, enh.

My daughter was still pretty young when I divorced her mother, so I missed out on many, many sounds as she grew up.  Consequently, I also missed out on large parts of her life.  I was still around for a lot of the high light sounds, plenty of graduations, birthday parties, etc.  I certainly remember one particularly memorable church service in Hamilton, GA.  I remember the music that announces the bride.  I certainly remember the sound of my daughter pronouncing, “I do”.

I recently was driving down the interstate listening to classical music.  They were playing Tchaikovsky’s beautiful piece out of the nutcracker suite, the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.  This transported me back in time about 25 years.  I can place myself into the Callaway Auditorium, watching my own daughter, my own dancing Diva, at her dance recital.  She was so excited, dressed up in her tutu, hair coifed, made up dimples visible on her cheeks.  While the other little girls were dancing to the Sugar Plum Fairy, my daughter, Rachael was dancing to the Tone Deaf Pear; out of step, out of rhythm, enthusiastically doing her own thing.  There is a smile on my face right now, just thinking of that moment.

A few years ago, my daughter called and asked if I could help her out for a few days.  Her husband had to be out of town and Rachael wanted to know if I could help her with her brand new baby, my Granddaughter, Lael.  It doesn’t take much of an excuse to get me around any of my grandbabies.  Lael is an old Hebrew name that means Child of God.  Little Lael was and is all of that.  When I got there, Rachael was explaining that we were going to have to bundle up the baby to drive to a neighboring town where Rachael had a doctor’s appointment.  As she further explained, since she didn’t have anyone to watch Lael, we would all have to go.  I was silent for a few minutes and finally said, “Duh – I think that Lael and I will make it just fine; you go to your appointment, and here is twenty dollars.  Sit down somewhere and have a nice lunch.”  After hearing the list of things I should do in her absence, Rachael pointed out that if Lael got fussy or fidgety, all I had to do was put her in wind up swing.  Apparently, this was guaranteed to put her to sleep.  Well Lael did get fussy.  Changing the diapers was needed, but it didn’t settle her down.  I wound up the swing, put Lael in the little bed, gave the swing a gentle push and away it went.  There was motion, but also a little noise.  I closed my eyes; I’d heard the noise before.  It was ennnnnnnh, enh, ennnnnnnh, enh, ennnnnnnh, enh.  It worked like a charm

In an open letter right now to Rachael, I apologize for the too frequent absence of a sound from me.  A simple sound generated from saying three short words, “I Love You”.

Bill Hogg is  a member of St. Nicholas, and resident writer of poems, prayers, and late-night musings. You can contact him at bhogg@contractoffice.com.

Youth Workers Retreat

This may be short notice, but the Diocese of Atlanta is sponsoring a Youth Workers Retreat at Camp Mikell July 31-August 1. I am thinking about going myself, and would love some company on the way up. Here’s a link to the registration form if you’re interested. The keynote speaker is great…I’ve seen her at the conferences I’ve attended at Princeton.  Please let me know if you’d like to go. St. Nicholas will pay for your tuition if you need assistance. This is for teachers, youth group leaders, parents, or anyone interested in helping us grow our youth program at St. Nicholas.

Your Week at St. Nick, July 19 – 25

Sunday, July 19

10:30am Holy Eucharist

11:45am Debbie Betsill, Episcopal Relief & Development

5:00pm Youth Group–Popcorn Theology

Ushers

Ann Simpson

Lynn Hall

Greeter

Nick Simpson

LEM & 2^nd Chalice

Brent/Martin

Altar Guild

Bradley/Correnti

Flower Guild

Bert

Lemonade

Heather

Acolytes

Table Cody

Crucifer Ivy

Gospel Cody

Offer. M&M

Torch M&M/Austin

Monday, July 20

6:30pm Summer Flicks at St. Nick’s

Signs--starring Mel Gibson

Wednesday, July 22

6:30pm

Holy Eucharist

Reader & LEM Training

From Sue Halmrast, Worship liaison for the Vestry:

In the past, LEMs have served as the sole Readers during the worship service at St. Nicholas. As we offer more opportunities to involve the congregation in worship, a new ministry for Readers has evolved. All those interested in becoming Readers would need to attend a special combined training session with the LEMs and then be scheduled to read the lesson, epistle, psalm or Prayers of the People, as needed. They will give a clear, articulate voice to God’s word and the people’s prayers during worship. All ages, including youth, are invited to attend this training and become Readers.

All current LEMs and those wishing to know more about this ministry, will also meet for a training and to discuss the impact moving to two services will have as well as scheduling issues. LEMs (Lay Eucharistic Ministers) are lay persons who have completed specialized training and are then licensed by the bishop to administer the consecrated elements of the Eucharist. All confirmed members are eligible, regardless of age.

Because all LEMs are also Readers, we will have a combined training on Sunday, July 26 in the Sanctuary immediately following the service. The first part of the session will involve Readers and LEMs. The Readers may leave when this training is complete, and the LEMs will remain for brief additional training and discussion. We will do our best to see that you are on your way as soon as possible. Please make every effort to attend.

Youth Group: Popcorn Theology

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