15th Annual Kirkin’ O’ the Tartan Worship Service Sunday, October 21, 11:00 a.m. This service led by Pipers, Drummers and a Procession of Tartans is… Read More »15th Annual Kirkin’ O’ the Tartan Worship Service
World Communion Sunday, Oct. 7, tomorrow, 8:30 and 11:00 am: Latin Music with CANTA Rhythm and Brass, and the beginning of Rev. Ritsch’s sermon series… Read More »World Communion Sunday, Oct. 7
Throughout the history of humankind symbols have been employed to lend clarity to abstract concepts. A symbol reaches beyond language and is aRead More »Paraments for the Portable Pulpit-Christian Symbolism
On a recent Tuesday, a group of 15 students, ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s, were gathered around a table in St. Stephen’s Eastminster Room. They were comparing the Book of Job in the Bible to Archibald Macleish’s brilliant poem/play JB. How did Macleish’s post World War II rewrite of the biblical book that asks why God allows suffering give us insight into Job? How did they differ? The discussion was lively and insightful. At the table were a varied group–a faithful older lady who is a dedicated volunteer, a PCUSA missionary, a young man who teaches English at a high school, a middle-aged administrator on his lunch break, an older couple, one of whom is in a wheelchair, and a formerly homeless woman originally from the Bahamas. The energy is palpable.Read More »Tuesday Bible Study
“Hildegard’s Song of Creation” was written by Richard Proulx and was commissioned by the St. Stephen congregation and friends of Mark Scott in tribute to him on April 1, 2000, the date of his 25th anniversary as Minister of Music and Organist. Proulx, composer, organist and choir trainer from Chicago, put the magnificent text from the writings of Hildegard von Bingen into a daring and expressive piece of music.Read More »Hildegard von Bingen, The Sybil of the Rhine
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the
depth and breadth and height my soul can reach
It does not seem too great a stretch to appropriate Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s immortal lines when writing about the Scottish Hebridean Island of Iona. Her expression of love for another person reaches multi-layered dimensions existing beyond description. Some would call this a spiritual state encompassing certain places set apart as well as people set apart. Iona is such a place.Read More »Embracing the Tempest
How can I take it all in–a surfeit of nourishment for anyone, and served in all of nature’s rugged beauty sating the hunger of a famished soul. The splendor of the Scottish Highlands overwhelms at first. They have been witness to a long, often brutal history. How could such magnificence attend this violent history? They stand sentinel and passive witness devoid of any emotion yet at the heart of engendering unbridled emotion as we, the tiniest fleck on an eternal time line fulfill our own life journey.Read More »A Way Away
Presentation: Streams and Valleys Thursday, September 27, 11:30 a.m. Join us for lunch and a very interesting program presented by Adelaide Leavens.The lunch will be… Read More »Saints Alive Program and Luncheon
Starts: Sunday, August 26th 2012 at 9:30 am Ends: Sunday, August 26th 2012 at 12:00 am Come one, Come all to Parish Hall! Sunday School… Read More »Sunday School Kick-Off
A Canterbury Tale
By the end of my sophomore year at Hampden-Sydney College, Inter-Varsity, our official campus fellowship group, was becoming more exclusionary and judgmental. There were standards that brooked no room for questions or disagreement. I was increasingly frustrated for my friends in IV who had questions, or were troubled in their souls, or who didn’t toe the fundamentalist line, or who weren’t quite pretty enough, cool enough, or secure enough in their faith to fit the IV model. Don’t get me wrong, there were many good, faithful people in IV–but the tenor of the group had become increasingly “Us against Them”–us against the “liberal religion professors,” us against the fratty boys, us against the Creeping Religion of Secular Humanism. Us against the world.Read More »A Personal Journey, 8: God’s Kingdom of Forgiveness
