Spirit of the Eagle – May 2014

Rector’s Reflections
Activities and events seem to have been almost non-stop since before Christmas and in lieu of that we are going to make conscious effort to slow down. I am sensing a level of fatigue, especially among those who are the most active in our Parish and it is this that I want to address. Being constantly busy can often obstruct our walk with God and it is at those times we need to follow the advice given in Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God”. We need time to be at peace and quiet reflection to take time that is absent of distractions to explore our relationship with the Lord. So beginning with May we will take steps to limit activities and events to only the most essential.

For instance the A.C.W., which performed spectacularly during Lent and beyond, is beginning its summer hiatus this month instead of waiting for June so there will not be a meeting or the Coffee Hour that they sponsor on the second Sunday of the month. Furthermore, there will not be an organized presence for St. John’s in the Memorial Day parade this year, however I have been given to understand that several local churches are banding together to ride on a bus and any who so desire can represent St. John’s in that way. In the days to come I will be exploring, with the Vestry, other events that can safely be put aside, without damaging the life of the Church so that this summer can be a time of rest and recuperation and in order that we can, ‘be still and know that He is God.’ God Bless. +Fr. Bryan Newman+

Wednesday Night Service: Holy Communion
Even with the reduction in extra-curricular events, our opportunities for worship will not decrease, at least not until our normal late summer hiatus for the Wednesday night service. Please take the opportunity to join us to receive Our Lord’s Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist and to reflect on the lives of the Saints. Please consider joining us for this mid-week boost to receive ‘spiritual food for your spiritual journey’ every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Choir Practice and Services
We have a small dedicated group that works diligently to give praise to God in song, won’t you consider singing with them? Practice is every Wednesday at 7 pm and most Sundays immediately following the Mass. As always we need more choir members and if you would like to help us make a joyful noise unto the Lord we would love to have you join the Choir!

Vestry Meeting
With Lent and Easter Day now behind us, the Vestry Meetings will return to their normal time of Wednesday evenings. The date for the Vestry Meeting for May is set for Wednesday, May 21st, at about 7 PM. If you are a member of the Vestry please make plans to be present but any parish member is welcome. Please let a Vestry member or Fr. Newman know if you plan to attend so that your item of interest can be added to the Agenda.

Rogation Day Blessing of the Garden
Rogation Days are the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, before the Ascension which is always on a Thursday, but is often transferred to the following Sunday. The English word ‘Rogation’ comes from the Latin word ‘Rogare’ which means, ‘to ask’. In the Middle Ages the people, led by their clergy, would process from the Church to their fields and ask for God’s blessings on their crops, which were essential to their survival. Of course, our survival does not depend on our Church Garden, but it is still important to us for its beauty and fragrance. Join us, on May 28th, Rogation Wednesday, after Mass, as we process through our Garden, asking for God’s blessing upon it. Come and join us and get to know your Church Garden and see it in a new light!

The Flight of the Eagle
It was Fr. Stork, (of fond memory to many in this Parish) who shared a record of his activities with the Parish on a regular basis. It is in his honor and inspiration that we include the ‘Flight of the Eagle’ which is a record of my activities as your pastor over the month just past. Below are the visits and other events, I made in the month of April. I prayed with those I visited and gave them Holy Communion and Anointed them when needed. +God Bless, Fr. Bryan Newman+

4/6 visited Ethel Fahlbush @ Villa Springs
4/13 visited Dom Benedict @ Rosedale Green
4/16 visited Fr. Al Hougham @ his home
4/18 visited Helen Foster @ St. E’s Edgewood
4/18 visited Kathy Hougham @ Health South
4/18 visited Toy Hall @ Health South
4/18 visited Don Prigge @ Elmcroft

Fr. Newman’s sermon at the funeral for Ethel Fahlbush 4-22-14
My thanks to Ethel’s relatives who spoke and shared their memories of her. It is further evidence of why Ethel was always so proud of her family. In the last several years I had gotten to know Ethel Fahlbush fairly well, at least as well as you can in once a month visits lasting about an hour. In my time with her I came to know that she had been a member of this Church for many years and at least one of her sons had been an altar boy here.

For me, Ethel Fahlbush always stood out for her remarkable disposition, she was always happy, at least in my visits with her. Whenever I would see her she was smiling, when she would speak she was always positive. What I remember most is how easily she laughed and it was a very distinctive laugh, almost a giggle. One of those infectious kind of laughs that makes you want to laugh when you hear it. Among my visits to our shut-ins (I hope that description doesn’t sound insensitive. What I am referring to is our elderly members who can no longer physically manage to attend church services) Ethel was my favorite. In my observations she did not let her infirmity, the fact that she couldn’t walk any more, keep her down.

She told me once that her thigh bone broke, some years back, when she was making her bed and unfortunately her leg would never be strong enough to support her again and so she was confined to a wheel chair. Even in her confinement she did not let it restrain her curiosity about the outside world. When I would visit her on Sundays I would usually find her sitting in her chair with the Sunday paper strewn about her bed, with one or more sections in her hands as she read. At those times she always wanted to know how the people she knew at Church were getting on and asked me to send them her best. With some shut-ins I can sense that sharing with them the fact that a person they knew at church had passed away would be disturbing to them. But I never saw that in Ethel, she knew that all of us come to the end of our days and there is no sense in denying it. Ethel was one of the most resilient people I have met in my time here and we can all profit from her example.

However the family has done a much better job than I can in reflecting on Ethel’s life and personality. The role of a priest at a service like this is to, of course, administer the sacraments, but also to provide perspective on what has happened and what will happen as Ethel makes her way to God, for Ethel has preceded us on a journey that we all must make someday.

Many, if not most of us, dread even the thought of dying, let alone planning for it but we should be resigned to the fact that in time it will happen to all of us. Almost all of us will avoid discussing it or thinking about it, and so when the prospect of it confronts us, we are terrified of losing a loved one or of coming to terms with our own end. That is understandable since death appears to be an end to all that we know and separation from those we love. Modern man tends to looks on death as the end of everything, as oblivion. However, that should not be so for Christians, for it is central to our beliefs that death is not the end of everything. It is instead a new beginning, to an existence where pain and suffering cannot touch us and where we will experience peace and contentment that we could never achieve in this life.

The Bible tells us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” We know from what Jesus told us that there is more than the grave waiting for us after we die. He told His followers, “I go to prepare a place for you; that where I am, there you may be also.” So Jesus is telling His disciples, that the life they hope for after death on this earth is elsewhere, in another place, where He has made a home for us.

And we know from what He told us that there is only one way to get there, to that place Jesus has prepared. Jesus told us that He is the Way and believing in Him is how we find Heaven. That is how we get there. Our belief, that Jesus is the Son of God, is the path to the eternal life. All that we need to do is have faith in Him and that He is who He said He was. And I know Ethel had faith. Whenever I took her communion she would recite the prayers for communion completely from memory which was pretty impressive for someone over 90 years old.

So while Ethel’s time with us has come to a close her existence has not. Today we can all take comfort in the knowledge that Ethel has NOT been lost to us forever. Instead she has begun a journey to a place where illness and pain will NOT afflict her, and I have no doubt that she has left all her infirmity behind and, no longer suffering any physical limitations.

Finally I’d like to share with you something that happened on the Sunday before Ethel passed away. I had left the Church after the conclusion of Sunday services and was headed to see another one of our shut-ins, Helen Foster at the Baptist Towers. Now I had seen Ethel more recently than my last visit to Helen so it was Helen’s turn. Well I absent mindedly took a wrong turn that put me in Ethel’s direction more so than Helen’s. I decided to exit 471 south and head back north to go see Helen. Well the exit I got off on didn’t have a ramp to 471 north, at least not where I could find it so I had to get back on 471 south and take 275 to 75 to head north and see Helen. After getting on to 75 north I soon found that it was at a dead stop in a traffic jam. It was at that point I decided that it was the day to see Ethel and not Helen. So I was able to spend time with Ethel and give her communion not long before she died. The following Saturday a chill went through me when I received a text message telling me that Ethel had passed away. To me getting to see her before she passed away was providential, something was steering me towards Ethel because her hour was near. So we need not fear for Ethel, she is in good hands.

Let us pray.
O Lord, may we always be worthy of thy grace and we pray, that as your infinite mercy has opened the door to Heaven for those of who have faith in you, we live in hope that we will be counted among them. We ask this in Jesus holy name. Amen.

Spiritual Tidbits for May from Father Tim
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, B.C.D. 312-389 AD, Feast Day May 9th. Gregory, his friend St. Basil the Great, and Basil’s brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, are jointly known as the Cappadocian Fathers (Cappadocia is a region in what is now Central Turkey).

Gregory lived in a turbulent time. In 312, Constantine, having won a battle that made him Emperor of the West, issued a decree that made it no longer a crime to be a Christian. In 325 he summoned a council of Bishops at Nicea, across the straits from Byzantium (Constantinople), to settle the dispute between those (led by St. Athanasius) who taught that the Logos (the “Word” of John 1:1, who “was made flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth) was completely God, in the same sense in which the Father is God, and those (led by Arius) who taught that the Logos is a being created by God the Father. The bishops assembled at Nicea declared that the view of Athanasius was that which they had received from their predecessors as the true Faith handed down from the Apostles.

The Arians did not accept defeat quietly. They created a sufficient disturbance so that Constantine, at first inclined to support the decision of the Council, decided that peace could best be obtained by adopting a Creed which simply evaded the issue. After his death in 336, he was succeeded by various relatives, some of whom sided with the Athanasians and some with the Arians, and one of whom (Julian the Apostate, Emperor 361-363) attempted to restore paganism as the religion of the Empire. The situation was complicated by the fact that missionaries to the Goths (east Germanic people) were first sent out in large numbers during the reign of an Arian Emperor, with the result that the Goths were converted to Arian Christianity. Since the professional Army was composed chiefly of Goth mercenaries, and the Army held the balance of power, this was a real problem.

Meanwhile, Basil had become Archbishop of (Cappadocian) Caesarea. Faced with a rival Arian bishop at Tyana, he undertook to consolidate his position by maneuvering Gregory into the position of Bishop of Sasima, an unhealthy settlement on the border between the two jurisdictions. Gregory called Sasima “a detestable little place without water or grass or any mark of civilization.” He felt “like a bone flung to dogs.” He refused to reside at Sasima. Basil accused him of shirking his duty. He accused Basil of making him a pawn in ecclesiastical politics. Their friendship suffered a severe breach, which took some time to heal. Gregory suffered a breakdown and retired to recuperate.

In 379, after the death of the Arian Emperor Valens, Gregory was asked to go to Constantinople to preach there. For thirty years, the city had been controlled by Arians or pagans, and the orthodox did not even have a church there. Gregory went. He converted his own house there into a church and held services in it. There he preached the Five Theological Orations for which he is best known, a series of five sermons on the Trinity and in defense of the deity of Christ. People flocked to hear him preach, and the city was largely won over to the Athanasian (Trinitarian) position by his powers of persuasion. The following year, he was consecrated bishop of Constantinople. He presided at the Council of Constantinple in 381, which confirmed the Athanasian position of the earlier Council of Nicea in 325. Having accomplished what he believed to be his mission at Constantinople, and heartily sick of ecclesiastical politics, Gregory resigned and retired to his home town of Nazianzus, where he died in 389.

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April showers bring May flowers so they say! Thus far it has been a beautiful spring and the flowers abound. All the beauty we see in creation is simply a foretaste of the immense beauty in which we will be immersed, after the Kingdom of Heaven and creation have combined to initiate the eternal glory of the Kingdom of God. This month we celebrate Ascension Day on the 29th. Let’s be diligent this spring, like St. Gregory above, and stay determined to Truth when we are faced with the heretical teachings the world gladly provides. I pray that God continues to shower your spring with beauty. ~Father Tim

Ascension Day, 29th of May
The Lord does not ascend to the Father for those who explore divine truth with their faculties as they are in a fallen state; but He does ascend to the Father for those who seek out the truth in the Spirit by means of the higher forms of contemplation. The Logos came down out of love for us. Let us not keep Him down permanently, but let us go up with Him to the Father, leaving the earth and earthly things behind, lest He say to us what He said to the Jews because of their stubbornness: “I go where you cannot come” (John 8: 21). For without the Logos it is impossible to approach the Father of the Logos. ~ St. Maximos the Confessor, Second Century Theology, 47.

May Spirituality Class
What exactly does it mean when we say Jesus “sitteth on the right hand of the Father”? Please join me after Mass on the 25th of May to discuss what really happens at Ascension Day. We’ll touch on the natures of Jesus Christ, His relationship with the Father, and touch on the meaning of the Trinity in preparation for our class in June, when we will delve into the Holy Spirit. Be sure to attend, bring questions, and bring a family member! ~ Father Tim

•••

For certainly, if we could understand it, that which is infinite (as God is) must needs be some such kind of thing: it must go whither it was never sent, and signify what was not first intended, and it must warm with its light, and shine with its heat, and refresh when it strikes, and heal when it wounds, and ascertain where it makes afraid, and intend all when it warns one, and mean a great deal in a small word. ~ Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living, Holy Dying

•••

BEYOND THE GARDEN
By Evelyn Underhill, Theophanies

I HAVE a garden, fenced round with thickets that no foot may pass;
All ordered joys therein are found of flower and fruit and daisied grass
For touch, taste, scent, and sight. Within the brake
The small tame birds a homely music make.

Rich are my borders, yet beyond I know a fiercer life must be :
I have a deep and secret pond. But far away I scent the sea.
And through the wordless whispers of the wood
Guess the grave voices of the mighty flood.

A gentle mist of measured rain here comes the summer thirst to slake;
But far above the viewless plain I see the noble tempest break
In love torrential, eager to invade
Each striving growing root, each faint upstarting blade.

Of moonlit nights, I walk the ledge wherefrom my gateless thickets lean,
And seek to pierce that prudent hedge. To thrust the plaited boughs between.
Vain! yet I suffer, poised above the steep.
The strange and stealthy onslaughts of the deep.

And once, there was a bird that flew far up the foreign clouds among;
The throbbing of its throat I knew, I might not hear its song.
Swiftly it passed across my narrow sky,
The silent minstrel of Reality.

That day was anguish; thence no more my garden can a pleasaunce seem.
It is a cage without a door, that shuts me from a better dream.
My foolish twittering birds enslave an ear
That should another, wilder music hear.

The little scale my senses know one note from out that music is;
In circling rhythms, above, below, all form, all colour, and all bhss.
Besiege my garden ramparts, yet I strain
To catch those radiant melodies — in vain.

My scented borders drug the mind. The summer woods enveil the view.
Come! winter, with your purging wind, when life ebbs low, when leaves are few,
Come! cut the pathway to that outer night
Of fierce and seething joys, beyond my shuttered Sight.

Yes! There is something beyond the beautiful spring, beyond the garden which, according to Saint Paul, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him! Have a glorious May!!! ~ Father Tim

May Birthdays & Anniversaries
Kevin Hess – Birthday – May 2
Abigail Evans – Birthday – May 4
Preston Moore – Birthday – May 6
Marie & Mike Whalen – Anniversary – May 8
Kacy Robbins – Birthday – May 9
Carol & Bob Petrie – Anniversary – May 9
Donna Lipscomb – Birthday – May 10
Steve Marvin – Birthday – May 12
Dani Law – Birthday – May 14
Judie & Rich Boughner – Anniversary – May 15
Myrna Richtor – Birthday – May 16
Mike Murray – Birthday – May 16
Fr. Richard Bryant – Birthday – May 17
Kim & Jim Marshall – Anniversary – May 23
Tina & Eric Smith – Anniversary – May 25
Judie Hiltenbeitel – Birthday – May 26
Frank Brady – Birthday – May 28

Volunteers needed for City Wide Yard Sale
Volunteers are greatly needed for this year’s Dayton City Wide Yard Sale, which will be held on Saturday, May 17 from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. This year’s proceeds will go to the choir to put toward new choir robes, but the choir is in need of a few volunteers to help with pricing on either the Thursday or Friday night beforehand, as well as set up on Saturday at around 7:30 a.m.

With only 2 weeks left until the yard sale, now is the time to begin bringing in items you wish to donate to this great cause. Please place your items in the furnace room and keep in mind that clothing items must either be new with a tag, or very, very gently used. Last year, Mike Lenz was stuck with hauling 2 pickup truck loads of very old, damp clothing items BEFORE the sale even took place, so please limit your shoe and clothing items to “brand new” or “very close to new” condition. Just think how much money we would make if everyone at St. John’s took a few minutes of their time to look through their garages, attics and basements in search of those nice items you have stored that just aren’t being used!

Due to the age and physical limitations of a couple of our choir members, it is very important that we all consider helping out at this event. All it requires is being there to make sales and giving the money to the designated “money person” with the till, followed by cleanup and dropping off leftovers to Goodwill (St. Vincent de Paul in Dayton has closed). If you are interested in helping, please call Brenda Strong at home 859-727-0337, or her cell phone 859-486-4604. Thank you!

ACW Spaghetti Dinner a huge success!
The ACW would like to extend huge and heartfelt thanks to the entire parish family for the coordination, assistance and execution of the spaghetti dinner. We would also like to give Ginny Jackson a wonderful thank you for bringing 31 friends with her to the dinner. Not only do they enjoy the dinner, they enjoy coming to SJC and look forward to being together in our Parish Hall. The dinner was a huge, yummy success. The profit for dinner was $1200, and the raffle netted us an additional $317.

Thanks to all for the donations of spaghetti and sauce, baked goods, and items for the auction as well as the commitment of time and effort. Special thanks to our Master Chef Robert Hooks for coordinating the kitchen and prep of meatballs and all things food. Thanks also to the committee chairs and the youngsters of our parish who did an excellent job coordinating, serving and assisting. Thanks again to the ACW and spaghetti dinner committee, those that shopped, set up, sold tickets, obtained auction items, served, cleaned up, etc. The spaghetti dinner is truly a parish event and would not be successful without all of you……..the ACW thanks you!

The ACW will not be having a meeting or sponsored coffee hour in the month of May.

Easter Service 2014

St. John’s was nearly full for the Easter Service held on April 20. Thanks to those who donated money for flowers and those who attended the services and dinners hosted by the ACW during Lent. Special thanks to the Altar Guild and especially Joyce and Jack Murray for all they do while coordinating and setting up for all of the funerals, holidays and special services that are observed at St. John’s. For many, many years they have been responsible for showcasing the beauty and traditions of our Church.